Earning stuff
-
I agree and disagree with the thrust of this topic; everyone wants to do something special as its in every book, tv show, etc. I see it, but then, I still think its not just those other media.
I've been doing this weird thing lately when watching the really 'good' stuff; I blame Magnificent Century because a few months ago I was watching it and realized this is just a soap opera but I was still drawn to it (probably because of the time period). I was there 30 minutes into like the third episode in a row that was dealing with this special ring Hurrem got from the Suleyman and I reflect, how did I get drawn into this; then I kept on watching.
By really good stuff, I mean popular, a lot of it is drama between characters. The really good stuff on TV may be about one or two heroes who do crazy things, but the crazy things make up like 10-15% of each episode, maybe a little more in periodic advances of major arcs. Otherwise, I'm watching 30+ minutes in a 45 minute episode of over dramatized drama. And I like it, and I assume a lot of others do too, due to popularity.
Just it is coming down to more wanting the action in a Mu and less wanting to develop the dramatized drama. Or they make fun of it, ugh social rp, ugh BarP. My most enjoyed characters that have spent less than 10-15% of the time doing special things or being in spotlight have had longer bits of drama and character development outside of the action special things. Could be me, I'm less interested in any reward and more interested in the stories. Otherwise, I go to other medium to be the protagonist (I'd go play a video game to get that feeling).
-
@three-eyed-crow That's totally a conversation that'd need a Pit version if it's in Constructive otherwise, because I really will invent new profanity to throw at these people. I really will. Triply so when they're in/seeking/expecting/demanding leadership positions of some kind. I will absolutely invent new foul language just for them, and they'll deserve every new four letter word of it.
-
@three-eyed-crow said in Earning stuff:
I mean I'm personally of the opinion that 'Other players being special detracts from me' is one of the most toxic impulses in this hobby but that's maybe another conversation.
I completely agree; but it's also not entirely an irrational or illogical extrapolation from the way we're fed fiction and storytelling, like @Arkandel said.
Can you guys PLEASE stop making me type shit that's in agreement with him? It's going to give me a migraine in my soul.
-
I agree with @coin, @Arkandel, and @Three-Eyed-Crow that the desire to be THE special one is one of the most toxic impulses in our hobby at the moment, because it is explicitly exclusionary: if anyone else has anything special, then the player isn't happy because they aren't the most special. I also think that it's derived from more single-narrative entertainment (movies, video games, books, etc), because that's most of the entertainment out there: 1-6(ish?) Very Special people doing everything and saving the cheerleader/town/nation/planet/galaxy/universe/multiverse/whatever.
However, I also think that this is a very, very small minority of people that have to be THE special one. I think that a much larger group in our hobby is happy enough being ONE of the special ones, one of those at least within the twilight areas of the spotlight, with it shifting over to them now and then. And I agree with @faraday that if you are careful with the character types allowed out of chargen, and have either the time or the staff to spread plot around to several groups at once, it is definitely possible to focus enough on the various groups to keep the more common ONE of the special ones happy.
-
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
If a significant part of your intended audience is looking for something that your game design just flat-out can't provide then you've got issues.
Said everyone at some point about World of Darkness games.
Important events can be scheduled, but World of Darkness games invariably contain some amount of status-earning incentive that creates competition. In a way, this is a plus: internal competition can drive the RP between PCs. In a way, this is a minus: internal competition can create divisions within the PC groups, which makes it difficult or impossible to schedule "important events" in a manner satisfactory to the parties involved and their interests.
That said, it is certainly possible to overcome this inherent system problem in WoD.
-
@three-eyed-crow said in Earning stuff:
I mean I'm personally of the opinion that 'Other players being special detracts from me' is one of the most toxic impulses in this hobby but that's maybe another conversation.
I agree completely, but as @Seraphim73 said - thankfully those folks seem to be a minority.
They are a vocal minority, which can be annoying. I remember on Sweetwater getting people complaining about how unrealistic somebody else's concept was while they're playing something equally rare.
@lotherio said in Earning stuff:
The really good stuff on TV may be about one or two heroes who do crazy things, but the crazy things make up like 10-15% of each episode, maybe a little more in periodic advances of major arcs.
If you apply that ratio to a MUSH though, assuming somebody plays 3 nights a week (which is pretty typical for an active player), you're talking about one action-oriented hero plot per month. That doesn't seem like a terribly unreasonable expectation for an individual player, and it's eminently do-able if you have a setting/character/player-staff-ratio that supports it. It's not practical everywhere, though, which is a problem if people expect it.
