Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?
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In regards to multi-scening, I do not think the majority of people do it well, including people who think that they do. I do not mind slowness, so perhaps I dont care as much, but it is irritating when someone who you've been waiting and waiting to get a scene with appears to be totally checked out despite your best efforts, or they protest that everything is fine (if someone seems really distracted I usually ask them if they'd like to reschedule or do things via ic mail or even talk it out, if they're not feeling it).
But.
I find the people who obsessively check the who/where and keep tabs on alts and comment to/about those alts while activity is going on to be extremely creepy and offputting. I do not think this is the intention but it comes across to me as extremely controlling. It is an instant turnoff to being involved in RP with that player, and I have instantly ended scenes where that person pinged my alt that had no association with them as if to check up on me. If you want me to avoid you, "playfully" paging my alts with questions about my activity or commenting about where my alts are located or if they are on while I am scening with you is the #1 way for me to dump your ass as a RP partner immediately.
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@mietze said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
@Thenomain we were talking about the differences between NPCs and pcs. All people on a game, whether staffer or player, have the ability to create rich RP and immersion and story. NPCs, in my opinion, are more targeted tools. Stating what an npc does does not preclude a PC from doing so also. Not sure what your point is in trying to make it seem like I said pcs cannot contribute to theme, plot, or immersion. I didn't. Not particularly interested in arguing that.
I'm saying that watching an NPC chase down his hat on a windy day contributes to my enjoyment of the game.
Plot? Probably not.
Game? Absolutely.
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@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
The? No. It shows that it is A way to get story.
That's your opinion as a person that thinks inter-personal RP via staff NPCs is fine.
Mine (as someone who does not think it's fine) is that I just saw Sue get a cool new weapon because she went 18-holes with StafferBob, and I did not get anything because I don't enjoy that particular flavor of RP and didn't jump on StafferBob's putter.
I may be completely wrong and pettily jealous, but now I'm completely wrong and jealous over here, on a game where I'm more comfortable with how staff uses their NPCs.
I dunno, it makes me a little uneasy to paint those who are ok with NPCs having interpersonal relationships as likewise being ok with handing out loot to players for having TS with them.
Also can speak from experience, a lot of people assume this kind of thing is happening when it isn't. A lot of people assume if NPCs flirt/spend time with PCs they are fucking them, and if they are fucking them, a lot of people assume it was not FTB and make noise about how unfair it is that the NPC was using their time that way whether they were or not.
IDK. play on the game that has the things you are comfortable with, 100%. I think at the end of the day every staff team's goal is for their players to have fun.
@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
The problems with sex and romance that are being used to object to sex and romance in plotlines are not actually problems with sex or romance. They are problems with unethical staffers behaving unethically. That sex is the topic is irrelevant.
It's fine to prefer that sex and romance elements (or mini-golf) not appear in plots. However, it IS a preference, not an absolute, and presenting it like people using sex and romance in their plots are unethical or bad for using them? Nah.Agree!
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So my PC sexed an NPC once.
General sequence of events: the NPC was set out in a public place. There were a number of different PCs who rolled in to play with her, as you might expect! People were excited. The RP was generally pretty fun and funny as I recall. I think there were about 6-8 other PCs in and out of the scene, not including my PC or the NPC.
It was generally known (ICly and OOCly) that this NPC had access to some top-tier weapons. The NPC was there as a diplomatic envoy to reestablish ties, and a previous treaty with her people had indicated they would supply these weapons, so there was a lot of expectation that that would be a part of any reestablished treaty. My PC was a real flirty, extroverted, show pony type who totally wanted one of those weapons, so when he realized the NPC was there at his favorite bar, he set about trying to impress or charm her into promising him one of the weapons. He was generally dumb and reckless about it. In his attempts to impress her, he shared with her some secret info. It was dumb of him to share, because it was the kind of info that other people in the world might use as reason to get him killed, but it was early in his introduction to things. Why not use a dangerous secret to try and get a cool thing from someone who could kill him in an instant!! Sounds fun!! In the nature of group scenes, this was one among several other angles of conversation going on. For further context without actually revealing the entire secret, it was not 100% unique on the grid, but it would have only really been present for a few PCs.
