The limits of IC/OOC responsibility

[magee101]

Personally for me this is my guidelines for the various IC positions you mentioned.

Significant IC position in a group: You should be willing to meet with other memebers for RP at least once a week to pass along IC information, if need be have a 'court day' where your PC has an open door policy. You should also be willing to do ST a miniplot or something along those lines once a month, usually handed out as an assignment from your character.

Bonded relationships: at least bimonthly you should have significant interaction with your bonded for the various needs they have of your pc. As the Bonded one sadly it is a bit more important you be free to tag along for your Bonder as often as possible and you also will have to accept the responsibility of being contacted by other players that may want to get to know your PC bc of your unique connection to your Bonded.

IC relationship: any deep meaningful relationship (dating, engagement, marriage, siblings/family) should have very open and clear OOC communication about activity avaliability and what both parties are looking for in the interaction. Both are responsible for keeping in contact and keeping each other's PCs invovled in their IC dealings on an equal level between each other. I have never had a true SO rp myself bc I know I cannot always commit to those responsibilities OOCly but this is what I would look for.

As for when to break up/get fired/etc I think two week notice is good enough to let the player know your feelings on the issue and to recieve a response. Depending on the length of time they are disappeared you might want to be ready to accept them back in even if you broke things off or fired them, think of it like a grace period of 'looking for a replacement'. In several games their theme allows for good ideas as to why they were missing without explination. Secret missions, kidnapping, got stuck in the Underworld/Shadow etc etc.

[Kanye Qwest]

@faraday said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

In a Wild West setting, the sheriff is a gatekeeper. Make them a NPC and let the players be deputies.

Then the deputies are gatekeepers. The problems people describe with PCs in leadership positions are always going to exist, even with NPC leaders, because those NPCS will not (and probably should not) be around to make all the decisions the playerbase will face.

I guess you could make it so no PC could hold any authority over another, at all, but that seems like it would turn into 'staff npcs dictate the game story'.

[Ganymede]

@saosmash said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

When we ran our Mass Effect game, we had staff npcs in charge of our mercenary company for a long time (although one of them eventually turned out to be the Shadow Broker, spoilers). It worked pretty well although I always wanted players to feel more free to go out and just do things than they were.

Def. I can see this working out well! Also, NPC leaders can spit out plot-foo for PCs to work with. That said --

@arkandel said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

Once again I will mention resource management. It's the real missing piece from politics on MU*; without it granting favors, making meaningful political decisions and maintaining friends (or creating enemies) due to the cost of your choices bears a lot less weight. If you have such a system then it opens a lot more venues for alliances and out-maneuvering others.

I have been saying this since RfK 1.0 shut down.

An effective resource management system gives a player something to do with his or her PC that can be completely separate from what staff is cooking. Said another way, putting the means of meaningful production (of RP) and the enjoyment of tangible benefits (of RP) in the hands of players motivates their private interests, which only strengthens the game as a whole.

[faraday]

@kanye-qwest said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

Then the deputies are gatekeepers. The problems people describe with PCs in leadership positions are always going to exist, even with NPC leaders, because those NPCS will not (and probably should not) be around to make all the decisions the playerbase will face.

Not really. If the deputy isn't available, then the staff can have the sheriff do the thing instead. It's a fallback, that's all. It doesn't in any way stop people from RPing with the deputies about crime stuff. Deputies are RP enablers without being gatekeepers.

[Kanye Qwest]

@faraday Ah, maybe I was reading a different meaning into gatekeepers. I find that no matter where you draw the line between NPC and PC authority, that is going to be the pain point.

If you have PCs who have IC responsibility and authority, it doesn't seem to matter much if they are the top of the line or somewhere in the middle. If they make decisions, they will get a lot of friction. If they try to impose consequences, they will get friction (and outright hate). If they don't distribute rp knowledge evenly, absolutely, and tirelessly, they will be accused of horrible things.

I wish I knew how to make people be considerate of each other, and not take everything as a personal slight when there are much more plausible explanations.

IMO the only real OOC responsibility of an IC leader is to do their best to enable instead of shutting down the RP of others, through being reasonably responsive and delegating with a permissive attitude within the boundaries of the setting.

