Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?

Ghost

Devil's Advocate Question.

While I'm sure many of you have TSed with people things that you felt were entirely hot, if it's 100% about the story, then why are people so careful about who they TS with? Why aren't people just TSing with random people for the better of the story?

Not looking for an answer. I just wanted to float this little seed of destruction.

Because I don't believe the bias about who people choose to TS with is purely about writing capability. It also has to do with words like connection, trust, and these kinds of scenes wouldn't be nearly as prevalent as they are if they weren't stimulating. I'm not here to judge, but I simply think it's fair to say that if you need any of these words (trust, connection, sync) to TS with someone or don't feel comfortable posting them on the wiki as any other given log, then...

...they're special scenes, and if they include personal kinks of your own then...

BOOM. BOMBSHELL

...doing this with staff can foster bias for benefit.

Or I could totally be wrong, and if I ever come back to mushing I anticipate some of you people who don't like me to TOTALLY be okay with TS with me if the writing is good.

Pandora

I don't even know who to @ right now, this thread is so motherfucking broken.

I recognize that there will always be the faction of players that believe staff attention/leadership attention should be spread evenly through the playerbase.

What the people who hold this belief need to understand is that this is their opinion. You can play on games where staff shares this opinion. You cannot force everyone to share this opinion, because this opinion is fundamentally flawed in the eyes of people who disagree.

People should play with those who are interesting and engaging and contributing to their sense of enjoyment in a game. If you are taking actions, involving other players, building stories, and making the game more fun for many people - staffers are more likely to pay you attention because you are doing what most staffers want their players to do, and we generally reward people for doing good things.

Generally speaking, on many games, the people doing this are a relatively smallish number, which can contribute to the mostly-accurate perception that a particular staff-run NPC is handing out all the goodies to one small group.

But what it all eventually boils down to is that NPCs are going to play where their player's interests and enjoyment lies. Being someone that gripes about staff not paying them attention doesn't make you fun, interesting, or enjoyable. So you're probably going to live your best life on a game where being fun isn't as important to staff as making sure everyone is getting their turn, deserved or not, in the spotlight.

Serious question though: Why would anyone ever want staff/NPC attention from anyone they had to bully/harass/shame into RPing with them? I'd feel super gross if I thought someone was begrudgingly RPing with me. This is what messengers are for, when you need something from someone but they haven't expressed any interest in RPing with you in person. KISS and move on.

Lemon Fox

@Pandora said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

People should play with those who are interesting and engaging and contributing to their sense of enjoyment in a game.

This. And really, only this.

saosmash

@Ghost Oh, no, it's not purely about writing capability. It is also about 'person I have assessed to be trustworthy enough to write this with without them getting all weird and sexual about it'.

Sunny

@saosmash said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

without them getting all weird and sexual about it'.

^^

surreality

@Ghost The trust factor for me isn't about 'ooh now I can share my real kinks!' because I don't; not really anyone's business. It's all about 'is not going to become an overly attached horror show that makes my life a living hell because my text nethers bumped around with their text nethers'.

Roz

@Ghost said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Devil's Advocate Question.

While I'm sure many of you have TSed with people things that you felt were entirely hot, if it's 100% about the story, then why are people so careful about who they TS with? Why aren't people just TSing with random people for the better of the story?

Because some people are weird or skeevy or will actually become manipulative or even abusive. Sometimes players, especially if they've ever experienced this, like to be slightly more selective about who they engage in this kind of RP with to try and reduce the possibilities of this.

But I've totally posted my TS on games where posting logs was the norm.

Ghost

@saosmash said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Ghost Oh, no, it's not purely about writing capability. It is also about 'person I have assessed to be trustworthy enough to write this with without them getting all weird and sexual about it'.

Why would they get weird/sexual about it if it's just text?

And if someone CAN get weird/sexual about it, then does that mean that these scenes could involve OOC titillation? And if the prior two statements are true, then...

...could establishing an Oocly titilating line of roleplay with a staffer result in preferential treatment than others don't have access to?

