[Eldritch] Sphere Caps & Waiting Lists

[Thenomain]

@Miss-Demeanor
Huh, then I have no idea. This shouldn't surprise anyone.

Mind you, I was probably right. I think one of the reasons we're not going the TL route is because it encourages the kind of thinking where people are not allowed to meddle in each other's areas of expertise. God knows I heard so much whining of TLs at other TLs on The Reach that when I wore a hat that said, "Responsible For Everything Staff Says And Does", reaching in and smacking people around was something I did far too often.

Mind you, I was probably right. I just was not the person who should have done it.

[Arkandel]

Not going the TL route has one more advantage, in that it's no longer a big problem if some spheres are overpopulated and some others are deserted.

Sharing the workload aside, SHH for example decided to not have a Geist sphere for the lack of interest - which I took to mean (and they can correct me if I'm wrong) that it was a bad investment of resources to have a full sphere staff for a place which would only have a handful of players. That wouldn't have been an issue (or not as much) for a TL-less game.

For Eldritch in particular, unless the GMC Werewolf mechanics are great (as it's pretty universally agreed they were not on 1st Edition nWoD) it'll most likely be the least popular sphere on the MU. But in this case, as noted, who cares.

[HelloRaptor]

Not having a TL also means there's no one person who has final say over a particular sphere, which means anything that requires escalation to that one person instead tends to end up in committee.

And everybody knows, committee is the most efficient and timely way to get time-sensitive shit done.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Thenomain I'm not necessarily complaining, either. I stepped up to TL because the ACTUAL TL was spending MAYBE one to two hours a week logged into their staffbit. And I stepped into a sphere that was FUBAR'd already. Not every idea I had was a good one.

And for clarity, I was the original Constantinople. Its on my playlist elsewhere on this site.

[Thenomain]

@HelloRaptor said:

Not having a TL also means there's no one person who has final say over a particular sphere, which means anything that requires escalation to that one person instead tends to end up in committee.

Or "man/woman on the scene" plus robust communication. The only time I've seen a TL situation not end up in Every Sphere a Kingdom was Aether, 2008, because nobody was in charge of every aspect of a piece of the game. This was by design and while some noses got out of joint from time to time, how the non-TLs accepted this rule made the game run smoothly. More or less.

So yeah, Sarcastro, it can be done.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

And for clarity, I was the original Constantinople. Its on my playlist elsewhere on this site.

Hi, maybe we haven't met, but my name is Thenomain and I have the same memory for names as a stunned puppy. Unless you're the Changeling staffer who was never actually TL in my time, in which case I don't see what the problem was.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Thenomain grins No, I wasn't Changeling staff. I TL'd Changing Breeds for a few months. I also enjoyed your antics as Vera on HM. So yeah, totally not a big, just figured I'd clear that up since there seemed to be some mistaken identity going on.

[HelloRaptor]

@Thenomain

The only time I've seen a TL situation not end up in Every Sphere a Kingdom was Aether, 2008, because nobody was in charge of every aspect of a piece of the game.

Oh, was Aether a WoD game? I thought it wasn't for some reason. My bad, my statement is clearly completely misguided then.

Or "man/woman on the scene" plus robust communication.

Yeah, or that I guess. Ahahahahahahahaha.

[Ganymede]

@HelloRaptor said:

Not having a TL also means there's no one person who has final say over a particular sphere, which means anything that requires escalation to that one person instead tends to end up in committee.

You don't need a TL to make a call on the interpretation of a rule, if necessary for a scene. You just need someone with sufficient knowledge and authority to make that call.

For a WoD game, you probably want TLs for particular races if your staff aren't versed in all of them. Or, as has been done elseMU*, the staffers can list what spheres they are comfortable making rulings on. If the rulings are incorrect, they can be appealed to those with greater authority, which are probably the game administrators.

[Thenomain]

@HelloRaptor said:

Oh, was Aether a WoD game?

It wasn't, no, but it had staffers in charge of maintaining the four main races, as in the NPCs et al., clearing all the characters with that particular species, being the primary contact, and so on. This was before we had a name for TLs, but they did the things that we now think are mandatory, but they did it without the current spate of ego and entitlement.

I know the question was meant to be another unhelpful throw-away line meant to ridicule and nothing else, but I still wanted to answer it as if you cared.

[HelloRaptor]

@Thenomain

This was before we had a name for TLs

They were just called Sphere Wizards, as far back as Masquerade. TLs was something I didn't run across until... HM? It always sounded like somebody with a Business Management degree trying to effect change by the super effective means of changing the names for things. You're a Team Lead, it means you're part of a team, go go team!

@Ganymede

You don't need a TL to make a call on the interpretation of a rule, if necessary for a scene. You just need someone with sufficient knowledge and authority to make that call.

