FCs on Comic MUs

[Tempest]

On hero games, I think 1 or 2 is the most you should get.

Especially on hero games.

Anything more than that, and you get into characters not being available for new players, because somebody else has them and does 1 scene every 2 weeks with them.

I'd rather somebody do 2 scenes a week on one character than 1 scene a week on 2 characters.

If I play Psylocke, Ms. Marvel, and Sif, yeah those are all pretty different in focus and they're even all in different 'spheres', none of them are even 'leadership' types, but goddamn I as 1 player just put a huge fucking dent in the available female FCs.

[Ghost]

@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:

Too fucking bad? People clamored for alts on RfK, but the absence of alts was one of its best policies.
Many people have disagreed with my point of view, but I believe that players need to invest in their characters more. If you cannot get your PC into RP for whatever reason, switch PCs. Keep trying, or don't try, whatever you choose.

I'm 100pct with you on this, as well.

Especially on games with rosters or FCs, if you're having trouble finding RP or getting into a character, the answer is to drop the FC and make a different one.

There's a menagerie factor when it comes to FCs on hero games. When someone has an interest in dropping a character, they have to question whether or not they could get the character back if they want to return to it. So you tend to see a lot of I'll hang onto this FC and hope I can do something with it, but I don't want to get rid of them while I'm RPing with my active character...just in case.

This inevitably leads to FCs being played just enough to meet activity requirements, but are largely on the back burner.

[Arkandel]

@saosmash said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@arkandel I dunno, if you have an established rule that says no character squatting I think it's a lot easier to go "Hi there, you are barely meeting this FC's activity requirements. Please review our policy on character squatting.

Tell me if this scenario looks plausible to you.

Staff are conflict-averse; they don't want to get into the unpleasantness of reaching out to tell someone they can't have a character any more, explain why, dealing with arguments, etc. To dodge that bullet they make a rule ("you need to post at least one log every three weeks") to reduce this overhead on them since after that look guys, it's not us firing you, it's the rule! Only, of course, rules are way easier to trick than people as it's been shown very clearly in this and similar threads lately.

At that point staff have replaced a small problem with a larger one, but they still pick the easiest road for themselves - by not having to argue with people, rather than spare harm done to their game. That specific bit, this particular part is what makes them bad at their jobs. Anything before it is a mistake, and everyone makes those... ask any game runner. But at that point it's on them.

Does that make sense?

[Lithium]

@social-diseases said in FCs on Comic MUs:

You have to begin with a solid base. And I understand this should go without saying but it does apparently have to be said - if you do not have the temperament, if you do not have the organizational and narrative skills, you should not even make the attempt. If your goal is self-aggrandizement, you should not make the attempt; if your goal is to create a sandbox for yourself and for your friends and your attitude is that anyone outside of that group is so peripheral to your interests that they may be subject to any level of abuse, you should not make the attempt. When you begin toxic, you have no right to complain that the environment is poisonous. And when there is a problem on a comic game, 9 out of 10 times, it is because of this. All other problems flow from the source of malicious or inept staffers.

The sheer amount of 'No' in this bit is just absurd.

No MU is ran entirely by one person, unless it /is/ a game intended to be a sandbox for a few people and if so there is /nothing wrong with that/. Nobody has the right to tell people not to /try/ something, to not even make an /attempt/ at something is just... No. You don't get to choose that for people. That is the point of having multiple staffers, to shore up each others weaknesses and to play to your strengths. Nobody can be /everything/, at least not for long, without suffering severe burnout.

The problem on comic games is because they're all the same for the most part. Most games are a mix-mash of DC and Marvel (and more). Screw that. Most are WAY alternate timelines. Screw that. Most are places where there is no parity between FC and OC. Screw that.

Any staff problems only compound the issue.

@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@social-diseases said in FCs on Comic MUs:

Camping is a problem. There is no easy solution.

Here's a solution: how about only allowing one PC for every player? No alts. You're either playing on the game or you are not.

