If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP

[mietze]

@Tinuviel it certainly can. Though I've seen it happen with smaller games too, when certain attitudes take hold. Not sure how that can really be prevented per se. I think it might actually just be part of the natural death cycle of a game.

[Tinuviel]

@mietze I think it's definitely a symptom of a dying, or should-be-put-down game, in many cases. It's too often a sign that staff have little control. Whether that's true or not doesn't really matter, as perception shapes reality in this regard.

[Thenomain]

@Sparks said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

However. I don't think that means it isn't still staff's game to decide what the culture should be.

I feel this was caused by poor wording on my part.

Staff has inherent powers to shape the game, but like any creative work they should--in my experience--be beholden to the same consistency in working within the game as it is implied as a player.

The real reason for the above justification is to get into people's minds that the staff does not come before the game.

Tangentially: It never ceased to amaze me that people who staffed acted like they needed benefits. You can change the course of the entire game, numnutz, what kind of benefit would you call that? And you get to RP any NPC at any time as befits the game. And you have an organized support network, which is far more than non-staff players can say.

Some people's children. Sheesh.

[Derp]

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

Tangentially: It never ceased to amaze me that people who staffed acted like they needed benefits. You can change the course of the entire game, numnutz, what kind of benefit would you call that? And you get to RP any NPC at any time as befits the game. And you have an organized support network, which is far more than non-staff players can say.

Eh. Sometimes. Even staff are often constrained in the actions that they can take as staff, because of community expectations, and realistically their own PCs get sidelined more often than not. Playing an NPC is fine, but that's not the same sort of thing, really. Staff know that. Players know that. Sometimes, there has to be a re-balancing, because the constraints (either implicit by community expectations or explicit in game policy) can quickly cause the benefits to get outweighed by the drawbacks.

One of the biggest things that I've found is that the most prolific staff scener0unners often have a devil of a time finding someone to run a required scene for their PCs, either because the other staff are conflicted out for some reason or the players have come to rely on staff storytelling so much that they don't offer to run things in return, which can lock out a lot of growth options.

So I don't mind staff getting certain benefits, so long as whatever those benefits are still abide by the general rules of the game, and don't give them too massive of a leg-up that players can't get.

Sometimes, being on the other side of the curtain just flat-out sucks so much that it's demoralizing. Those benefits help to keep staffers at least moderately engaged.

But no solution is perfect.

[Killer Klown]

@Derp Yes; and the other thing to remember is that not all staff are going to be the movers/shakers/shapers/npc runners. There's always going to be a number of folks who's sole purpose is to keep the game running under the hood - handling xp spends, build requests, general player questions and what have you. These people are responsible for making sure the game remains up and running but don't really have any decision making capabilities for the game as a whole. They're providing a necessary service, usually for nothing in return.

[Sparks]

Sorry, but no, Theno. I both disagree with the implication that perks are universally a bad thing, and feel rather strongly these supposedly-inherent benefits to staffing are either not guaranteed, or even actively harmful to the game.

So I'm going to address those point-by-point, and I'm probably going to get characteristically verbose; for the likely-impending wall of text, I apologize in advance.

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

Tangentially: It never ceased to amaze me that people who staffed acted like they needed benefits.

Why? I mean, demanding perks—especially specific ones—rather than being offered them is super gauche, yes. But staffing is an unpaid volunteer position, and many real-world unpaid volunteer positions do offer perks or benefits to say thank you.

For instance, I used to help out with organizing author Q&A and signings at the local bookstore. I did not work at the bookstore, I did not get paid for this. And because I was volunteering, I couldn't just sit in the audience and be part of Q&A, I needed to go 'flap' the store's entire stock of books for signing (i.e., sticking the first few pages under the front flap of the dust-jacket, so that each book would open immediately to the page to be signed). I got to do it within earshot of the Q&A so I didn't miss any, but I didn't get to participate and ask my own questions. I also had to show up early for any signing to help prepare, and I had to stay late (sometimes very late) afterwards to help see the store's stock signed, put away all the chairs, and all that.

That kind of saps some of the fun out of the event, no question. But in return there were non-monetary benefits I received.

I got to hang out and chat with the author without a crowd around after everyone had left, since I was standing there to help pass the flapped stock over to sign. And this particular bookstore liked to take the author out for launch/dinner (or at least provide food) after the signing was done, if possible; I'd get to go along for those. I've gotten to share a meal with some of my favorite authors as a result. I have lots of anecdotes and fond memories from those meals and the post-signing chats.