-
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
If you apply that ratio to a MUSH though, assuming somebody plays 3 nights a week (which is pretty typical for an active player), you're talking about one action-oriented hero plot per month. That doesn't seem like a terribly unreasonable expectation for an individual player, and it's eminently do-able if you have a setting/character/player-staff-ratio that supports it. It's not practical everywhere, though, which is a problem if people expect it.
This right here, yes. When I'm playing, I would be completely happy with one action/hero/do-something session/plot per month and I play up to five days a week. I might like it played out with clues along the way, but the equivalent of one session a month would be plenty for me.
And for me, I prefer the option to do that one thing a month as a PrP, even if I'm running it for others. With less hoops to jump through. Its been pointed out this isn't the norm and there is an expectation on all action to be provided by staff. I'm weird that way, having mostly played US daytime when most places have zero staff or work idle staff that are only there to help players if needed not run things for players.
-
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
If you apply that ratio to a MUSH though, assuming somebody plays 3 nights a week (which is pretty typical for an active player), you're talking about one action-oriented hero plot per month. That doesn't seem like a terribly unreasonable expectation for an individual player, and it's eminently do-able if you have a setting/character/player-staff-ratio that supports it. It's not practical everywhere, though, which is a problem if people expect it.
I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation, either, and it's one that a game of even moderate size could probably maintain fairly well. Probably even double that.
There are unfortunately a lot of loud voices that will insist that if each of those three nights of the week, there's not a chance to go be John McClane, staff is lazy, the game is dying, and "nobody does anything good". As much as I may want to dangle these people off of something really high by an ankle until all the entitlement drains out of them -- fate has cruelly denied me this magical power -- they are very loud and very insistent and their persistent loud insistence about this can do bad things to game morale over time.
-
Tangent: I think Mushes I’ve seen have become a more like sandbox video games: Less about the story and more about the experience.
When I started, the stories we told could get confrontational, but they were things that people wanted to do with their character.
Doing things with the character on these games has become so pointless. Jobs-based events. Fewer people in public. Less engaged staff. You might laugh on a public forum that Caine just rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque, but Caine rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque.
I never thought this would be something I would use as an example of better than what a lot of games are doing now, but I would kill for this level of involvement again.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain said in Earning stuff:
You might laugh on a public forum that Caine just rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque, but Caine rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque.
Context? I'm not sure why this example is a good thing?
-
@wildbaboons said in Earning stuff:
@thenomain said in Earning stuff:
You might laugh on a public forum that Caine just rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque, but Caine rode up to a seedy bar on a motorcycle in the middle of Albuquerque.
Context? I'm not sure why this example is a good thing?
Because something is happening. Something BIG is happening. Something that you can react to, even if it’s a copious Gen-X or Millenial rolling of the eyes. You know that somethings going down on this game, something that has weight, and weight means gravity, and gravity means movement.
Caine was the first vampire in WoD lore, but even in vaguely biblical lore, Caine stopping by a seedy bar is still something that can happen between waiting for the next +event.
The games I’ve played on lately have had little of Caine On a Motorcycle, or even little Hey Let’s Talk About Current Supernatural Events.
And that’s sad.
I don’t need to earn anything. I log in to play a character and their story. Earning things makes it more varied, but it’s a tool for play, not a reason.
-
I think that this stuff comes down to tradeoffs and just what staff are willing to deal with, and more importantly, what they enjoy doing. Like I worry that we'd drift into talking about design in a way of best practices, when a well run sandbox game with no metaplot could be infinitely better than a plot driven game that just isn't run well, and I think because of people's experiences on good games they might be more inclined to say, 'this is the best way to do it' when really it was just colored by that particular approach being well done.
So on balancing the need to be a protagonist that a lot of players are after, I really think of it as a general scale. I mean sure, if a single player out of 500 goes and kills the space slug and saves the world, other players might be cranky and jealous about that. If 100 out of the 500 do it, while there was 4 other also very relevant stories for each of the other hundred, then that mitigates complaints from anyone but a handful. And if staff doesn't want to deal with those kinds of headaches, then they either don't do it, or try to change the game to the point where the headaches are minimized.
Similarly I think of different tools as just tradeoffs. Like I just don't have a dark version of staff invisibility. I personally feel the cost in trust outweighs the gains of me being able to run around the grid and spontaneously create RP on people that don't suspect it that would enjoy the surprise. Conversely, I hide other information for narrative reasons that I think don't have the same kind of problems I want to avoid but have large gains, and I don't think this is a right or wrong thing, just preference by a staffer on their game.
some fucking idiot who people only like because he's good at taking credit for the work of everyone under him, just like every other fucking L&L headwiz.