KABOOM. BOMBSHELL. REDUX

TS: also known as that "thing that we like that we want to always be entirely IC because it's fun to write hot stuff, but is always a crazy-ass minefield of people's ooc emotions, expectations, fantasy fulfillment, and potentially RL issues, so we try to only do it with people who won't get all attachy and try to fuck with my ACTUAL RL relationship."

surreality

In fairness, part of me feels this was a bigger issue before we all got old and lazy and believed in things like 'enough sleep' and 'work in the morning', and getting laid was a much bigger priority in those horny college age days, but that could be my need for a nap talking.

Pandora

I'll TS anyone my character finds interesting enough to fuck, I don't care what they're doing on their side of the screen & I have never really understood the desire for trust or OOC communication in roleplay but I do understand it's a prevalent thing in this community, so I don't dispute it. I do think it'd all be that much more fun if we didn't open ourselves up to the weirdness by inviting false familiarity with unknowns only to be let down when they're fucking creepers, especially when they're so often fucking creepers. Live, learn, and keep it entirely IC?

Sunny

@Ghost said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

...could establishing an Oocly titilating line of roleplay with a staffer result in preferential treatment than others don't have access to?

Yes! It could. But I feel that what should happen in this circumstance is that the unethical staffer -- and that's what they are -- should be fired. Not removing an element from roleplay. Because what they are doing is the worst kind (to me, that part is an opinion) of abuse.

bored

I find it particularly odd (and again, in fitting with the recent hard turn scramble, scramble, defenses up! in this thread) that we're choosing to focus now on the danger of abuse of the nebulous OOC/IC divide around TS while simultaneously defending privileged individuals engaging in those relationships?

For those of you strennuously defending NPC TS while warning against the dangers of emotional abuse & manipulation around TS relationships... does it not occur that these problems are almost certainly 1000% worse when a person doing the creeping/manipulation/other violation of boundaries is Staff?

This is a huge part of why it's a bad idea.

Ghost

@Pandora said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

I'll TS anyone my character finds interesting enough to fuck, I don't care what they're doing on their side of the screen & I have never really understood the desire for trust or OOC communication in roleplay but I do understand it's a prevalent thing in this community, so I don't dispute it. I do think it'd all be that much more fun if we didn't open ourselves up to the weirdness by inviting false familiarity with unknowns only to be let down when they're fucking creepers, especially when they're so often fucking creepers. Live, learn, and keep it entirely IC?

Agreed.

I'm not on some crusade right now. I just prefer a pretty cut and dry honest approach like you do. Fuck it. I'll role play anything with anyone so long as they don't get weird on me. Part of that involves me being pretty clear about boundaries and being willing to nope out when I feel it's time to do so.

But I dont think the community as a whole buys this "it's all IC" thing as well as they do declare. I think it's a mantra, goal, or even a practice, but I don't think many of us actually believe that it's entirely IC.

Groth

@surreality said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

In fairness, part of me feels this was a bigger issue before we all got old and lazy and believed in things like 'enough sleep' and 'work in the morning', and getting laid was a much bigger priority in those horny college age days, but that could be my need for a nap talking.

It's kind of tangental to this topic, but the biggest TS hounds I've ever known have been people in their 40s, they just behave like horny college kids! The people with wierd ooc attachment issues however are all over the place demographics wise in my experience, I don't think its something you grow out of.

Auspice

@Pandora said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

But what it all eventually boils down to is that NPCs are going to play where their player's interests and enjoyment lies. Being someone that gripes about staff not paying them attention doesn't make you fun, interesting, or enjoyable. So you're probably going to live your best life on a game where being fun isn't as important to staff as making sure everyone is getting their turn, deserved or not, in the spotlight.
Serious question though: Why would anyone ever want staff/NPC attention from anyone they had to bully/harass/shame into RPing with them? I'd feel super gross if I thought someone was begrudgingly RPing with me.

I need to point out here that some of the people arguing the points in this thread (or upvoting posts doing so) are people I know for a fact are really positive members of the community. Like Seraphim74, Wretched, Derp.... They've been really strong. uplifting people (ST a lot, help fellow players out, active, don't publicly complain on-game, etc) when I've seen them on games. So I'm not really digging the tone of this post.