And some specific signings ended up having other perks, too. For Terry Pratchett's final signing at the store, on his final book tour, his health was bad enough that he said he could only sign a handful of books compared to all his previous signings. So the signing slots were given out to lucky audience members at random via raffle, only about 20 slots for the like 350-ish people who showed up. (It was honestly really unfortunate; the poor guy visibly felt bad when he saw how big the audience was and everyone's hopeful looks during the raffle.) But he had said he'd also sign a book for each of the two volunteers without our needing to be in the raffle, so I still got my book signed.

Those are perks. Were they unfair? Maybe some folks in the audience at those events would say they were, sure. Maybe they wanted to have dinner with the author, too. Maybe they felt those two signings that Terry gave the two volunteers should've been raffled off to attendees along with the other 20. But those folks also showed up right before the Q&A rather than coming early, they got to ask questions during the Q&A rather than flapping books, and they left right after their books were signed rather than sticking around to clean up.

Those folks did not have to turn away people who showed up at the door to see their favorite author one final time on what he'd said would be his final book tour, only to be turned away because they had not read the event listing and so hadn't realized the event—unlike pretty much every other signing—was ticketed, and that tickets had sold out weeks earlier. They did not have to turn away folks in the event who tried to get into the signing line despite not having winning raffle tickets, pleading how important an author Terry Pratchett was to them and how this is the last time they'd have a chance to get his signature, and surely one more person in the line wouldn't matter?

(Dealing with the disappointment and anger at that signing was not my favorite experience as a volunteer.)

Similarly, players get to focus on just RP. They don't have to spend time going through requests. They get to be be pleasantly surprised by plot twists and dramatic reveals, not having been privy to folks writing them. They don't have to worry about people paging them when they're trying to RP, going, "So, I have this policy question" or "can I get some clarification on this GM response?" They don't have the unpleasant job of dealing with player management (i.e., "stop harassing Becky OOCly for TS immediately, this will be your first and only warning").

So, yeah, I think perks/benefits for unpaid work are not necessarily a bad thing in general. And I think the same can be true for a game offering perks to the staffers.

But those kind of perks should always be additive; they should be a benefit to the volunteer without being a detriment to someone else. If, for instance, one of my perks as a volunteer at the book signings had been to kick someone out of the signing line and take their place? That would have been a terrible perk, and absolutely would've been unfair.

So maybe a staff perk offered on one game is "where normally you're limited to two PC alts, a staffer can have one extra as thanks for their hard work." Maybe a staff perk on another is "Once a year, as thanks for your hard work, you can put in a request for GM action without having to pay a luck point/AP/karma coins/whatever." Neither of these perks are detrimental to someone else, but do offer a small perk for all the volunteer work.

Now, sure, maybe it's ideal if those perks are written somewhere so that players know "Oh, staffer Jane is playing three alts because that's a perk for a staffer doing all their work." versus "Staffer Jane is playing three alts; she's clearly cheating! Get the pitchforks and torches!" But the perks for volunteering at the book signings certainly weren't made explicitly clear to the attendees, either.

(To be fair, we did sometimes have people who were like, "You said everyone has to leave! That the signing is over! So why is she getting to stay and talk to the author while she hands him those books?" We even once had someone nearby in the store overhear the dinner plans for the author being discussed while we were setting up for the Q&A, and try to invite themselves along. I wish I were kidding on that one.)

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

You can change the course of the entire game, numnutz, what kind of benefit would you call that?

Something that really should not be done casually, or just to suit your own mood? Changing the course of the entire game should be treated as a very weighty decision made by more than one staffer, not a right to be exercised on a whim as a benefit of being staff. I think if you're changing the direction of the game just because you can—because it's a benefit of being staff—that's hugely detrimental to the game.

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

And you get to RP any NPC at any time as befits the game.

Many games assign specific NPCs to specific staffers for consistency, so even if you did want to play that NPC in that scene it's not yours to play. And many games have rules about when NPCs can be used, too. I would argue strongly that if you're taking an NPC out on the grid to RP with people every night, you're doing NPCs wrong; at that point, it's basically just a PC with an unfair advantage.

In fact, I actually feel pretty strongly this suggested "benefit" of playing an NPC on a whim wherever you like and in whatever situation you like as often as you like is potentially way more detrimental to the game than the perks I suggested above.