-
@thenomain said in Earning stuff:
Tangent: I think Mushes I’ve seen have become a more like sandbox video games: Less about the story and more about the experience.
FWIW I haven't seen that. What I have seen though is that peoples' definition of "story" has shifted to include only a) Epic plot events, or b) Relationship RP (including platonic/familial relationships) with friends. What's fallen by the wayside is a lot of the random "let's hang around in the bar playing pool" or "let's sit in the park and chat about the monster we killed last week" scenes.
Personally I can't call that a bad thing, because I don't really have the patience for the latter any more either. I miss it in a sort of weird nostalgic way, but whenever I try to do one of those scenes these days it's not very fun.
And really, when you get right down to it, a+b constitutes, like, 90% of primetime TV airtime.
-
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
If you apply that ratio to a MUSH though, assuming somebody plays 3 nights a week (which is pretty typical for an active player), you're talking about one action-oriented hero plot per month.
I think that works great for the people who play 3 nights a week (which is about what I can manage at my best), but for those people who play 5-6 nights a week? That's somewhere just shy of one crazy-awesome thing each week. That means they're in every plot, which in turn means that one less person can join those plots. These are also that same vocal minority that has to be involved in everything, so if they're asked to sit out a plot or two, it's clearly the most awesome plot ever that they're missing, and they're hated because Staff wanted someone besides them involved and WOOOOOE IS MEEEEE.
Augh. Sorry. Got peeved out there for a second.
(yes, just like @surreality said... I should keep reading before I post)
I also agree with @Thenomain that a lot of characters don't seem to have (reasonable, attainable or entertainingly-unattainable) goals these days, and that's hurting games, because they tend to drift directionless, latching onto any forward motion and then trying to make it all about them.
Augh. There I go again. Deep breath.
To get sort of back on topic... is there a good way to make it clear that those pursuing a goal are "earning" the things that their characters get, while those drafting on them or on Staff are not, no matter what Big Bad they one-shotted?
-
@seraphim73 said in Earning stuff:
I think that works great for the people who play 3 nights a week (which is about what I can manage at my best), but for those people who play 5-6 nights a week? That's somewhere just shy of one crazy-awesome thing each week. That means they're in every plot, which in turn means that one less person can join those plots. These are also that same vocal minority that has to be involved in everything, so if they're asked to sit out a plot or two, it's clearly the most awesome plot ever that they're missing, and they're hated because Staff wanted someone besides them involved and WOOOOOE IS MEEEEE.
That's a very common thing in MUSHing. It's not the exception since it happens often.
Look, it might be the hobby or online gaming online but there are some players who simply get to invest way more time than average into it. And it's only human nature for them to expect a return for that investment even where none is owed.
This leads to all kinds of issues both for them and the game in general. It's why activity has to be one of the first things for staff to cap in terms of rewarding, and I don't simply mean by limiting XP, else it will get out of hand. Fast.
-
This post is deleted! -
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
And really, when you get right down to it, a+b constitutes, like, 90% of primetime TV airtime.
You know earlier when I said that way back when people logged in to write?
No?
Way back when, people logged in to write.
Even me.
Which just proves how bad of a writer I am.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain said in Earning stuff:
Way back when, people logged in to write.
I have no idea what you're getting at. Writing has always been a part of MUSHing, and always will be due to the fundamental nature of the medium. Primetime TV writers are writers too. The fact that MUSHers are more inclined to emulate those types of stories is not a bad thing IMHO - especially when you consider that the ongoing episodic nature of MU stories has more in common with a TV series than it does a movie or a book (both of which have a core "story" and a finite resolution).
-
@faraday said in Earning stuff:
I have no idea what you're getting at.
That "90% of primetime TV airtime" didn't matter. And my current experience is that a lot of people don't log in to write, but to react.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain said in Earning stuff:
That "90% of primetime TV airtime" didn't matter.
Maybe I'm still missing your point, or maybe you missed mine. When I said that a+b equated to 90% of primetime TV, I was just trying to illustrate that the +c we lost (e.g. the random social scenes) wasn't necessarily important to telling actual stories.
Pick any TV show, book, play or movie. The scenes all have a purpose to furthering the story. You don't see a scene with Bob and Mary just randomly meeting in the park to say 'hi how's the weather', which is what a lot of BarRP/random pickup scenes are like. I don't think it's a bad thing that folks have moved away from scenes like that. And I certainly don't see how it means people are less interested in writing.