The NPC had specific reason to be interested in what my PC shared with her. He didn't know it at the time ICly, and I didn't even really have an idea of it OOCly. Long story short, she became much more receptive to his general flirtatiousness at that point and took him to bed after several hours (as I recall) of the public scene. There was, indeed, some posing of sexual stuff before it hit a FTB point, mostly because of the late hour at that point. If it had been earlier, maybe it would have been played out? There was notable character stuff that certainly made it interesting.
In the end? He didn't actually get the weapon from her. She did intend to, but the diplomatic negotiations fell through with the actual people in charge, and she and her fellow NPC left town. However, she reconnected privately a while later with a different PC who she had also encountered in a public/open scene and who had impressed her into being quite fond of him. (In fact, I believe the PC specifically was telling off other PCs in the scene for being really rude to the diplomatic envoy NPC. Being interesting and not super rude to the NPC went a long way.) This other PC was given a number of the weapons to distribute to other PCs he felt were worthy of them and would use them in defense of the city and whatnot. He chose a variety of PCs from different factions of the game, the majority of which were commoners or lower-level nobles who he thought would have less access. My PC did end up with one of the weapons through this route. I am absolutely aware that there are players who were angry about this because they felt it was fucking his way into a cool weapon. (And, to be fair, he didn't make a secret of the fact that he'd slept with the NPC, because at that point he was particularly dumb about saying everything that popped into his head like an excitable puppy.)
So! Fast-forward...a while. There is now a kid from all of this. The kid was, in fact, the point of it for the NPC. I can't fully unpack it without revealing certain secrets that are still in play, but suffice to say there was specific reason rather than a more general desire to just get knocked up by somebody. The kid actually blew up quite a lot of my PC's IC plans, considering he was in a position where he wasn't allowed to have kids, and there was a lot of fallout before it was all settled. In the end, he had to be released from certain vows, and he gets to have the kid around half the year. (The other half, the kid goes back where his mom lives.) The kid is weird and creepy and delightful because he is growing up half his life in a very weird and creepy place with his mom's very weird and creepy people. His presence is generally limited to color in my RP for part of the IC year. There are multiple PCs who have really leaned into interacting with him when I've brought him out, so I think that's a benefit, and I try to just background him for people who aren't interested.
My PC and the NPC in question never hooked up after the one time; the limited contact they've had in the couple years has mostly just been about the kid, and at this point the NPC is largely out of play. I'd say that during that initial time, the NPCs were put into public spaces that were generally accessible for a lot of PCs to try and peek in and engage. I guess you could say that those PCs who sought out those scenes to engage had equal opportunity to flirt like idiots like mine did, and other PCs might have very well had different ways to make themselves of interest. It's true, however, that the NPC's source of interest in my PC in particular was relatively unique.
All that said, no one's really interested in hearing my inside take that I thought it generally felt reasonable, because my opinion is obviously biased and will generally have to be seen as someone who is looked to have benefitted from all of it. Most of this took place largely a couple years ago, but the effects are still continuing throughout the game.
So mostly I thought I'd share an actual story as a potential example for people to pick apart! For me it did not feel gratuitous or inappropriate, and I think I would have felt the same even if more of the sex part had been played out, but obviously this is like the very definition of YMMV. I just thought it might be interesting to toss out an actual scenario that happened. My general opinion is that healthy NPC play lies somewhere between "NPCs have no business messing around with anything sexual with PCs" and "NPCs can spend their whole day TSing the same person forever and giving them all the free loot." I do also think it's the case that players will always make assumptions about what exactly is going on behind closed doors and that our assumptions are probably more often inaccurate than the reverse.
