How does a Mu* become successful?

Lotherio

Provisional RP isn't new. I do think it comes with the implication that on the players part that they are not approved and what they have could be changed. Its the risk they are taking in provisional RP, not so much on the staff for allowing provisional RP.

Sort of like when you test drive a car, its part of the pitch, doesn't mean your finances will get you approved for that car. You may go in to test the Mercedes and drive off in the Ford Focus.

ThatGuyThere

@faraday said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

I understand what you're saying. Personally I don't see a big difference between provisional RP in OOC areas with consenting folks, and provisional RP in IC areas with consenting folks. Either way, you're risking retcon -- not only for the parties involved, but also for ripple effects if there was anything significant done during those provisional scenes.

For me the big difference is being on grid. It goes to the whole public scene versus private scene discussion.
If you are unapproved and you find someone to rp with in a public grid spot that then can and does draw others in. this is fine as long as each new person is told Hey character A is not approved so this could all be retconned.
But the question gets a lot messier if Person A logs off but the scene keeps going. Now lets say there is an issue at what point to you start and stop the retcon of the scene.
Now scenes in RP rooms tend to stay with just the characters that started them, the the potential for damage is more neatly contained.

I am a bit split on Provisional rp, I will not take part in it since I hate retcons in all forms (yes sometimes they are necessary but even then I hate them.) but I see no problem with it being allowed for people that want to partake in it.

faraday

@ThatGuyThere We can agree that the potential for ripple effects on unexpected people is greater if the RP is on-grid. My only point was that the potential exists either way and I'd just rather not have to deal with the headaches or the pissed-off fallout from the approved characters who got caught in the splash zone.

Lithium

I hate the idea of RP'ing before a character is approved because I hate the idea of retcons. Retcons are always a worse case scenario for me, I'd much rather just nuke the problem person/character after the fact and move on while saying: No more of this.

There are a number of games that allow RP'ing before approval and I think it's kind of silly, why would you be RP'ing when you don't even know if your character is going to be approved? Maybe it will without any changes, but you don't know that. Maybe there's a core or even a small element to your character that gets denied or need to be changed and then the character plays totally differently?

That kind of RP is like... Fanfic.

Wretched

Yanking things away from players after approval is a huge pain in the ass. On FC I've recently had to ask a few players, as politely and as firmly as possible to scale back their Mien Descriptions in changeling. Gany's 'anthropomorphic skunk' is the perfect example in my case. Having a wyrd 3 character that's not even a beast looking like they were an extra in Disney's Robin hood cartoon isn't thematically appropriate. There was very understandable push back, as the apps were approved. Luckily we have had wyrd/mien policies since day one, and are able to point to that, but it still sucks from both player and staffside to have to deal with that. We are making a stronger effort to look harder at those things before approval to avoid it in the future.

Ive always loved provisional Rp tho, you just need to go into it knowing that some details may need to be changed, and engage such things with that in mind.

mietze

I feel you, Wretched. One of the irritating and just morale grating experiences I had on TR as a Ling admin was denying MGMT his fucking 9 foot long tail and a whole bunch of other shit mien...at Wyrd 2. So much public boohooing, lying, so much other people saying "OMG YOU BITCH Y U DENY PLAYERS SOMETHING". Verbal abuse on the job, in pages. Relentless. But you know, guy was "having a bad day, he's not usually that bad."

Wretched

Yeah, we honestly don't want to play desc police and there are probably more than a few borderline cases that we aren't going to nitpick. But when things that are hugely out of theme come across our desk, we will act. As politely as possible, pointing out the rules and whatnot and offer to help Give them a few weeks to change it, If they adamantly refuse, we simply freeze them until they comply.

I completely understand feeling like yer being told 'wrongfun', and feeling like staff is coming down on you for something you thought was cool. On the other side, man it sucks to be the guy to do it too. In most cases however, the players in question have been polite and understanding.

Lithium

@Wretched There is a difference between "Wrongfun" and "Not following the Rules" or "Not following the Theme". A game generally has a set theme, that theme enforces a set of rules by which everyone has to follow in order for the game to follow a reasonable path. The part that people tend to forget is this:

Not all games are meant for all character types.

Not following the rules on Wyrd (the example used above) is to me just as egregious a problem as trying to app a Space Marine in a low fantasy setting.

When you make a game world it has a theme that needs to be followed to be part of the game world, such as: No guns, No space ships, No time travel, No Magic, No whatever. People need to follow that in order to be a part of the theme of the game.

I see this a lot on roll20 and D&D games, people wanting to app special snowflake races and classes that aren't part of the main books even when the DM says: I am only allowing stuff out of the players handbook.

Honestly, if a prospective player can't be assed to follow the rules that are clearly written then imho they don't need to be playing on the game. Which segue's into another gaming 'truth':

Not all games are going to be fun for everyone.

If a game doesn't match up with a players idea of 'fun' then the game isn't meant for them and they should be reasonable about that fact and either try and find a game that does match their idea of fun or try and come up with a fun character that /does/ fit the world.