For a WoD game, you probably want TLs for particular races if your staff aren't versed in all of them. Or, as has been done elseMU*, the staffers can list what spheres they are comfortable making rulings on. If the rulings are incorrect, they can be appealed to those with greater authority, which are probably the game administrators.

Yeah, that doesn't sound at all like exactly the sort of thing my quote was addressing. Not having TLs means that by default the general interpretation of rules for a given sphere are a matter for committee discussion.

And committees are always the most efficient way of doing things.

I feel like we've come full circle again, somehow.

[The Tree of Woe]

Apropos of nothing, I hate the term "Sphere." I wonder where it came from.

I prefer "genre," though I know that's not really the best word for it either.

[Coin]

@The-Tree-of-Woe, "sphere" is much better than "genre", because it's more generic, IMO.

[Thenomain]

I prefer the name "sphere" than "splat" (and "game line" over either), and prefer the term "sphere wizard" than "TL" but man, were we bitching about them under any name since time immemorial.

[Ganymede]

@HelloRaptor said:

I feel like we've come full circle again, somehow.

This is only because you're too stupid to see the difference, that's all. Let me highlight it for you.

If you bother to read, you'll notice I said that the decision can be appealed to the game operators. This is always the case. Otherwise, you might as well have no staff at all.

Because game operators have never overruled their TLs. Ever.

[Bennie]

I was always partial to Splat, because it came from Splatbooks, which sort-of developed the same time as Convention Books, Tribe Books, Clan Books, and so on became the White Wolf thing.

It is curious where Spheres developed. It seemed to happen somewhere between quitting all the oWoD games and returning to nWoD much later. Magically there it was.

[silentsophia]

The sphere is coming from inside the game! AAAAAAAAAAAH!

(That said, I prefer to wait for something I truly want. I'd feel bad turning around and dropping something. But that's just me.)

[Eerie]

@HelloRaptor said:

Not having a TL also means there's no one person who has final say over a particular sphere, which means anything that requires escalation to that one person instead tends to end up in committee.

And everybody knows, committee is the most efficient and timely way to get time-sensitive shit done.

I suppose we’ll see how cooperative staffing goes! The idea was that we wanted to promote a more cohesive, integrated game than we’d seen other places, which sometimes felt more like six or so separate games running concurrently that occasionally scraped shoulders rather than one. We all do have things we’re more comfortable with or interested in, and nobody has to staff what they're not comfortable with, but there’s a lot of overlap and I’m hoping that a side benefit will be that it will cut down on ‘no, we have to wait for Bob, because he’s the staffer in charge of +noting widgets and that’s his little territory and so nobody else can assign widgets, even though actually any one of us /could/ +note your widget and then you’d be all set in about 30 seconds but instead you need to wait till next week till Bob gets back because he’s in charge of widgets’.

I also don’t think that there’s much to be afraid of as far as ‘rule by committee’ goes. My experience has been that most ‘big’ decisions about policy or interpretation of powers always got decided by committee anyway, and most other decisions get handled by whoever is there in the moment. I can’t actually think of too many examples that don’t fall into one or the other of those categories. We’re just going into this saying ‘if you think you can handle it, then handle it’ instead of everyone carving out their little turf that nobody else dare trespass upon. Mind, we’re also a small staff core at the moment who all talk already. We will probably need to add a few more admin and storytellers soonish, and we’ll see how it goes and adjust/evolve as need be, which was also the intention going in.

[Eerie]

@silentsophia said:

(That said, I prefer to wait for something I truly want. I'd feel bad turning around and dropping something. But that's just me.)

This is a nice sentiment, but honestly, I hope that if you have an idea that appeals to you, you'll go for it. My experience is that you never know if its going to be long term fun until you're doing it anyway, and ultimately its a game. Don't worry too much about the starving children in distant lands sphere caps, just do what you think will be fun. Maybe you will find that once you're playing a stigmatic garden gnome that you apped instead of a werewolf that its actually fantastic and you're having a blast, but even if you decide you'd rather play a werewolf when it reopens, at least you had fun in the interim. And this is also why we're going with two alts but not limiting it beyond that. You can also do both.

[Arkandel]

@Eerie said:

Maybe you will find that once you're playing a stigmatic garden gnome that you apped instead of a werewolf that its actually fantastic and you're having a blast, but even if you decide you'd rather play a werewolf when it reopens, at least you had fun in the interim. And this is also why we're going with two alts but not limiting it beyond that. You can also do both.

I'm too lazy to look! Are there rules in place for XP migration? I.e. your PC dies/you're bored of your PC and wish to roll a new one, do you start from scratch or do you offer alternatives?

[silentsophia]

I can dig that, @Eerie