Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?

[Derp]

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

If you're going to demand people interact with people they have an issue with, then frankly you're the one that needs to rethink the whole staffing thing.

If a staffer has such a personal bias against a person that they can't set it aside for a bit to do something like this, then they're not the kind of people that I want on my staff. If your personal opinions are so deeply ingrained that you absolutely cannot have a reasonable interaction with another player for a short span of time, then you don't belong on staff. Period. I don't have time for that kind of catty bullshit. I would ceratinly hope that others don't either.

That weak-ass 'forcing people to interact with people they have issues with' crap is crap. We expect you to behave like an reasonable adult would in any other position of responsibility, and if you can't do that, then you don't belong there.

[Sparks]

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

@Sparks You do realize this is more or less the MU equivalent to an argument against the fair wage act, right?

Maybe that's not the intent, but hoo boy that's how it reads.

Let's, for a moment, assume that employment and an in-person GM'd scene with an NPC are a reasonable metaphor for each other in this case.

You're correct; the Fair Play Act prevents me from denying someone employment on the basis of several protected classes, such as gender identity, sexuality, race, etc. Howeer, the Fair Pay Act also still lets me deny someone employment on the basis that they're not actually good at the job I'm hiring for.

Let's say someone gets to the interview and tech screen stage at my company. I cannot disqualify this person based on their race, sexuality, gender identity, or any other protected class. Nor should I want to. But I can still disqualify them because "this person was actively hostile even during the interview, shouted insults at the interviewers, and I think that attitude is detrimental to getting the job done". I can absolutely disqualify them on the grounds that "I am hiring for a firmware engineering position and frankly I'm not convinced this person actually knows C, much less C++." Those are not protected classes, and they are relevant to their suitability for employment.

In this analogy, where deciding whether or not you want to GM an in person, on screen scene for someone is equivalent to giving them a job interview? Traits like "your roleplay is dull as dishwater", or "you are actively hostile whenever roleplay does not go your way", or "when you don't get exactly what you want you revert to one-line poses and sometimes just idle for an hour"? Those are not protected classes. And further, when the 'job' you're referring to is about having fun telling collaborative story via live roleplay, I would argue that your ability to actually make roleplay enjoyable for others (including the GM) is not only not a protected class, but actually a fairly relevant consideration in my deciding if you have the ability to perform the job I am 'hiring' for.

So, even if we apply the Fair Pay Act as an analogy here—which I will note, I still think is a ridiculous comparison—this is still actually acceptable.

I will further note I think it is ridiculous to use the Fair Pay Act here as an analogy here. I feel like a much better analogy would be to make the plot advancement a piece of information you need to get to the player, and GM'ing an in-person scene with an NPC is equivalent to calling someone on the phone; doing some rolls and sending the result is the equivalent of sending an email. If I know the person can never get to the point on the phone, if I know they ramble and I'll never be able to politely hang up, if I know the phone call will make me miserable, if I have made 17 phone calls in the past three days and I'm so tired of talking on the phone, if I just don't feel social enough to want to talk on the phone to anyone this week? I can send them an email instead. The person might wish they had gotten a phone call, but I still got them the information either way.

[Tinuviel]

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

We expect you to behave like an reasonable adult would in any other position of responsibility, and if you can't do that, then you don't belong there.

And what a reasonable adult would do is find someone else to do it for them, so that it still gets done. That's what a team is for.

[Derp]

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

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

We expect you to behave like an reasonable adult would in any other position of responsibility, and if you can't do that, then you don't belong there.

And what a reasonable adult would do is find someone else to do it for them, so that it still gets done. That's what a team is for.

In what universe do you get to pawn your work off on someone else because you've got personal beef with that bitch Brenda in accounting?

You leave your personal bullshit at the door, and focus on the work that needs done. That is what reasonable adults do all the time.

[surreality]

...and where does this leave us re: staff being obligated to TS someone on an NPC or obligating a PC to TS the NPC to get X?

