Dust to Dust (Formerly the nWoD grenade thread)

[Arkandel]

@Sunny said:

No. Staff teams essentially said 'whew, the players have mostly taken over storytelling' and stopped.

So you'd rather not have players running plot? I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just not sure I follow - I assumed you were incentivizing that, just not staff-ran stories.

But either way I disagree with the reasoning. "We have too much plot" is a problem I'd love to have on any game, and if it's so much staff aren't running any because they feel redundant then ... well, I don't know what happens then. I've never seen it happen.

If players running plot is an issue though, and that is the result of rewarding them then how come there hasn't been enough of it on games like SHH or even Eldritch who've been offering those rewards? I mean @Coin isn't about to give up STing because there are a bunch of people waiting in line for their turn to grab some XP, you know?

[Thenomain]

@Sunny said:

Wait, Spider is your brother?

We need a Quip Contest on a response to this, because I can't think of anything.

@Arkandel said:

@Sunny said:

No. Staff teams essentially said 'whew, the players have mostly taken over storytelling' and stopped.

So you'd rather not have players running plot?

If it's how I'm seeing it, I agree with @Sunny. Too often (twice on the biggest WoD games), when staff got players to run things, they stopped. I'd love to incentivize players, but not if staff isn't willing to keep control and keep things going.

[ThatGuyThere]

@tragedyjones
Well I must be a jerk then. Since I am neither Spider nor your brother, unless there is a family secret i know nothing about.
I find conditions to be annoying fiddily bits, and hate the fact that athletics adds to defense for online purposes cause combats last too damn long already.

[tragedyjones]

@ThatGuyThere said:

@tragedyjones
Well I must be a jerk then. Since I am neither Spider nor your brother, unless there is a family secret i know nothing about.
I find conditions to be annoying fiddily bits, and hate the fact that athletics adds to defense for online purposes cause combats last too damn long already.

I will concede that, for the purposes of a MUSH, that the defense boost is not the best thing. Overall, for the system in general, though, I like it.

[Tempest]

I can't think of any reason to not use GMC rules. Even for the games that don't have a 2nd ed book out, you should probably do what you have to to make it work. I enjoyed the last Darkwater incarnation, even though it used GMC with non-2nd ed Changeling.

I personally don't get the defense thing. Yeah, it's hard to hit another combat monkey now. Makes sense, and you can easily scale NPCs for PrPs to be at a 'challenging' but not 'omg taking forever' level. Before, it was pretty much impossible to -miss-, since most people have 2-4 defense before adding armor/powers, and probably capped out well below 10, and you could hit 15 attack dice without even really trying or bringing in powers.

[ThatGuyThere]

@tragedyjones
Yeah for table top I like the defense boost.

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain said:

Too often (twice on the biggest WoD games), when staff got players to run things, they stopped. I'd love to incentivize players, but not if staff isn't willing to keep control and keep things going.

Why are those two things mutually exclusive? Staff can oversee and organize storytellers, keep track of active plots and help close inert ones. It's not one or the other. Staff and players are supposed to share the role of telling stories, they're not at odds with each other.

Looking at PrP running as a bad thing (assuming, of course, I'm reading this correctly - I acknowledge I might not be) goes quite against my philosophy of gaming, I can't fathom how the benefits could offset the downside.

[Sunny]

@Arkandel

Let me clarify; staff stopped running staff plot. It took it off their plates to worry about. It's not the only reason; it's one of the many reasons.

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel said:

Why are those two things mutually exclusive?

They're not. Maybe I missed the entire context of what Sunny said, but I don't read anywhere that's saying this.

What I'm reading is that he's saying Staff has made this a reality far too often.

[Sunny]

@Thenomain said:

@Arkandel said:

Why are those two things mutually exclusive?

They're not. Maybe I missed the entire context of what Sunny said, but I don't read anywhere that's saying this.

What I'm reading is that he's saying Staff has made this a reality far too often.

Theno has it dead on.

[Sunny]

Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that I refuse to reward staff with advantages over other players. They're there to facilitate RP, not benefit themselves.

[ixokai]

@Sunny said:

Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that I refuse to reward staff with advantages over other players. They're there to facilitate RP, not benefit themselves.

FWIW, I concur. I don't know where this trend began where Staff would get XP for doing their jobs, but its an abomination, IMHO.

(My abbreviations are like book ends)

The rewards for staffing are social, if that. It's satisfaction (mixed in with frustration).

When we were discussing this thing, I suggested that hey, we should let players +vote Staff! Sunny was all NOO, and I was like: wait, but staff don't have stats. They have nothing to spend it on! Its just a number, a kudos. That kinda reward I don't mind, but someone else raised the objection that they'd be dis-incentivized if they saw I had like 25 kudos-worthless-XP and they had like 5, so were not loved. So it was dropped.

