Earning stuff

[surreality]

@faraday I agree on the 'how much info' thing, believe it or not.

Thing is, I think there are viable ways of working around this that allow players familiar with the culture to skim over the basics and have full comprehension of almost everything that would be there, while still presenting the whys and examples and further info for folks who are new to the culture as a resource. It's not hard to set this up in such a way as to ensure the old hats, who are skimming over the same list of exactly what they probably would expect to find, are not going to be bombarded with endless details. That absolutely is important for the 'information overload' reason you describe.

There are different staffing styles. There are different game cultures. Different things are going to work better or worse depending on a variety of these variables. Game size is a factor. Are there similar games out there with an established culture people know? That's a factor, too. Are you using new systems or trying totally new things? That's going to be a factor as well. Is the player base primarily composed of people who have played together for years, with new arrivals brought in by that group and essentially mentored through the norms for the group? That'll be a factor, too.

This is not a 'one true way' or 'one size fits all' prospect. Someone who can make style A work and sucks at style B should stick with style A, and vice versa. It doesn't mean their a failure, wrong, or somehow lacking because they take a different approach that suits their skillset and the community atmosphere they want to cultivate. Just like we wouldn't tell someone who wouldn't be suited to running a horror game they should run no games, I think it's short-sighted to suggest that if someone can't make something work via only one approach, they shouldn't be using an approach that they feel is more effective and suited to their belief in the way things should be done.

All of the options have downsides, or potential pitfalls. All of them. All of them have strengths, too.

Beyond that, some game themes, settings, and game systems are just going to require some different information. You're probably not going to need a rape policy on a My Little Pony game. You probably will on a WoD game. You're not going to need a list of restricted or not-in-use bits and bobs from a published game system on an original theme game, nor will you need a policy that says 'don't ask us to add things from the restricted list, it's restricted for a reason'. (People do this all the time. Allllll the time. That up front 'no', when it gets added? Has stemmed that tide immensely, and diminished the amount of staff work and angst. I've seen it! It's a thing.) You're not going to need rules for XP spends on a freeform consent game that is statless, but you're probably going to need them for a game that uses an XP-based system. And so on.

[Thenomain]

@misadventure said in Earning stuff:

@faraday

@thatguythere said in Earning stuff:

Best example i can think of is from the Reach which had a policy of "Be Excellent to Each Other." Nothing wrong with that on the face but it was definitely used (by players more so than staff) as a club to silence any who said something negative be cause "That is not being excellent to each other."

Definitely saw this at The Reach. However, the Reach was so big, and around more than long enough to give character players and staff players plenty of chances to show off their less than stellar behavior. it basically led to players not communicating on channels and finding other ways to complain, having already lost the chance to shape how play went.

The Reach had a very long-standing history of staff abusing players, and headstaff (of which I was one, even when it was happening) doing nothing about it. This makes staff look ineffectual because they were ineffectual. If staff wasn't excellent to each other and to players, why should players be excellent?

I think that WoD games on the whole are getting better, and that the understanding of the 'don't be a dick' and 'be excellent' statements are spreading throughout that particular game culture. This is nothing but good news. (A deflection to the next person saying 'game xx is doing yy': I stress on the whole.)

[Misadventure]

@thenomain Just saying that others had the same impression at The Reach. Maybe we're just overly sensitive snowflakes, or maybe people have learned to use zealous correctness as a coercive weapon.

And hey, y'all got rid of VAS and OW so you couldn't have been all bad all the time. Broken clock at the minimum.

[brent]

@surreality said in Earning stuff:

You're probably not going to need a rape policy on a My Little Pony game.

I regret to inform you that you're massively underestimating the remnant brony fanbase's capability to be totally, dismayingly awful right there

[Thenomain]

@misadventure

I only “got rid of” VAS because I said that her presence in Changeling was unwelcome and she had to go so she took her toys and went elsewhere. She came back. And was put on Staff. So much for staff behaving like adults.

[faraday]

ETA: Never mind. We're so far afield of the original discussion and it's obvious we're never going to agree, so I withdraw further commentary.