[Scorn]

There have been times when I have 'pawned off' something onto a fellow staffer, either because I knew I didn't have the time to deal with something, or because I was uncomfortable with it. It's a thing. It happens. First and foremost, our priority is seeing that the players' needs are met, whether we tend to it personally or not.

Would I have an issue with another staffer portraying an NPC that I, personally, have traditionally portrayed? Depends on the staffer, honestly. In some cases, hell yes. In others, where I know that general knowledge of past interactions with that NPC is sorely lacking, or the other staffer's play style differs wildly from my own, I might hesitate -- not because I'm territorial over that NPC, but because I'd like to preserve some sense of continuity. If I played a werewolf elder with Player B one week, and another staffer snagged that elder NPC to go and interact with Player B the next and acted like they had never met them before, that'd be.. awkward as hell, frankly.

So in cases like that, where there isn't another staffer who could handle the situation at hand but I'm just too busy to do a full scene within a reasonable timeframe, there's also the option of doing things back and forth via +request.

Either way, ultimately, the player's going to get what they need. Which is how it should be, imho.

[Tinuviel]

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

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

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

We expect you to behave like an reasonable adult would in any other position of responsibility, and if you can't do that, then you don't belong there.

And what a reasonable adult would do is find someone else to do it for them, so that it still gets done. That's what a team is for.

In what universe do you get to pawn your work off on someone else because you've got personal beef with that bitch Brenda in accounting?

You leave your personal bullshit at the door, and focus on the work that needs done. That is what reasonable adults do all the time.

Except staffing isn't office work, it's customer service at a call centre. So you're not dealing with a colleague, you're dealing with an annoying customer. It's not for a short period of time it's repeatedly, and often for hours at a time.

It's not pawning off work, it's asking for help. And a reasonable supervisor would see the issue, and ensure that customer doesn't get on your headset again if at all possible.

It's not a big ask. If there's a team of staffers, then there are other people that can do the roleplay just as well as I can. And I, as a player, would much rather have someone else roleplay that NPC and enjoy it rather than put up with someone that is there because they're contractually obligated.

Frankly, given how quickly staff burn out these days, I would much rather someone have the support to say "I do not want to deal with this person" and still get that player the scene they want from someone else. Staff are not your employees from whom you can demand anything, staff are people helping you. Staff aren't your subordinates, they're your team. Work as a team, not a dictator passing down edicts.

[faraday]

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

Does Fred have any barriers to access to this NPC?
Are you the only one that plays this NPC?
Not all PCs get access to all NPCs for various reasons, but 'I don't like the player' is not one of them. Not for a staffer. You don't get to just arbitrarily decide that a player isn't worth your time, and therefore doesn't get access to said NPC, even if you are providing 'other ways to succeed', because that sometimes doesn't work.

"Access to on-camera RP with a NPC" is not some inalienable player 'right'. It just isn't. If being staff on YOUR game means that I would have to provide hours-long scenes to anyone who asked for it, regardless of quality or player contribution, then you wouldn't have to fire me because I wouldn't touch that job with a ten foot pole.

"My character needs to talk to the king" can be resolved off-camera. There's no need for it to take up three hours of my real life. And if that's unsatisfactory? As I said, there's the door; no skin off my nose. I am providing a game as a voluntary service to the community. It is not for the community to dictate to me how I run that game. If my methods are intolerable, people can and should vote with their feet.

ETA after catching up on some of the other back-and-forth: Staffing is not a job, and MUSHes are not employers. Comparisons to the Fair Wage Act or expected behavior for paid customer service staff are absurd. Even unpaid volunteers in RL are only expected to meet the obligations they actually agreed to do.

[Arkandel]

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

When does an NPC become a Staff PC?

When the NPC serves a staff member, and they are not a plot device for a specific plot/sphere.

