Tools, and not just Beiber.
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@arkandel said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
- The carrots need to work. IMHO currently in most MU* they don't. XP should have a purpose - it ought to incentivize the things we want happening on the MUSH; handing it out automatically to everyone is 'fair' but useless.
You're assuming XP can be the only carrot, though, and that's not so. In FS3 games for instance, XP is handed out fairly and automatically to everyone as a way of modeling IC progression and preventing the dino effect, or making players more powerful than one another simply by virtue of their OOC ability to contribute to the game. Luck points are the carrot.
I'm not saying this is the only or even the best way to do it for every game. I'm just saying that players fixating on XP as the only thing that matters isn't necessarily healthy for the game either.
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@arkandel said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
ways and means to get people Out There Doing Things
If you want to reward players, don't use XP. Find something else.
@lisse24 said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
There needs to be a middle scene between the ST-driven scene and pure social RP.
There definitely does. The two biggest hurdles here are 1) People like me that don't want to run stuff, and 2) player-run plots being seemingly immaterial. The former isn't ever going to be solved, as it's not really a problem. We're there to play, not work at a thing, and that's something that just has to be accepted.
The second, however, can be worked at. Many times, in my experience, I've seen player-run plots be basically ignored when it came to the further development of whatever metaplot that's going on. People aren't going to run plots that don't matter.
He/Him
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@bobgoblin said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
This is the real struggle, the carrots. What I find interesting is that XP is for character growth, but we often utilize it for player action. If you think about it, that's really not the goal. The question becomes what carrot can we offer to PLAYERS for PLAYER actions? Myself, I'd love to keep XP to Character Actions and some other sort of currency/carrot for Player actions. However, what that is? I don't really know, I think that's why XP becomes the default. There might be an opportunity here for some deeper delving. What would PLAYERS like versus CHARACTERS?
This is something I struggle with, too. I prefer slow character growth, so I'm not a fan of tons of XP generally.
I recently got into DND, and one thing that struck me as really interesting is the use of Inspiration. The GM awards it when you do cool things, and you can do a certain number of things with it - mostly things that let you choose a moment to be a little more awesome by rolling with advantage, shortening a rest time, adding an action, etc.
I'm currently experimenting with using FS3's Luck Points in this way. There is a list of ways to earn them, and said list is made up of things I want to encourage players to do OOCly. Running plots, updating the wiki, building, descing, etc.
Then there's a list of ways to spend them. These are mostly centered around letting your character be a little extra awesome. So bonuses to rolls, recovery from a knockout, rerolling and taking the better of two, getting a super lucky break/big piece of info in a plot, or getting some plot love outside of planned plot times. I think of Luck Points as sort of your heroic moments. You can accomplish the same things without them, but you're not going to look as cool or as instantly successful.
I think it's a pretty cool system, and I'm excited to see how it works out in larger play. It was fun in our alpha testing, but I was also handing out Luck left and right because players were doing a lot of OOC work for me. I really like the opportunity to award players for their OOC contribution without using XP.
ETA: Lol. I see @faraday got to this idea before me. I type too slow!
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@tinuviel said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
There definitely does. The two biggest hurdles here are 1) People like me that don't want to run stuff, and 2) player-run plots being seemingly immaterial. The former isn't ever going to be solved, as it's not really a problem. We're there to play, not work at a thing, and that's something that just has to be accepted.
The second, however, can be worked at. Many times, in my experience, I've seen player-run plots be basically ignored when it came to the further development of whatever metaplot that's going on. People aren't going to run plots that don't matter.
See, and I was including PRP in the ST-driven scene category.
In any case, I think you solve this issue by giving players something to struggle over. I don't think you need to go as system-heavy as Arx has, but for example, Vampire games can lean into territory and blood scarcity. Games could also make influence spheres more important by giving them some mechanical benefits. Just give players something to spin their wheels against that doesn't require waiting for a third person to run something for them, because I don't care how easy you make running PRPs, it still won't be enough to keep your game going, IMO.
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I have seen a fair share of Table Top games drifting this direction as well, a secondary currency other than XP for spending that is more based on the narrative actions or the player oriented actions.
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@lisse24 said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
Just give players something to spin their wheels against that doesn't require waiting for a third person to run something for them
And who will adjudicate these situations?
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@tinuviel said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
If you want to reward players, don't use XP. Find something else.
Okay, that's a fair point you and @faraday made. More carrots would be good - something with an in-game effect to draw characters out should work. It'd be best if whatever it is scalable; not to diminish what @Apos and others do but (for example) coming up with meaningful secrets on a huge scale is more work than many game-runners intend to be part of.
For some unfathomable reason players like achievements, too, or other purely cosmetic thingies without any effect at all.
For all those weirdos meaningful RP participation could be a source of those (although 'meaningful' would need to be defined somehow).There definitely does. The two biggest hurdles here are 1) People like me that don't want to run stuff, and 2) player-run plots being seemingly immaterial. The former isn't ever going to be solved, as it's not really a problem. We're there to play, not work at a thing, and that's something that just has to be accepted.
Ah-ah, you're extrapolating on that one. For example I love running PrPs, it's not work but something I enjoy doing. The issue in my case is knowing how much freedom I have to do some cool things too and not just minor also-ran plots, and not having my own character penalized in the process due to the opportunity cost of STing scenes.
The second, however, can be worked at. Many times, in my experience, I've seen player-run plots be basically ignored when it came to the further development of whatever metaplot that's going on. People aren't going to run plots that don't matter.
