Incentives for RP

[Sunny]

I feel like there's a fundamental breakdown somewhere along the way here for some folks in this discussion.

'Incentives for RP' does not mean incentives for just any ol' RP. Some games used them that way, but that was because they were copying the games that came before them, not because they understood it.

Votes -- and other incentives -- have always been about rewarding the specific behavior you want to see.

Some games made them worth more for new people, some games made it so familiar people couldn't vote you once in a while, some games pooled them all together and split the rewards amongst the playerbase, some games capped how much a given person could spend, some games -- it goes on, and on, and on. But it's never been just 'we have to bribe people to play at all'.

So the question isn't actually 'how do I reward people for roleplaying when I do not want to use XP?' because you're right, it's stupid, and nobody's actually doing that. The question ACTUALLY is:

'how do I reward people for <a particular behavior I want to see, such as helping new people> without using xp?'

That's an easier question to answer, because it's specific, and it shows us all what we're actually trying to accomplish.

[Sunny]

Examples:

How do I reward people for interacting with new players without using character advancement?

Every new player (important: player, not character) that hits the grid gets 2 'newbie points' to bestow on whoever the hell they want, be it the friend that pulled them to the game or the person that walked them through chargen. Those points can be used to buy badges for your wiki page to show off how much of a newbie helper or new player recruiter you are. Yay! People like being recognized as helpers.

How do I reward people for playing in public rather than being squirreled away in their private places all the time?

Get into the habit of dropping NPCs into public scenes and giving out plot information in them.

How do I --

And on and on. You have to start with the specific behavior you want to encourage, to find a solution for that behavior that is not character advancement.

[Ghost]

@Sparks said in Incentives for RP:

Do you punish them if they don't?

Realistically, this is a catch-22 situation.

In tabletop or LARP (more TT than LARP) you can easier penalize people for rude/antisocial behavior because there's more oversight. Also, these often tend to be in-person affairs where things like body language, face to face meeting, and rude behavior are more obvious and harder to explain away.

Why this is a Catch-22 is because mushing is absolutely intended to be a hobby that involves a large group of people writing together. In the spirit of things? Absolutely people should be reprimanded for ignoring other players or pushing exclusivity. If the spirit of the hobby is collaborative writing, then ignoring people and only writing with a small clique is contradictory.

In theory, you should be annoyed with players who behave elitist, avoiding players because of petty differences, and create a negative social atmosphere of exclusivity.

The other side of the sword...

There are some cases where it's warranted. Creepers, people with rape fantasy, stalkers, etc. In a perfect world these people are outright banned and the environment is sanitized of their filth. In many cases, they are, but technology allows for these wolves to sneak back in and cause issues. This is also absolutely why some people with personal/petty issues go straight for words like sociopathic, because that will presumably ensure a ban. False reporting has resulted in it becoming harder to convince staff to ban, and for decent reason.

So...you can't really demand that players write with people that they don't want to, but at the same time, not enforcing people being inclusive and positive is the exact behavior that results in primadonna/exclusive/overly judgy behavior that not only goes allowed, but in some cases is the norm.

My gut tells me that the players who refuse to be inclusive aren't any better for a game's atmosphere than the creepers who deserve to be banned. On a philosophical level I think the players who refuse to be inclusive despite reassurances that all logged bannable offenses will result in a ban are a problem, and some games might be better off with neither.

Get the player mentality you want on the server, and weed out the people with bad attitudes. You might see an improvement in atmosphere, give or take some bad habits.

[Sparks]

@Sunny said in Incentives for RP:

How do I reward people for playing in public rather than being squirreled away in their private places all the time?

Get into the habit of dropping NPCs into public scenes and giving out plot information in them.

So apparently, sometimes this backfires.

turns to stare directly at the camera, a'la The Office

[Ganymede]

@Ghost said in Incentives for RP:

Because the horse ultimately wants the carrot, and not the stick.

Get out of here with your kink-shaming, commie.

