Staff’s Job?

[Arkandel]

@Auspice said in Staff’s Job?:

And I think that may be where Arkandel is coming from. And I get it, 100%. I want people who are enthusiastic for the game and what it needs... not people who are enthusiastic just for the staff title. The latter often end up hanging out just to hang out and don't even do the busy work, causing the rest of staff to end up shouldering the burden anyway.

There are usually two kinds of 'bad staff' in that context.

Some will want to do nothing and are just after the 'prestige' of a colored name; they might even be mostly harmless other than in trying to set a different culture.

Some of the worst staff will do work and use it as currency to buy what they are really after; that's much more dangerous.

Either way I think @Thenomain wanted us to debate more what staff's job is and not what it isn't.

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel said in Staff’s Job?:

Either way I think @Thenomain wanted us to debate more what staff's job is and not what it isn't.

More than that.

What makes someone a "staffer" and not a "player"? Is there anything special? Do players get any advantages staffers do not?

Not any particular type of staffer (tho @Pyrephox's response was amazing), just... what is staff's job in general? What is it to staff? What is it to not-staff?

[bear_necessities]

@Seraphim73 said in Staff’s Job?:

Ensure that the world reacts to the actions of the PCs. This touches on points 1 (hopefully) and 2 (definitely) as well, but if the world only acts on PCs, never reacts to them, a lot of players (myself included) are going to get bored.

You know, I always wondered how staff can best do this. What are some ways a staff can make you feel like the world reacting to your actions? Are emits enough? What sort of things do people expect?

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain said in Staff’s Job?:

@Arkandel said in Staff’s Job?:

Either way I think @Thenomain wanted us to debate more what staff's job is and not what it isn't.

More than that.

What makes someone a "staffer" and not a "player"? Is there anything special? Do players get any advantages staffers do not?

Okay, let me take another stab at this then.

There are several skills I consider essential for staff that are not necessary for a "player". I'll list them again: managerial ability, communication, decision-making, time management. You can get away with not having any or all of them (possibly not communication) and still be a good or even great player.

There are also several skills that aren't needed to be staff but are mandatory for players. Roleplaying ability is almost unimportant (unless they want to be running plot) as I've legitimately worked with great game admins who were very average as players but had a great work ethic, they could build, code, answer questions, create wikis and helpfiles very well and their grasp of theme was excellent; you can have all those things and still not be a creative poser or breathe life into your characters after all.

Above all I think what differentiates staff from players when it comes down to it though is perseverance. There's a little bit of madness in staffing and to do it in the long term you simply can't have a thin skin. You can't let negative comments or criticism get you down. You need to be able to listen and adjust but not be a pushover. And you need to do these things for a long period of time; there's no such thing as a great staff member who gave up a month in.

For bonus points... having your players' respect is such a treasure. Being able to say "guys I know this is weird but trust me..." and have them give it an honest try is fucking gold. It's so easy to lose this yet if you have it you can run My Little Pony By Night and it can turn out to be amazing.

Half of staffing is getting people to buy-in after all.

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in Staff’s Job?:

what is staff's job in general? What is it to staff? What is it to not-staff?

Each game is going to have a different definition for this, so I don't think there is an "in general".

In the broadest sense, staff manages the game, but there's still no consistent definition of what that means exactly. Is the system admin who keeps the server operational 'staff'? Are the builders, even if they have no other duties? What if anyone can build? I remember back in the day there were volunteer "Judges" who could mediate RP scenes - were they staff? Or were they just helpers? What about faction head or FC roles that have some measure of responsibilities attached? Each game is going to answer these questions differently.

So for me, staff is what an individual game says it is. I do think @Pyrephox's list is a great starting point for games trying to figure that out for themselves.

[Derp]

So, we've covered the roles of staff some, but now we're starting to get into who makes for a good staffer and who wouldn't. So, here's what I look for when hiring staff:

• Passion - Unlike others, I prefer people who are excited about the theme and the game. Yet, this hasn't been the case for awhile now, and I haven't seen many games that actively look for this kind of thing and recruit passionate people. The first time I ever saw this was in the hiring process for Haunted Memories, who preferred their staff to be lukewarm for reasons I will never fathom. If you wanted the job, you weren't the right fit. That boggled me more than I can tell you. I don't want someone who's phoning it in. I want someone who is actively engaged, and wanting to do more.

