Game Stagnancy and Activity
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@Tez said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
How do those smaller plots run within the shell of the -- umm, I'll call it a plot arc -- really impact the word?
Actually, they do. @faraday hasn't set a end for what's going to happen at the end of the campaign. There may be a last grand battle scene, but the small plots in the meantime will set what happens in that arc. One of the objectives on Picon was to locate a POW camp where one of the PCs escaped from. Last night I ran a recon scene (the one @Ganymede mentioned) that was to be the start of it - because of the failure of that mission, that objective is now in jeopardy. If they had succeeded, there may be more of a chance. All the small air battles and ground battles, they help @faraday decide what the final result will be. On Canceron, we had a split - we lost one of the major objectives, but was able to free a whole providence.
It's really about being open ended on what you want to have happen, and a willingness to let the players drive the direction.
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@Apos Exactly. It's a balancing act to find enough change where people feel impact, but not so much that people feel like things are coming out of the blue.
By the way, I think HBO's The Leftovers should be required viewing for people running plots on MUs, because I think they hit that sweet spot perfectly. On that show, Big Things happen: 2% of the world's population disappears, cults swindle people out of money, a nuclear bomb goes off, BUT the story never focuses on those things, the story focuses on how those things affect people and how people's personal reactions to the Big Things flow from and cause more Big Things. The Big Things are never important. How they impact people's lives is what's important. The result is a fantastical story that feels real and grounded, impact is always felt, and when something comes out of left field that people didn't see, the reaction afterwards is "Oh, well, that makes total sense, how could we think anything else would happen?"
Now taking that sweet spot and getting it into MU form? That's the hard part.
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@Tez said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Those kinds of impacts at the end are definitely what helps. How do you make them felt?
You advertise the successes and failures on the game.
There it is -- memorialized. You managed to make it out with the prisoners, but Sergeant Jayne is dead and Private Courtois is so badly injured that he's on-planet, recovering. Or, you screwed up, and Sergeant Ingvar is in the sickbay on life support.
The problem with many World of Darkness games I've been on recently is the lack of information. You connect each day, and you see nothing about what's happening on the Grid, even if you did do something. That's not necessarily discouraging, but it enforces the opinion that nothing you do will shape the game. On the flipside, when the smallest mission gets disclosed, success or failure, there are stakes involved, even if it's just your PC's reputation. That's BSG:U, where the pilots count their kills and the marines count their blessings.
It sounds simple, and I think it is. When I was running the Denver by Night Changeling Sphere almost 15 years ago, I tried to put out a weekly newsletter on the Board about local events, out-of-county rumors, and so forth. It got the players engaged, even if the rumors were false or the news misleading.
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@Ganymede said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
@Tez said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Those kinds of impacts at the end are definitely what helps. How do you make them felt?
You advertise the successes and failures on the game.
There it is -- memorialized. You managed to make it out with the prisoners, but Sergeant Jayne is dead and Private Courtois is so badly injured that he's on-planet, recovering. Or, you screwed up, and Sergeant Ingvar is in the sickbay on life support.
The problem with many World of Darkness games I've been on recently is the lack of information. You connect each day, and you see nothing about what's happening on the Grid, even if you did do something. That's not necessarily discouraging, but it enforces the opinion that nothing you do will shape the game. On the flipside, when the smallest mission gets disclosed, success or failure, there are stakes involved, even if it's just your PC's reputation. That's BSG:U, where the pilots count their kills and the marines count their blessings.
It sounds simple, and I think it is. When I was running the Denver by Night Changeling Sphere almost 15 years ago, I tried to put out a weekly newsletter on the Board about local events, out-of-county rumors, and so forth. It got the players engaged, even if the rumors were false or the news misleading.
A weekly newsletter is definitely a good idea.
It would also be cool to have PRPs be investigatable. Anyone who runs a PRP usually has to submit something to staff at least after the fact--a log, whatever--and you can put up, in the newsletter, that x or y happened, and if anyone wants to investigate that, contact [person] (be it staff or the prp runner). That not only generates more plot-based rp, it might also lead to people going and roleplaying with other players who were involved.
