First Through the Gate Syndrome

[gryphter]

Rank's not a bad system for negotiating this, but for fairness' sake you'd need a way to equate civilian expertise to rank to decide who's senior in a given scene -- this to not 'discriminate' against the civilian characters. Unless that's something you're fine with in a certain setting which is defined as primarily a military one and that's part of the expectation.

Given a system where different types of events and stories are run for different types of groups, this is clearly easier to sort. If it's a combat mission the military's in charge; if it's a science mission it's probably the ranking civilian expert. Now you have the setup to have your NPC, someone who gives 'General' orders (wink) give those orders directly to the ranking person in the scene.

Now it's their responsibility to 'post-set', if I may coin a phrase, and kick the orders or directives down the rank structure. Everybody needs to have a pretty clear understanding of where they fall on that spectrum, civilian and military both, for this to work as smoothly as it might.

[Goblin]

Unless there's a clear reason for someone to start, why not simply make everyone do a roll. Highest start, then the rest follow in the order of the dice.

Simple and efficient.

[Auspice]

@Goblin said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

Unless there's a clear reason for someone to start, why not simply make everyone do a roll. Highest start, then the rest follow in the order of the dice.

Simple and efficient.

I'm torn on this.
On the one hand, it would get people posing.
On the other hand, I prefer a 3PR style to my STing. It keeps the scene from getting hung up on that guy who went AFK and prevents people from feeling like they'll never have a chance to respond to something first because that guy who is first in initiative gets to.

The latter can also occur in free posing because whomsoever types fastest gets the ball... but I try to prevent at least that by picking things out of peoples' poses and having them roll. I also try to mix up who gets what info (this isn't always possible, mind, but I try to always offer everyone at least one instance a scene of getting unique info).

[saosmash]

I used to hesitate before posing in a gmed scene due to anxiety about spotlighting but now I am old and I just pose. I've discovered that if I pose "actively" and am doing something people are more likely to also be doing something and the beginning of scenes kicks things off right away instead of standing around.

I think it is just one of those things. Somebody's gotta break the seal.

[Auspice]

@saosmash said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

I used to hesitate before posing in a gmed scene due to anxiety about spotlighting but now I am old and I just pose. I've discovered that if I pose "actively" and am doing something people are more likely to also be doing something and the beginning of scenes kicks things off right away instead of standing around.

I think it is just one of those things. Somebody's gotta break the seal.

One method I've taken (to your standing around part) is, when STing, I start people in media res. And I know other STs who do the same.

For years it was the norm to start in the 'setup' stage of plot (on BSG this might be 'you're in the ready room and the alert goes off...' or 'you're all prepping for a mission and have to board the Raptor...') and people could take over an hour just to go through that.

Now I just thrust them into the midst of it.
'On the other side of the Stargate....' - because of course you're all gonna gear up, get your mission debriefing, and go through the Gate. That can be assumed. So I just fold it all into my set.

I've also been trying to be more proactive about just outright asking people 'So, are you moving on to the next area?'
I used to avoid it because I didn't want to seem like I was railroading people or cutting off someone's pose, but now I do it because it keeps people from milling around waiting for someone to 'go first.' (And if someone was working on finishing up a pose for Area A, they can fold it into their pose for Area B.)

[mietze]

I think people are first writing up stuff, but then waiting, so that they can edit what they've written if other people are doing stuff way different, because nobody wants to be the weirdo that gets things wrong and now it's awkward because of all the other simultaneous posts that either make it look like you copied or misinterpreted OOCly like whoa.

[faraday]

@Auspice said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

One method I've taken (to your standing around part) is, when STing, I start people in media res. And I know other STs who do the same.

Yeah, I also favor that approach. It does take some choice out of the hands of the players, so I think it only works if there's NPC leaders involved. But in general, it seems to me that if you leave players to their own devices to choose a direction, they just dawdle and/or argue endlessly. Then the plot goes nowhere.

ETA: If you want to have "making a plan" be an important part of the plot, that's fine, but I think it's a distinct phase. Don't mingle planning/executing into a single scene.

