How would you run a large scene?
-
@Ghost To be honest, one of the main reason I hate PvP with dice (at least on nWoD MU*) is because they actually make posing undesirable. It actually gets in the way, which is the exact opposite of what I log on for.
I'm not arguing they aren't necessary, you need the mechanics to provide resolution, but I don't have to like it.
-
@faraday said:
I strongly dislike places code. If you're going to do places, you might as well just be in separate MUSH rooms. Less obtrusive. But I haven't seen a lot of trouble with people making and managing their own sub-groups naturally, even when they're in the same room.
But yes, in general I agree with the rest of it and would add:
Skip the fluff. Summarize boring parts in a "moving right along..." type pose. Weddings are a prime example of this (OMG how I hate wedding scenes). One round of poses can summarize most - if not all - of the ceremony.
Start poses with your name instead of an emit. It makes it a lot easier to see who's doing what and keep track of the smaller sub-groups. Setting up a client-side highlighter for your character name can also help you avoid missing people talking to you.
Keep it moving. If you're the organizer and someone's holding things up, take charge. Pose around them. Don't let things stall or you'll have a lot of bored and frustrated players on your hands.
I couldn't disagree more. Places for large scenes are something that I consider essential. Perhaps I should say extra-large in that I mean 10+ people. Places serve several very valuable functions including keeping non-essential spam out of most people's screens. They also allow me to hold a side scene, which is what keeps me from totally zoning out.
Other than places, I think removing the necessity of less-essential PCs to pose helps to keep things flowing. Especially if its a scene where servants/ghouls/etc. may be included mainly just to make sure they're in the loop. Asking them to come up with a reaction pose every round is a bit much, nor should they have to wait a round to lean in and whisper to their master/husband/best-friend etc. some bit of special information.
OOC organization, like what Mietze did is also a great facilitator especially for uber-huge business meetings.
Finally, I always highlight my name client side along with the name of immediate family/packs/coterie mates/etc. It helps me know when I should be focusing on what's being said instead of zoning out.
-
@Lisse24 said:
Finally, I always highlight my name client side along with the name of immediate family/packs/coterie mates/etc. It helps me know when I should be focusing on what's being said instead of zoning out.
Yeah, I do that too, it helps a ton. Then again I never remember to make it MU-specific, so I'm playing different games and "Daniel" gets lit up for no reason.
-
The very best method I have ever seen used to run a large scene, was one person - the Storyteller - writing out large pages (multiple paragraphs), and handling The Story while the other person who has a character in said scene, handles The Math - that includes rolls, general mechanical questions, and the like. This two-man show ran smooooooothly. A massive scene that would have taken hours with Vampire, took half the time and none of the enjoyment was missed out on.
-
Before using FS3, I couldn't imagine a combat scene with more than about 8 players. With FS3, if you have players who know what they're doing, I would feel comfortable running a combat for 20 players without much of a problem (and regularly ran combat scenes with 10-15 players on tFW).*
I'm generally against +places code (because I love to see what everyone is doing, no matter how spammy things get), but I do like the idea of places code that was just a colorized notation of where in the room things were occurring tagged onto the start of the pose. What would be really cool would be code that allowed such places to be created on the fly by players. This would let them create "places" like "Around <name>" or "in front of the stage" or whatever. One other solution that I've seen work really well is "arena" code, which made all poses and emits from one room show up in the second room, allowing people to watch gladiatorial matches, melees, or whatever without their non-combat poses spamming the combatants.
I totally agree with the suggestions to summarize anything that isn't interactive (wedding ceremonies, NPC trials that the PCs aren't interacting with, etc). You don't want several rounds of people posing sitting still and watching (or perhaps worse, getting into a major argument ICly and disrupting the scene).
Modified 3-pose-rule is absolutely critical. You absolutely cannot keep strict pose order, but you also have to keep from leaving people behind, because it's really easy to get lost in a big scene. I like to go with "3-pose-rule, so long as everyone in your immediate group who isn't afk has posed too."
For a court scene, a living agenda doc is a spectacular idea, keeping people up to date and moving. Having a designated "catch up" person to bring latecomers up to date is awesome too.
*I've noticed, however, at least with the set of code being used on Omens, that anything more than about 28-29 combatants tends to make +combat hang.
-
@faraday
Aside (I am reading the thread still), but you could (at least on Penn) @hook the commands to determine places status and then arrange appropriate pre-tags from there. -
@Lisse24 said:
I couldn't disagree more. Places for large scenes are something that I consider essential. Perhaps I should say extra-large in that I mean 10+ people. Places serve several very valuable functions including keeping non-essential spam out of most people's screens. They also allow me to hold a side scene, which is what keeps me from totally zoning out.
Well, naturally everyone has their own preferences, but I question how "essential" it can be when I've been running games just fine for 10+ years without it
But more seriously, if everyone's running side scenes in separate places with no interaction, then it's not really a big scene any more and there's no reason why they need to be in the same room in the first place. Split people off into RP rooms or whatever. The benefit of having having one scene is that X and Y can be having an argument at their table and then someone else can react to it. Places code takes that away.
@Bobotron - Probably you could, but I've never seen places code that did so.