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@Coin said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Anyone who runs a PRP usually has to submit something to staff at least after the fact--a log, whatever--and you can put up, in the newsletter, that x or y happened, and if anyone wants to investigate that, contact [person] (be it staff or the prp runner). That not only generates more plot-based rp, it might also lead to people going and roleplaying with other players who were involved.
True, if the PRP were something that was kept confidential. If the results were published, I think the player's investigation should start with the PCs involved, which generates its own RP without staff work. That said, if a PRP were kept confidential, perhaps staff could implement an "investigation" scheme within its political system framework.
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@Ganymede said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
@Coin said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Anyone who runs a PRP usually has to submit something to staff at least after the fact--a log, whatever--and you can put up, in the newsletter, that x or y happened, and if anyone wants to investigate that, contact [person] (be it staff or the prp runner). That not only generates more plot-based rp, it might also lead to people going and roleplaying with other players who were involved.
True, if the PRP were something that was kept confidential. If the results were published, I think the player's investigation should start with the PCs involved, which generates its own RP without staff work. That said, if a PRP were kept confidential, perhaps staff could implement an "investigation" scheme within its political system framework.
Well, I mean, even if the PRP were public and posted, there's no real reason other characters would know who was involved. Also, like, if I see a PRP log that I liked and my character is interested in that, I can cvontact the PRP runner and see how to use it to get in touch with the players.
It all really depends on how much information the investigasting character starts with.
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@Coin said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Well, I mean, even if the PRP were public and posted, there's no real reason other characters would know who was involved. Also, like, if I see a PRP log that I liked and my character is interested in that, I can cvontact the PRP runner and see how to use it to get in touch with the players.
On BSG:U, whether or not your PC knows what happened is up to you. In a military unit environment, I think it's safe to presume that mission successes and failures are known to all in the unit, and there's no real need to maintain confidentiality.
It varies from game to game, I guess. I'd recommend keeping the information open and flowing, and letting players decide if their PCs would know about it. It reduces staff work and puts PC control in the players' hands.
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@Ganymede said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
@Coin said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Well, I mean, even if the PRP were public and posted, there's no real reason other characters would know who was involved. Also, like, if I see a PRP log that I liked and my character is interested in that, I can cvontact the PRP runner and see how to use it to get in touch with the players.
On BSG:U, whether or not your PC knows what happened is up to you. In a military unit environment, I think it's safe to presume that mission successes and failures are known to all in the unit, and there's no real need to maintain confidentiality.
It varies from game to game, I guess. I'd recommend keeping the information open and flowing, and letting players decide if their PCs would know about it. It reduces staff work and puts PC control in the players' hands.
It really depends on the game, though. On Las Vegas, the CofD game we're building with @skew and @tragedyjones, it's a multisphere game, so if a Werewolf sees on the newsletter something interesting regarding spirits that a Thyrsus was involved in, it might require the PRP runner or a staff member to adjudicate the rolls to find said Mage, etc.
BSG:U is very particular in that it's a very tightly-knit game, but not all games are that.
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I know I've enjoyed that kind of thing -- newsletter, recognition -- player-side; staff-side I groan at the extra work. I think it's still probably worth it in the end, but man. Where is the easy button.
How have you gathered material for newsletters / recognition posts? I've tried doing those sorts of things before -- faction newsletters, updates -- and soliciting information from players has never been super successful. On the other hand, this is something people are DELIGHTED to tell staff on Arx for a prestige cookie. The IC systems support players summarizing what they did. But BSG:U lacks that, correct?
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@Coin said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
It really depends on the game, though. On Las Vegas, the CofD game we're building with @skew and @tragedyjones, it's a multisphere game, so if a Werewolf sees on the newsletter something interesting regarding spirits that a Thyrsus was involved in, it might require the PRP runner or a staff member to adjudicate the rolls to find said Mage, etc.
It does depend on the game, definitely. Not going to deny that.
On Las Vegas, take the above scenario. I'd probably put a weekly newsletter on the Werewolf Board and the Mage Board, and on any Board that may be affected by the Thyrsus' action. If players wanted to investigate, I might make them make a roll; if there's a Time-based Activity system, I'd probably require the spending of Time on the project too.