@Auspice said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

So how can we encourage more people to be willing to go first?

Beats me. How do you motivate players to do anything that requires some initiative?

I have only compensatory mechanisms for when they don't Like the turn time limit, nudging people OOCly to pose, having leaders give them some direction, starting a scene in media res, etc.

[Auspice]

@faraday said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

having leaders give them some direction

I will say to this point that while I know some people take issue with having any OOC 'requirement' on leadership roles... The fact that we put a requirement on certain ranks on SGM (said ranks have the requirement to run at least 1 scene a month*) has made, from what I've witnessed so far, people more deeply consider the role. We have some really great people who have stepped up to it and are accepting that mantle of 'my character has to be a guiding force.'

*the scene can be plot or social. It's just a 'go and schedule a specific time for people to get together and RP a thing.' If one of them wants to run a plot every month: awesome. I am down for it. But if they want every month's scene to be the monthly poker night, that's totally cool too.

[Goblin]

@Auspice That'd just be to get the scene started, once people get to posing it usually rolls onward. You can introduce the 3pr after the initial set from everyone.

[Auspice]

@Goblin said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

@Auspice That'd just be to get the scene started, once people get to posing it usually rolls onward. You can introduce the 3pr after the initial set from everyone.

Hmm.
I might try this at some point and see how it pans out.

[mietze]

@Goblin I really really like the pose order for pose in, 3 pr afterwards!

[Goblin]

I've seen it done in some GMed scenes, it tends to work - but still relies on people to be somewhat on the ball so it's not necessarily the HOLY GRAIL of getting things started... Just might help!

[faraday]

@Auspice said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

@Goblin said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

@Auspice That'd just be to get the scene started, once people get to posing it usually rolls onward. You can introduce the 3pr after the initial set from everyone.

Hmm.
I might try this at some point and see how it pans out.

I have to say that this personally makes me squicky. Picking someone and forcing them to go first feels like the equivalent of a teacher calling on someone who hadn't raised their hands. It could potentially put someone on the spot / in an uncomfortable position, and I don't think that's good for a pretendy-funtime game environment. Also I wouldn't want to have to be in a forced 'initiative order' and keep track of when it was my turn to pose in a big scene like that. What if someone had to go to the bathroom or had a crying kid or whatnot?

Just seems like you're substituting one problem for another set of them.

[Auspice]

@faraday said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

@Auspice said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

@Goblin said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

@Auspice That'd just be to get the scene started, once people get to posing it usually rolls onward. You can introduce the 3pr after the initial set from everyone.

Hmm.
I might try this at some point and see how it pans out.

I have to say that this personally makes me squicky. Picking someone and forcing them to go first feels like the equivalent of a teacher calling on someone who hadn't raised their hands. It could potentially put someone on the spot / in an uncomfortable position, and I don't think that's good for a pretendy-funtime game environment. Also I wouldn't want to have to be in a forced 'initiative order' and keep track of when it was my turn to pose in a big scene like that. What if someone had to go to the bathroom or had a crying kid or whatnot?

Just seems like you're substituting one problem for another set of them.

That is my hesitation. It would be putting someone on the spot.

But, if as @Goblin suggested, the order is dropped after that point... the other issues that you mention aren't a thing.

[faraday]

@Auspice said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

But, if as @Goblin suggested, the order is dropped after that point... the other issues that you mention aren't a thing.

I thought it was a strict pose order for the first round. But I mean even if it's just for the first person - what if they're AFK at that moment? Now everyone's still waiting for someone to pose first, but for a completely different reason

[mietze]

@faraday When I sign up to GM a non-strictly-social plot scene, I feel an obligation to respect the players' time--and I expect other people to also. So if 15 minutes had passed with absolutely NO response (unless I knew this was a group of players who routinely take 30 minutes to pose--BTDT and planned the scene around it!), then I wouldn't feel bad about prompting/encouraging people to go ahead and pose, or else I'd just have everyone roll initiative and we could do it that way thorugh the initial scene set only (and just skip the non-responders after 15 minutes after everyone else had gone had passed), and go back to 3pr.

