Logging your activity

Thenomain

I think you missed the point, so let me try again: I'm not against things evolving or changing, but I don't see any personal benefit to logging everything, or much of anything. In my use, the game is just as good with or without it.

Arkandel

@Thenomain said in Logging your activity:

@ixokai

I think you missed the point, so let me try again: I'm not against things evolving or changing, but I don't see any personal benefit to logging everything, or much of anything. In my use, the game is just as good with or without it.

There's a flipside to this though.

So as @lordbelh mentioned XP is a powerful motivator and we end up doing small things to earn it while chasing that ol' carrot. Logging itself aside, in various games in the past when I was given the chance to do small chores to gain a little more I found myself doing them; for instance on The Reach you could write justifications for your spends for a small discount, on Kushiel's Debut you could write a weekly synopsis of 'things you did' that gained you a bit extra, and on Arx there are journals you can write for about the same effect.

Without the incentive I don't do any of those; for instance not's not like I wrote a couple of paragraphs about raising Dodge on Arx just for my own use, right? But when I had done the same thing on TR I found it helped my roleplay - I gained perspective on my character's downtime, the reasons he found himself needing the edge, the things he did to practice, etc. Similarly on KD it offered me the opportunity to reflect back a bit and check out my overall direction - was I just doing generic bar scenes or was there a purpose to my character's dealings? Or even if there wasn't, could I extract an emerging pattern from it, something developed organically that I could use to leverage future RP?

Perhaps the same could be applied to other things - like logging. For instance, although I never read them myself after they're posted, maybe they can be used as a reference guide for the game's ongoing history as written by its players. For all I know there are people here who read other people's scenes for fun or even IC profit (if roleplay is on public record then by perusing it like that you can nitpick details to use for your PCs, the same way we look over Donald Trump's tweets iRL).

Or maybe they're just a waste, dunno. All I'm saying is, someone out there may find use for these little hoops we get to jump.

faraday

@Arkandel said in Logging your activity:

For all I know there are people here who read other people's scenes for fun or even IC profit (if roleplay is on public record then by perusing it like that you can nitpick details to use for your PCs, the same way we look over Donald Trump's tweets iRL).

Or maybe they're just a waste, dunno. All I'm saying is, someone out there may find use for these little hoops we get to jump.

I enjoy reading good logs just because they're like reading good stories about familiar characters. I also find them useful.

As a staffer, logs help me to be aware of what's going on in the game and steer plots accordingly. If I know that Bob and Suzy are chatting about X, maybe there's a way to work X into a larger plot (of course, I'd talk to them about it first). Or maybe they don't realize that Harvey is also interested in the same thing, and they might want to coordinate. If Bob and Suzy just did a giant barfight, I might post something on the Rumours bbs so everyone knows, or update the room desc with some battle damage. It also helps to know who your active players are.

As a player, logs help me find people who RP well or have interesting hooks that I might want to talk to them about. "Hey, both our chars are X - let's do something with that." Sometimes it can also be used for assuming what would be common knowledge. Like, if there's a log where Suzy tells Bob she's breaking up with him, you shouldn't assume knowing that. But in the aforementioned giant barfight, I think it's entirely appropriate to RP, "Hey, I heard there was a big dust-up here the other night." Especially if it's a small town. Or if you work with Suzy and you saw a log where she's in the hospital, it's probably safe to assume you know she hasn't showed up for work.

Thenomain

@faraday

I normally get the same effect by listening to the channel chatter, or usually also reading the boards. Sometimes people are not forthcoming with information, but I've also lived through the terrible time period where if you couldn't prove that someone RPd it with you, you couldn't know something. Maybe you didn't have to deal with "OOC Masq" hard-liners, but it wasn't fun.

Cue the "you kids don't know how well you've got it". Shake cane. Comment about lawn.

Again, I think that I mistakenly came across trying to say logs are pointless. They don't add anything for me. I don't enjoy reading scenes (mostly) and I can get a summary of anything important with gentle questions on a channel or via pages (mostly). I don't feel any desire to chase down xp (mostly) for reasons that can fill an entire other thread.

faraday

@Thenomain said in Logging your activity:

@faraday

I normally get the same effect by listening to the channel chatter, or usually also reading the boards.

Interesting. I think maybe it's a game culture thing. On games with logs and wikis, people don't tend to post "hey, this happened" on the boards because they just assume you'll read the wiki. And personally I don't see people chatting about IC events on channels, but that doesn't mean it never happens.

So if you've got those other avenues available to know what's going on, groovy. That's just not the experience on games I've played. Logs are essential if you want to know more than what was personally RPed with you.

Wretched

I chose the 'I would die without logging everything', but mostly I just set up an Autologger and let it go. it has come in handy more times than I can count as a staffer and player.