[faraday]

@kanye-qwest said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

I wish I knew how to make people be considerate of each other, and not take everything as a personal slight when there are much more plausible explanations.

Ah yes - totally. That's a separate and equally valid problem than what I was describing. I was referring solely to the 'gatekeeper/roadblock' phenomenon where nothing can get done in a given sphere/department/house/whatever if the leader is shirking.

[Darinelle]

@bored said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

High tier nobles absolutely make the low tier nobles pointless. Staff will always claim that they're not, that they can agitate or band together and cause problems, but I've seen that happen organically precisely zero times ever.

Blame lazy staff, the ever present corrupt/just stupid need to give people feature characters, etc.

Why don't you blame players afraid to take risks? We've come close to civil war several times now, and each time so far as staff we've been like - "ooooooh, we might get to run a civil war this could be fun" and players go "yeahhhhhhh, I might lose a civil war so uh...... let's find a different way."

Which is fine, but it ain't staff that's the "problem" there. And when staff has talked to parties on all sides and says things like "we are willing to GM a civil war if that's where you want to go with this" then again - staff ain't the problem with that.

What I do see, over and over again, is a player mindset of "I have to ask <this person in charge> if it's okay to <do this thing> and if they say no then <it means I can never, ever do this thing.>" That's again - not a staff problem, especially when I feel like we've made it really super clear and obvious that it's okay to have agency, we're not interested in one person EVER being the gatekeeper for actions, taking independent actions is fine with us, and it's always easier to ask for forgiveness than to beg permission.

The most successful people, at least in Arx, are the ones who find a storyline they want to pursue and then pursue it, finding people they want to RP with and ways to accomplish things even if it's not "I asked my High Lord and they said it was ok to do." Finding unusual ways make for better stories anyway.

Of course, I'm also going to suggest that a lot of L&L players played that one game, where if you submitted a dumb action that was vaguely unthematic or hinted of fun at all, you generally got some humiliating emit to make you feel stupid and/or your character died in a terrible way. So there's a fair bit of brainwashing too in many cases, where distrust of GMs (and leadership characters, because most of those leaders - even the good ones - were played by staff) is ingrained and needs to be worked around, and any hint of fun personal story that might also be interesting and connected to the metaplot is to be avoided at all costs.

But I don't blame OUR staff for that either.

[Kanye Qwest]

@darinelle There's the mitigating factor of : players who take risks are usually punished ruthlessly by the playerbase if the outcome of those risks is not 100% positive...even though 100% positive outcomes don't offer nearly as much RP opportunity.

Like, take player A. They did something really (ok stupidly) recklessly, but it was BIG, and more it was something the entire setting was pressuring that faction to do, forever...and the rest of the players want to oust them from everything for doing it in the wrong way.

Staff isn't to blame for this, it's a lack of consideration for people outside our groups of friends and friendly acquaintances.

[Arkandel]

@kanye-qwest said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

I wish I knew how to make people be considerate of each other, and not take everything as a personal slight when there are much more plausible explanations.

It's probably our biggest collective issue as a community. We're not always good about sharing our toys, or not taking things personally. It doesn't help that we're looking at each other as competitors instead of collaborators at times.

In fact that's the key here... trust. We don't have it, as a rule, for our fellow players.

On a tangentI wonder (some of you such as @Ganymede might be able to answer this) if it's the same for theatrical productions. Do actors root for their characters and try to push for them to win? Do they view directors - which I assume is the closest thing to storytellers - as means to get what they want for those characters, or obstacles to their success?

Are there any parallels between the two activities, since that would be a community with some similarities to ours, but unlike it with centuries worth of history we can tap as opposed to this fledgling little hobby of ours that didn't exist two days ago.

[Darinelle]

@kanye-qwest said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@darinelle There's the mitigating factor of : players who take risks are usually punished ruthlessly by the playerbase if the outcome of those risks is not 100% positive...even though 100% positive outcomes don't offer nearly as much RP opportunity.

Like, take player A. They did something really (ok stupidly) recklessly, but it was BIG, and more it was something the entire setting was pressuring that faction to do, forever...and the rest of the players want to oust them from everything for doing it in the wrong way.

