The Desired Experience

[Derp]

@il-volpe

Ok. Sure.

But the difference is, there's no Writer's Room on a MUSH plotting out every single thread for every single character. The tailor is the most interesting character because he was custom-designed to be that way. Bashir feels so shoehorned because he was shoehorned, and other than that only had the fact that he was hot and smart going for him. A mile wide, and an inch deep.

There is not even the remote equivalent of a thing like that on a MU. There is no central authority planning out every single thing that a character will do, say, and experience in combination with all these other characters.

So making a character like a tailor and expecting, as if by magic, someone to figure out a way to get him from the dressing room to the dungeon depths is not only a little unrealistic given the logistical difficulties on a MU, but even actually a little entitled. It assumes that someone else is going to do all the mental gymnastics necessary to flip the story around in such a way, including every other character in it, to not only make it possible for the tailor to participate in the dungeon-delving, but to also give them a time to shine -- somehow. No matter how ill-suited they are otherwise to dungeon-delving.

That isn't fair to the gamerunner. That isn't fair to the other players that have made characters that can flow into their specific parts with minimal resistance or disruption. It is your responsibility, as a player, to at least attempt to create a character that isn't going to make an inordinate amount of work for anyone else. Or to find someone willing to do that work for you. Nobody should simply expect it of anyone else just because you're there.

A MU isn't nearly the same as a season or nine of a television show. They have very different distributions of resources, and very different creative control methods. You cannot expect them to be remotely similar, or be able to employ the same mind-boggling logistics that it takes entire teams of people months to storyboard for in a relatively static environment.

[faraday]

@derp Yep.

On BSGU, I was very up front that the plots were going to revolve around the pilots and marines doing action stuff. While you could be some other kind of crewman, you were on your own for RP. Whenever someone apped a support crewman, I spoke with them individually to make sure they understood this. Some proceeded anyway, and I was like: "More power to them." They knew what they were getting into.

Most got bored and quit, as I expected. Two, though, took the initiative to figure out how to get their support people into the "dungeon". They worked with me to craft an appropriate storyline, generated a bunch of RP, and ended up being two of the more interesting characters on the game.

[il-volpe]

@derp

The tailor who is just a tailor, ill-suited to dungeon diving, isn't the character I'm talkin' about.

Just pretend they're remotely similar. It didn't take massive mental gymnastics to include Garak. It took Bashir taking an interest in him, and 'The Wire'. Garak didn't make somebody figure out how to get him from dressing-room to dungeon, it was built-in. It took other PCs getting past 'tailor' and GMs reading the bit in his bg about the implant in his head and letting that hit the screen. This is probably equivalent to what @faraday said about working with staff to craft an appropriate storyline.

ETA: I may be confused and you're meaning apps for plain, simple tailors and you know there's nothin' more to them, because you read the apps. Rather than being a player and coming across a tailor PC.

[Derp]

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

ETA: I may be confused and you're meaning apps for plain, simple tailors and you know there's nothin' more to them, because you read the apps. Rather than being a player and coming across a tailor PC.

That is what I mean, yes.

In your case, he isn't a tailor. he's like -- a sleeper agent with a cover as a tailor, and has already mapped out the critical path necessary to get him out of the dressing room and into the dungeon on his own initiative.

I mean the people who will just app in a tailor, nothing more, and then get mad that they aren't Central to Everything, or the ones that app in something so far out in the fringes that even though they took the initiative to create something ostensibly deeper than 'plain simple tailor', working them into the storyline would be kind of maddeningly difficult.

For the latter, think like -- the guy that apps the feudal era samurai that only speaks japanese and can't understand modern technology onto DS9 and then gets mad when they aren't on every away mission.

There is a certain amount of 'dude, seriously?' that comes along with certain concepts, the too-plain or the not-nearly-close-enough.

If someone else has already mapped out a reasonable path forward that doesn't require the entire game to shift to accommodate them, then yeah. They're in the clear.

[mietze]

Honestly, I like finding a RP group of people who are nice to me oocly in game and who like my rp and stories and who have interesting characters that I like learning more about.