But, you're right. It's game-specific, and this is revealing a whole lot of holes, to me at least, with how we've been running WoD games. Trick is figuring out how to patch the holes without requiring substantial re-writes or re-inventing the wheel too much.
@Tez said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
How have you gathered material for newsletters / recognition posts? I've tried doing those sorts of things before -- faction newsletters, updates -- and soliciting information from players has never been super successful.
On BSG:U, you get a Luck point for running such a scene for other players. I think you're required to post a log or the results on a certain Board. Not 100 percent sure, but that's how running the plots is incentivized.
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You guys are really ignoring the glaring issue with all this 'weekly newsletter' and 'let everybody investigate all the things' commentary.
Who is going to be taking the time out to do this? You're lucky if a game has 1 or 2 people willing to run stuff regularly. Nevermind handle all this stuff after running those scenes.
If you have 10 players, you can probably manage it. 20, 30, 40? You're not going to (reliably) have the time for the jobs and the writing, and you're going to get tired of doing it even if you do.
I fully believe some of you could do it for a couple months, sure. Then you'd shut your game down or turn it over to other people to staff.
I mean if we're talking dreamland fantasies, I'm sure a MU with STs who'd run daily adventures for random individual/small group players they don't know would be super succesful and popular.
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@Ganymede said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
On BSG:U, you get a Luck point for running such a scene for other players. I think you're required to post a log or the results on a certain Board. Not 100 percent sure, but that's how running the plots is incentivized.
That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Also, the Scuttlebutt board is usually used for posting results of all military action scenes - it helps keep everything pretty much in order. Once a month, @faraday updates the wiki with a Story So Far section so that players and newcomers are able to have a cliff notes version of what's happened so far, and it usually contains the Scuttlebutt posts.
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@Tempest said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Who is going to be taking the time out to do this? You're lucky if a game has 1 or 2 people willing to run stuff regularly. Nevermind handle all this stuff after running those scenes.
@DownWithOPP runs stuff. I think someone else does. @faraday does. So, that covers "people willing to run stuff regularly." Regarding the Scuttlebutt @DownWithOPP mentioned: whoever ran the scene writes something quick up. Logs are almost always posted; someone in the group is logging at all times, which is not a novel or difficult thing to do.
If you have 10 players, you can probably manage it. 20, 30, 40? You're not going to (reliably) have the time for the jobs and the writing, and you're going to get tired of doing it even if you do.
I think BSG:U has 20-25 active players. If people get tired, they get tired. @faraday hasn't gotten tired yet, and she's the only staff on the game.
I fully believe some of you could do it for a couple months, sure. Then you'd shut your game down or turn it over to other people to staff.
That's not going to happen on BSG:U, given that it's @faraday's baby and testing ground. Maybe she shouldn't be testing things on her baby, but I ain't one to judge.
I mean if we're talking dreamland fantasies, I'm sure a MU with STs who'd run daily adventures for random individual/small group players they don't know would be super succesful and popular.
Sure. And BSG:U seems to be doing just fine, activity-wise. In the battleground of ideas, there's always room for optimism and pessimism, just as there's room for facts. You can probably come up with a million reasons to not do something, but it's the one reason that makes you act that means the most.
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@Tempest I knew //one// person before I joined BSGU. That was Eva/Abigail's player. I ran things because I saw a game that was well set up and @faraday was open to my suggestions. I don't want to be staff. I never want to be staff. I just want to do things that are fun and help the game. I like running things. I like posting things. I've been doing both pretty consistently, but I take breaks now and again, just like anyone else. A couple of other players @GirlCalledBlu for example, have started running some plots as well. As long as we all communicate with each other and not step on toes, we're doing great.
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@Ganymede said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
The combat code is unforgiving. And we all had a blast, even though one of us nearly died a horrible death.
I'll emerge from lurking briefly to point out for those who don't play the game that you can't die unless you choose to. Worst that happens is you get taken out of action for a week or so.
@Tez said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
How do those smaller plots run within the shell of the -- umm, I'll call it a plot arc -- really impact the word?