@Seraphim73 - LOL, oops. I confess I never tried a scene that big.
-
I wonder if it would be possible to indicate that you have a pose that contains a response that needs to be timely.
The idea here is that you use the order people indicate they have a time dependent pose to offer.
Like initiative, these would be placed in an order based on when it was indicated a response was being written. People could of course defer to others.
Have a means to indicate an interruption, especially something big like pulling out guns in a debate.
Let the scene coordinator decide how big a pose should be so that people don't pull off eight hour speeches while folks wait to react to their opening line, o their presence in the scene.
Perhaps this timely pose order thing could include indicators of a long pose, such as opening remarks at a meeting.
You could likewise indicate other functions such as "response to Bob" "shouting down the impostor" or "I am waiting to make my formal introduction.
In theory players could look at these synopsis, and coordinate among themselves to allow for actual interruptions of poses, talking over one another, having the men in white hustle someone away and so on.
-
@faraday
True. It seems pretty trivial to do so though, with how @hook works. Just softcode your say/pose commands, make them trigger if someone has joined a place, if that person is in a place DBREF (or has a place attr on themselves), then prefix with a [Alcove Tables] or something of that nature (actually, I may tweak my places code for TheatreMUSH to do this, as I like the idea...) -
I already have hooks for pose break systems. I think there is a point where the pose and say system just isn't going to do everything.
-
@Bobotron said:
@faraday
True. It seems pretty trivial to do so though, with how @hook works. Just softcode your say/pose commands, make them trigger if someone has joined a place, if that person is in a place DBREF (or has a place attr on themselves), then prefix with a [Alcove Tables] or something of that nature (actually, I may tweak my places code for TheatreMUSH to do this, as I like the idea...)What kind of barbarian uses say or pose? Nothing of value would be lost if those commands were removed <.< >.>
What is obvious to you may not be obvious to me and vice versa.
-
@Groth said:
What kind of barbarian uses say or pose? Nothing of value would be lost if those commands were removed <.< >.>
LOL. Say, I agree. But pose? I use that constantly in scenes where there's more than one other person. It helps me keep track of who's doing what to see the names first.
-
For non-business scenes, I throw in with the people who say there should be a slot limit. I understand the desire to include all comers, but the problem is for me (and I suspect many other STs) the ability to stay attentive/field questions/respond with reaction stuff that isn't just cut and paste canned tops out between 4-6 people not including the ST. (For me it's 5 max). When I have run an all-sphere plot (like for law) even if something is happening concurrently I schedule several times and cap the participants in any one scene (or limit folks to picking one if real crowd control is an issue).
What have noticed with larger "plot" scenes is the following:
-
Because of the volume, player time is not respected. I actually think it's important to both players and ST to have start/end times that are adhered to promptly or a check in given if the time needs to be extended. For important plot scenes I always have a backup date/time for rollover. I don't want people to have worked so hard to lay groundwork and been attentive and all that, only to be so exhausted and redeyed once it hits 2 AM their time on a workday even though the scene was supposed to have wrapped 2 hours previously). Some of that can be ST mismanagement (like the ST does not set a time limit for responses and gives people in init an hour to respond even with no AFK notification, ect) but if you have 8 people in a scene then realistically if it goes into init or rolling, even if the player proposed action/Player Pose/rolling or ST negotiation/Result or Response pose only takes 5 minutes total, that's still 40 minutes to cycle through everyone assuming there isn't any clarification or explanation or help involved. Everyone can be attentive and on top of it and with the volume it may just turn a 3-4 hour action packed scene into a 6 hour slog with a lot of waiting for everyone and a harried ST.
-
Maybe this is just something unusual, but I've noticed with +Event signups that do not have slot limits/waitlist, especially on attention-starved places, people seem less likely to show up/be on time than if there's boundaries/clear indications that you're taking a slot that could go to someone else. Maybe people assume that an unrestricted (in slots) scene with 15 people in it means that they can roll in whenever and it won't be a big deal or it won't start on time anyway or they get freaked out and decide not to go at all...but whatever the case, the people not knowing if they're going to be stuck in a 6 hour scene that should be 3 because they're waiting 90 minutes for people to pose so why bother, or if everyone bails so you'll have an awesome time with 2 people...just an observation I've made in participating and running scenes is that players (and sometimes STs!) tend to get real sloppy with manners really quick or things seem directionless and that seems to encourage a great deal of flakiness.
*Manners degrade at a rate proportional to the size of the scene, if the players are expecting it to be an action scene (by action I don't mean combat necessarily, just--not social or info dump but something that the PCs get to actively, personally contribute to and most importantly affect with their RP). I do think our hobby's general population at least on WoD places is very much suffering from "oh my god, no one is doing anything, I need to latch on to whatever I can because NOTHING is going on and nobody is doing anything" entertainmeitis. And because most WoD do devolve or are set up for a model that heavily, heavily relies on players to "make their own fun" rather than staff constantly giving them things to do, there are a lot of bored people who don't know what to do, who are tired and frustrated because they want action RP and are starved for it. So they sign up for an event, and when it doesn't deliver to their expectations (which may be modest) people get irritable and maybe even pretty rude. I think most people with limited time who are starved for RP find it really hard to deal with the realities of a large scene--most people are not going to get to "shine", there is no way the ST can help out 10 people find a niche in a couple of hours unless there some advanced planning, if you are patient and polite your questions may be lost compared to the bluster and page bombing and scenery chewing of the more aggressive players, if you choose to engage in that behavior then you may have to deal with a harried ST; again, maybe I just have had a bad run of observations/experiences, but I think the satisifaction level for players (even if they are awesome players and the ST is awesome--I'm talking about everyone doing their best here) tends to go down in larger scenes because of the time and attention crunch.