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

And you have an organized support network, which is far more than non-staff players can say.

I disagree that this is even guaranteed to be true at all, much less that it's a benefit that only staff can claim. I have seen games where the staff were not exactly OOCly close-knit, or even are on the verge of outright hostility. Where staff has schismed into two rival clusters who are only grudgingly cooperating, with a thin veneer of polite cooperation atop a seething mound of antipathy.

And conversely, I have seen player cliques who were so tight OOCly that individual molecules of air would have trouble passing between them.

I'm actually pretty sure we've had threads about both types over in the Hog Pit at some point or another.

[faraday]

@Sparks Everything you said, yes. Most players don't realize or appreciate what a grueling, thankless task it is to be a MUSH staffer. Staffers must attend to the minutia of running a game, endure a constant barrage of complaints and drama, and entertain dozens of players with very disparate/opposing goals. To expect them to do all that without any perks/benefits is frankly absurd.

@Sparks said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

But those kind of perks should always be additive; they should be a benefit to the volunteer without being a detriment to someone else.

I agree, but this is where a lot of ten tension comes in. There's so much entitlement in the world that people have a hard time seeing the difference between "a volunteer did extra work and got one of the ten signed copies as a reward" and "that pesky volunteer got a book and I didn't. Unfair!"

As for the other "benefits"?

You can change the course of the entire game

Why on earth would you want to do that?

And you get to RP any NPC at any time as befits the game.

I suppose there are some staffers out there who get their jollies NPCing Princess Leia in a medal ceremony, but most of us find it to be a terrible chore.

And you have an organized support network, which is far more than non-staff players can say.

LOL. I wish.

[surreality]

I'm not sure where I stand on perks. In a lot of ways, it depends on the perk. Also, I don't inherently agree with the the examples listed. (Example: Only in very few cases have I ever had an ability to run NPCs in a way that players were not also permitted to do so, and I don't recall ever using this permission when I had it.)

Faraday is also spot-on re: entitlement. Odds are high that even if there is a perk I could get, I'd probably turn it down due to the inevitable drama. (Likely, only to get accused of benefiting from it anyway, which leads me to not want them to exist.)

This is because people don't see the work. They don't understand that it's work, or don't grasp how long it takes, etc. Even some fellow staffers don't necessarily recognize it, and think it's some instant magical power rather than the slow, pick-everything-apart line-by-line debugging process it actually is, and that you can't typically just glance at someone and know what's wrong and how to fix it.

[faraday]

@surreality said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

I'm not sure where I stand on perks. In a lot of ways, it depends on the perk.

Absolutely. Intent and transparency also matter, and there's certainly a line at which "perks" become unethical.

For instance. "Staffers get first dibs on their favorite superheroes" seems like a reasonable perk. "Staffers get Tier 1 superheroes and everyone else gets Tier 2" rubs me the wrong way because it sets up an inherent power imbalance that strikes me as unfair.

Reasonable people can argue about where that line is for any given instance, but in the end it kind of comes down to players voting with their feet.

[surreality]

@faraday The sad bit is, many of the folks I have staffed for would consider that a horribly unreasonable perk -- and that staff should instead wait for players to choose what they want before being allowed to choose for themselves, and give the role up to a player if at any point a player expresses interest. We see a lot of folks clamoring for staff to not even be permitted to play on the game at all with some regularity, still, for instance, so this isn't as extreme as it may sound.

[krmbm]

@faraday said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

And you get to RP any NPC at any time as befits the game.

I suppose there are some staffers out there who get their jollies NPCing Princess Leia in a medal ceremony, but most of us find it to be a terrible chore.

I assume this is where the "NPCs are PCs, too!" argument came to life. I am not a fan of this argument.

[Auspice]

@krmbm said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

@faraday said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

And you get to RP any NPC at any time as befits the game.

I suppose there are some staffers out there who get their jollies NPCing Princess Leia in a medal ceremony, but most of us find it to be a terrible chore.

I assume this is where the "NPCs are PCs, too!" argument came to life. I am not a fan of this argument.

Unfortunately there have been Staffers out there (Sylph of Ennersea is a very good example) who have taken their special plot NPCs and just eased into them being their own personal PCs until it became a sort of brand.

But this sort of dovetails into the post I just made in the peeves thread: we can't assume 'just because X person did it years ago' (or even a few people over the years have done it!) 'every single person I ever encounter will do it'.

