GMs and Players
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Since I do think the discussion originally started in the Hogpit about GMs is a good one (not a fan of the 'traits' thing but the back and forth about expectations on both sides was interesting.
Points as I saw them to be:
- GMs and players should be clear about their expectations on plot/scene paces. If a GM is a slow burn, make that clear. If they are mechanical based, make that clear, etc.
- Players and GMs alike should be mindful of RL availability.
Those are the main things, I think. I might be forgetting some.
My own comments:
I am a big fan of /attempting/ to design scenes to those involved. Like, if Play1 is social, Player2 is combat, and Player3 is combat give each of them a time to 'shine' and show off their skills. My only real rule as a GM is help each other show off and don't hog the spotlight. Sure, you might have the stats to so defeat an enemy but why not work with someone who might be a good tactician so you guys an show off together? In the scenes I GM I encourage my players to work together and make each other shine over focusing on 1 person's thing (when the scene is not specifically designed for that person).
I am also a pretty slow paced GM, as in when and how fast a scene is. I don't generally do long plotlines, most are aimed to finish in 2-3 scenes, sometimes one. The time between plots vary. I'm also likely to not GM something if some people involved can't make the scenes.
I also don't plan out any of my scenes, save for the intended results. Like, on Atharia's Children of Gods plots, the only part I have planned is Player1 is to become a Child of Gods. Sometimes slightly more, depending on if I want other things to happen at a point in it. Which, I usually set up a plan for why it happens. Like if I want someone to 'fail' so that they can open up a storyline for them, I let the player know. I try to combo the 'fail' with another scene/plot so that the 'failure' is not the focus.
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Thanks, @icanbeyourmuse
https://musoapbox.net/topic/3564/field-guide-to-the-gms/27
I think there's a misunderstanding where people think "now" means "on demand" when the joke is that things that never happen now never happen.
I like your comments.
I think it might be rough to want people to list their expectations. Making clear what you find it reasonable for others to expect of you might be more to the point and easier.
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So. Re: Player expectation management
Players aren’t really a bunch of entitled little shits, or at least not more so than humans. My experience is that most players are fine and manage their expectations just fine. True, I am absurdly tolerant of their abuses in that I don’t find it unreasonable for a player to expect that a GM (noun) will at some point GM (verb).
Most players mostly manage expectations appropriately. But one does have to support their efforts a tiny bit. Try: Don’t piss them about. My logging on just expecting a scene maybe doesn’t look so entitled if you include that the GM said the scene would be happening at that time. Objecting to rain-checks from someone who shows up an hour late for your scheduled scene, cancels, and cancels it again for the reschedule, and again, and again, for persuasive reasons like forgot, double-booked, don’t feel like it… well, maybe the person who kept showing up on time wanting to play isn’t the person who’s not respecting that others have lives. Telling a player “I forgot this, you should have paged me,” about some two-weeks-stale jobs but feeling hard done by and harassed when they do page or otherwise appear to expect less than two weeks turnover? Not a pushy player trick.
Players will have the unreasonable expectation of fairness. They think that if they interact with the game correctly they’ll have as much chance of fun as anybody else, and the systems will work for them the same as for others. The latter can be approximated. The former is impossible on an open MUSH but you must make a run at it and expect some pushback when you inevitably fall short. They’re not being little shits, they’re being social vertebrates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequity_aversion_in_animals Live with it. A GM who has playgroup A steal a ship, playgroup B blow up a base, and playgroup C get invited to a scavenger hunt is foolish to expect no murmurs. It’s technically correct that he doesn’t have an obligation to run scenes for those entitled little shits so they oughta be grateful for what they get, but they’re mammals, not narcissistic supply. Sometimes it’s GM expectations about praise and criticism that need some management.
"... you'll find the story doesn’t end how you think, and the most important characters aren’t who you expect.” - Penny 40 to Derek, The Magicians S04E07 ‘The Side Effect’
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@il-volpe Boy. I can't think why GMs aren't falling over themselves to make story for you.
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@il-volpe said in GMs and Players:
Players aren’t really a bunch of entitled little shits, or at least not more so than humans.
But if the players are human --
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@herja said in GMs and Players:
@il-volpe Boy. I can't think why GMs aren't falling over themselves to make story for you.
Honestly, @il-volpe isn't wrong here.
It is wrong to expect that a GM or staff member's world revolves around a player. However, it is not wrong to expect the same consideration and respect that we would expect from any other person in a social setting. Players and staff are both carving out time from their lives to meet up with each other and do things, and that's important to respect from both sides.