• Competence - Slightly less important than passion, I want someone who knows the system. Code and commands I can teach. Someone who has actually read the damn materials for the system? Invaluable. I'm willing to hand-hold a bit, but really, I expect you to either know what you're talking about, or at least know where to find it when you inevitably need to go look it up, and not make more work for me by chasing down rules errors.

• Assertiveness - I also need someone who can interact with players. I don't necessarily need them to be nice. But I need someone who isn't afraid of diving into a conversation, or breaking up a fight, or trying to steer the ship of OOC, or making a decision on a job, or a roll. Whatever. Someone who at the very least carry some water when I'm not there. If you're so conflict averse that you just watch everything drift on by like turds in the pool while you wring your hands, or refuse to say anything, you probably aren't going to be much use to me. This goes both ways, though. I want someone who can call me on my mistakes, or tell me when they think I'm wrong. I might not agree, but I'll definitely have the conversation with an open mind, and respect you for being willing to speak up.

• Miscellaneous - There are other things I look for too, but those are so far down the list that they're almost bonuses rather than criteria.

[Mr.Johnson]

I always just thought the job of staff was to set up the environment approve applications for characters or deny them and bug fix. Everything else kind of depends on the players.

[Derp]

@Mr-Johnson said in Staff’s Job?:

I always just thought the job of staff was to set up the environment approve applications for characters or deny them and bug fix. Everything else kind of depends on the players.

It's a mutual tradeoff. Staff has to give you the framework, but it's up to the players to make the world move. Staff can build you the nicest hotel with the nicest people there to help you, but if the players never come out of their rooms, it's pretty meaningless.

That's been one of the things that I think is problematic in MUdom in general. There's an awful lot of 'this is my pretendy fun time you cannot ask me to do anything meaningful that might be like work to keep things moving', whereas once upon a time, that was basically the expectation.

Staff can't just feed you continual streams of entertainment without you ever engaging in anything else. It's gotta go both ways.

[Tinuviel]

@Derp said in Staff’s Job?:

Unlike others, I prefer people who are excited about the theme and the game.

In my experience, which is not universal, passionate people are the ones you want to keep as players. Ideally you'd want them in staff as well, but no matter how passionate a person is that will drain when it turns into work.

[Derp]

@Tinuviel said in Staff’s Job?:

@Derp said in Staff’s Job?:

Unlike others, I prefer people who are excited about the theme and the game.

In my experience, which is not universal, passionate people are the ones you want to keep as players. Ideally you'd want them in staff as well, but no matter how passionate a person is that will drain when it turns into work.

There is some truth to this. In my ideal, however, players and staffers are both working from different angles to make the place fun.

[Tinuviel]

@Derp said in Staff’s Job?:

@Tinuviel said in Staff’s Job?:

@Derp said in Staff’s Job?:

Unlike others, I prefer people who are excited about the theme and the game.

In my experience, which is not universal, passionate people are the ones you want to keep as players. Ideally you'd want them in staff as well, but no matter how passionate a person is that will drain when it turns into work.

There is some truth to this. In my ideal, however, players and staffers are both working from different angles to make the place fun.

Of course. And the main source of issue, where "passionate" people are concerned is that games used to (still do?) measure their success based on their population. So if you have a handful of passionate people, you want them in amongst the rabble to keep things going, and the hard workers that don't really care in staff to keep things moving.

[mietze]

I dont think that it ever looks exactly the same person to person tbh.

I love STing. It is my passion. However, I prefer to just be a ST and do not like to play where I do, because what ignites my interest is helping to weave the stories together both personal stories of the PCs and the overarcing plot if any. I love spoilers and am great at keeping them under wraps (thanks to being with my hubs for 20+ years--he loathes spoilers, while I can't really enjoy tv and movies without knowing the story in advance, so I always read in advance and think wikipedia is the BEST EVER.). I do not like spoilers where I play though because the conflict of interest makes ME super stressed out. (I believe many people are the opposite and that is good and lovely!)