[krmbm]

@Auspice said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

But this sort of dovetails into the post I just made in the peeves thread: we can't assume 'just because X person did it years ago' (or even a few people over the years have done it!) 'every single person I ever encounter will do it'.

No, but it's definitely still a thing people do on games currently. Like, the-day-before-yesterday.

[Thenomain]

@Sparks said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

Tangentially: It never ceased to amaze me that people who staffed acted like they needed benefits.

Why? I mean, demanding perks—especially specific ones—rather than being offered them is super gauche, yes. But staffing is an unpaid volunteer position, and many real-world unpaid volunteer positions do offer perks or benefits to say thank you.

Like a support network, the ability to get an insider view of the entire game, fast-track for your ideas to get approval—and you probably will already have them formed in the most likely way to be approved because of the previous two perks.

Staff already get perks just as a side-effect of being staff, and I'm not suggesting that anyone take them away. I am saying that they don't need extra kudos that players themselves don't get.

Now the word here is "need". If they get extra benefits, well I did preface with the "Theno Antiestablishment Game" and now we're in the fine details of what each of us think is okay for staff to do or get away with.

Too many games already treat code of ethics differently between players and staff. If the game's staff honors it then they're not doing the game's culture harm by bending the rules for anyone.

But this is the thrust of my argument: The game culture can overrule what the staff wants to do. Hell, I think this @Sparks person has already mentioned this, and she and I already agree with each other on the topic.

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

And you have an organized support network, which is far more than non-staff players can say.

I disagree that this is even guaranteed to be true at all, much less that it's a benefit that only staff can claim

And I think you're starting to put words in my mouth. If I ever mentioned that staff were not entitled to benefits that were available to players, or that players couldn't also share benefits available to staff, then shoot me now because that's entirely the opposite of what I meant.

Staff better have the same benefits and responsibilities as players, except where their role implies otherwise.

I'm going to stand by my "instant social network" statement as I've yet to play on or staff for a game where staff doesn't have a private mode of communications with every other level of staff. Even if people don't use it that way, it's there, it's available, it's Godwin's Law or a sort of Chekov's Gun; the likelihood of someone using the tool as intended increases to "one" over time.

Staff just for the act of being staff have access to nearly the entire staff communications network and all the aspects of it—chat, jobs, bboards. Certainly a great deal more than players, and unless it becomes the new default, players do not get access to any of it.

This is a tool of necessity, but it's also a huge perk. I can think of examples, but I think I've defended my position enough for now.

---

---

ALL OF THAT SAID

If a game's culture allows something different, then do it.

If you want to see that you, as staff, can succeed at it, then try it.

Your goal as player, as staff, as coder, as plotter, is to make the game interesting and fun, and if I say anything that goes against that then throw it out the window. Throw everything out the window until you find what works for you.

...

(deep breaths)

...

I have had the exact same problem finding RP as the original poster, and like the suggestions about doing more work to entice people to open up to RP, but putting the work solely on the person looking for RP seems a little like a cop-out. As a coder, everything I do aims toward "will this facilitate game-playing?" Anyone who is encouraging and engaging to newbies needs a gold star, and Arx's "rp with strangers" bribery concept needs a gaming trophy.

Mr. VASpider once said that it's not anyone's responsibility to help anyone engage. While pragmatic and true, I think that goes against the best nature of this hobby. I think we want engagement, and most of us want to enjoy the engagement of others, but that is work, but a burden shared is a burden lessened.

Whatever we do to get there is okay with me.

[Ganymede]

Regarding staffing and perks, I never have and never will ask for any perks if asked to become staff. I never have and never will ask for perks if I submit work to a game as a player either. Anyone may hold me to this.

But if I do contribute something, recognition and respect as to the source would be polite.

[Sparks]

Okay, more verbosity!

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

And you have an organized support network, which is far more than non-staff players can say.

I disagree that this is even guaranteed to be true at all, much less that it's a benefit that only staff can claim

And I think you're starting to put words in my mouth. If I ever mentioned that staff were not entitled to benefits that were available to players, or that players couldn't also share benefits available to staff, then shoot me now because that's entirely the opposite of what I meant.

Okay, please don't take this exasperation as a personal attack or anything. But you literally said that staff have an "organized support network", and that it was more than non-staff players could say they have. That implies that an "organized support network" is not a benefit that non-staff players can say they have, whereas staff are guaranteed to say they do. The sentence stating that is even in the block of text you quoted to write that reply.