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@mietze said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
I find the people who obsessively check the who/where and keep tabs on alts and comment to/about those alts while activity is going on to be extremely creepy and offputting. I do not think this is the intention but it comes across to me as extremely controlling. It is an instant turnoff to being involved in RP with that player, and I have instantly ended scenes where that person pinged my alt that had no association with them as if to check up on me. If you want me to avoid you, "playfully" paging my alts with questions about my activity or commenting about where my alts are located or if they are on while I am scening with you is the #1 way for me to dump your ass as a RP partner immediately.
Seriously this shit is NOT OK and it's extremely controlling and makes me NOPE away from players pretty fast, whatever the intent is.
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NPCs and vNPCs fill the world that we play in. That means NPCs are people in the world. People that have sex, or pointless conversations, or attend wine tastings, because that's what people do. When you get into the territory of what NPCs should be doing, you're getting into the territory of staffers having wrongfun. Of dictating what staffers can spend their time doing.
Yes, they could do these things on their PCs, but again - NPCs are people who do things as well. As long as the NPC is furthering plot appropriately, why does it matter to anyone what they're doing in their free time?
In some instances of these complaints, it really just looks like jealousy. Like if the NPC doesn't find you interesting enough to go off-topic with, they shouldn't find anyone else interesting enough to go play with outside of their main mission, either. That's nonsense. Real people are playing these NPCs, and they have the right to whatever fun they can get on whatever characters they enjoy playing - and it's really just none of anyone else's business.
Tinuviel about 9 hours ago
I hate you with the power of a thousand Pandoras. -
Agreed.
There's a difference between paging me on my alt for a quick thing like "Hey, are we still on for tomorrow? KThxBai." and pestering me through my alt with cleverly worded pressure.
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@Pandora said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
Real people are playing these NPCs, and they have the right to whatever fun they can get on whatever characters they enjoy playing - and it's really just none of anyone else's business.
Bingo. Agree 100%. This is how I feel about it, too. As long as the staffer is not harming anything (and I mean that: if harm is being done, whether by favoritism or by some other mechanism, then that harm is a problem), it's OK, and also none of anyone else's business.
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To FURTHER clarify, I do not believe 'making someone else feel jealous' constitutes harm.
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@Roz said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
In the end? He didn't actually get the weapon from her
But I bet she got the gun from him.
Booyah!!!! BaDumPumC-
-DED.Ahem. Sorry.
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I guess my take on this is... if NPC interaction is free and equally spread, and any sort of interaction with them, be it mundane, sexually charged, or plot-related, is not limited to only a few players/characters, then so what. Where I run into a wall is when NPCs are falling into multiple frequent interactions with the same players/characters, when it is evident that their interactions with those players/characters is radically different (more invested/more interesting/more in-depth/more rewarding) with a tiny pool of players/characters, and when that interaction sets up other players/characters to be audience only without the possibility of breaking through to more involved interactions.
If I see an NPC in multiple scenes with the same people over the course of a period of time, handing out shinies of whatever variety to one or two people, and I am putting in the same level of effort but not getting the same level of return, then yeah... that's a shitty feeling, a shitty situation, and probably not a game I am going to stick around on. I have walked away from games for that. I will walk away from games if I'm in that situation again. It's something I'm wrestling with right now, in fact.
The shape of the interaction with the NPCs doesn't matter to me. What matters is the atmosphere created by those interactions, if it feels like a level playing ground. When it doesn't (and I acknowledge there will be times it doesn't feel level without there being actual staff misconduct), no amount of railing by the players is going to change staff's approach to it (because people on any side of an argument will find justifications to shore up their side of things). Your option then is to vote with your feet.
It isn't a matter of knowing it when I see it. For me, I know it when I feel it, and when I do feel it I'm generally not long for that game.
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One character or player monopolizing all the attention of a particular npc is an issue that exists regardless of whether there is hanky panky involved, and is especially annoying when the player attempts to use it to throw their weight around ooc about how well connected they are. But while the sexytimes angle is and can be part of this I GUESS, I think making the issue sex instead of spotlighting is a mistake and muddies the waters.
