Earning stuff

surreality

It would be great to find a solution that could reward random/social without unbalancing scales; without becoming code heavy/staff reliant.

This is another reason I am still getting butt-splinters from fence-sitting on dev again.

I am a big fan of social RP. Especially when it in some way relates to the broader events going on in the game.

I am also a big fan of wiki forms, and so help me, while the test run for this is gods-knows-where in a backup, I had a form that'd let people upload their log, who was in it, etc. It also had checkboxes for incentives and similar. This included things like 'relates to <plot> <links to plot>', for incorporating specific game themes, for playing in an on grid location <link to location page>, etc.

These were all small, incremental things, but the way it was set up, it'd tally those up and spit them out so staff could process any XP earned from the log easily.

It also would link up 'things that go on at <place>' to the page for <place>, so people would have a good idea of the kind of things that happen there. (Helpful, when you're looking for where to do something and want a certain atmosphere.)

It would link those downtime scenes (marked as such) to the plot they reference, if they did so, and give the plot-runner a small XP kickback as well, because they generated story beyond the event(s) that they ran in a way that gave people something to do during downtime.

And so on.

All designed to give people a carrot for 'downtime stuff that's story-related' vs. 'well, we're bored, I guess we can just screw until the next event'. It also is a chance to bring other people into a storyline/plot that weren't able to attend the event(s) directly. It gives people incentives to explore the themes, lore, etc. of the world.

More importantly, it concretely demonstrates in the system itself that social play is considered to be of value on the game, especially if it is in theme and engages with ongoing story or aspects of the world. It isn't 'just filler'. Most games treat it as 'just filler', and considering how much of actual game play it is for most, and how that game play is what sustains a game in the vast majority of time when someone is not running a specific event, I think that underestimates its real importance and value.

Ganymede

@lisse24 said in Earning stuff:

I think we need to do a better job of finding ways to make random/social RP focused and meaningful from the outset.

I am of the opinion that engaging in random/social RP is the point of itself. Because of this, I'm not sure how to incentivize it without deprecating it. I like the +activity/log system at Fate's Harvest, and I liked the +beat system at Requiem for Kingsmouth.

But I don't think that those systems necessarily made the interaction meaningful. That was up to the players.

faraday

@ganymede said in Earning stuff:

But I don't think that those systems necessarily made the interaction meaningful. That was up to the players.

Yeah, I really fail to see how simply bribing people into doing more social RP makes the social RP any more interesting.

Most random pickup scenes follow a basic pattern: 3-5 people congregate in a random public location (bar, cafeteria, the park, town square, mess hall), sit around, and do small talk. The scene has no spark, as someone put it earlier. Unless the small talk leads to an argument or some dramatic revelation (which is rare), there's no tension, no drama, and no action. Finding ways to inject those things into random pickup scenes would be the way to make them more interesting, which I think in turn would increase peoples' willingness to actually do them.

Thenomain

@faraday said in Earning stuff:

I really fail to see how simply bribing people into doing more social RP makes the social RP any more interesting.

Social? I can't keep track of how many non-social scenes I've been in that were not the least bit interesting.

faraday

@thenomain said in Earning stuff:

Social? I can't keep track of how many non-social scenes I've been in that were not the least bit interesting.

Sigh. I don't know how many times I have to clarify that I'm talking about random pickup social scenes with no direction and not all social scenes. But apparently the answer is at least one more.

@faraday said in Earning stuff:

@roz said in Earning stuff:

You're misunderstanding my point. Note that I didn't say the purpose needs to be about plot. ... I'm saying that, in good writing, every word has some sort of purpose. Sometimes that purpose is plot, but sometimes it's about character... but it's still relevant and interesting in some way. Good writing has a point.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say as well. One of my favorite scenes on BSGU was the pilots going to a karaoke bar during shore leave. ... In contrast, some of my least favorite scenes were random "let's stack some Cylon planes up and mow them down" combat missions, because they had no real point other than people turning up to pad their kill counts.

Tehom

The point about how social scenes should serve some purpose kinda resonates with me as far as coded systems go. Like any scene in a book or show might not necessarily impact the plot, but generally serves some purpose in trying to demonstrate some aspect of a character's personality, demonstrate how something impacted a character, how a character's relationship with someone else is changing/growing, or some other aspect of character development. It seems like it'd be possible to have a system that'd reflect that and make otherwise inconsequential scenes meaningful in an aggregate kind of way, showing how these things accumulate to change or emphasize a character's personality. I'm not really sure how to do it in a way that wouldn't feel burdensome or annoying, though.

Thenomain

@faraday

Yeah, I can’t keep track of everyone’s personal definitions of specific phrases either. God knows I’ve clarified myself and had people not pick up on that.

Often.

In this thread.

By you.

People gonna be people. It’s important to work toward common ground whenever possible.