Some signs for such NPCs:

• they are played pretty frequently as opposed to just when it serves plot reasons
• they have special relationships (and spend more time) with some players who often happen to be friends with the staff member
• they are not allowed to switch hands and be played by a different staff member
• they resolve (rather than be catalysts for) plotlines with the PCs helping them rather than the other way around
• they fit most definitions of a Mary Sue even if they happen to be 'tormented' in unique, snowflake-ish ways

As you can tell this happens often enough that it's pretty cliche.

[Coin]

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

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

When does an NPC become a Staff PC?

When the NPC serves a staff member, and they are not a plot device for a specific plot/sphere.

Some signs for such NPCs:

• they are played pretty frequently as opposed to just when it serves plot reasons
• they have special relationships (and spend more time) with some players who often happen to be friends with the staff member
• they are not allowed to switch hands and be played by a different staff member
• they resolve (rather than be catalysts for) plotlines with the PCs helping them rather than the other way around
• they fit most definitions of a Mary Sue even if they happen to be 'tormented' in unique, snowflake-ish ways

As you can tell this happens often enough that it's pretty cliche.

Fuck you, Ark.

I didn't sign up to this board to agree with you, I did it to be a pain in your ass. Stop it. Now.

[juke]

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

In what universe do you get to pawn your work off on someone else because you've got personal beef with that bitch Brenda in accounting?

You leave your personal bullshit at the door, and focus on the work that needs done. That is what reasonable adults do all the time.

The day somebody pays me a living wage to ST on a MU* is the day I don't collaborate with the rest of staff to make sure the shitty jobs get spread around enough that we don't all go absolutely barking mad.

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

• they are not allowed to switch hands and be played by a different staff member

I'm still going to loudly object to this. I don't share my NPCs because any NPC I create is a character every bit as considered as any I would ever play, I have specific plans for them and I made them that way for a reason, and I don't want a thousand different voices mucking up what I'm doing. I don't trust anyone else with them. It's not that other staffers aren't as good at RP as I am, or something snobbily elitist like that. It's that they are not me and don't/cannot live in my head, so they don't know my characters like I do, and my NPCs are still characters, not sock puppets or Pez dispensers made for spitting out plot points. Their interactions with PCs are meant to be meaningful.

It's completely fine if a game runs NPCs that way, sharing them around. In some cases it may even be necessary. But it's wrong to assert that doing it any other way is improper or unethical. I won't drag a bunch of players I've NPC'd for in here to testify, but I know they would back me up. They got interactions with 'real people' -- or people who felt as real as I could make them -- which gave their character's story depth, dimension, and significance tailored for them in a way their interactions with other players often will not because other players have their own agendas, while my NPCs can be entirely reactive to player choice because their fates remain in the hands of those players.

Bringing the world to life is one of the greatest joys for me, and I know there are storytellers who feel the same. Sharing an NPC just dilutes the clarity of that vision for me, and makes the whole thing workmanlike. I can stamp out plot that way, yeah. I'd just rather not. If I know every inch of that NPC's story because I was there at the time, it's much easier for me to dig down and get into the emotional nitty-gritty.

YMMV, obviously. But for me it's genuinely not a small detail, it's a big thing that matters a lot.

[saosmash]

@juke Yeah there are definitely NPCs I wouldn't share. There are also NPCs that I wouldn't be comfortable stepping into the shoes of because that is someone else's NPC and I don't think I could do their NPC voice justice. I think that existing in the list is awk, but I understand that its presence in the list combined with those other factors is problematic.

[Seraphim73]

I've sat back on this topic a good long while, so of course, my opinion is worth more (I say, I say, that's a joke, son).

I tend to think that the difference between an NPC and a Staff PC (or GMPC or whatever you want to call it) is that an NPC serves a purpose that is not simply engaging in RP. That purpose may be dispensing plot info, it may be guiding PC leadership/PCs away from unthemely decisions, it may be generally reinforcing theme, it may be... well, there's a lot that it may be, but it should, in my opinion, always be something more than simply engaging in RP. That doesn't mean that they can't be involved in BarRP or come to a PC party, but they should always have a purpose in doing so that goes beyond their character. And while it might be fine to introduce an NPC in an awesome way to prove their bonafides as a source of info or an authority figure or whatever, besides maybe that one exception, they should never be the spotlight of a scene.