The trick, as @DownWithOPP alluded to, is to have an open-ended plot arc. You have to be willing to let the PCs steer the course (within reason). Like the POW camp rescue he mentioned - that wasn't my idea. One of the PCs wanted his backstory to be "rescued from a POW camp" and worked with some other players to lay the groundwork. All I did was give them opportunities to have RP around that plotline through a mix of staff-run and player-run plots.
There was another little one-off event @DownWithOPP did where the Cylons pretended to be friendlies and ambushed the PCs. A week or two after that, I built on that idea by having another event where the Cylons again tried a similar trick - this time resulting in a "friendly fire" incident that spurred a lot of RP.
You don't have to let someone blow up the grid every week for them to shape the story.
@Tempest said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Who is going to be taking the time out to do this?
A PC running an event and posting the log is incentivized by luck points and my heartfelt gratitude. If you go the extra mile and post to the Scuttlebutt board (which is basically the "what's happened ICly" BBS), bonus. If not, I will. We have 20-some active players and I can keep up with the activity all by myself. It's work, sure, but it's not insurmountable.
I think that keeping players in the loop is critical to spurring RP beyond the event. We have levels of that:
- Scuttlebutt BBS (for up-to-date summaries on what's happening.)
- "Story So Far" cliff notes wiki page (for new players who understandably don't want to read seventy billion bbposts.)
- RP Logs (for folks who want the gory details. I'm pretty compulsive about posting logs for the missions.)
On Babylon 5 and BSG:Pacifica we had a similar thing to the Scuttlebutt board for IC news articles. Those things help a lot with recognition ("hey I made the news!") and staying connected.
I think that the game theme helps a lot with stagnancy. On the BSG games it's pretty much set up so there is constant action - that's the whole point. On Sweetwater (my western game) we did pretty well for awhile when the Range War plot was going on and there were constant plot developments around that. Once that metaplot ended, there was nothing cohesive to spur things along and the game went off the rails.
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Sounds like a pretty great community over there, congratulations on that.
Meanwhile, on WoD MUs, most people can't bothered to type +bbread once a week.
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@Tempest - Double-post to add... you can cut down on the post-event work by having reasonable expectations and tools support. For instance, the event BBS posts don't need to be novels. Here are a couple recent examples:
On Saturday, a marine squad was ambushed while escorting supplies to a forward defense post. One truck of supplies was destroyed and its driver (from the Picon marines) was killed. The other truck was damaged and its Picon Marine driver seriously injured. Several other marines, including Chaplain Kavanaugh, were injured in the ambush. The Cylons retreated once the trucks were hit.
Or...
A recon team was sent to try to get some information on the POW camp's location that Lieutenant Walker was located at. When the Raptor returns with them, Sgt Jonas Ignvar was heavily wounded, Sgt Lyn Arda and Cpl Charlie Wagner looked shellshocked, Cpl Erin Hayes looked pissed, and the new kid, Cpl Kyle Costello looked excited.
We're not talking elaborate AARs here. Just a pithy summary that's easy to write and read. If you want the details - that's what the log is for.
There's also a scene auto-logger tool, and my log cleaner app that auto-formats combat logs for the wiki.
The easier you make it for people to do stuff, the more likely they are to do so.
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@Tempest said in Game Stagnancy and Activity:
Meanwhile, on WoD MUs, most people can't bothered to type +bbread once a week.
That sounds like a personal problem to me. That aside, and as I've stated before, World of Darkness games provide different challenges, and, yes, one of them is how to get the word out to the players. Then again, most WoD games fall apart because they miss Point 2: Have a tight theme.
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@Ganymede Pretty sure that's the opposite of a personal problem. But whatever floats your boat, Gany.
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PRPs are a great way to keep things active, but as others have said, you need the tools to make them as effective as possible. As called out already, Arx had a ton of PRPs during the siege, but they all felt sort of self-contained; no one plot actually felt like it affected the siege as a whole in a meaningful manner, which I think contributed to player fatigue by the end of it.
In hindsight, what I might've done there was give a weekly update of the 'state of the siege', detailing how frequent the incursions were and how thick on the ground the army appeared to be outside. If players did a lot of PRPs and succeeded well, I'd probably have the number of off-screen attacks in that report have gone down, or see a decrease in the troops encamped outside the walls. I might even have included a 'Silent Army Strength' metric, and used that for the final battles; run enough effective PRPs of people doing things against Brand's forces, and you reduce the difficulty of the final battles. Then folks would've probably felt fairly invested.