Staff isn't to blame for this, it's a lack of consideration for people outside our groups of friends and friendly acquaintances.

That's also another thing - and which ties us back neatly to being considerate of each other, and remembering that consequences make great story but "endless negative consequences from all sides" can be exhausting so maybe sometimes be the ray of light at the end of the tunnel if you can.

There's no one right answer, I think.

[deadculture]

@darinelle To what extent do you consider character vs character interactions to be that? As in -- is actively subverting someone but never actually attacking them physically or socially to be considered CvC? And CvE - where do you draw the line, there? Say, someone wants to declare war on NPC enemy faction Z; this can be a lot of fun, OOCly, and ICly it might be catastrophic for the Allied Forces of Whateveria.

But your character, who is currently invested in rebuilding after a very recent (internecine or not) war, decides to speak out against it and pulls out their troops from the alliance. Is this CvC? Is it CvE? Does this action of your character merit going through due to IC considerations or should it be discarded in favor of the more OOCly fun pursuit?

Also, yes, players are generally blamed for the failings of their characters, it's something we've all experienced to some extent, I think.

[Darinelle]

@deadculture said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@darinelle To what extent do you consider character vs character interactions to be that? As in -- is actively subverting someone but never actually attacking them physically or socially to be considered CvC? And CvE - where do you draw the line, there? Say, someone wants to declare war on NPC enemy faction Z; this can be a lot of fun, OOCly, and ICly it might be catastrophic for the Allied Forces of Whateveria.

But your character, who is currently invested in rebuilding after a very recent (internecine or not) war, decides to speak out against it and pulls out their troops from the alliance. Is this CvC? Is it CvE? Does this action of your character merit going through due to IC considerations or should it be discarded in favor of the more OOCly fun pursuit?

Also, yes, players are generally blamed for the failings of their characters, it's something we've all experienced to some extent, I think.

Goodness. So any of that can be fine. IC subverting is fine. We'll use Dawn as an example because she was in a leadership position and took a lot of shit but it's also stone age Arx so hopefully no one's still frothing at the mouth over it.

"The Leadership" make the decision to pay the Tiend (which involves human sacrifice, which also was voluntary, which also saved the world ). Dawn decides to go pay the Tiend with a bunch of NPCs. She intended to die herself there, but wasn't allowed to for IC reasons. Someone else went in her stead. So - the Tiend is paid, she comes back to Arx, and EVERYONE IS MAD.

Okay so here's where it gets iffy and where I think consideration for the other player comes into play:

How long should EVERYONE BE MAD AT DAWN?

How long is she going to have to join every single scene in public and get absolutely shit on because EVERYONE IS MAD AT DAWN?

How long is it going to be fun when it's literally one (or two) people against EVERYONE IN THE WORLD before they're going to quit the character?

How much fun is it if literally every scene you are in, someone wants to personally extract their pound of flesh?

That's more what @Kanye-Qwest and I are talking about here. Not that IC is free from repercussions. But that at a certain point as players it's important to step back and say "wow, giving this person shit is hella fun for me ICly, but what fun am I creating for them?" Like - if there's no way past it, and your relationship is never going to get better no matter what they do, maybe just handwave the scene and say "welp, I'm going to hate them forever and there's nothing they'll ever be able to do to make things better." It can still happen IC. You can still work against them. But maybe don't make them sit there and take your character yelling at them for an hour with no recourse or any way to make things better.

If you want a scene with someone, it doesn't have to be positive. It can be negative - but both players need to have some kind of agency and ability to make story, or you might as well agree oocly "hey, our characters now hate each other for these reasons that won't change." Then you can get your hate on in public group scenes (which is fun and hilarious for everyone) while both having some kind of character development and growth.

That's what I mean when I say "consider the player." Dawn went off grid not because she made some poor decisions (which also saved the world so good job dogpiling on the person who did the needful there guys. Hella standup) but because every time someone asked her for a scene it was to shit on her and call her a traitor and be hateful to her, and there's no actual fun that comes from constantly being berated IC with no development, shift, change, reason, or character growth.

[Kanye Qwest]

I have lost count of the times I have asked someone "do you think this is fun for <the other person involved>?" and gotten long, silent pauses, as if the question never even occurred to them.

