PRP or SRP

Coin

With any sort of plot, there needs to be oversight of some kind. While I'm not a DC reader, I hear Flashpoint was kind of nuts. Flash, not being one of the big three, rarely got any oversight for story stuff. So they went balls-deep and went nuts with it, to the point where DC decided it would be easier to reboot their whole universe than it would be to sort out the mess. So, too, I feel it is with some PRPs. The problem is when people either 1) lack the scope to realize that no, what they're doing is wrong, but by the time staff get wind of it, it is a monster to retcon, 2) realize it, but don't care. Even SRPs could do this, but they have the benefit of having staff on hand to help nip things in the bud.

What? The Nu52 was not in response to Flashpoint, but rather the reason for Flashpoint happening at all.

mouse

Both, but I find many games becoming lazy and simply going the PrP only route. Shadowrun Denver has gone this route in all but name now, and it is incredibly boring. Why players are even tasked with creating goals/issues in their background make no sense whatsoever as none of it is used, the grid is simply for bar RP at this point. Staff is concerned, overly concerned, with handling gear requests for PrPs and there is no meta or plot arc. Any staff that could run a story have no incentive, and maintain several alts.

People run PrPs like it's crack in the 80's, little groups huddled in plot rooms passing the pipe around. No impact on anything, it's incredibly unbalanced and sad as the sole representative of the product.

Arkandel

@mouse said:

Both, but I find many games becoming lazy and simply going the PrP only route.

I don't know that it's lazy as opposed to making a choice.

Staff normally needs to be marked as staff in order to fulfil their duties. When you type +jobs you're looking at a bunch more things than normal, you can go dark to avoid interruptions or catch policy violations such as harassment, you can teleport across the grid at will so you can build, etc.

A "staff ST" can't do anything inherently more than what a player can. You have access to the same commands.

Now consider that each time you add to staff you're adding to a certain overhead; you have to administrate one more person whose actions reflect on your game, they are given access to exclusive decision-making or information you might not want them to have. So unless you have a good reason for it why do so?

The answer to the question is probably somewhere in this thread. I'm not saying there's no good reason, just that it's not a given, and not necessarily the product of laziness.

mouse

I can respect and agree on the general level. On the other hand, a Staff ST is validating the player's actions and impact on a game more than the player alone in a plot room. A player X can say Dunklezahn hates player Y, but it has no bearing outside their immediate (assuming) agreed upon PrP. A Staff Storyteller can say, "No, Dunklezahn actually hates you. He's putting resources behind you and your friends, it's time to take action." And when Dunklezahn dies, in this instance, the rest of the game must accept that as reality.

To me it's the difference between fan fiction Sons Of Anarchy, and Kurt Sutter's script.

Three-Eyed Crow

@Arkandel said:

A "staff ST" can't do anything inherently more than what a player can. You have access to the same commands.

Except they do have access to more commands and those commands are helpful in doing their jobs. They can look at +sheets and backgrounds as they please, rather than going through the process of getting all that from the player. They can make changes to the grid themselves rather than putting it through some kind of builder request. If there's a larger plot going on, they ideally have access to the areas where it's documented and can make use of it. If a player has earned XP or a stat increase through something, a staff ST can just give them these things rather than going through a request process with a bunch of jobs and logs.

There are other things, too, but those are the main mechanical advantages that come to mind. You can do things like open +sheet and command access to certain players to mitigate all this, but it's not a thing that's standard.

AmishRakeFight

I like both, too.

As other people have commented, PRPs when dealing with high theme concepts or antagonists that have the power to blow up the world, those things need staff oversight. There are a shocking amount of people in various WoD splats that want to run complicated, high theme plot but haven't opened the fucking book and read it beyond the table of contents.

And if staff is worth their salt, they'll allow PrP antagonists if reasonably provoked to put their dick in everyone's cake and not shield people from bad outcomes from bad choices. So the cake fucking better be mechanically and thematically sound.

Jennkryst

@Coin I did mention I'm not a DC reader. Should have clarified that anything I said was based on stuff I was told by others.

Still. Shadowrun Denver is one of those examples of why you need more than one game of a setting/system. SR3 is broken and sometimes it feels like there are more HRs on the game than there are rules published in the books. It doesn't help the ruleset has been out of print for over a decade. But. This is the PRP v SRP thread!

There is a player on Denver who, less than a week ago, was involved in three plots in a 24 hour period. One of them, she ST'd. One of the plots (one of the two she didn't ST) was literally 'assault an office building in downtown Denver and take on 24 security guards in milspec armor with machine guns. Milspec. This is Shadowrun, mind you, not WoD, so military grade-gear is kind of bonkers. The whole point of Shadowrun is to sneak into places, do a job, and sneak out. Everyone goes in guns blazing because Wizard buffs are stupid unbalanced (okay, so it's kind of like WoD).

So there is no lack of PRP to be had there. But there are almost zero consequences from plot to plot, because in the above example, despite the fact that there are now 24 corpses laying around (all of whose gear is not able to be looted, because, again, more HRs than book rules), no NPCs are going to investigate.

Miss Demeanor

@Arkandel I was going to say... basically what Crow just said. Staff ST's have access to a lot more than the average player. Rather than having to input a job to request plot XP, a staff ST can simply grant it themselves for a log posted. There's no need to code in a +prove command since the staff ST can just look at your sheet anyways. They have access to the antagonists that are restricted to staff approval, once again without having to toss up a job and wait for said approval. Having staff ST's can actually help cut down on the number of jobs in a given sphere's bucket just for wiping out the need for half the jobs. And because they ARE staff, they can still approve the xp request jobs from PRP runners. They can still process xp spends and equipment requests from those other plots being run.