If I sign up for an event or a scene, as a player, I am /absolutely/ choosing to miss out on other things I want to do in my life in favor of this. If a GM continuously just blows it off or decides not to run something on little to no notice, it's exactly the same as if you and someone else made an agreement to go out to dinner or an event together, and the other person keeps blowing you off at the last minute. It's not 'falling down on the job', it's not the end of the world, but it IS RUDE.
And if it happens occasionally, that's fine. But I've absolutely left games (and will again, probably) over GMs who schedule events and then blow them off with little to no warning on a habitual basis. The GM's life is important, and their time is valuable...
But so is mine. And it being a hobby that people are doing for fun doesn't really excuse disrespecting other people's time and effort, or making serial commitments that you then break with little warning.
It is possible that having these expectations makes me a trial to GM for. If so, I'm okay with that.
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I have four-hour windows where I can actually engage with this hobby, so keep in mind, while I'm not making metal and stone do what I want with my hands I'm playing pretendy-funtimes with all you lot.
So, short and sweet:
GMs are players that have become STs. They've ceased first-party interaction to engage third-party interaction. They tell the story. Shit, I've seen more and more players taking this load onto themselves, and thus allowing their STs to focus on greater, and greater metastories or whateverthefuck that ST is going to do.
Players can choose not to log into a game. If the game, the environment or whatever isn't for you - don't log in. Don't talk shit. It comes off wrong, you know? Makes your breath reek.
It also makes your examples squishy, shitty even.
Now, I've been privy of every side of almost every argument and it's fine because it's a bunch of dorks (blanket term, myself included) playing a dorky game (House with Extra-Steps) using a tool that lets them remain anonymous to some degree.
There's a careful balance created and maintained here, and the biggest, most-powerful tool you as a player have against a GM you don't like or don't agree with is simply leaving. It's when you talk shit that you might get called out and dragged through your own excrement, you know?
This is just my constructive criticism, mind you, based on experience and all that. But if you, like me, have a small window to actually engage with this hobby, you should not be opening that window to smell, or permeate the outside-air with bullshit.
The Center Cannot Hold.
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Except that's not all il-volpe said.
Players will have the unreasonable expectation of fairness. They think that if they interact with the game correctly they’ll have as much chance of fun as anybody else, and the systems will work for them the same as for others. The latter can be approximated. The former is impossible on an open MUSH but you must make a run at it and expect some pushback when you inevitably fall short.
If something is impossible, why should I attempt to make it possible? If fairness is an unreasonable expectation, why should I cater to it? And if the reason is only "because this is what you signed up for as staff" then I can easily avoid additional stress in my life by not signing up.
As has been said a hundred times in a hundred different ways, finding staff who are reasonable, diligent, and trustworthy is an extraordinarily difficult task for someone running a game. People who fit this mold have other important duties and responsibilities in their lives. They are generally unwilling to take on additional duties and responsibilities to run a game that includes players who have unreasonable expectations or demand that they make the impossible possible.
Here's a "revolutionary" question that has helped guide me in my past decade of MUSHing: am I being fair to staff?
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@horrorhound said in GMs and Players:
Don't talk shit.
I mean. Um. That's kind of what this place is for.
But to avoid personal attacks, I shall simply say this: Some players have an over-inflated sense of their own importance, and become soul-sucking time-stealing dredges of willpower. It becomes taxing to deal with them - as staff and as a player.
Should this then result in the emotional draining player being removed? Yes, but I don't think staff should be given too much hassle for trying to soldier through.
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@ganymede said in GMs and Players:
Here's a "revolutionary" question that has helped guide me in my past decade of MUSHing: am I being fair to staff?
It's a good question, and the answer could be "yes" or "no". Another question is "Is this particular staffer the problem?" Again, it could be "yes" or "no". I mean how many game runners/staffers have been ranted about on here who seriously qualify as being the problem and worth warning others about (ala Spider)? There seems to be a pretty fair share of wrong on both sides of the equation. So how do you figure out which it actually is? Or (I know, revolutionary idea) Could BOTH player and staffer be the problem in the same equation? GASP!
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Other good questions could be 'How can I help the GM move the story along?' 'Am I missing that I should be reacting to a thing?'
So many people seem to basically make the GM chase them to interact over attempting to take what the GM is putting down.
Although, there are also the GMs that focus on just one person in the scene and anyone else is basically just warm bodies and the others actions are ignored, whether they should cause problems or not.
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@betternow said in GMs and Players:
So how do you figure out which it actually is? Or (I know, revolutionary idea) Could BOTH player and staffer be the problem in the same equation?
