NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux

[Auspice]

@sunnyj said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

@auspice People expect staff to do all the work, and staff seems to think games should cater to these people. I met and RPd with @ganymede and all of my friends in games.If you log into a game and you can't find a single person to RP with you steadily, your times are either wacky AF, you need to figure a new way to approach things, or you just leave and accept the game is not for you.

Staff should only provide support to things like the Praxis and Consilium, something that serves the WHOLE Sphere.

Anything else? Eh! Go relearn how to have fun.

I happily ST and run stories for friends (and others) on games. I usually just need Staff for, yeah, support/oversight/approving stuff I'm uncertain about. But I feel like WoD games are largely just sandboxes anyway but it's so hard to get people to... move even these days. Like just... do things. Go. RP. Play.

But the refrain is still just 'there's nothing to do.' Okay. Make things? Make up story? That's... that's the point? And I mean it's part of why I think a game's story should just be a framework (as mentioned above for NOLA). Give people that freedom rather than too rigid a structure. Allow them something fluid to play in rather than something that relies too heavily on Staff/ST oversight.

But regardless it's still gonna fall back on people actually going out and doing.

[tragedyjones]

The entire Chronicles of Darkness line is not really that well suited for a MU environment, in that they are designed with a ST and a small group. Without that, they lose their focus and become generic bickering supernatural in generic city. By night.

[SunnyJ]

@tragedyjones So let it become that. People should focus on finding what is a By Night and making it the best it can be, if WoD as it is doesn't work.

[Ganymede]

@sunnyj said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

Players should be expected to craft MOST of their fun on these games, sans-staff.

I concur with you, but, as Auspice points out, this does not seem to match the expectations of a lot of players. I would opine that the Number One reason why games idle into shutdown is because a lot of players are incapable of crafting their own fun without staff.

You and I? We don't count because our RP is on fire. Like, I can't remember any time I've ever RPed with you that didn't end up in our PCs madly dancing with one another in a vicious circle of hatred and sexual tension.

[Lisse24]

@ganymede said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

@sunnyj said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

Players should be expected to craft MOST of their fun on these games, sans-staff.

I concur with you, but, as Auspice points out, this does not seem to match the expectations of a lot of players. I would opine that the Number One reason why games idle into shutdown is because a lot of players are incapable of crafting their own fun without staff.

You and I? We don't count because our RP is on fire. Like, I can't remember any time I've ever RPed with you that didn't end up in our PCs madly dancing with one another in a vicious circle of hatred and sexual tension.

Can I just say, I don't think it needs to be active staff running plots, but rather there needs to be mechanisms and systems in place that help players make their own fun. I'm thinking specifically of various systems implemented on Arx and on RfK that allow for conflict, building, and creativity by the way of the players. Players needing a hand up isn't a bad thing. It's a normal thing and it's to be expected.

My worry with this game, with the upcoming Miami game, and honestly, with any big multisphere WoD game is that the makers think the draw is "big" and "multisphere" and they don't think about how or why players will interact. As a result, you end up having players sit in their little private rooms until someone in their clique is around and up for RP ... which is exactly where I'm at with my char over on San Fran.

To sum: I don't think players need to be spoonfed by staff, but I do think players need tools and nudges to encourage interaction and allows for making their own fun.

[Killer Klown]

@lisse24 I generally follow the same line of thinking - or, more simply, I tend to believe that if you can't think of a reason or role for a splat to be included, then that splat should not be included. I don't mean constant, 24/7 shepherding of every little detail; but rather why that group - and consequently the players - are in the area and what their interests are. Is it Werewolves hanging around because of a influx of wounds? Vampires trying to bring law to the lawless social structure that exists there? Mages fleeing from a Seer takeover two towns over and trying to re-establish their status quo? These require occasional staff input/storytelling <since this is, after all, a Storyteller system>, but I don't mean to imply that staff needs to run everything. Players can and should be fully encouraged to pick up a ball and run with it for a while - but first they need to be given a ball to run with.
And, you know, make sure they're informed they're playing a game that involves a ball, and not curling.

[SunnyJ]

@ganymede Oh, for sure! What I mean is that the more the community of a game puts on PLAYERS that THEY need to ENGAGE and CREATE, I think the more a lot of these lazy players will just wake up to the fact that 'Wow. Maybe I should, I don't know. do something with my time here.'

Just a theory, of course. I don't know if a game's culture could work like that. I have never seen it!

