PRP or SRP

Bennie

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.

I am putting emphasis on out front if they wanted to. This can either be great, or incredibly poor taste. I have this strange pet-p over hogging. I find it poor taste when things are going along unimpeded and suddenly everything has to stop and the light has to shine away from what you were enjoying to what someone else thinks is enjoyable. In other words, the Staffmember who appears in a puff of virtual smoke and declares something astonishing will happen right now, like an overly theatrical stage magician, makes me want to chuck whatever I can get my hands on nearby.

I just don't find it cool, or appreciated. when I've gone to trouble - for example - to get my european friend into some RP. I tend to plot out a lot of RP, too.. I line my ducks in a row. I need to talk to you, and you, and you, and you, and for this IC information to transfer from A to B. It sounds like a job when I type it out like that, but there are times when you need there to be tangible conversation behind what is taking place in the game world. A lot of my RP centers around that tangible transferring.

So when a Staffmember appears suddenly and sidetracks my day's efforts, and dumps a shoot-out into the bar, I've lost my window. Not only that, suddenly I am reminded that RP in public really just equals endangerment. Be prepared every time you go outside, you might get shot at! It makes me wary. I stop going out into public as often. I start focusing on private Scenes. I do less and less where people are playing. This can have wide-ranging effects, especially when you are in a position of leadership down the line.

I have always wanted some kind of installed system to signal Staff that, should enough people in a location, public or private, want something to happen, Staff can take a quick look at their gaming that night and see where the desire really is. Just an easy communicator: +wantstaffrp

I think there is a time and place for what Staff are hoping to achieve when they dive-bomb a location, I just think the means are not always considerate. Worse, I'm the prig when I say, no, we only had 45m today to RP, and you're interfering, get out. Worse even still, I hate when there is a fight over the situation. I've had a Staff member literally say, "Well if you don't like it, get out." I've had other Staff members say, "Too bad, you're staying, and that's that." I've literally encountered Staff who have a side agenda of being disruptive just to be disruptive.

Since most games don't have an actual alert system for Staff to know when a group of players are shifting from "We want to do our thing" to "We wouldn't mind being in the thick of something", an easy way to make things open so that people can decide on their participation is to make an announcement ahead of time This would work better, imo: At Chez Panisse tomorrow, something will happen! Come have lunch and see what all the fuss is about! This is especially good for people who like to plan their activities. They know when, where, and can be ready appropriately with materials and their gaming hat on.

Alternatively, making something happen nearby, so that people can split the group would work alright, if there are a decent number of folks present, this way something can continue (like Sid and Lizzy breaking up), but something new can take place for the rest of the people present: *Outside of Chez Panisse, something is happening! Come out, should you wish to interrupt your lunch! * It works out the same, people know a when (now), where (outside), and can get their gaming hat on (albeit quickly).

TL:DR
A head's up is nice. Being able to opt out is nicer. Being able to opt out without losing the RP you actually intended to have (that Staff have no idea you worked so hard to schedule) is nicer still. Being able to say no without having the Staff member be offended, and being allowed to finish what you were doing, is the nicest.

Insomnia

Oh yeah, I'd always send a page asking if people minded if I dropped in. I was never much one for Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies either, so usually the only way combat would happen on PCs when I dropped plot on them were them taking the first swing. If they are busy, then I would move on. But I feel if you are out in public you are opening yourself up for public things to happen.

But, the only danger you should have for being out in public is that people see people gathering and suddenly you're swarmed. But if you have a nemesis who is bent on ruining your day, don't be in public... or don't take a nemesis, because as an ST I'm going to eventually stop asking you if it's convenient for this inconvenient thing to happen to you.

If I just wanted to write a story that people got to read, and couldn't participate in, I'd write books.

I don't really see combat for combat's sake as plot anyway.

mouse

In the past I would also try to reinforce that ST don't have to be "dangerous" simply by showing up.

As a ST on Shadowrun: Seattle, I would pop by as various contacts, even family, of a player just to RP with. For instance, one player had in their sheet they had a family member deeply in debt, I'd call once in a while and RP as that family member asking to borrow some money. Or, simply describe additional mundane things going on, or show people discussing fallout from another player's story.
Trying to keep things organic. But this is beside the point of plot and player plots, ultimately, I just see more Player Plots than Plots because I find ST's increasingly worried about ticking off people, or again, Staff not even interested in hiring ST's.

surreality

Option: have specific places flagged and noted as 'ST plot/interruption-ok'. Some of the bars, some of the parks, etc. Just an OOC note that lets players then choose to have the 'it took us a week to arrange for this meeting OOC!' scenes in places without it, and still allows those who are open to the idea or aren't going to hit a huge OOC obstacle if it happens can gravitate to places where something is more likely to happen.