[Arkandel]

@thenomain said in Earning stuff:

The Reach had a very long-standing history of staff abusing players, and headstaff (of which I was one, even when it was happening) doing nothing about it. This makes staff look ineffectual because they were ineffectual. If staff wasn't excellent to each other and to players, why should players be excellent?

Another factor I think is quite underrated is we are seeing fewer MU* ran by enormous staff, and for that matter, being staff constituting a reward for players rather than... a job description. It's harder for things to be lost in the shuffle or for politics to emerge from a small, tightly knit team than an enormous group of them who're barely able to communicate with each other effectively.

Conversely game runners either take or are forced to take more responsibility for their actions - we've introduced a notion of accountability, albeit slowly, over the last ten years or so. It used to be staff were beyond criticism but that's no longer the case, which is a significant cultural shift in the right direction. Even when they protest they don't care (and they do, a lot) staff are seeing their players having expectations from them other than paying the bills.

[Thenomain]

@arkandel said in Earning stuff:

It's harder for things to be lost in the shuffle or for politics to emerge from a small, tightly knit team than an enormous group of them who're barely able to communicate with each other effectively.

This just means that any bad staff behavior is more deliberate. Ashes to Ashes is one infamous small-staff game where the behavior was planned. Shadowed Isles was another.

Large staff groups still rely upon and need to be lead by Headstaff, so if there is poor communication going on then it’s up to the chain of command to identify it and, if it’s a problem, correct it.

[Sunny]

@thenomain said in Earning stuff:

Ashes to Ashes is one infamous small-staff game where the behavior was planned.

Not to say that the bad behavior wasn't bad or planned or whatnot, but we had 26 staffers on Ashes for a good stretch of time. I would in no way consider our problems as relevant on the 'small staff' spectrum of things.

[surreality]

@arkandel said in Earning stuff:

It used to be staff were beyond criticism but that's no longer the case, which is a significant cultural shift in the right direction. Even when they protest they don't care (and they do, a lot) staff are seeing their players having expectations from them other than paying the bills.

The idea of staff being immune to criticism pretty much went out the door with the first WORA, which was a fair bit longer ago.

I'd be more inclined to say it's a pendulum issue. Pre-WORA, staff being shady were shady in the shadows, and there was nowhere this really came out. There might be some small exodus of a group of players from a game, but rarely did people from multiple games communicate extensively for that to have much impact on who came to play there later, and so on.

So much shady nonsense went on in the shadows and came to light that even now, most staff are considered untrustworthy by default, particularly on WoD games. In plenty of cases, all it took was one player being told 'no' to get someone's reputation completely destroyed, and telling people 'no' sometimes is absolutely part of staff's job, and staff has to be able to tell people 'no' when 'no' is the appropriate answer. It could produce calls for that staffer's head on a plate or a mass exodus of the game, or new players refusing to go there.

Essentially, it went from staff being immune to criticism or being told 'no' to players being immune to criticism or being told 'no'. Neither of those scenarios are good things. That seems to be starting to change only over the past 2-3 years toward something more balanced.

[Ganymede]

If you are going to make players earn something for their PCs, then the rules should be clear and straight-forward, and readily available. I concur with Faraday and Surreality here.

If there is discretion involved, the exercise should be consistent. Ideally, deviations in that consistency should be adequately documented to explain the deviation, and why it was fair.

These rules are different than rules about on-game conduct. Those rules are by necessity and circumstance going to need to be more vague, but should still adequately inform new players as well as provide staff the discretion to act on novel situations.

But system-based gains should be less discretionary and more strict. Otherwise, you’re going to have favoritism complaints, among other things.

Staff need to be quick and decisive when they act, regardless.

[WildBaboons]

@ganymede said in Earning stuff:

If you are going to make players earn something for their PCs, then the rules should be clear and straight-forward, and readily available. I concur with Faraday and Surreality here.
If there is discretion involved, the exercise should be consistent. Ideally, deviations in that consistency should be adequately documented to explain the deviation, and why it was fair.

Very much this. I can think of an example about a year ago where players wanted to do achievement X.

Group 1 was told no, it's impossible in this setting.
Group 2 was told no, it's impossible in this setting.
Group 3 announced their glorious achievement of X

Group 3 and staff were perplexed why players in Group 1 and 2 were unhappy.