Right now I am /fiending/ for a crunchy Super Hero game. I'd love a game based off Hero System, Savage Worlds, Aberrant, DC (Mayfair games version) or the like but they are few and far between. The only HERO system game I know of has jumped the shark severely, the only Aberrant game I know of has a tiny player base and the XP is very fast so new players literally cannot compete, the others don't exist to my knowledge. So I am left with trying to find something that works for me on those games that do exist, or not playing.

Apos

@mietze said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

I feel you, Wretched. One of the irritating and just morale grating experiences I had on TR as a Ling admin was denying MGMT his fucking 9 foot long tail and a whole bunch of other shit mien...at Wyrd 2. So much public boohooing, lying, so much other people saying "OMG YOU BITCH Y U DENY PLAYERS SOMETHING". Verbal abuse on the job, in pages. Relentless. But you know, guy was "having a bad day, he's not usually that bad."

Who on earth puts staff in a position where they have to rein in players for thematic violations without empowering them also to deal with abuse? Wtf, that's horrible. If some staff told me I made a desc or background or whatever that was over the line, I would be like mortified and apologize. Who fights about that shit?

Lithium

@Apos Welcome to the 'Entitled'. A class of 'Player' who believes the 'Player' is superior to every other aspect of the game, and thus should be worshiped. They feel the game should revolve around /their/ ideas, and to hell with staff or theme or anyone else who doesn't share their opinion.

They tend to travel in packs, so as to throw their weight around, and try to 'ruin' games as soon as things don't go their way.

Apos

@Lithium I would think that would call for something like: "I'm sorry you feel that way and I hope you guys find the right game that appeals to you and wish you all the luck in the future." I mean some folks just can't collaborate and it's okay to part ways, I figure.

surreality

Seconding @Lithium on this; I've gotten no end of nonsense horseshit for telling people this.

Wretched

@Apos said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

Who on earth puts staff in a position where they have to rein in players for thematic violations without empowering them also to deal with abuse? Wtf, that's horrible. If some staff told me I made a desc or background or whatever that was over the line, I would be like mortified and apologize. Who fights about that shit?

Oh I have all the power, I am a terrible despot. Well, Co-Despot. However, in being a tyrant, i do attempt (occasionally) to not come off like a power mad totalitarian. So, Politeness, firm deadline.

Changeling suffers from a fairly unique problem of having a /lot/ of room for creativity. There's a lot you can do with you desc, but there are also some clear (to me, and in the books) limits on things. So yeah, you can have badass looking horns, but your horns should not be like those of Tim Curry in Legend. Animal features, but not full on Furry until you are damned high wyrd. A lot of changeling has to do with story, but some take that to mean literally everything they ever read in a fantasy book should somehow be canon. My keeper is totes obsessed with D&D and made me a Drow! Or that the hedge is 'generic fantasy realm X', here are your Gryphons and Dragons, despite many of the books being filled with unique flora and fauna and environments and MOOD that are totally unique to the thorns. STAHPIT. (Please ignore late night nerd flail rage rambling).

@Lithium I have literally had players get on channel and say that a staffs job should be to process apps and jobs and butt out unless someone they don't like is going too far. That is it the players game and not staffs.

Kanye Qwest

@Wretched
There's nothing 'power mad' about telling an abusive babyplayer to go sit in their rooms and calm the f down. You aren't being an asshole if you demand to be treated with a minimum of human respect.

Thenomain

@mietze

Lies. MGMT was always that bad no matter what kind of day it was.

Arkandel

@Thenomain I can't decide if what MGMT was doing was worse than staff protecting him. But he was pretty damn bad.

Roz

So I haven't read a lot of this thread, but I can talk about something we've discovered on Lost & Found that's been pretty successful for us: Tumblr. We're in a position where our game canon -- not just Transformers, but specifically the comic More Than Meets the Eye -- has a huge fanbase on Tumblr. We've had a game Tumblr since inception. At one point we got a player who was experienced with MU*s but also active on Tumblr and the TF fandom there, and they started poking around RPer accounts on there and inviting people who seemed promising. I mean, Tumblr already seems like an awful platform to RP on, because it kind of makes conversation really difficult, and I've always believed that these people would probably be open to other options if presented to them. So now we've had a whole bunch of players who came in from Tumblr and learned the mechanics of the game, and we suddenly started exploding in size.

Here's the catches:

You have to be exceptionally newbie-friendly. We've been rolling out super basic guides to a lot of stuff both on the wiki and on the game. A lot of these folks have never heard of MUs, but could become awesome MU players as long as you're open to hand-holding for a while. Honestly, we've gotten some players for Tumblr who have picked up things faster than veteran MU*ers who can't for the life of them remember certain commands they use regularly.
We had to bring on more staff, and if we didn't have players willing, we would be in a position where we couldn't handle things at all. We went from a three-person staff to something like eight (although those additional folks mostly in specialized positions). If we didn't have people who were willing and able to step up and run plot and process apps, it wouldn't have been successful.

So I guess the moral of the story is: recruit outside the usual places. Find your audience if you're not getting enough from the MU* population.