I was doing some chores around the apt a minute ago and I think a lot of the issues here are:

we all agree on the bad ethics of 'Staff who spend a lot of exclusive time with just one or two people via NPCs' - that can be agreed on. We're muddying around in other places. The issue is that for so, so many years, it has been acceptable practice to do so. So many Staff on so many breed of games have just done this that it's become an acceptable (if bad) practice. And it sounds like, out of everything else we've agreed or disagreed on (such as whether Staff NPCs should be shared among Staff or can be exclusive to a single Staffer): this needs to change.

Staffers should be available and approachable on their NPCs. Yes, of course, within reason. We all have a limited capacity for how much we can play, but no Staffer should be letting one or two players monopolize all of their time on an NPC. And it's a practice we should all start voting on in the ways we can. If we're a fellow Staffer, speak up/out. If we're a player, vote with our feet. It's not cool.

Ghost

@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Ghost said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

...could establishing an Oocly titilating line of roleplay with a staffer result in preferential treatment than others don't have access to?

Yes! It could. But I feel that what should happen in this circumstance is that the unethical staffer -- and that's what they are -- should be fired. Not removing an element from roleplay. Because what they are doing is the worst kind (to me, that part is an opinion) of abuse.

I dont think you're wrong.

I mean, I'm sure people try to offer sex to get out of a speeding ticket from time to time, and you should rely on your sworn officer to not abuse their authority/duty for gain. It's not so different a concept.

If I found out a GM were drifting benefits to their TS partners via NPCs that they weren't giving to others, I'd front-punt them off the server.

saosmash

@Ghost Of course they CAN involve OOC titillation, the point is that if you're writing with someone whose opinion about it is compatible with yours there's no problem. If people want to fap together by themselves in a corner who cares? Not me.

It's when people who want mutual masturbation and people who want to write stories with sexual themes get their wires crossed that conflict is created. So like...

If a staffer wants to jerk off and isn't planning on using the connection to create story, then yes, it is inappropriate to do that with a NPC. That's not what NPCs are for. And yes, if someone is mutually masturbating with the staffer and creating that kind of for-bennies relationship, that is also not cool. That's why Sunny was making the distinction earlier about ethical staffers. No one is making the argument that this never happens, because we're not all morons.

But if a staffer wants to create sexually themed story, there's nothing at all wrong with that, and assuming that all scenarios in which sex happens with a staff NPC are in that category is bullshit. Pretending that this is what is always happening does a disservice to like... everyone.

Pandora

@Ghost said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Why would they get weird/sexual about it if it's just text?

As an erotic fiction writer, some of my most heartfelt comments from readers have been about their masturbating to my stories. My first comment along those lines, I'll never forget it, was from a reader that said she had to change her panties before church. I laughed so hard I nearly died. It was a compliment, and it was harmless, and my point is that text can be sexy and inspire sexual feelings. If you've never visited asstr or Literotica or any erotic fiction/fanfiction repository, you're probably better off, but also probably in the minority.

And if someone CAN get weird/sexual about it, then does that mean that these scenes could involve OOC titillation? And if the prior two statements are true, then...
...could establishing an Oocly titilating line of roleplay with a staffer result in preferential treatment than others don't have access to?

What is the difference between writing good text sex and getting a staffer's love and attention, or writing good combat text and getting a staffer's love and attention, or writing good adventuring text and getting a staffer's love and attention?

This obsession with TS like it is some unholy grail of moral depravity is crazy levels of shaming.

Derp

@Roz said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

"you're too emotional" is a common derailing tactic in debate used against women who express any sort of investment in what they're arguing about.

Which would be more valid if he implied it was because she was a woman, and not just a person getting emotional.

Telling someone you believe they are getting to emotional is perfectly fine. I think that people are reading some kind of sexism into the statement that Thenomain didn't put in there.

People, regardless of sex, can in fact be getting too emotional.

Ghost

@saosmash I agree with your points.

My argument isn't about right/wrong, it's about whether or not it could result in unfair bias. That's all. I got on this BOOM train or whatever (mostly because I love posting Always Sunny gifs) because I think there is definitely a potential currency in play that is a quid-pro-quo danger zone.