Earning stuff is awesome, the sense of accomplishment you can get from it is great.. but make the rungs on that ladder you have to climb visible so people know how to start climbing and which way to go. And make the climb entertaining, maybe even fun.

[Apos]

Any game owner has to choose whether they want to obscure any information on their setting for story purposes, knowing full well that if they do so, they will be accused of favoritism and stuff like that down the road. You just will. If players try to do something and don't understand why it doesn't work, and if explaining it would cause gigantic reveals that spoil major plotlines, there's just no option but to sit there and have a ton of people talk about how bad and unfair you are. And if you have a completely transparent game, where everyone knows everything about the setting, you really lose a core appeal that is the heart of why some people (by no means all), play these games. Staff just have to decide if they want a living, more full fleshed world that has things to discover, and are willing to take some really unfair punches for it.

Like let me give an example.

Say someone creates a setting that is set on earth, and is seemingly post apocalyptic with very limited information about why. A deliberately obscured past, history eradicated, that kind of thing, with players starting to piece together what happened. Some find out that the few cities they are left in might have been part of an intergalatic empire, though they just don't have anything like interstellar space travel yet.

Now, some players are really captivated by the mystery of this and are chasing down storylines about it. Some REALLY want the achievement of their characters being admired by the first ones to do interstellar travel again, and are super hungry about that. What they don't know is that ships are not the limiting factor here, because of the Giant Angry Space Slug that eats anything that tries to go past Jupiter, or the Impenetrable Ring of Space Fortresses created by the alien civilization that reduced mankind back to earth that destroy anything leaving the solar system, vaporizing anything that comes close.

So players that REALLY want the achievement of getting interstellar travel ask, 'So will we be able to leave the solar system soon?' and as staff you say, 'That's likely not happening anytime soon'. They grouse but they don't touch it.

Meanwhile, the players super wrapped up in story, find out about abandoned moon bases, and want to check out the moon base, and build a rocket to do it. Just to the moon and back, so this won't go by the Giant Angry Space Slug, and this definitely won't go by Ring of Space Fortresses. Just to the moon.

The latter category of players will freak the fuck out. They will say up and down how mean and unfair staff is, and how ridiculous it is that group A is building a rocket to go the moon, when they were very clearly told by staff that interstellar travel wasn't happening anytime soon. Months of complaints on discord, constant whispers about staff can't be trusted, etc, etc.

A lot of people are like, 'well why didn't you just let people build a rocket and die to the space slug, or correct this', and that's really missing the point. Those people definitely aren't going to be any happier if their characters die. They are after the achievement and admiration of their peers. Being a warning to others is a thing they hate way way way more than staff bias, and they would call it mean staff anyways if their characters died. The whole reason they asked oocly if it was possible was to avoid looking bad by trying and failing.

And it's annoying but it doesn't matter. The people that are invested in story will appreciate it, and going full transparent to appease a group of people that just don't enjoy games the same way just makes for games that don't take any risks to entertain people that deserve it. I think staff just has to be willing to deal with people that gripe that don't engage in the same way.

[faraday]

@apos said in Earning stuff:

Any game owner has to choose whether they want to obscure any information on their setting for story purposes, knowing full well that if they do so, they will be accused of favoritism and stuff like that down the road. You just will.

FTFY

But seriously - it doesn't matter how transparent or well-intentioned you are. Some players will get their noses out of joint no matter what you do. Do what's best for the game.

[Arkandel]

@apos @apos said in Earning stuff:

A lot of people are like, 'well why didn't you just let people build a rocket and die to the space slug, or correct this', and that's really missing the point. Those people definitely aren't going to be any happier if their characters die. They are after the achievement and admiration of their peers.

Do you think it's a oversimplification to break it down to this:

"Players want things which are rare and special. However if many possess them they are neither rare nor special."

Because of it's not then it's at the heart of our impasse. We are deadlocked between giving no one anything cool, making things uncool by handing them out generously, and facing allegations of favoritism if they are are handed out selectively.