[Wretched]

So, what Fates harvest does (and what we are using a version of for Miami) is both Xp and Arcade Tickets. Xp has a weekly cap and it's fairly easy to reach with minimal staff interference. Once said cap is reached for the week, you instead earn an alternate currency that can be used for a variety of other things.

I like this, because well, i've had more than a little experience with XP going awry. When people go 'Oh Wretched, it's only a +1, Its just another +1, it's just another +1. And then one PC has 1500 xp because headstaff gets burnout and another staffer decides to do all the XP jobs for members of their own IC RP group and it derails the entire games XP system.

Not that i'm bitter.

I am generally with the 'I am in this hobby to be in this hobby' and I really hate xp based incentives, because it always starts out as 'oh its just a minor thing'. and then 'well you allowed that minor thing, why not this minor thing'.

So, alternative currency, maybe use it to play an antagonist for a specific time and plotr, to skip[ PRP justifications, to create a side economy of trifles and gewgaws and other limited one use items from across the spheres. Cash in for a personal plot about your past. Theres a lot of ways to use an alternate currency that isnt directly related to inflating your character's stats more.

[Sunny]

@Wretched said in Incentives for RP:

So, alternative currency, maybe use it to play an antagonist for a specific time and plotr, to skip[ PRP justifications, to create a side economy of trifles and gewgaws and other limited one use items from across the spheres. Cash in for a personal plot about your past. Theres a lot of ways to use an alternate currency that isnt directly related to inflating your character's stats more.

I am a huge alternate currency fan. There are a LOT of things that you can do that will motivate people just fine, starting with "fate points" and wiki badges and going from there.

It is an interesting thought to me: what if you made said alternate currency tradable between players, as well? So like, you earn some, and you can pay Bob 5 of it to do something for you, and then Bob can use it to buy whatever from staff (or someone else). If you did it right you could encourage all sorts of things.

[Ghost]

@Wretched What's Arcade, pressshus?

[juke]

For the thing I'm working on, I've been looking at ways to reward people who ST for other people...with plot that's run for them. Because, speaking as someone who loves to ST...sometimes, you'd really just like to get embroiled in a plot mystery that you don't hold all of the cards to, for once.

How to do this in a sane way, without burning out staff responsible for doing that (in the event you wind up with a glorious abundance of players STing for other players), is an important question. It's possible that a player may not even like the plot that gets run for them, because in MU*ing the one universal truth is that you can't please everyone...but I think communicating with the player about the kinds of things they want/enjoy solves a lot of that.

I've always liked games where fun little mcguffins were part of storytelling and plot, too. Objects or information that did stuff.

[Auspice]

@juke said in Incentives for RP:

For the thing I'm working on, I've been looking at ways to reward people who ST for other people...with plot that's run for them. Because, speaking as someone who loves to ST...sometimes, you'd really just like to get embroiled in a plot mystery that you don't hold all of the cards to, for once.

How to do this in a sane way, without burning out staff responsible for doing that (in the event you wind up with a glorious abundance of players STing for other players), is an important question. It's possible that a player may not even like the plot that gets run for them, because in MU*ing the one universal truth is that you can't please everyone...but I think communicating with the player about the kinds of things they want/enjoy solves a lot of that.

I've always liked games where fun little mcguffins were part of storytelling and plot, too. Objects or information that did stuff.

Getting people to run plot is one of those things that has been long evading me. It's like the majority of people who MU are actively repulsed by the idea of running plots for other people at this point in time.

[faraday]

I've been in the leadership of a volunteer organization in RL, and I think you find a lot of the same issues that we face on MUSHes. Someone either has a volunteer mentality or they don't. Incentives just don't work very well, unless they're super-enticing. (like $$ in the real world)

I think the RPG realm, stuff that makes your character badass is inherently super-enticing, which is why XP-based or trinket-based systems do work well. Unfortunately, they are fraught with abuse, imbalance, and an inherent unfairness in rewarding those with more time on their hands so now you have a class of haves and have-nots.