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@Pandora BULLSHIT.
And the rest of you are eating this shit up.
Did you really just try and turn 'Staffers using NPC's to TS' into a rant about 'sexual freedom and expression?'
No, sorry, just no. NPC's are tools for staff to run plot. NPC's are often passed around between staffers, or have to be picked up after staffers quit. There is enough drama after multiple different staffers play an NPC and some player complains they aren't being as nice to them asd they used to be.
Humans and Sex is fucking complicated and it is and always will be. I am not a puritan in any light, I am for all kinds of sexual freedom. i believe in 100% legalization prostitution. I am one of the kinkiest people some of you mgiht ever know, and I have hundreds of hours spent TSing.
But sex and power dynamics is an issue, and just because some of you (myself included) have had positive outcomes from TSing staff NPC's, doesn't mean that that should be the norm. As others have mentioned, Optics are super important for a healthy game.
If you wanna TS someone, fet off the official NPC's and get on a PC bit and fucking go forth with your semen drenched fuinsplosions, but dont try and look me straight in the face and say that people in positions of power (Aka Staffers and NPC's) should just go around using set pieces to boink PC's because it 'furthers the story'.
And do be clear, i'm not talking ab out 'seducing the NPC with dice rolls and FTB's to murdlepate them.
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@Wretched Like ... ok but maybe I'm coming at this from a weird angle because I keep my fapping and my TSing separate as a rule, but who cares where the ftb point is? If the storyline is the same, there's no difference at all except how long the rp takes to get done since decent porn, like a good battle scene, takes longer to write. The problem this no TS as NPCer rule is aimed at is the problem of staffers spending too much time/attention/story/whatever on a particular PC and neglecting other shit because of it, not whether there is squelch involved.
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@saosmash said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
One character or player monopolizing all the attention of a particular npc is an issue that exists regardless of whether there is hanky panky involved, and is especially annoying when the player attempts to use it to throw their weight around ooc about how well connected they are. But while the sexytimes angle is and can be part of this I GUESS, I think making the issue sex instead of spotlighting is a mistake and muddies the waters.
The tricky part is that while one on one RP between an NPC and a PC is 'inefficient' use of Staff time, it's also super exhausting to do public scenes all the time and public envirements tend to prevent you from exploring a lot of the more deep interactions.
What I usually see happen a lot is that some player approaches an NPC to Explore some sort of plot hook and the Staff playing that NPC gets excited about where things are going, so they make themselves available. That can then look to outsiders like that player is getting special favors when it's really just two people enjoying RP.
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I'm... starting to detect a pattern here, between the people defending this across multiple threads and conversations and the examples being used.
That aside, yeah. It's still bullshit. You can write about how sexuality is important to the lives of these characters all you want, or give examples of great stories revolving around romantic storylines.
TS is 100% irrelevant to that.
TS is not an IC construct. It is an OOC choice of activity that dips into RL sexuality. I've had characters that were ICly married, had active sex lives and ongoing stories, and where no TS occured because I did not have that sort of relationship with the player, or care to. I have also had multiple relationships across differing games with a small handful of players, many of which were ICly deeply romantic where TS was also an expected part of it because we had that OOC chemistry. I've also pursued TS more or less out of boredom with various randos, as a fun time-filler with almost no real story value. Oh, and I've hooked up with staffalts, and I can't think of a single time I didn't get some significant benefit from it?
When it's a staffer in a mix, there's no way the 100% OOC part of the activity isn't going to have some influence. We're currently having it implored that 'oh won't someone remember that some staffers are good!' and yes - certainly for some, this influence may not rise to the degree of game-destroying ethical compromise. Yet the subtle effects are pervasive, and it's a kind of willful blindness to pretend they don't exist.
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I fundamentally disagree with your premise. I think you are not just wrong, but very wrong, and not just on a preference or a matter of opinion. You're straight up incorrect.
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