Its also nice to have staff proactively involve me, but that's like not a daily/weekly/monthly thing really, but at certain points in the larger story.

There are so many types of rp and storylines i enjoy. But I can have the best story ever but if a lot of people are ooc hostile and I have to see too much of people being mean or super rude to each other oocly then it ruins the experience for me.

[Warma Sheen]

@mietze That would be nice. Unfortunately, I've never had that experience on a MU*.

That sounds exactly like what I got in tabletops and LARPs, which is why when I stopped being able to go to those I started MU*ing, to get the same experience. That was a let down. Not always. But inevitably, the bad would jump up and outweigh the good.

[Derp]

@mietze said in The Desired Experience:

Honestly, I like finding a RP group of people who are nice to me oocly in game and who like my rp and stories and who have interesting characters that I like learning more about.

This.

I want to find a group that I click with. I want to tell stories with that group when I have the time. I want other people in that group to tell stories when they have the time. Sometimes, I want to be in those stories.

I want to find a game where I am not forced to engage with things I don't want to engage with. Where staff is cool with my boundaries and my level of commitment, or usually lack thereof.

I want to just -- find my little friend island and enjoy my time in the sun or whatever, reach out and explore when I want to, and then go back and retreat to my little safe space, and let other people do their own thing. Preferably out of reach of me unless we agree otherwise.

[mietze]

Like, I like interacting with and being impacted by the game/larger storylines. But having that space in game to have a cordial relationship ooc (which ime tends to mean richer/more risky storytelling because of the ability to communicate and the respect) is just really lovely when it happens.

[Ominous]

I want the Dune and Republic of Rome board games writ large. I want a strategy and negotiation game on a huge scale with actions taken being based on in-character reasons rather than "Well, that's the move that wins me the game." I want suboptimal moves. I want flavorful moves. But I still want the intrigue and tactics and politics, though.

[Warma Sheen]

@derp said in The Desired Experience:

I want to find a game where I am not forced to engage with things I don't want to engage with. Where staff is cool with my boundaries and my level of commitment, or usually lack thereof.

Yeah, that's really something that would be nice to have. I don't have time to RP nearly as much as I did 15 years ago so I want that RP to be fulfilling to me when I do it. Being able to avoid crap and be able to engage in only the RP I want without being penalized outright or passively would be wonderful.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

It's certainly important to communicate what you want -- as a player but also as a game. Personally I want to feel included on equal footing with everyone else which is bloody difficult to achieve when you're on Central European Time.

[BetterNow]

@warma-sheen said in The Desired Experience:

@derp said in The Desired Experience:

I want to find a game where I am not forced to engage with things I don't want to engage with. Where staff is cool with my boundaries and my level of commitment, or usually lack thereof.

Yeah, daily adulting sucks and I want my RP time to be a relief from work stress, not adding more stress into my life.

[Seraphim73]

@arkandel I would include that sort of information in the mission statement if it was particularly important to the game: "an immersive exploration of Middle Earth, focused on storytelling in the themes of Tolkien's works" (or something like that). In my opinion, the intent of the Mission Statement is to include whatever the Staff thinks is most important.

[il-volpe]

From some blurb I wrote up for potential GMs:

Can I Play Too? and I Can Has Agency?

Those are what players want. They want to interact with other characters and join in the exciting shit. That is to say, everybody wants to play too. They also want to do stuff that matters in the world - agency. You must say Fuck Yes to both these.

Try not to build grid that forces characters apart, try not to add social divides that keep characters apart, don’t get uptight about enforcing those divides if they just exist in theme. People want playgroups and playgroups often mean factions and natural divisions and that is fine, but especially try to say Fuck Yes to letting people play too, and with whom they bloody well want to play. 

The question, “Can you think of a reason your character might be [at location/researching bobcats/watching static on the tv/whatever hook]? Might I offer one?” ought to be directed, on channels or in pages, to PCs who are around during events if they are at all qualified to join in. Encourage people to join in, and encourage people to welcome them. This does not mean you need to let everybody play in every scene and turn every event into a free-for-all of too many characters, but it does mean you should look around and let people be there when stuff goes down.