[faraday]

@sunnyj said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

@ganymede Oh, for sure! What I mean is that the more the community of a game puts on PLAYERS that THEY need to ENGAGE and CREATE, I think the more a lot of these lazy players will just wake up to the fact that 'Wow. Maybe I should, I don't know. do something with my time here.'

My experience is that the more a community puts on players to engage and create, the more those unmotivated players just leave or spend all their time in the OOC area whining about how there isn't anything to do.

(I don't think it's laziness in a lot of cases, but more a clash of expectations. They come from video games or TTRPGs where someone else doles out the story and they just get to participate in it. The idea of creating the story themselves is a foreign - and often intimidating - concept.)

[SunnyJ]

@faraday Them leaving is a good thing, no?

[faraday]

@sunnyj Not necessarily. A MUSH needs a critical mass of players to function, because people are turned away when they can't find RP (even bar RP) when they feel like playing. That's why sandboxes often sputter and die.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

A MUSH needs a critical mass of players to function, because people are turned away when they can't find RP (even bar RP) when they feel like playing. That's why sandboxes often sputter and die.

I concur, but that does not necessarily mean that a game cannot remind players that they can engage and create and that staff will facilitate that.

[faraday]

@ganymede said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

I concur, but that does not necessarily mean that a game cannot remind players that they can engage and create and that staff will facilitate that.

Absolutely. Enabling and encouraging players to engage is great. I'm just saying don't be surprised when a significant percentage of the players just don't, either because they lack confidence, lack trust in staff, or lack the experience in building stories for themselves.

[PuppyBreath]

We definitely have both perspectives on staff. Bourbon is good at coming up with stuff and running things. Decatur (me) is basically the person you're talking about; scared of engaging for fear of Doing It Wrong, not proactive about finding RP, etc. It's definitely something that's on my mind as a staffer, wanting to make it easier for people like me to be involved.

[mietze]

I think there's also people who enjoy being able to affect the world outside of the private RP room but it's really not something they feel they MUST have to find enjoyment, people who don't enjoy at all knowing that they'll never be able to affect the game world environment beyond the private scale, and those who recoil from the idea of /having/ to do anything with anyone they don't know/outside of their RP room.

Or some mixing and matching, like the folks that want to affect the game world environment, but want to maintain full control over who gets to take part in that and anyone but their circle is going to be very unwelcome despite the effect on their PCs.

Larger game world effects require staff intervention or arbitration usually I'm not talking about plot forced ON the players from on high necessarily (though that is one form of staff mediating PC abilities to make changes to the game environment!) but more making sure that there's a neutral judge for a scene, or facilitating investigations and the like. There are many players (including me!) who can be quite happy with having minimal to no effects on the world at large, because we are getting our RP kicks from smaller more personal stories that don't rely on other people beyond those involved caring about them.

[SunnyJ]

@mietze said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

I think there's also people who enjoy being able to affect the world outside of the private RP room but it's really not something they feel they MUST have to find enjoyment, people who don't enjoy at all knowing that they'll never be able to affect the game world environment beyond the private scale, and those who recoil from the idea of /having/ to do anything with anyone they don't know/outside of their RP room.

Maybe these people have unreasonable expectations out of the hobby as it is today. This is especially true when the people most ENERGETIC in affecting the world around them are OFTEN the obnoxious, uninteresting, buries-staff-with-jobs, giant coterie/pack/motley plot-hogging sort.

[mietze]

@sunnyj said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

Maybe these people have unreasonable expectations out of the hobby as it is today. This is especially true when the people most ENERGETIC in affecting the world around them are OFTEN the obnoxious, uninteresting, buries-staff-with-jobs, giant coterie/pack/motley plot-hogging sort.

You'll get no argument from me over that! Though to them they're having a ton of fun and "creating RP for people," and they might even correct at least in part over the latter! But they'd also probably say they are "making their own fun" too, by being proactive and asking for things, ect.

So it's a good thing to define expectations pretty well on a game, as to what can be (or can't be) expected from staff, and what they specifically they mean by "make your own fun." Some of the worst behavior I've seen from people has been when they are doing just that!

[tragedyjones]

Back to important questions.

1 - @rdc did you approve promethean yet?
2 - Who is gonna play my BigTiddyGothGF?

[Royal]

@tragedyjones said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

Back to important questions.

1 - @rdc did you approve promethean yet?
2 - Who is gonna play my BigTiddyGothGF?

2 - Dibs.

[ILuvGrumpyCat]

Out of curiosity, is there any ETA on opening?

[tragedyjones]

@Royal https://goo.gl/images/Re4XGe