Different games take different takes. My understanding for example is @faraday has picked the middle road, you've chosen the latter approach, and many WoD games took the first one.

[faraday]

@arkandel said in Earning stuff:

"Players want things which are rare and special. However if many possess them they are neither rare nor special."

I agree with that assessment but not with your low/middle/high spectrum. On any game you end up with things that people perceive as being limited/cool even if it wasn't something that you ever intended to generate competition. So "giving no one anything cool" I think is inherently impossible.

[Apos]

@arkandel In a very broad sense, yeah. I mean if there's anything in any way to compete with, even if only one person feels competitive. Like take @faraday talking about kill boards in her game and how drama came from it. Some players would be like, 'oh hey I have X kills, cool' and don't care about how they fall in relation to others, while a couple feel a burning need to be #1 and are going to be huge dicks about it.

Discovery falls under the same thing. Some people want it because it's cool, while some feel competitive about feeling like they know the most, are the best at uncovering something, are the person known for doing something first. And some people can be perfectly healthy and constructive and fine while enjoying that. It's not that people feeling competitive drive is bad but a lot of MU players are just really terrible at doing it in a constructive way that makes them not be a dick about it.

So I'd more take your statement and make it even more broad, not so much rare and special, but -anything- that can be measured or have some metric that someone with a competitive drive can use as a basis for comparison, and story or the respect and admiration of their peers definitely fall under that. Just someone feeling competitive about, 'I run the best PRPs and am the most fun for RP and entertain the most people' isn't usually anywhere near as toxic, with some exceptions. (Spider, maybe?)

[Coin]

A lot of these problems stem from the medium through which we tell these stories. Roleplayers usually involve themselves in online roleplaying via at least one of the following: tabletop roleplaying in real life, reading a lot in real life, watching a lot of television in real life. These things lead them to try expanding their enjoyment online and immersing themselves in the stories further, with lots of other people.

But the heroes of a book, or a television (or movie), or a tabletop game in real life... are the protagonists of the story. They get to go to space, and they don't just get to go to space, they get to blow up the space slug, make a hole in the space shield, and beat the fucking daylights out of the oppressive aliens. Because they're the protagonists. The story is about them.

One thing I've heard a lot is how "unrealistic" it is that a story is about a person and that person just so happens to do all this stuff or have all this stuff happen to them--but the truth is, it's the other way around: the story is about that person because that shit happens to them and they do that stuff. If someone else did it, or if it happened to someone else, the story would be about them.

And therein lies the rub. Many people come to online gaming to replicate and immerse themselves in the kind of stories they see the heroes and protagonists partake in on television and the big screen, or they come trying to find a way to do what they used to do in real life in tabletop with their friends back when they had time and didn't all live further away and didn't have life-sucking jobs...

But online play, in the massive games we run and play in, is a completely different beast, where you are not the protagonist--you are a protagonist amidst dozens of protagonists, and that spotlight istemporary and transitory at best.

The more people who get that, the better the hobby will be.

[faraday]

@coin said in Earning stuff:

But online play, in the massive games we run and play in, is a completely different beast, where you are not the protagonist--you are a protagonist amidst dozens of protagonists, and that spotlight istemporary and transitory at best.
The more people who get that, the better the hobby will be.

Except that it's perfectly fine to have it work the other way around. The more people realize that there is no singular right way to play these games, the better off this hobby will be.

On BSGU, the PCs were the badass heroes of the story. An ensemble of heroic protagonists. They were the ones going to space, blowing up the space slug, etc. and the plots were structured accordingly.

Games need to set expectations better so people know whether they're getting a game where they're the heroic protagonists or they're getting a game where they're the supporting characters in a wide-reaching story.

Then games need to set policies to support the kind of game they want it to be.

[WildBaboons]

@apos said in Earning stuff:

The whole reason they asked oocly if it was possible was to avoid looking bad by trying and failing.

I think that this is a bad assumption to make, though probably not wrong a lot of the time. If I was to ask if something was possible it wouldn't be to avoid trying and failing but to help shape the story. If the answer was an affirmative the followup question would be to be asked how/where to start, especially if the obvious places have been tried and gotten no where which led to the question of something being possible in the first place.