We all are quick to say "THESE GAMES ARE PRETENDY FUN TIMES" when we are the ones being misunderstood. And so, so slow to remind ourselves of that when we feel we have been slighted in some way.

[deadculture]

@darinelle I don't think giving people OOC grief is fun or fair in any way; naturally, people will talk about someone else behind their backs and there's nothing that can be done about it, but people should have the sense to at the very least not freak out at the PC two months after the fact unless they were directly affected and aren't given a chance to.

Grumble, talk into your drink, look away when she enters the room, sure, but you don't need to walk up and give her shit over a difficult decision after what's an eternity in MUSH terms.

But yeah, there's a point where 'Oh it's just my character giving hers shit' stops being that and starts being undeserved and unfair.

[Darinelle]

@deadculture said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@darinelle I don't think giving people OOC grief is fun or fair in any way; naturally, people will talk about someone else behind their backs and there's nothing that can be done about it, but people should have the sense to at the very least not freak out at the PC two months after the fact unless they were directly affected and aren't given a chance to.

Grumble, talk into your drink, look away when she enters the room, sure, but you don't need to walk up and give her shit over a difficult decision after what's an eternity in MUSH terms.

But yeah, there's a point where 'Oh it's just my character giving hers shit' stops being that and starts being undeserved and unfair.

It's not just OOC.

There can be a multitude of valid IC reasons to dislike a character. That doesn't mean you have to demand to have a scene with them to just give them hate. Just - hate them. My character hates lots of people. LOTS OF PEOPLE. I am cold to them in group scenes or ignore them. And... I have yet to message any of them saying "hey, let's talk" and then turned that into "I hate you and here are all my valid reasons why."

That's what I mean when I say "have some consideration for the player, even if my character hates theirs for valid reasons."

[saosmash]

Yeah ... if my character hates someone mostly I'm gonna avoid RPing with them. And if I hate them OOC, I'm DEFINITELY gonna avoid RPing with them. Nobody needs to deal with me venting my spleen. It won't be fun for anyone involved. Even if I get something out of it temporarily I'm probably not going to feel very good about myself afterwards.

[deadculture]

@darinelle What's the point of demanding a scene with someone to give them shit, though? What does that accomplish?

Note that I'm just confused as to why this pattern of behavior exists. I wouldn't RP with a character my own hates unless it's business; I've had a very successful example of that like two weeks ago. Both got something out of that exchange.

[Darinelle]

@deadculture said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@darinelle What's the point of demanding a scene with someone to give them shit, though? What does that accomplish?

Kind of my point.

Do you have any idea how many people do this? Or single out the one character they hate in a crowded room, to hate on them publicly and somehow embarrass them? Just leave them alone. Work against them, talk about them, be hateful about them. But public scorn and ridicule, particularly when it becomes dogpiling, is MISERABLE to work through.

I damn near quit Portia back in the day because almost every single scene I had for the first month I played her was "we hate you and you don't deserve anything nice or to have any friends and you don't know anyone and you'll be forever alone and you might as well just Dove yourself now before we get around to it you stupid bitch."

And some of this from players who liked me fine oocly. It was exhausting. It was not fun. I ended up having to RP with people WAY outside where she normally would have RP'd just to have a single fucking scene that wasn't "you're a failure and a cripple and we hate you." That was a tough damn month oocly, because this is a pretendy funtime game and I wanted to just have some fucking fun, but no. No, other people were having too much fun shitting on mine, and mine had no way to counter it. EVEN THOUGH THESE WERE ALL IC REASONS, it was oocly fucking miserable.

People lack basic consideration for other players' fun sometimes, and if too many people do it to the same character all at once, it's a miserable goddamn experience.

[deadculture]

@darinelle And Portia was a fucking sweetheart, that's just wrong.

[Darinelle]

@deadculture said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

@darinelle And Portia was a fucking sweetheart, that's just wrong.

Well, now you know why Portia was so friendly with the Ticanee. Because they didn't treat her like shit when she didn't know anyone and didn't have any friends and randomly got locked out of her house and sent to an inn to live. On the no money she had because they also wouldn't give her any access to family funds.

Things changed, but it took a long time and I had a lot of really, really unfun scenes.