Permit people to use redshirts or proxy bits for the same PC, so that they can RP in two places at once if they are worried about missing RP opportunities on the game by being occupied in one scene.

This is a good idea, alts are not a good thing on Super Hero MU's in my opinion, they allow people to hold their 'favorites' and thus deny them to others. It is the rare person who can be ultra active on multiple characters at the /same time/, and even if you manage it, your attention and focus is split. Far better to just not allow alts as much as you can enforce, at least, not amongst the FC's. Maybe allow 1 FC and 1 (or 2, whichever) OC's might be the way to go here. Something worth trying at least.

I think a policy of FC's needing to /lose/ more might help. In the comics FC's are kicked around for much of an arc before they finally win the day, if they do at all. Part of the problem is that some people playing FC's aren't actually /writers/ in the sense that if they don't have a clear goal for a thing, they want to win by default especially if they're playing their favorite FC.

(EDIT: To remove stupid gif.)

[Kanye Qwest]

2 alts seems good. You still get some camping, but you just have to be willing to monitor it in SOME way and reach out. We do it on Arx, by counting poses done in a room with other characters. We don't have one set cutoff, we just kind of look at it like, if you had 0 poses the last two weeks, and only 20 the two weeks before that, I don't really call that very active on a roster character. Maybe make an OC, which has no activity requirement, and go from there. I suggest that, see if they want to talk about it, can be more active, etc.

I also think Apos is super right about the type of game environment you create (not shocking, I mean we obviously staff a game together). I think it's important for people to openly have the impression that being shitty, snarky, or mean towards other players is not ok, and I wade into many ooc channels to enforce that on a daily basis.

it's not fun. I get accused of attacking people, paying favorites, 'punishing' people, and trying to run a game WITHOUT FREE SPEECH, etc etc. You can't be conflict averse AND create the game environment you want, if you want any sort of standard of behaviour. You just can't, ESPECIALLY if you have some players in coveted positions/characters that others want.

Or you could maybe disallow all OOC communication, like an RPI?

[Ghost]

@kanye-qwest said in FCs on Comic MUs:

Or you could maybe disallow all OOC communication, like an RPI?

XD.

This would do great things for the community.

[Arkandel]

@kanye-qwest Also keep in mind character 'tiers' affect the impact alts can have on a game.

For example if I have Superman and Batman, my BFF has Flash and Green Lantern and another person has Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter... well, there goes the JLA, all owned by a tiny clique.

[Kanye Qwest]

@ghost You're never going to make people like each other. Arx players make private discord channels for all their shit-talk needs, and we can't really do anything about it. All you can do is keep it off your game.

[Thenomain]

@ghost said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@kanye-qwest said in FCs on Comic MUs:

Or you could maybe disallow all OOC communication, like an RPI?

XD.

This would do great things for the community.

No who/where, no ooc chatter, no events systems, no boards? Even if we presume that "ooc communication" only means channels and pages and an OOC area and not also an 'ooc' command for chatting out of character in a room or all the other non-character-knowledge commands, this is not a cure-all.

I could say, "Meh, do what you want; it's your game," but a lot of people are basically saying what people should be doing with their own game in this thread, so that's not going to fly.

... Unless you were being sarcastic, in which yes, I agree.

[Roz]

@arkandel said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@saosmash said in FCs on Comic MUs:

@arkandel I dunno, if you have an established rule that says no character squatting I think it's a lot easier to go "Hi there, you are barely meeting this FC's activity requirements. Please review our policy on character squatting.

Tell me if this scenario looks plausible to you.

Staff are conflict-averse; they don't want to get into the unpleasantness of reaching out to tell someone they can't have a character any more, explain why, dealing with arguments, etc. To dodge that bullet they make a rule ("you need to post at least one log every three weeks") to reduce this overhead on them since after that look guys, it's not us firing you, it's the rule! Only, of course, rules are way easier to trick than people as it's been shown very clearly in this and similar threads lately.