A Staff PC, on the other hand, is there to engage in RP, often focused on their own story. They may be used to dispense info, they may be used to give nudges into more profitable courses of action, and they may be used to reinforce theme, but their focus will be on engaging in RP, rather than serving any other particular purpose.

I fully believe that Staff should be allowed to -- nay, encouraged to -- have PCs on their game; I don't believe there's a better way to keep your finger on the pulse of the game than playing it. I've learned that Staff PCs should never hold the spotlight even as much as the average "engaged" player, and certainly well less than the most-engaged non-Staff PCs. I believe they should never hold any position more important or rare than any other PC (and usually nothing that several other PCs don't already hold). I believe they should never save the day, except in the company of others. I believe they should be within the bounds of an "average" PC in every way. Is playing a Staff PC less fun than playing a non-Staff PC? Probably a little, because you have to be careful that there's no perception of unfair advantage. But that's part of the price you play for having a game that is (or should be) exactly what you want to play.

An NPC, on the other hand, can be the One True King (to keep all the PC nobles from instituting direct democracy in what is supposed to be a feudal game or to keep the peace between squabbling PC nobles in what's supposed to be a PvE game), an ancient sorcerer, a computer superfreak who knows just about everything committed to electrons ever, or whatever awesomeness the plot/setting needs. They can have skills, powers, or rank that no PC can have, because they're a mechanism to enrich the story of the PCs. In my opinion it's fine to have scenes where an NPC is just there to be social -- it can help show who they are, and give context to their other, more plot-driven actions, but I think that the majority of their scenes should be driving plot or reinforcing setting.

Focusing on 1-2 PCs with a single "important" NPC is a good way to get the rest of the playerbase thinking that they're being spotlighted to the exclusion of others, whether the NPC is teaching those PCs, TSing them, or shooting craps with them, it's just bad optics.

[Auspice]

I've come to hate the term 'bad optics' because for however legitimate it is I feel like half the time it's used in good faith and the other half it's said in a...

...often even by the same people.

It's sort of infuriating because I find myself sometimes sitting here going 'I want to say this is bad optics but I feel as if someone is going to spongebob me in return......'

[Tinuviel]

@Auspice I hate the word 'optics' more than I really should.

[Auspice]

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

@Auspice I hate the word 'optics' more than I really should.

Bad limpid pools.

[Seraphim73]

How about "even if it isn't gaining the 1-2 PCs any benefits, it just looks bad?"

[Auspice]

@Seraphim73 said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

How about "even if it isn't gaining the 1-2 PCs any benefits, it just looks bad?"

Nothing wrong with the phrase! I just see so many people react so negatively to it that they'll disregard everything else said.

Overall I am on the same page as you, I believe.

[Wizz]

I think the difference between NPCs and PCs should be that players should know, OOC, literally any time they are interacting with a puppeted object in a MU*, and there should never, EVER be a staff-level account that exists that does not have the same view permissions as all other staff acounts.

No staffer should EVER be in doubt on their own game what is and is not a staffer-puppeted object.

Period. No ands, ifs, or buts.

Anything else is a serious breach of trust and just fucking kookooville.

Can you even fucking imagine being trained to ST in an environment like that, where you are never really sure OOC who you are talking to?

Or even worse, putting YOURSELF through that mindfuck, especially if you're inebriated or have mental health issues?

[surreality]

@Wizz And in my head, I'm picturing a tipsy person staring blearily at the screen while a puppet argues with itself in front of them when they asked something relatively harmless, like 'do you wish for me to join the battle, commander?' because two different staffers are working the puppet and talking at the same time.