But feel good times and access to secrets and NPCs are the privileges of staffing. Not XP for their personal characters.

[Thenomain]

@Sunny said:

Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that I refuse to reward staff with advantages over other players. They're there to facilitate RP, not benefit themselves.

On the other hand, we as a group demand so much of them—especially on bigger games—that we are having problems finding people willing to staff under these conditions.

The answer is to change the conditions, but that merely sounds easy. Gaining acceptance to it may prove troublesome and even then we can't be sure it will work. We can either try without knowing our chance of success, or not and continue the status-quo, waiting for someone else to do the hard work of effort/success/failure.

[Coin]

@Sunny said:

Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that I refuse to reward staff with advantages over other players. They're there to facilitate RP, not benefit themselves.

It's not particularly an advantage, from my view point.

I'm not running more plot because I have access to staff plot and can run PRPs from my bit. I'm probably going to run as much plot as I can and/or want regardless.

I just don't place the same value on "being on the inside of staff plot" as you do. It's just not that big a deal when it comes down to it. And frankly, having access to it is often a detriment for most people because they can't enjoy the player side of it. And if you're worried about them metagaming with the knowledge, they shouldn't be staff.

I guess we're just fundamentally on opposite sides of this. I don't really see "staff plot" as inherently better or more important than player run plots. It's a different type of plot, but the effort is often even greater than for PRPs, and the coordination needed is greater, the stress is greater, the level of inclusion you have to put forth is greater--and thus you are effectively saying, "I will reward you with XP if you run stuff for your friends, but for those staffers who bust their asses running stuff for the game itself, well, no. Because it's staff plot. And it's more special."

I mean, I enjoy the debate, but that's what it boils down to: I don't think being staff should take away from the rewards just because it's staff-related. Especially since staff don't get perks for doing apps, completing jobs, etc.

If it were a tabletop-style game? I would agree. Because my mindset going in would be different, the game would be different, etc. But I don't staff as an ST; I ST on top of staffing. They're different things.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Ganymede said:

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Everything went to player-run (or Staff-run through player bits), which some people used to game the system for bunches of extra XP. I believe she's trying to halt that before it starts.

Why is this a problem?

Are you going to start giving your Admins and TL's xp for doing jobs? Staff ST is still a staff position. Why should they be special and get xp for doing the job they volunteered to do? No other staff can do their staff job and gain xp for it. When they did away with the Staff ST position entirely? Not as big a deal. Don't get me wrong, in general I don't have an issue with PRP's. I have an issue when a single subset of staffer starts get bonuses to their PC for doing their JOB. No other staff get xp for doing their job, why should Staff ST's be special?

[Groth]

On the subject of Staff and XP, on RfK all Staff bits as well as NPCs*can receive Squees(Basically a form of +vote) just like any other character on the game and then have them transferred to their playerbit, the actual XP income from those is abysmal, on a good week the most active staff members might get 3-5 beats. However it feels really nice as a member of Staff when you do get Squees because it means someone appreciates the work you put in especially as all +squees must come with some sort of justification that the target gets to read.

[Sunny]

@Coin said:

If it were a tabletop-style game? I would agree. Because my mindset going in would be different, the game would be different, etc. But I don't staff as an ST; I ST on top of staffing. They're different things.

It's a fundamental difference in perspective, yes, plus staff storytellers are, as @Miss-Demeanor has noted, going to be a thing. I'm no longer asking pure STs to handle jobs or applications, or job monkies to run plots. It isn't an 'and you do this' it's a 'you can do this but don't have to' sort of deal.

I'm not making a single member of the staff team act as storyteller (unless they're signing on purely for storytelling). We have no sphere leads. We have no division on those lines. Everything is being developed and managed as a single unit, rather than breaking it up. So I have no Sphere Lead that I expect to be running plot for their sphere. I have no sphere admins.

Instead, I have several storytellers who signed up specifically to run the bigger picture plot. stuff. Plus me. I can actually do a ridiculous amount of storytelling all on my lonesome.

[Ganymede]

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Are you going to start giving your Admins and TL's xp for doing jobs?

Of course not. But if you are going to award players with XP for running plots, then why should staff not be able to gain XP for running plots?

I concur with Sunny's sentiment that staff should not enjoy rewards that players can't or don't.

[Sunny]

Oh, right! Thanks, @Ganymede.

@Coin: The advantage comes in in that staff has access to a ton of background information to mine for plots. They have hooks, and in some cases I'll be doing all the development and then sending them forth. They are not having to do nearly as much work for the Game Plot stuff as people have to do for PRPs.

[Arkandel]

@Sunny In case I missed your answer (and I apologize if I have) is your plan to not incentivize (with XP or otherwise) players running plot at all? And is that the result of believing that they doing so is detrimental since it results in staff not running their own plots due to reasons?