At that point staff have replaced a small problem with a larger one, but they still pick the easiest road for themselves - by not having to argue with people, rather than spare harm done to their game. That specific bit, this particular part is what makes them bad at their jobs. Anything before it is a mistake, and everyone makes those... ask any game runner. But at that point it's on them.

Does that make sense?

I mean, sure, obviously that's a thing that commonly happens. That's also just called bad staffing. You do need good staffing to make any sort of system like this work. There's no "this system will totally work even with lazy or conflict-averse staffers."

[Thenomain]

So I lost this response somewhere between the doctor's office and here. Let me see if I can replicate it:

There have been, and still are a lot of very popular games with toxic staffers, some of them in spite of it but others because of it.

Staffing is work, it's unforgiving and takes dedication and it takes passion. And you know what a lot of toxic people have? Passion. And you know what a lot of passionate players do? Become passionate staffers. Some of them are not self-aware, but a lot of people are aware just how big of jerks they are and wear it like a badge of pride because they get things done, because enough people feed their egos that they feel justified.

I'm not saying that any of this is okay, but PHBs (Psycho Hose-Beasts) have been running successful games, Muds and Mushes and Superhero and WoD and Pern and you name it, for decades. And as more reasonable, balanced people tend to leave the hobby, we pretty much expect this. A lot of people justify it to themselves, to each other, for decades.

I have no answer to this. I've been on these forums long enough to see the cycles and to want to get out of some of them. Is this view blunt honesty or toxic behavior? Different people will tell you different things about me, and that's a huge problem with the idea that is the core conflict with how this discussion has formed itself; few people can agree on what is a bad staffer, but damn are we ready to tell others what they should think one is!

I'm being part of the problem by participating in the same "no, I'm right", but while we're all in the chaos of the creative commons of open discussion, I wanted to get in my two cents.

[Kanye Qwest]

@thenomain You can have a very 'successful' - IE long lived and popular game that does not at all foster a healthy community. Take Firan, for instance. Now, Firan's staff was NOT always the hotbed of insanity and unethical behavior people will tell you, here. It just wasn't. When I was part of it, though, it was very lax about some things, and SOME staffers, and very very strict about other things I also found stupid. But, no one could argue that the game community was a healthy one where people collaborated well.

So, sure. You're right, over-invested and unfair staffers (I object to the term PHB for a lot of reasons) have run a lot of popular games. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss/strive for better.

[surreality]

@arkandel The self-awareness thing is why I tabled RP and any dev for the foreseeable future. I know I'm not in the headspace for it, and would rather take knocks for being a flake or 'ha ha idiot can't do it' than pursue something I give a shit about, only to see it get completely scragged due to a period of particularly bitchy depression on my part.

This is actually not as hard as it sounds. We all have our strengths, our weaknesses, and our limits. We do tend to know what they are, deep down, under whatever levels of denial or insecurity or whatever else is going on at the same time. (Ex: All the people who fret over being shitty writers who are actually brilliant; the folks who will literally type 'alts are allowed' and then 'alts are discouraged' and refuse to see why they might be confusing someone as to the game's feeling about whether alts are actually welcome, etc. I'm sure everybody's seen stuff like this and there are other plentiful examples.)

Functioning within them is important. You don't have to do it all; this does not make you a failure. You're a great storyteller and a shit administrator? Team up with a good administrator who is a shit storyteller. And so on. This ability -- to work within your strengths and with the strengths of others -- is not to be underestimated, ever.

^ That's what I think @Thenomain successfully addresses, actually; while it may be semantic, I wouldn't call it passion, exactly. Some 'toxic' people with passion are great at this and can produce a good game as a result. Some awesome people with passion suck at it and will produce a dumpster fire of a game.

You need passion, too, because it's all a lot of work. Passion is what gets you to do the work when there are no rewards to be had from it•, be that 'yet' in terms of dev, or 'during' when all the things are going sideways at once (because they will; Murphy's Law and all that).

• Even if the only reward someone wants is 'make a space for people to have fun in, ideally but not necessarily including themselves', this counts as a 'reward' that I'd dub morally neutral or best-intentioned and not in the same category as things like 'praise' or 'power' or 'new besties' or 'popularity', etc. that are oft-cited.