Many people think that it is impossible to staff/ST where you don't play. I think that may be true for many people who cannot feel connected without doing so, but I find I have a more intense and fun time when I get to be exclusively ST staff who gets to see the big picture, and the players seem to really react positively when I am hooked in like this. It's a rarity though because I do not think most people can relate and so wanting to staff without playing makes me automatically a power hungry crappy person to some. But in reality its just a matter of having finite energy and I dont often like trying to balance being a player and storytelling staff (thus responsible for bigger picture storylines) as that kind of story building draws from the same "energy bucket" for me and performance suffers at both ends a result.

I can administrate and play just fine, because that FOR ME draws from different buckets.

Oh well this probably doesnt make sense unless you are similar, but there we go.

[Arkandel]

@Derp said in Staff’s Job?:

• Competence - Slightly less important than passion, I want someone who knows the system. Code and commands I can teach. Someone who has actually read the damn materials for the system? Invaluable. I'm willing to hand-hold a bit, but really, I expect you to either know what you're talking about, or at least know where to find it when you inevitably need to go look it up, and not make more work for me by chasing down rules errors.

Different qualities are important to different people but honestly systemic knowledge is so far down my list I don't even know if it's there at all. So I'm not going to say this is wrong, just that it really isn't a major factor.

I've worked with some incredible staff members in the past who genuinely didn't know how to roll for initiative. I've been in plots ran by STs who understood theme intimately, and who designed themes that made me truly want to roll a character just to give them a spin yet they couldn't tell you how a grapple should work.

This is how I look at it - the reason for all this isn't that mechanics or systems shouldn't be in the toolkit because of course they should. It's that they are very, very teachable. Most systems are meant to be easy to learn, they were created in the first place to be something players can pick up.

Most of the items on the list that make staff good aren't teachable. I don't know how to teach someone to be a better decision-maker, to engage people or to be a better communicator; these are valuable real world skills businesses, organizations and militaries actively recruit, and we're trying to find them in volunteer positions for text-only games.

I'd honestly focus on those. If someone has them and knows how to roll strength+brawl versus defense it's a bonus, I guess.

[mietze]

I think it depends on the game though. I do not think it's bad/incorrect to require of staff that they be competent in the RPG system IF that is part of what your expectations are/what you need to run the game you want to run. I could see that being essential on some games, especially if consistency in how scenes are run is important and there's an absence of supportive code.

Will that be important to every game or every game owner/runner no, but it isn't invalid even if some other games do not have that as an important criteria.

I feel like sometimes we get in these circles of argument about the universal best way and I am unconvinced that there is truly one.

[Tinuviel]

@Arkandel said in Staff’s Job?:

I don't know how to teach someone to be a better decision-maker, to engage people or to be a better communicator

Me neither, and they let me have children.

[Seraphim73]

@bear_necessities said in Staff’s Job?:

@Seraphim73 said in Staff’s Job?:

Ensure that the world reacts to the actions of the PCs. This touches on points 1 (hopefully) and 2 (definitely) as well, but if the world only acts on PCs, never reacts to them, a lot of players (myself included) are going to get bored.

You know, I always wondered how staff can best do this. What are some ways a staff can make you feel like the world reacting to your actions? Are emits enough? What sort of things do people expect?

I mean, obviously the true answer is that it depends on the person. For me, I think the most important thing is that it's ways in which the player can see them, and can point at them to other players and go, "See that? That was me." So maybe it's a mention in a bboard post of someone's efforts in creating a particular defensive position when the enemy is thrown back, or specifically calling out someone's contribution in the wrap-up pose of an event, or the King repeating a joke the PC told to them at the start of a big court scene, or an NPC superior mentioning a PC's idea to another PC for their input, or as simple as explicitly showing NPCs reacting to a player's actions during a round of combat.

I think any time Staff is summing up events or setting a scene, if they can mention the actions of PCs (by name or just in some way that makes it clear who made that impact), it's a great opportunity to show the world reacting to PCs. If there are NPCs interacting with the PCs in a scene, explicitly calling out how they're reacting and why is great ("the Tusken Raiders turn and run" is nice, but "the Tusken Raiders turn and run because of the Wookiee's terrifying howl," is awesome).