The alternate currencies require some system in which to use them. On my BSG games it was mostly +combat. Earn some luck points, get some more hero moments. If you've got some kind of action point economy, that can work too. But if you're running a mostly cooperative, story-driven game, your opportunities for making such a thing useful is fairly limited, and thus the alternate currency is not going to be very enticing. It's kind of nice for the people who were going to do it anyway, but it's not likely to actually motivate people who weren't already inclined to do the thing.

@Seraphim73 said in Incentives for RP:

Because yes, everyone is here for RP, because MUSHes are RP games, but not everyone is here to spread plot hooks and welcome new players onto the grid and generally support the actions of others. Many players feel that's burdensome, so if you want it, you incentivize it.

I think at this point I'm mostly in the "get off my lawn" phase of MUSH running. If I need to bribe you to get involved in plots, or be welcoming to new players, or support the others, then why are you even here? I'm just not inclined to cater to those people any more.

[Sparks]

@faraday said in Incentives for RP:

I think at this point I'm mostly in the "get off my lawn" phase of MUSH running. If I need to bribe you to get involved in plots, or be welcoming to new players, or support the others, then why are you even here? I'm just not inclined to cater to those people any more.

I admit, I view the incentives less as useful for "I want to get this player to go out and do things", and more for "I want these players who are already doing things to maybe think about including the player who is not, and is feeling stymied because they don't know where to start." Because even players who aren't being actively malicious or exclusionary can still tend to cluster into little clumps. You only have a couple hours a night to RP, and this is the storyline you're interested in? Well, you're probably going to keep RP'ing with those two folks. And it gets easy to almost not notice that poor Bob over there is sitting in the corner, seeing you three together on +where every night, and wondering what he needs to do in order to get into a story like that.

You're not wrong that all the systems are kind of inherently flawed, though. I feel like all you can do is pick the one that's flawed in the least-destructive way for your particular game.

[Ghost]

I think the trick to encouraging STs is to provide some kind of benefit that isn't monetary (IC money, XP, equipment) but also doesnt excessively make them a VIP (your own private Star Destroyer, 5th generation Brujah, OP feature characters like Luke Skywalker or Optimus Prime).

But I can think of a few cool perks, like:

• Why did Phasma have cool shiny armor? No clue, but for one reason or another the Empire let your stormtrooper have an identifying style to your armor. It stops blaster bolts no better than FN-7667's plain white-ass armor and you will still be as shitty a shot with a blaster, but it's intriguing.
• It means nothing and won't come up in game in any means of major consequence, but your character is the 2nd cousin of that one guy in ARMAGEDDON FORCE 12.
• Again Star Wars. Why the hell is Poe's X-Wing orange and black and everyone else's is some kind of uniformly identifiable color? WHO KNOWS, but for one reason or another Ackbar approved your cool black and gold A-wing and there's a neat story there, but the Empire/Order might wanna kill you first.
• Maybe something like: 1x every 60 days you can sign up early for an event, limited to one GM player per event

Just ideas. The point is that rewards dont necessarily have to help you be above other players, but also don't need to put you into some higher caste.

[Wretched]

@Ghost said in Incentives for RP:

@Wretched What's Arcade, pressshus?

http://fatesharvest.com/w/Arcade

That is what i am basing the idea on, but with MOAR (including something I am currently calling the 'Soap opera Ressurection' the idea of which would be to use an alternate currency to bring back a 'dead' character. I mean, its a thing in almost all the related media, the Winchester Brothers, etc. Prolly not applicable to PVP (but nothing entirely ruled out), but might encourage more Risk of established/loved PC if bad dice didn't mean permanent loss. Earn tokens, spend them, and instead of dying from falling off that train, you return with a cybernetic arm and some manchurian brain damage, or some other fun and improbable scenario. But thats a whole other conversation.)