I remember the MAIN reason HM switched over to player run plots is because staff ST's wanted to be able to get xp on their player bits for running stories as staff. They felt it was unfair that they were doing work with no reward while other players got xp for running scenes. Using a player bit to run a plot back then was a way of gaming the system.

Sfire

@Miss-Demeanor said:

I remember the MAIN reason HM switched over to player run plots is because staff ST's wanted to be able to get xp on their player bits for running stories as staff.

I thought the main reason was because Loki drove off the majority of the good staff STs with draconian bureaucratic procedures and a staff application process that relied on you being best friends with him, his wife, and top cronies.

Then again, I could just be bitter.

Darinelle

@Miss-Demeanor said:

I remember the MAIN reason HM switched over to player run plots is because staff ST's wanted to be able to get xp on their player bits for running stories as staff. They felt it was unfair that they were doing work with no reward while other players got xp for running scenes. Using a player bit to run a plot back then was a way of gaming the system.

This seems like a flawed system, and the solution should be to reward STers too. If you run a plot that nets the people who play in it xp, why shouldn't you also get xp? I will say TR does that right at least - if you run a plot as staff, you can just request for XP to be awarded, equally with the people who go on said plot, to the character of your choice.

STing is too involved to not reward people who do it, and if they want xp as a reward they should get it. While some crazy people insist STing is its own reward (and to a point I agree), if people have characters but spend all their time STing, sometimes they end up enriching everyone's stories but their own, and that can detract from the enjoyment thereof. Especially if you happen across asshole players, which - and I know this will shock many of you - does unfortunately happen from time to time.

Miss Demeanor

Preaching to the choir, @Spitfire. Preaching to the choir.

@Darinelle It was a flawed system. That doesn't mean the solution applied wasn't also flawed. Once they phased out staff ST's, sphere metaplot all but disappeared (though some brave souls on staff still attempted it now and then) because nobody wanted to run something from their staffbit when they could get xp for running some 'monster of the week' from their charbit.

mouse

So the question should be, then, how can Staff ST be rewarded (with/or without their player bits) for theme plots? Denver had a run where 24 security guards died and no follow up? Yet to do anything with theme, you have to jump through hoops to get approved. Sad.

Sigh, I think I actually miss the days of Vulcan, at least you had to think.

Anyway, I think someone wrote there needs to be multiple Staffbits running plots, I agree maybe giving them each a hemisphere to cover and I would advocate giving it an every other week approach- almost like a tv series, so player-staff bits can interact as well? Players need to realize they are not entitled to 24/7 theme coverage from staff too.

Thenomain

@mouse

I think staff should be rewarded by having fun, same as the players. Why, what do you think staffers deserve for running plots?

mouse

I'm with you Thenomain, the telling of the story is the reward, but I would hazard not many would agree with that.

surreality

@Thenomain said:

@mouse

I think staff should be rewarded by having fun, same as the players. Why, what do you think staffers deserve for running plots?

I'd say treat the staff the same as players in terms of reward, if rewards are given. If they aren't given to players running plots, don't give them to staff either. If they're given to players for running plots, give them to staff, too.

Then it becomes much simpler: whoever is running the plot, they either get a reward or they don't, and it's the same reward regardless of who they are.

Coin

@surreality
This is pretty much my stance. In fact, the best way to do things is to basically just separate Player Experience from Character Experience. You ran a plot? It doesn't matter which character or staff bit you ran it on: you, the player, get the Experience, and can spend it in any way you see fit. Simple.

Insomnia

I miss when I would randomly thrust plot on to people who were sitting in public areas. Because I was bored. I didn't have anything else to do as staff, and usually I had approved the sheets and knew about the dark secret or what have you. Or just... to do something but not really in the mood for personal RP. But that seemed to fall out of favour with players. They were already doing something, in a private scene, you see. Never mind it was in a bar on the grid. Never mind people had been looking for RP when I cooked up my scheme.

But now if you even look at a sheet when you aren't on a job to look at that sheet, you are wrong wrong wrong. Or at least if not wrong, you get a side-eye. If I can't be trusted to look at sheets in the first place, I probably shouldn't be staff.

For me when I played, it was the playing in a plot, not who ran it. Well, it was a little bit who ran it, but mostly because of style, not substance.

Coin

@Insomnia, I kind of want to be able to drop in on people and just spring plot on them. I may do it occasionally on my game when we open and if they don't like it, well. I don't know. We'll see. But I consider myself someone who can entertain if people are willing.

surreality

@Coin said:

@Insomnia, I kind of want to be able to drop in on people and just spring plot on them. I may do it occasionally on my game when we open and if they don't like it, well. I don't know. We'll see. But I consider myself someone who can entertain if people are willing.

I wonder how much of this comes from so many plots these days being combat-centric or 'monster of the week' style plots? I can see someone being uneasy about random lethal combat exploding around them 24/7, especially if the opponents are tailored toward the higher end of the scale. (On games like TR, they almost have to be.)

I would love to see more instances of something as simple as 'that week's monster is sighted' dropped on people in advance of whatever conflict is brewing in the fashion you're describing, then have media boards utilized to report the sighting via fringe outlets/etc. in a way that might drive more interest in joining the good ol' monster of the week event that particular week. I'm surprised I don't see more of this than I do, which does happen once in a while.

Obviously there's more that can be done with further-reaching plots, but even the simple ones can often be developed much more significantly than they commonly are.

ThatOneDude

@Coin There was a little mu* I use to play on that the staff use to drop plot all the time. The best was plot where the staff would pop in and "make things happen". It made hanging out in a coffee shop interesting when something would happen plot wise out of no where inside the shop itself or out front that the characters could jump into if they wanted to. For someone like me that would be cool and appreciated.