In most of the scenes I've GMed I outline attention/time standards (one of which is if you don't respond to my private page prompting for your action that round in 15 minutes I will move on to the next person--you're welcome to go to the end of the line, but if everyone has gone and you've still not responded, we move on to the next round and you lose your action; and that if I am given a heads up that you're going to be AFK I will try as hard as I can to preserve your action, maybe for an additional 15 minutes at the end of everyone else having gone). In fairness I also disclose these up front and try to incorporate those in the signup process so people know.

I am sure it does make some people avoid my scenes or get angry (after 3 rounds of non activity and no notice, I remove people from the scene--nothing bad happens to them, but that means they've usually had 90 minutes or so with no activity, no response, and no communication) and sometimes people will eventually notice and get hurt or angry (I try to be nice and professional in my communication with them up to/through/after the removal). But I also find that people who even might have gotten bumped often show up the next time better prepared to communicate (or they don't show up) and my other players feel like I care about their time/preserve their ability to play fully conscious (as opposed to scenes running super long with long periods of waiting--most people are fine if the action is steady with things going long, but I always ask!).

[faraday]

@mietze There's a difference between saying "you guys have 15 minutes to pose or I'm moving on without you" (which I do too) and "ok, Faraday, you HAVE to go first".

I'm not telling anyone how to run their plots. I'm just saying that kind of thing would make me super uncomfortable and I likely wouldn't participate in plots that were run that way (after the first time I discovered that's how it was done).

[Paradox]

Something that I've been working towards doing, and want to continue fine tuning, is identifying a player who for that scene (or part of a scene) is the spotlight player. This does a couple of things, it ensures I'm sharing the spotlight around and it also addresses the issue of who is posing first. The way I go about this (or am planning to at least) is to ask a player directly what their goal is in the scene (or again the segment of the scene) and make that the focal point for that round of poses. Everyone is doing their own things, but it should be around that spotlight moment. So if the spotlight player is wanting to investigate abandoned warehouse, then the other players in the scene are working around that as well. The goal is to create a team based mentality and one of using RP to support others goals while still exploring your own. Then as things move off one spotlight it picks up with another player and their spotlight.

[mietze]

Hmmm, I dont see this as a way to run plots so much as problem solve when a specific period of time goes on with no response. If people are posing in before 20 minutes has passed, I wouldn't use it. But I do like it for giving people the green flag for go ahead and pose, as well as starting the countdown to moving on past the non posers. The other options would be prompting several times to the room at large, which might add to the pressure, me arbitrarily picking the order of people I'd nudge privately. I like the list or order everyone knows. Though if there were something like the +line command (people add themselves to a pose/activity order) that could be useful as well.

[Seraphim73]

@faraday said in First Through the Gate Syndrome:

ETA: If you want to have "making a plan" be an important part of the plot, that's fine, but I think it's a distinct phase. Don't mingle planning/executing into a single scene.

I like to have people make a plan OOCly first (because that usually goes a hell of a lot faster than doing it ICly), and then drop them in media res. It takes away some of the slowness of planning, and some of the railroadiness of in media res, although it still removes some of the fun of snarking around plans and keeps some of the rainroadiness. It's not a perfect solution, but I think it's a relatively neat medium when you've got time to OOCly talk the plan over.

As for a pose-order first round, I worry that it would delay later poses and make the first round take even longer. But I could be totally off-base on this. I do like something Faraday did and I copied over on BSG, which was having the ST scene-set, the IC leader of the scene pose first, and then everyone else as they will after that (I think someone else suggested it up higher in the thread too). It lets the IC leader pass the orders down the chain as mentioned above, makes someone break the seal, but doesn't stack everyone else up to a strict order after that.

I get that this might play into @faraday's discomfort with being called on to go first, but since we always asked the person who was going to be in charge if they were okay with it, I don't have so much of a big deal with it -- you picked the rank, you 'get' to be in charge, you have to pose first.