If I was a staffer or I'd committed to running a 8+ slot plot scene, then I'd do what I've done in previous instances where I either wanted to ensure rapid pace action with intense subject matter--bring in a helper or two and prewrite a lot of flavor poses that I could C&P in addition to actual response. I'd also ask that anyone participating send me any special tidbits/abilities of their PC so that I could be sure to a) have that loaded on my cheatsheet and also so that I had some time to think about how to anticipate incorporating it. I would be absolutely draconian on start times (I usually give 15 minutes unless everyone else agrees for more--with a huge plot scene I'd narrow that to 5 with prior notice, otherwise doors "lock" on the dot) and response time. (If you aren't ready when the timer starts you get skipped until the next round, if it happens again, or maybe 3 times, without warning then you get booted from the scene--you can observe but no longer participate). Yes, I would disclose all that up front in the +event and in the pre-set so that people who know they can't do that have the option to bow out.
But really, I would do everything in my power to avoid 8+ PC "plot" scenes. I have never really seen those work well ever. Maybe some of the TR EOTW scenes, but plenty of those where it did not. I don't run a lot of very straight up here is a big monster kill it or get killed/defeated stuff. Maybe something like that could be well done in a large scene; but as a ST I like to have the PCs be able to have open ended solutions to problems, I like to play WITH them as ST so that they can surprise me (and my players and PCs often have surprised me in huge ways as an ST, it's what I live for!), and for me personally I don't feel I can offer the individual attention I enjoy most once a scene carries over too large.
-
-
@faraday
Working on a Clone Wars game... wanted to see how many B1s I could throw at people before I went insane or the system broke. I'm not sure which actually happened first, but around 28-29 participants (PCs, NPCs, all inclusive) it usually hangs 1-3 rounds in. At 25 participants, it seems to work just fine, even with grenades and fullauto and all sorts of crazy things.The randomness of the multiple, independent d100 rolls may drive me insane (give me bell curves!), but the system itself is robust, and wonderful for running many players through combat very quickly, while keeping it characterful.
-
@mietze - That's interesting. I haven't observed that phenomenon myself. I've seen lots of scenes with 5+ people get done in just a couple hours. Even combats. I don't doubt you've experienced it, but maybe it's related to genre, STs, or something.
@Seraphim73 said:
The randomness of the multiple, independent d100 rolls may drive me insane (give me bell curves!)
Pretty much everything in FS3 uses bell curves, so I'm not quite sure what you mean. Anyway, I'd guess you're probably hitting some kind of Penn queue or attribute count limit. Could probably work around it somehow if you really wanted to (not really a subject for this thread though.)
-
FS3 worked for large combats because the combat system does most of the work in determining who hits, how they hit, and how much damage is done. All people need to do is write a pose for who they're targeting and then roleplay the results. It really does a great job of queueing people to where they need to be in a scene. There's no time spent by the player in compiling their dice pools, either. It's pose, then run the round of combat, and pose.
Very simple and effective for mass combats. IF I ever ran a game I'd want the possibility of large combats, so FS3 would be my go-to.
-
FS3's combat is a total godsend for big combat scenes. I remember literally drinking my way through doing a particularly giant on a totally statless game and wanting to cry. Doing a giant melee on Steel & Stone a couple years later with +combat was a revelation.
We did start breaking the system a few times just because of the number of folks in one +combat, though. I imagine it was Penn limits going on.
-
@Roz
It's too bad you can't automate a lot of the 'common' RPG systems in such a way to do that, which is why I think many games use their own custom combat system or FS3. Things like WoD, you can't really 'automate' (well, okay, you can but it's difficult, especially if you're doing something like CofD and have all the available creature types). Coded combat has always been something I've found super useful in my past games, and often fun to create poses for. -
Part of it is also a cultural thing. While the limited experience I have had with FS3 combat has been mostly positive, i would not want automated combat in a WoD game.
The thing with published systems is that they are designed to work with a human moderator in place, take that out of the equation, or lessen they role they have and things tend to break down. -
Depends on if it's combat or not. If it's not combat, I generally go with Rule of 3. Three poses after yours, you can go again so long as it's not an action pose, this is pure social because large scenes tend to devolve into circles responding to each other anyways since 10 people rarely have a conversation. It's one person talking, 3 people listening, 3 other people talking about something else, and a pair of people mocking everyone.
For combat scenes I have the five minute rule. Pre-type your actions so that you can declare easy and roll then pose the attempt/effect whatever.
It's still a long thing depending on how many npc's there are and whatnot but that's what I do.