I don't try to figure it out. The point of the question is to self-reflect. And when I do that, I usually find an answer I am comfortable with.
If I am not being fair, I should try to be more fair. If I am being fair, then there is nothing more I can do.
It does not matter if the staffer is fair or not; what matters is the decision I end up making.
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I have some cognitive deficits that aren't super noticeable in on the fly RP (I don't think) but can be amplified in STed scenes (which tend to be time-limited/have more moving parts such as needing to figure out actions/rolls/ect not just RP).
Therefore I really appreciate when GMs lay out their expectations at the start, rather than assume that I will figure out what they expect while we're doing it. Sometimes I can, but it might come slowly and that's just frustrating to everyone (and I don't like annoying people).
I really super appreciate time limits, especially those that are announced in advance, because it helps me know if/how long I need to set a timer for. It's also helpful if they give clear and concise directions (Page me your actions now, you have Y minutes to do so. Hold poses until you see X. Now we are in free play/now we aren't.) That type of thing. My cognitive issues are not helped by stress, so knowing what's expected helps me just do better in general. And knowing timing up front means that I can employ tools like setting timers and the like that help it be so that people in the scene/hopefully the GM too just don't notice it at all.
When I GM for people I try to be up front with all those things too. I do set time limits for responses. I do move on after my set time limit. I try to put a hard time block around a scene and let people know. Sometimes people have become upset with me (Especially the first time that they're passed over for their action because they weren't responding to me in time, or if we start on time and I'd not heard from them so I didn't hold the scene start). But I find when I don't have clear boundaries and follow them that more people don't have a good time because it becomes too long/by the time we get to resolution it's too late for people to pay attention/people get annoyed and bored waiting on stragglers, ect.)
But in the sense of the more general expectations (personal tailoring, ect), that's often so dependent on the individual scene/chemistry of the people involved that I usually don't feel comfortable laying that out like a law. Instead I often put out my goals for the scene (First/Last step to resolve a specific crisis; bringing a group of specific PCs together to help them mesh for a story development, exploration, honoring a specific person's request, ect) out there before people sign up so that we're on the general same page. And I always say my time limits and preferred procedure up front (and expect to do some reminders for the first part of things).
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I'm going to reiterate the idea that making a strong terminology around these differences in expectations is a really good idea.
People can use the discussion to better understand their own expectations, capabilities, and realities.
It could be used like the +kinks list, but for every kind of player (staffers included) interactions.
I think the asynchronous option is also one that would be great to advertise for given staffers or even whole games. Are the alternate forms of RP acceptable, for what kinds of scenes: alternate window rp, paged rp, on game mail RP, forum RP, email RP, etc?
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@misadventure I don't understand what you mean by strong terminology.
Because games are so different culturally most of the time, I favor simple but clear terminology. So rather than fast-paced/slow-paced, for example, it would help me the most as a player if the GM says "please respond to all GM poses within 15 minutes or page me if you have a question or need more time during that time. If I don't receive your response by that time, then you'll be skipped that round; people who skip x amount of rounds may be dropped from the scene". To me that would probably be "fast paced" but to another person that would probably be mind numbingly slow. Having specific details rather than terminology helps me know what to expect.
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@misadventure said in GMs and Players:
Are the alternate forms of RP acceptable, for what kinds of scenes: alternate window rp, paged rp, on game mail RP, forum RP, email RP, etc?
brake screech sound
Noooooo. Nonononono.
God, we've already seen what happens when staff refuses to act on some kind of easily-faked Discord screenshot that someone claims is someone else being abusive.
Nobody should encourage off-game RP. There is no good way to police that in the event of a dispute even though apparently people think that GMs are supposed to police shit that happens off the game.
This just sounds like all kinds of a bad idea.
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@misadventure said in GMs and Players:
Are the alternate forms of RP acceptable, for what kinds of scenes: alternate window rp, paged rp, on game mail RP, forum RP, email RP, etc?
If it doesn't happen on my server (or one I have any kind of legal stake in, eg renting, borrowing, loaning, contracting, or otherwise engaging with on a formal basis), in my game, with my code, that I can directly audit and look over, you're on your own. That should be the base level of understanding. That's like going to the manager of a Denny's to complain about what happens at the McDonalds just because you took Denny's food with you.
He/Him
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I'm not sure what 'paged RP' is or how it differs from other kinds of async or messenger/text scenes?
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@three-eyed-crow said in GMs and Players:
I'm not sure what 'paged RP' is or how it differs from other kinds of async or messenger/text scenes?
It's RP that happens through pages, rather than @emits/poses.