(Admittedly, I think another problem was that the siege PRPs became a lot of 'something happens, and suddenly Bringers!' and people fighting them; there were lots of well-run combat scenes, but it was almost entirely combat scenes.)
So that said, here's the things I try to keep in mind to make a PRP engaging enough to keep folks really interested:
- Players always want a chance to shine; I try to write plots such that everyone who's going on them has at least an opportunity to really do something in their wheelhouse. Every character has something they can do well—if they don't, they probably aren't going to be super fun to play forever. It can be something with no plot relevance (see: Hallie's tattoo skills over on BSGU), but there's going to be something they have. It might not even be a skill, just a particular knowledge or interest; I had a player once send out, "Does anyone know any dialect of elvish?" and boy howdy that was right in my character's little linguistics nerd wheelhouse, so I got fed a little more information. If you give them a chance to use this in a plot, they're probably going to be happy. I tend to look at players' rphooks, or wiki 'Interests' field, or whatever before finalizing a plot's details for that reason.
- Players do want to feel like they affect the world. Obviously, you can't really have a PRP let someone blow up a prominent building or assassinate the king or whatever, at least not without tapping the staff in at some point and going, "...help?" But if a PRP takes place entirely in its own little pocket, they will be sad. Give them something to take back, whether metaphorically or literally.
- To use Arx as an example again, the clue system is great for this, now that you can create PRP clues yourself. I've also let people find old objects—not artifacts of power, but things they can take home as a remembrance anyway.
- I've also tried to leave at least one hanging plot thread from each plot, so that players can pick it up and run with it themselves for more PRPs (or I can pick it up later). The demon-tainted shavs who got away during the Hunting the Beast plot, the one mural they couldn't decipher in Choose Wisely, the whole lingering question of "where the hells did he go after he did this" for the villain behind The Forgotten City, etc. Even if it doesn't affect the main metaplot, feeling like it wasn't just a self-contained one-off—as if it's part of the world, and there's still consequences and things to look into after they get home—seems to help player investment, and keeps it from feeling like it took place entirely in its own little pocket world.
- Thematic consistency is important. You might be GM'ing this PRP separately from Tony's PRP, and both of you are doing things entirely separate from Staffer Julie. But for the players, it's all the same world; people are going to take whatever you did and bring it back to mainline plot stuff. If I make a demon in my plot who can be defeated by one specific means—say, they cannot tolerate the presence of one specific plant—and the players defeat the demon that way, I guarantee you that the players are going to share that info around, and the one player from my PRP who is later on some other plot is going to want to try that plant against the next demon they face.
- Obviously, it's easier to run PRPs within a narrow thematic channel ("a skirmish with the Cylons", "Bringers in the city again") and fit it in to ongoing things neatly than it is the overall wider world and entire theme ("I'm gonna run a big plot involving Ha'la'tha smuggling!" "I'm gonna have you all face a Demon Knight who enslaved a village!"). Give players hooks to hang their PRPs off of where you'd like to encourage RP—carve those thematic channels for PRPs to flow through—and you'll see it happen. Witness, for instance, the sudden spate of "I'm gonna run a PRP!" during the siege on Arx.
If you can hit all those points, you can keep players engaged, and the PRPs feel like something that actually ties into and effects the world.
So I feel like one key is to facilitate that. Make a PRP GM interest group, a channel for players to trade GM tips and tricks; GMs love to chat about things they're planning, even just in the abstract. Make tools to help them; I know Arx is working on +goal and +prpgm systems, which should make it much easier to hit those points. I know FS3 games allow players to setup and run the combat code just like a staff GM would, which hugely facilitates things like players running skirmishes on BSGU. The more information they can get to plan PRPs, the better; the fact that @faraday posts the goals for a given 'campaign' helps players GM stuff that feels like it fits into that specific campaign.
And if you make it possible for PRPs to feel like a living, effective part of the world, I think you can keep the game fairly active even without staff having to kill themselves or end up run ragged trying to GM or oversee everything.
That's my overly-lengthy $0.02, anyway.