@Sunny The idea of trading tickets is interesting, I was more thinking of the objects you could by themselves. Like a Gewgaw or trifle costing like 4 tickets or whatever (with an idea of a randomizer vending machine that only costs 1 but its random and might not even be from your sphere, but totally tradable or cool to add to an IC esoteric museum of some sort), but direct trades seem interesting too. Semi Related is Our Resources and Crime stuff

[Ghost]

@Wretched AAAAAAAAAAAAH I like that. Kind of like a ticket booth at Dave & Busters. I get it now.

I like that. I mean it's merit based, which makes it not about favoritism, and it's openly posted so it isn't some perk only certain players can partake in.

I diggit.

[faraday]

@Ghost said in Incentives for RP:

But I can think of a few cool perks, like:

Sure those are nice perks. But do you really think anyone is going to be motivated to go out and run plots for people (a thankless, frustrating job) just to be able to pose that their X-Wing is black? So again it comes down to why you're doing it. If it's a perk for folks who were going to do the stuff anyway - sure, let them have a black X-Wing. No harm done. But as a motivation? Color me skeptical.

[Ghost]

@faraday You may be right. I'm just spitting out ideas.

Ideally people run plot for others because they enjoy telling stories. However if it feels too much like putting on a performance, maybe another approach would be to try putting together writing groups and instead of an "event" it's 5 people, each a GM and a writer, rotating GM-work and throwing each other plot twists mid-scene.

[Sparks]

I like the idea, but...

Aesthetic perks might motivate some folks sufficiently; there are plenty of people who will do something ludicrous and time-consuming in an MMO solely to get a particular title or equippable cosmetic. I've known people who will defeat 100 of a specific enemy in a specific place where they spawn incredibly infrequently and only during the night, just to get a title they want. (I might've been this person, on occasion.)

So I think the number who'll be incentivized may well be greater than zero, but I'm not sure by much. Because I also think storytelling is frequently more difficult—or at least, requires more investment of thought and creativity—than getting a particular MMO mission perfect or killing X number of enemies in a specific circumstance, and so I think the bar of "what will incentivize this behavior" is higher.

Sure I'll run this obnoxious stealth mission in the Secret World six times with my friends until we make it through without triggering a single alarm once, all just to get a rare dance emote (fistshakes at the Bank Heist mission in Tokyo), but if you asked me to write a novella? A novella that hits specific plot beats, and which directly appeals to the individual interests and tastes of these five specific different people simultaneously? If I had to do that in order to earn a rare dance emote, I think I as a player might very well decide the dance emote isn't worth that much effort and walk away.

[saosmash]

I love running stuff FOR people but I find it kind of intimidating also because tailoring something to someone, you either have to know them really well, or be magic?

[Ghost]

@saosmash said in Incentives for RP:

I love running stuff FOR people but I find it kind of intimidating also because tailoring something to someone, you either have to know them really well, or be magic?

^this is important to the topic. Very.

I know I mentioned pages back, but people can be judgmental. A good number of people are happy to have plot run for them, but there's those vocal ones who will sit through an entire session, rules lawyer the fuck out of a scene, and then say things that sound like a 1-star Yelp! review from the perspective of someone who actually paid for a product.

"Yeah, it would have better if you'd have let me use my parkour skill more. I don't get why you didn't want to go full combat..."

We've seen some "meh" on Hog Pit about people not THANKING people for running scenes, complaints about railroaded scenes, etc. Players have really good ideas (and many opinions) as to what they like and don't like.

(Hey, wanna circle back to inclusiveness? Sure)

This is probably because people get used to running plots and scenes with their go-to players and GMs. You get so used to a style that different styles or approaches might seem neat to one person, but rather "GOD DAMNIT, CAROL, YOU KNOW I DON'T LIKE KETCHUP ON MY HOT DOGS WTF" with others.

It can be very intimidating, which makes it all the more fucking important to be gentle and caring for the people taking their time to run a free night of entertainment for players in a scene that doesn't really further their own characters.