Players want agency, and to give them that you must give them opportunities to do stuff. Players generally want /equal/ agency which means that if one month Abelard saves the world and Brigid invents a devilish new salad dressing, and the next month Abelard saves the city and Brigid wins trivia night at the local bar, and so on, Brigid is probably wondering what she’s doing wrong.

[Devrex]

@il-volpe I'm not 100% sure I agree with this. Of course this is what players want and it should be facilitated and I'm down with that, but the ST already is running events and running scenes and offering hooks and doing a million pounds of work. Trying to figure out who is remotely qualified to be there and paging them and drawing them out when they're just sitting there seems like a bridge too far to me.

This post says nothing about Brigid's onus to sign up for the +event that's already on public offer to every player in a faction. Where is Brigid's responsibility to read the hooks that are being put out publicly and to +request a scene where she investigates or impacts those things? Why isn't Brigid using the tools?

I say this as an ST who has legit @mailed players going "I notice you haven't played much, are you okay can I offer you something" and getting, "Oh I'm totally fine."

I say this as an ST who has legit @mailed hooks to people and had them straight up ignored.

I say this as an ST who has basically listened to the same people complain endlessly that they can't get in on anything...but they won't sign up for events, they won't proactively poke at anything, they won't put themselves out there. They expect...something, I don't know what, a level of handholding and spoonfeeding that means I now am not giving my energy to the people who really are willing to pay attention and jump in.

I say this as an ST who has literally given personal attention or personally GM'd scenes to people where they like...got to friggin' James Bond their way to information that was pretty vital to the story only to be told, "I haven't gotten to do do anything important."

When do we say, well, Brigid, you had the option to go to World Saving Night and you did a social scene about salad dressing instead and how is that on us? At what point do you go, "Okay, well, you got to objectively do this thing and you can certainly do more but managing your feelings and FOMO is maybe not my job?"

Not trying to be antagonistic here, I just feel a fair bit of frustration sometimes at the amount of effort that I at least, personally put in to trying to get people involved only to run into just all of these things and just this idea that players have no responsibility for managing their own experience. Like it's one thing to say, "I play for moments where I get to do high social drama" so that I as an ST can try to offer more high social drama stuff, it's another to say "if Brigid never shows up to anything and is mad about it this is somehow my fault as a GM."

[mietze]

I do sometimes wish that more games would have very specific "you can expect x experience" plastered everywhere.

But you know, the more I think about that, the more difficult I understand it to be to write that sort of thing.

I have come to loathe stuff like "you get out what you put into it" because that's certainly never been true in my experience--while people who get a lot do tend to put a lot in, lots of people also put in a lot and get...crickets. Doubly so if there's no real guideline or clear way showing the right kind of work to put in to get results--but there's always folks who are targets of a certain degree of snobbery (their writing style doesn't fit in, they're unknown, ect) or timezone mismatch, things that aren't really anyone's fault per se.

[Ganymede]

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

Players want agency, and to give them that you must give them opportunities to do stuff.

What if some players' active hours differ from the core group?

What if some players are less comfortable with the kind of RP that the core group want to do?

There's a lot here. It's nice to say GIVE THEM AGENCY without answering the tougher questions about how to do it with a given player base. Because every player base is different.

[faraday]

Agency in the sense of "doing stuff that matters in the world" isn't everything, either. Take TGG for instance. In most of the campaigns, the PCs were grunts. They couldn't impact the war. They couldn't choose their missions. The battle code could kill them at any moment. BSGU was in a similar vein, though not as hard-core.

People want different things. There's no one perfect recipe for a game to be successful.

[il-volpe]

@devrex Eh, I think you're just making a leap. This means, "FFS, /invite/ people," not "spend a lot of time coaxing people to play." (Please don't. Play with people who show some enthusiasm.) If you posted an event, you're covered.

ETA: also assumes a small game.

[il-volpe]

@Ganymede You're right, of course. There's a lot more to this old and badly in need of editing document.

@faraday That's a matter of scale. The biggest thing the grunts can do is win battles, right? That matters in their world. So in BSG Abelard saves the team and makes the objective with minimal losses and Brigid does a good job wiping down the mess hall.