(Or go with the reverse -- same principle applies.)

Three-Eyed Crow

Just paging to check seems like the better option. It's also not a great idea to conduct private RP in a public place if you don't want to be interrupted, either by staff or other players.

Like a lot of things, this is something that only becomes an issue when somebody doesn't exercise common courtesy. I like the idea of surprise plot involvement if I'm not in the middle of anything important, but I am more hyper-scheduled about my pretendy funtime now than I was when I was in college and had a ton of time for it. These two things aren't really that incompatible unless they're made to be so.

SG

Player run plots for sure.

I find with players you can hang out with more and get the feeling for what they like and cater to that. There's a greater sense of personalization to them, and with player run NPCs, you can actually build relationships with them.

Staff run plots often feel very generic and boring. I think this is because they have staffing stuff to worry about and not enough time to craft fun plots. The only excitement tends to be from the crazy stats they put on their bad guys and the insane rewards they dole out for participating, and that's because they don't have to deal with staff bureaucracy in order to do it.

Derp

See, I think that the standard model of metaplot kind of works in the wrong direction.

Metaplot - If we're talking about some sort of themely undercurrent to the city that causes the city to have a specific mood and flavor, this is great, but people usually call that theme. If you're talking about a grid-wide plot that everyone and their uncle's goat can get in on, this is where you start to run into problems with management and credulity. Often, there are so many people involved here that trying to get everyone feeling like they're part of the Endgame either makes it laughably dangerous to the point nobody wants to risk it, or makes it mind-numbingly complex for the people running it. But plot seems to be built from this top-down structure, and I don't think that should work like that. Have that mystical undercurrent, or whatever, sure, but don't make it -approachable-. Make it the framework of everything in the game, and use the smaller plots that come from that efficiently.

Character plots should be the focus of anyone's RP. Things that characters/groups of dedicated RP circles (Pack, Coterie, Ring, etc) can get in on. Have these plots mostly run by the players themselves. The responsibility of an ST would be to find and oversee a group of reasonably connected Groups and help them tie their stories together in interesting ways from time to time, and run bigger things that these groups could get involved with from time to time. Don't make it grid-wide, make it 2 or 3 different Groups, each with an ST responsible for them. Or make ST's responsible for certain game areas.

In turn, the St would report to whoever is controlling the overarching mood of the game, and that mood could change appropriately over time. Mystical flows get disrupted and cause weird changes, which could spark all new stories. You don't want to do this too often, because you want players to feel like they can build stability, but you also want to give them something fresh to sink their teeth into.

I feel that building it up from the bottom and just having that interact in ways with the overall atmosphere of the game would A) help with the burnout that people feel when they feel that the fun of an entire sphere/game is their burden and theirs alone, and b) make plots far more reasonable, and give people reasons to interact without having to artificially stretch the stories to include every single person in the funsies. If there are Groupless PCs, maybe assign a couple of them per ST too, especially ones that seem like they could work well with/within other groups.

That would also be the danger of not being a member of a Group. This encourages players to work together as well, instead of soloing it for all eternity.

So... largely, I feel that the current -framework- around which we define plots could be changed, and I do agree with @thenomain. Those times when you and a friend are out doing things, making rolls, and forming a mutual story is just as much creation of a story as what is normally called plot, and should be rewarded for creativity just the same.

TL;DR - +1 @thenomain -- why are we stuck with this model/

Thenomain

@Derp said:

TL;DR - +1 @thenomain -- why are we stuck with this model?

Because it's easy, and it tends to be a more adult form of patience to give up cookies, especially if it's in a Pretendy Fun-Time Game.

Sponge

If it's reasonable to assume that staff showing up means things are about to get ugly I'd be concerned about the nature of that/those staffers. Ideally it should just be "something's about to happen", but badness being a foregone conclusion doesn't sound great. Similarly, a lack of consideration for what players are doing, whether or not they're already having fun, is uncool.

24 super dudes getting murdered and nothing coming of it isn't because it's a PRP. The person running the PRP could carry it forward and make the blowback from the assault an ongoing source of RP. I'm guessing that what they (the STing player? the participants?) really wanted was a shoot-em-up. It doesn't take a person with authority to bring down consequences in RP.

Having the power and authority to bestow awards on participants isn't inherently wrong but it certainly leads to a lot of potential conflicts of interest. Even perceived conflicts of interest are detrimental to respect and authority for staff. It's tough to give out awards and consistently keep everyone feeling like it's all being done ethically.