[Bobotron]

@arkandel
So key them as types of FC. TFMU*s did this with an E(ssential) FC, B(on-Essential) FC, and a couple of others. They also had limits on how many of each type you could have. You could old have one EFC, one NFC and one OC (and you could replace one of the others with another OC). Not that difficult to limit.

[Arkandel]

@surreality Self awareness comes at a premium. Usually you have to fuck up, and have others tell you, and drill it into you until you actually get it. It's not always the same kind of fuck up, either.

When I was head staff in games a long time ago I lost perspective. I was more authoritative than I should have been, listened to input less, did things that sounded good to me because I could and I had no idea since people still played it. We kept running into recurring issues because of these directions - massive red tape was one of them - but I didn't want to hear that I was solving problems by introducing larger ones.

It's not easy to spot these things when you're directly involved. And when you are staff there is always criticism, much of it unwarranted, which means distinguishing between legitimate concerns and general whining becomes even harder.

These days I don't staff. When I do I prefer being someone's right hand - I'm better at that than being in charge. I like myself more, too, which comes in handy.

[Apos]

@roz said in FCs on Comic MUs:

I mean, sure, obviously that's a thing that commonly happens. That's also just called bad staffing. You do need good staffing to make any sort of system like this work. There's no "this system will totally work even with lazy or conflict-averse staffers."

I think it's a little contrary to what I was trying to get at originally. While you're right, you can definitely design things systematically that makes it way way way way easier or harder. Like I would rather start from the point of, 'Well, a lot of staff are conflict-averse. What system is least bad with those people?'

Generally, you'd want to design something with the least amount of decision making, with systems that resemble what choices would be made by someone fair minded. Like if every top tier FC had a set limit for how long someone could possess the character before it had to go up for grabs, and then the metric for deciding who got it next was automatically determined based on how you quantified who made me the most rp for the widest spectrum of people among. I mean sure, any of those things can be weighted unfairly too, but frankly even in systems that have really terrible weights there tends to be way less hostility because it's a little bit emotionless and detached.

[Lithium]

@apos Even that isn't going to be a surefire method. People have different RP styles, who wants to see a Batman who is smiling all the time while wearing the cowl. Bruce, yeah, he's a playboy but Batman? No.

So there's a lot of factors as to who would do an FC justice. Honestly... I find FC's to be the worst thing for a game in almost all circumstances, because whoever is clamoring to fanfic that character probably doesn't have the best intentions for the game as a whole. This is not a hundred percent true of course (nothing ever is) but an OC, at least they're trying to /create/ something for the game and push new storylines.

[Ganymede]

@social-diseases said in FCs on Comic MUs:

I could probably see allowing 2, maybe 3 characters so long as those characters were sufficiently different in focus, but...

No, no, no. Not 2 alts. Not 3.

One. One alt. (Ah, ah, ah.) Especially on an FC game, which is what we're talking about.

And this is my stance because no one has ever provided me with a satisfactory answer to the question: "why do you need to play more than one feature character on a game?"

I mean, unless you're Alan Tudyk, you get only one Disney animated character. And you get only one Marvel character.

One alt.

Just one alt.

[Arkandel]

@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:

I mean, unless you're Alan Tudyk, you get only one Disney animated character. And you get only one Marvel character.

Chris Evans.

[Ghost]

@ganymede said in FCs on Comic MUs:

And this is my stance because no one has ever provided me with a satisfactory answer to the question: "why do you need to play more than one feature character on a game?"

You don't.

If you're not capable of finding plenty of RP on one character, taking up another character might seem like an answer at the time, but it shifts focus from character A to character B. The end result is less focus on a character who wasn't already fulfilling your need for RP and taking more attention away from it.

I'm a strong believer in the ethic that if you have 20 characters across 4 MUs, you're only able to focus 1/20th of your creative energy on any given character, and thus you water down the experience for the people you play with.