Yes, that's a big thing. Staff really need to plan ahead for PrPs and allow them to have an impact; if I run a 4-story PrP with dozens of characters in them I expect there to be a payoff for them. In many cases staff in general didn't even know those things happened let alone allow important key figures to count them for things like gaining status, gaining promotions, etc.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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Here's sort of a follow up question. We discuss running PrPs. Let's say there is a player like Ark who enjoys running PrPs and likes them to have impact. If the staff are 'generating' the Prp Leads it would then infer that they'd be part of things to have an impact most likely. I saw a lot of people comment about how staff would give players threads to run. What if that /was/ the methodology of the game. From Day 1 it was established that there are free form scenes (your BarP), there are Drama Scenes (Pre Generated outlines from staff that are meant fo rplayers to run to advance the story of the game) and then climax scenes where the results of the Drama Scenes come out.
The temptation may be to say 'well why wouldn't people just do nothing then show up to the Climax Scenes', maybe it could be limited to priority to those who participated AND ran the Drama scenes getting the first opportunities for the Climax Scenes?
Addendum: Climax scenes are found very often on Shang.
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@arkandel said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
Ah-ah, you're extrapolating on that one.
Not at all. I distinctly said, "that don't want to run stuff."
Another point to consider, moving on from the 'systems' to the more generalised design of games, is that more game-runners need to be able to say "okay, that's enough players now." At large scales, everything a small staff wants to do will be negatively impacted by the mass of players through sheer force of work required to do anything. A team of five can't hope to work with a population of a hundred with any degree of intimacy, the type of which would be required to maintain @BobGoblin's suggested PrP Lead 'system' that has any relevance.
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@bobgoblin said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
What if that /was/ the methodology of the game. From Day 1 it was established that there are free form scenes (your BarP), there are Drama Scenes (Pre Generated outlines from staff that are meant fo rplayers to run to advance the story of the game) and then climax scenes where the results of the Drama Scenes come out.
I'll talk about the elephant in the room here. I'm not doing it to offend anyone but it needs to be said.
To do anything like this has a major payoff. It also entails a crapload of work - active work. Think "I log on every day and spend a long time talking to people, answering theme questions, giving solutions, enriching their plots with metaplot clues" and not "I put a paragraph of stuff on the wiki, somewhere".
The vast majority of games are not ran by staff either willing or able to do this. That's the reason this isn't done more often - and I get it. I have no idea how Darinelle et all do it on Arx because it's... an insane investment of effort, especially at first when you don't have a momentum built up and players heavily invested in giving you the positive feedback required to keep going.
The temptation may be to say 'well why wouldn't people just do nothing then show up to the Climax Scenes', maybe it could be limited to priority to those who participated AND ran the Drama scenes getting the first opportunities for the Climax Scenes?
Yeah, that's the other thing. Players who show up for the payoff - who just appear in the final scene to fight the Goblin King - can make thematic sense ("the King has sent reinforcements") but it can significantly lessen the emotional impact of it for those who were all in from the start.
Addendum: Climax scenes are found very often on Shang.
Please, no one ask for citations on this one.
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I agree, and disagree, with the amount of work. I think you're front loading your work with something like this.
Costs: Additional up front work of writing the scenarios, designing the flows, tracking the results of the scenarios and communicating
Pros: Instead of needing to 'run things' 3 times a week, you may have one day a week of 'work' in doing the above.
For myself, I think the trade-off isn't the worst ever. If players are able to be active and impact the game through their actions and feel comfortable that they're free to do so because they're operating with Staff OK (through the plot structures) then Staff doesn't need to run the scenes. It means also that Staff is processing the information and preparing the results -- I think time wise this takes less time than it does to run every scene yourself. I think that if PrPS happen freely, Staff still need to process the results (if you want it to be impactful to the game), outline the outcomes and disperse the 'rewards' or what not. On the flip side, if the plots are known to be part of the staff story that are being 'legworked' out to players to run Staff are doing the same back end, but now they have time to not run the scene. They may even (GASP) be able to participate in some of them.
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@bobgoblin said in Tools, and not just Beiber.:
I agree, and disagree, with the amount of work. I think you're front loading your work with something like this.
Costs: Additional up front work of writing the scenarios, designing the flows, tracking the results of the scenarios and communicating
Pros: Instead of needing to 'run things' 3 times a week, you may have one day a week of 'work' in doing the above.
For myself, I think the trade-off isn't the worst ever.
We might need to come to MSB's infamous agree-to-disagree state here.
Generally speaking it's far harder and more labor-intensive to communicate with and coordinate STs than to run scenes yourself. It simply is - there are all kinds of efficiencies which as staff you can develop over time when you're experienced at running plot, starting with:
- simply knowing the rules (in many cases being the one who made them in the first place)
- understanding the combat system (many perspective STs I've spoken to have mentioned this as the reason they want to but don't)
- having the players' respect (fewer people try to go over your head to 'make sure you're right about this ruling')
- finding out exactly what happened (the log might not show incorrect rolls or use of mechanics, misleading pages, etc),
- and of course dealing with actually malevolent players which on their own can send you spinning your wheels for a long time.
I think the key to all of this is getting that early momentum going. Once you have it things become so much simpler; engaged players whose characters are already interested and have a stake in things will ask you questions, point out ways to enrich your plots, can easily run something on the spot for you if you ask them since OOC they already know a lot about the situation, etc. When you don't need to chase them down but they are coming to you then you got'em - but the first few weeks, sometimes months, require a lot of constant vigilance and grooming to the point of micromanagement.
Most games don't have the staff who can do that. It's easy to spot, too, when there's a surge of activity early and then the momentum dies down as people sit on their thumbs. In my opinion the first month after opening is critical for a MUSH; it's too easy to get the kiss of death from a surge of characters getting created followed by nothing at all; once the surge is spent if there's nothing else going on... well, things get tougher from then on.