I imagine it's pretty common for PRPs to actually be run by staffers on their PCs. It's nice to be able to scratch an itch to tell a story without being stuck with a lot of paperwork as a result.

Coin

The talk about "if you're worried about your character's safety when an ST rolls up unannounced, that says something about the ST" reminds me of the "True Friend Merit" debate on The Reach when God-Machine Chronicles came out. It went roughly like this:

For those of you unfamiliar with it:

True Friend (•••)
Effect: Your character has a true friend. While that friend may have specific functions covered by other Merits (Allies, Contacts, Retainer, Mentor, et cetera), True Friend represents a deeper, truly trusting relationship that cannot be breached. Unless your character does something egregious to cause it, her True Friend will not betray her. The Storyteller cannot kill a True Friend as part of a plot without your express permission. Any rolls to influence a True Friend against your character suffer a five-die penalty. In addition, once per story your character can regain one spent Willpower by having a meaningful interaction with her True Friend.

Some caveats: on The Reach, a "story" is, as a non-abstract unit of time, more or less equal to 1 Month (or was, at the time of this debate).

Anyway, we were smack dab in the middle of the GMC Re-Spec Extravaganza (hosted by our very own @tragedyjones) when a subset of staffers lost. their. fucking. shit.

I am not even kidding. They hate this Merit. Like, they absolutely fucking abhor it, and their reasoning went something like this:

"This Merit is overpowered because for three dots it stops the ST from killing the NPC and it lets them regain WP and even if you want to affect them via the NPC you take a five-die penalty this is the worst dingoes ate mah baaaaaaaaaabies."

Or.

"Whatever. I don't have to kill them. I can just kidnap them! Or put them in a coma! Or drop them down a dark shaft and assure the player that they aren't dead. Mwahahaha! I am so the evilest of evil!"

Both of these positions are fucking stupid as shit.

Let's begin with the fact that the Willpower regain effect is meaningless on a MU. It just is. The overall time it takes to tell a story and the chronological constraints we find ourselves in due to it being a persistent and constantly moving game (whether you're there or not) make it pointless. You might as well be paying XP for an extra die in "any rollt o understand the Teletubbies' strange baby language". Any concerns over this mechanic (and there were concerns, voiced loudly and shrilly) were idiotic, especially since you could only do it once per story, which meant that it was a mechanic available once a month. A month. On a MUSH. FFS.

More to the point, however, were the other concerns. I cannot tell you how supremely vexed some of these people were that the Merit would prevent them from just killing off someone else's NPC on a whim. Like, they apparently really thought it was their right as a staffer and storyteller to be able to kill anyone's NPCs for whatever reason they saw fit. Seriously, how much of an asshole do you have to be for this to be your philosophy? Do you still hang around in your mom's basement and lord the fact that you're the only one who owns the Dungeon Master Guide over your friends so you can kill their PCs over and over and over? Fuck, man.

I said as much on the jobs back then, but they continued to complain and whine and you'll notice that the True Friend Merit has never been available on The Reach, because apparently someone having a steady NPC presence that means something, story- and character-wise is too much of an affront to some staffers.

Fuck.

Anyway, these are the same assholes I wouldn't trust dropping into scenes randomly to run surprise plot, because they have no sense of scale and an entitlement complex the size of a fucking sun.

All right. Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Arkandel

Right? I hadn't heard of this particular anecdote but it sounds plausible.

Look, there's a kind of player who're basically Storyteller jocks. With them it's all about the things they can do to others, the monsters with big stats they created or the gross things they threw at the PCs. They brag about it, too ("so the spirit had 15 dice and it negates defense, AGGRO! Hahaha!") like it's a mark of pride.

I was lucky enough to not be that familiar with the practice until some time on TR when I was invited to some plots which literally started before +inits were rolled; like, we'd start in front of a house where Things Had Happened (how did we get there? who are the other characters? why is my PC with them?), then the bad guys spot the party and they attack. I think at this point since there's nothing else to take pride in - I mean it's not like it'll get marks for creativity or development - the Storyteller just goes overboard with stats and grossness of guts and innards hanging from walls, or giant bloodshot eyeballs with teeth and whatnot doing the attacking.

So it's possible those people @Coin is talking about add NPC casualties in the same list - which is lazy more than anything. If you're worth your salt at all you don't need to go kill the characters' Best Friend merit NPC if you want to create an emotional impact; instead buckle up and use your keyboard to type things which amount to an NPC of your own who's interesting and cool enough for them to care about them. Give them a sense of purpose, generate ties with the party, create rapport, breathe life into them... then butcher the living fuck out of that fucker. Then enjoy the players' hearts breaking and relish in the taste of their tears.

Or, you know, whatever.