But for reference, with bolding, to show what I mean:

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

And you have an organized support network, which is far more than non-staff players can say.

I took that to mean that players could not say they had the that benefit, whereas staff are guaranteed it. So apparently I misunderstood what you were saying, but I feel like saying that my interpretation is "putting words in your mouth" is maybe a bit much.

Regardless, even with your clarification—that what you mean by 'organized support network' is access to all chats, the jobs board, all bboards, etc. is a huge perk—I honestly still kind of disagree with this premise. I know it's common to say that knowing what happens behind the curtain is a huge advantage to staffers, as though you can just handwave and say that the ability to look behind a certain is a net advantage to staff as a player. It's not.

Let's take a personal example here.

I enjoy Arx's storyline, and enjoy storytelling in it. I enjoy writing lore and backstory on Arx to use in that storytelling, and I love watching players uncover those seeds that have been planted and grow whole plotlines out of it. It's wonderful and rewarding! ...as a GM, that is.

As a player? It actually kind of sucks sometimes.

I mean, first off, you shouldn't be using things you know OOCly (like, for instance, lore you wrote) to inform IC actions, so knowing something OOCly means you should be really careful about learning it player-side and examine your IC conclusions carefully to make sure they're justified, in a way most players don't usually have to. Did you unconsciously follow that particular route of logic because you already knew the destination ahead of time? I thus examine a lot of my IC conclusions a lot more closely than I ever had to as just a player, before deciding if that's actually what I'd take away as the meaning of the vague hint we just found about some bigger secret.

It's also exceedingly rare for plot revelations to surprise me on an OOC level. Another player might look into who they're a reincarnation of, and be shocked OOCly when it turns out their past life was a historical figure whose reputation they know. Whose journals they've even read! Oh my gosh! Those are wonderful moments as a player. I, as a staffer, generally cannot have them, because chances are I know the reincarnation story OOCly already.

It's like if you work backstage at a theater where a new play is being put on, you've seen the play in all its various stages. You've seen the dress rehearsals. You know all the script revisions. You know the music cues and the scene changes. You know about the giant mechanical dragon that lowers from the ceiling at the end of act 2, and even how it works. And hey, that's cool!

But that also means you cannot have that moment the audience can, where the mechanical dragon descends to hang above the actors, its mane blowing dramatically in the 'wind' made by the fans offstage as the gears in the neck tick and it tilts its head to regard the characters below gravely. The audience sees this and gasps, because it's new. It's a surprise. They just see the sight of an immense clockwork dragon, and can enjoy that moment.

But working backstage, you saw the dragon being built. You not only know there will be a dragon at the end of act 2, so it's no surprise, but you even know exactly how the armature works. You know how the stage lights cause the lubricant on the gears to evaporate if you put it on before the show, so the darn thing will stick unless someone gets up into the rafters and greases it up between acts 1 and 2. You know that one of the stagehands was re-attaching one of the scales on the spine before the show and spilled a bit of adhesive in the mane, and there wasn't time to fully clean it, and you hope no one has noticed there's a patch of hair right over there that isn't fluttering in the wind.

There's no surprise and perhaps little sense of wonder to that moment of reveal on opening night.

So, sure, there are advantages to knowing what happens backstage, but there are also some serious disadvantages too, and those really shouldn't be discounted. What that exact mix/ratio is probably varies from game to game, sure, and maybe on some games it is really an unmitigated advantage. But I don't think you can say that's universally true, and therefore is guaranteed to make up for the hard/unpleasant parts of actually working in that backstage area.

Anyway, I suppose that was a heck of a lot of words to say basically "I don't agree that 'the job should be reward enough for the job' is a philosophy you can universally apply to staffing, much less one you should. Especially when the perceived 'advantages' inherent to doing the job can also be disadvantages."

I appreciate that in this most recent post you do clarify that you feel other games can try it if they think it'll work for their culture. That's cool! But I feel like when we say that in threads like this, it usually carries the implication of "Yeah, if you can convince your players that's kosher, fine, but I will still expect games I play on do otherwise."

And that's the part I think is actually not entirely healthy for the community.

It's the difference between saying running a book signing event and saying "I think the fact that the volunteers will—by nature of their job—be spending time with the author as stock is signed is perk enough." (which is fine, it's your event) versus being an attendee at someone else's event and appending "And therefore this person who brought cookies as thanks for their volunteers is doing it wrong; they either should have brought enough cookies for all the attendees, or they shouldn't have brought any at all!"