I think it's even better when the impact lasts beyond 1-2 scenes. Does a PC's great line become some new bit of slang that spreads throughout the whole game? Does "but you're no <PC's name>" start being used to rein in people who are getting cocky about their skill at <PC's specialty>? Does the decision to build defenses in one particular area in one particular way lead to an entire plotline as people have to defend them -- or take them back after an NPC stupidly retreats from them?

I know some (smaller) places do weekly story updates, and I think this is a great way to call out precisely how PCs (and players) have impacted the story.

I don't think that there's anything that should be expected, except for some acknowledgement by the game world that the actions of the characters are having an impact on it. But I also think that the more you can demonstrate the impact of PCs, the more engaged those players will be.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Seraphim73 I think you're on to something very important here. Story telling, from the GM's perspective, where the point is not just writing the story, but making every bit player feel that their input mattered, that it affected the outcome.

Ironically, it's one of the hardest things to accomplish.

Many players compete for the attention of staff or other (more or less correctly perceived) 'community leaders'. I've been staff, guild master, and game master enough, virtually and offline, to realise that the more known your name is, the more people you have wanting to lick your feet -- or stab you in the back, depending.

The challenge here, which I think at least formal staff (but honestly, anyone with a big name) is responsible for rising to, is inclusion. The loud and confident players will make themselves noticed. It's the other ones you need to look out for. The quiet ones. The ones who often end up feeling that they weren't really welcome, that their input didn't matter, and that they wouldn't be missed if they left.

They're wrong, incidentally. A game that retains only the loud ones ends up in tumbleweeds or drama fests, or both. Even the most extrovert players need more than 1-2 other players to feel that the world they exist in is alive. They need an audience. And to retain that audience, they need to make room for it, to allow an exchange where sometimes, you're the lead actor and sometimes, you're the guy on third row eating popcorn and clapping.

The quiet ones need catering to too, they need equal opportunities, and they need attention. It can be an ungrateful task because many of them are withdrawn, face social challenges, are drama queens, suffer from various disorders, or are just introverts who may not even -want- to get dragged out and seen (but they still appreciate getting the -offer-).

Players are not obligated to care about this group, the group that I think of as 'the silent ones'. Staff that run official plotlines is. At least to me, that's a very defining difference between player and staff. A good and decent player will try to do what staff have to do too, and make room for everyone that wants to step up. But they don't -have- to.

[Pandora]

Some games require staffers to build, others have systems in place where players can do their own builds. Some games require staff to run plots, others are PrP only. Some games require staff to approve character applications, others have a full chargen where staff input isn't required.

And so on.

It is therefore ineffective to bog down the definition of staff with specific tasks, as those then become game-specific definitions.

The job of staff as a whole in any text-based game is to maintain the code, theme, and community standards through all of the back-end tasks that players do not have access to, and these will vary greatly depending on if you run a MUD, RPI, MUX, MUSH, or MOO as each have different systems and requirements from staff.

This differs from players, in that their responsibility is to interact with the systems in place on the front end, ensuring that their contributions to the game are thematic and not to the detriment of anyone else attempting to play the game.

(Also players - See Below:)

[surreality]

@Pandora Actually, a quick edit...

@Pandora said in Staff’s Job?:

The job of staff as a whole in any text-based game is to maintain all of the back-end tasks that players do not have access to.

^ That about nails it. (It does in complete form as well, but the more concise version sums it up nicely.)

[faraday]

@Pandora said in Staff’s Job?:

The job of staff as a whole in any text-based game is to maintain the code, theme, and community standards through all of the back-end tasks that players do not have access to,

It's as decent a generalization as any, but it's still not quite accurate. We can generally divide MUSH activities into roleplaying your PC, and everything else (administrivia, coding, building, etc.). But there's a huge amount of overlap among player/staff roles even on a single game.

On many games, both players and staff can build, run plots, code (less so these days), or do any number of other things. Sometimes they even do community review/approval of character apps.

On the flip side, players can't access the server, but most games don't consider their server admin to be a member of staff. Even builders often don't show up on the staff list.

It just varies a lot. There's no other way to put it.