At any rate, I think I've said enough words to count as 'enough' on this topic over the past two days, so I have said my piece and shall try to let it be.

[Thenomain]

@Sparks said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

@Thenomain said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

And you have an organized support network, which is far more than non-staff players can say.

I took that to mean that players could not say they had the that benefit, whereas staff are guaranteed it. So apparently I misunderstood what you were saying, but I feel like saying that my interpretation is "putting words in your mouth" is maybe a bit much.

That's fair.

Regardless, even with your clarification—that what you mean by 'organized support network' is access to all chats, the jobs board, all bboards, etc. is a huge perk—I honestly still kind of disagree with this premise.

Sure. If being robbed of the third-act twist is a problem, then I suppose it could be, but on most games I've been on I've never seen anyone forced to learn things they didn't want to know.

As a player? It actually kind of sucks sometimes.

And here I'll go further into my personal staff theory: You're not a player. You're a staffer. You might have a PC, you might want to enjoy the game as a player, but you're not. Why? You might buy products from the company you work for, but even off the clock you're an employee of that company and that responsibility grows the higher you up in the chain.

I think you're already saying this, though. And I empathize; I, too, have had games less interesting for me because I participate in the behind-the-scenes, but that's a part of staffing. It's a trade-off. That doesn't make the access less of a perk, it just means you now have to live with knowing how the sausage is made.

But that also means you cannot have that moment the audience can, where the mechanical dragon descends to hang above the actors, its mane blowing dramatically in the 'wind' made by the fans offstage as the gears in the neck tick and it tilts its head to regard the characters below gravely.

I wanted to address this line particularly.

This is why I code. Because I want to watch the reaction of the audience, how fresh and new and exciting it is every time. As a player you can get that by meeting new people, throwing twists in their character discovery, enticing people into plots.

If every staffer doesn't want this a little bit then I don't know what to say. Maybe they're doing it to better their own personal interests. Maybe they're just going through the motions. And maybe those people should consider leaving staff.

It's the difference between saying running a book signing event and saying "I think the fact that the volunteers will—by nature of their job—be spending time with the author as stock is signed is perk enough." (which is fine, it's your event) versus being an attendee at someone else's event and appending "And therefore this person who brought cookies as thanks for their volunteers is doing it wrong; they either should have brought enough cookies for all the attendees, or they shouldn't have brought any at all!"

Good fucking god, if I ever say anything equivalent to this, shoot me.

(I know people are thinking about responding "but you did!", there's implied and there's inferred.)

Anyway, I suppose that was a heck of a lot of words to say basically "I don't agree that 'the job should be reward enough for the job' is a philosophy you can universally apply to staffing, much less one you should. Especially when the perceived 'advantages' inherent to doing the job can also be disadvantages."

And this brings us to the crux: If you're not enjoying your volunteer job, why are you doing it?

--

"Yeah, if you can convince your players that's kosher, fine, but I will still expect games I play on do otherwise."

If I implied this, I apologize. There is passion and there is reason and sometimes—often—they don't line up.

The first part of my post was, "This is what I believe to the core about what's good for this hobby." The second was, "But we're not going to enjoy this if we don't try what we believe in." They are different, discrete statements, both equal in importance.

And as long as there are people willing to discuss the pros and cons of each other's points, then I think we're doing alright.

[Alamias]

@Thenomain A few months ago I was in the airport in Taipei, and as I was walking the airport during my 4 hour layover I came across the chapel area which housed multiple doors per religion. Cross, Star of David..etc. One of the doors had a swastika. For a brief half second I was all 'Oh my god?!' until the trained gut reaction instinct faded and I remembered that the swastika was a holy symbol in a religion long before it was a symbol of hate.

I feel bad for the people whose religion uses that symbol (I am ignorant in that I don't know specifically which religion that is) since if they display their religious icon they are likely to be branded for it's negative symbolism than the positive one it was originally based on.

[Auspice]

@Alamias

I do know certain maps in Japan use it to mark Buddhist temples. And I think in some areas it's used for Hinduism though I'm less certain on that one.

[Tinuviel]

@Auspice I believe it's an Indian symbol that was absorbed by the various religions originating in and around India. So it could apply to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism to a lesser extent.