Dust to Dust (Formerly the nWoD grenade thread)
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@Sunny said:
Staff will not gain experience for their characters from running plots on the staff level
Care to explain what that means (and what the reasoning behind the decision was) ?
Why would I, as a player, gain XP from running a plot but BobStaffer who runs the plot isn't eligible? What happens when a staff member runs plot as their character? Etc.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel I am pretty sure it means that, if there is a level of freedom or power granted to Staff Plot Runners, if they avail themselves of that, they do not get a perk and if they run a plot with all the possible hurdles of a player, they do.
I'm a rodeo clown.
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@tragedyjones said:
@Arkandel I am pretty sure it means that, if there is a level of freedom or power granted to Staff Plot Runners, if they avail themselves of that, they do not get a perk and if they run a plot with all the possible hurdles of a player, they do.
I'm arguing under the assumption that most games allow for a whole lot of flexibility and 'freedom' for players. I.e. unless they break that paradigm and go back to restricting PrPs considerably more than has been the norm in the last few years, I don't really see a big difference between what staff is allowed to run and what players are. So that perk would be minimal at best.
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@Arkandel - I know that on Reno built in 3 levels of plot restriction - Anyone anytime, Players can run with a request/heads up, and Staff Only.
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@Arkandel said:
@Sunny said:
Staff will not gain experience for their characters from running plots on the staff level
Care to explain what that means (and what the reasoning behind the decision was) ?
Why would I, as a player, gain XP from running a plot but BobStaffer who runs the plot isn't eligible? What happens when a staff member runs plot as their character? Etc.
Part of this is, I admit, holdover from ye olden days. I cannot conceive of a system in which staff are virtual-materially rewarded for being staff and doing their jobs. It is, to me, abhorrently unethical, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Earning a reward for doing your job as staff, to me, is on the same level as taking care of your own experience spends/jnotes or judging your own scene. I feel very strongly about this. I understand and recognize that the community has progressed to where this is not actually the case, but in my opinion that's not something we should have let go, or something that should have even been tolerated when it first began.
That said. there is a distinct structure / framework for storytelling on Dust, and nobody is getting a direct XP reward for running things (players are being rewarded, just with player points, something still under development). To try and make it simple, there is one category that players can run with review but not needing approval (that means they submit what they're doing and just go do it, and if we need to we chat after the fact), and the other player-level category which requires approval.
If one of my staff members chose to run something at either of those plot levels, I would counsel them to run it from the player side, not the staff side. The approval level plot stuff is actually not as limited in scope as people might imagine, either -- primarily, the distinction between whether players can run it or not is the makeup of the factions the plot is intended for. It's a rule, though -- there are some things that are off limits for players to run, because they do not have and will not get access to staff information.
There are also multiple levels of staff plot; all of them involve the game's forward story progress directly. This is the "perk" of being a staffer. You get to peek behind the screen and ruin everything for yourself, but you also get to help craft and execute the story of the game. There are people that enjoy that, and with the structure we're building in for staff, I might even be able to keep them for more than a few weeks.
tl;dr: If my staff are running player level plots from their staff bit, they're goofballs and should be swatted lightly to remember they earn points if they do it from their player bit.
Edited to add: After some consideration, I realized, I did lie up above. With the system we're using on Dust, I actually would allow staff to handle their own XP spends and jnotes WAY before I'd conceive of rewarding them for staffing.
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We have a metaplot!
It is going to be awesome.
I am not going to post details because spoilers, but I am crazy excited about it.
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If I'm interpreting correctly, I believe @Sunny is trying to move away from an issue that rose up (and killed) Staff STing on HM. i.e. the introduction of being able to gain XP via running plots from your player bit. When some people realized they could run a plot they would normally run from their Staff bit on their player bit to gain XP for that bit... Staff ST's died out pretty quickly. 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.
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I am such a believer in killing stupid possibly outcomes before the start. See my suggestion that the Choke merit not work on vampires.
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No, I just don't think staff should get perks for being staff. I think it's ridiculous and unethical and it was a bad idea when games started doing it, and the fact that it's causing games problems now that it's been in play for a while is something that should have been self-evident when people essentially started paying people to staff.
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Since I was asked!
If you're really not interested in participating in real-time discussions but you still are interested in assisting with the development process, feel free to send me a PM with the account name you'd like and an e-mail for me to send a password to, and I can set folks up with access to the staff wiki. We have a list of topics up for brainstorming, and as time goes on there will probably be more of them. I'm not going to pass out access like candy, because there's Plot Stuff on there, but if you're genuinely interested in helping with development but not interested in logging into the game itself, let me know! This is good for those of you who don't have a whole lot of time to just hang out.
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I'd volunteer for storytelling duty. Not sure how much time I can promise because work is nuts lately, but I've been hankerin' to try.
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@Sunny said:
No, I just don't think staff should get perks for being staff. I think it's ridiculous and unethical and it was a bad idea when games started doing it, and the fact that it's causing games problems now that it's been in play for a while is something that should have been self-evident when people essentially started paying people to staff.
The biggest flaw in your logic is that staffing is not a job. It is a volunteered activity. Knowing what is going on behind the scenes is not a perk of being staff, it is part of the description of duties when you volunteer to staff.
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Staffing -is- a job. Just because you volunteer to do it doesn't give it any fewer responsibilities. If you volunteer at a soup kitchen you can't just hang out and not do anything. You're given a job whether it's ladling soup or doing dishes or something else.
I dislike the notion that people seem to have regarding staff that says 'Staff are volunteers, therefore you can't really criticize them for lack of activity or work ethic'. If you can't do the job, don't volunteer to do it.
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@Admiral said:
Staffing -is- a job. Just because you volunteer to do it doesn't give it any fewer responsibilities. If you volunteer at a soup kitchen you can't just hang out and not do anything. You're given a job whether it's ladling soup or doing dishes or something else.
I dislike the notion that people seem to have regarding staff that says 'Staff are volunteers, therefore you can't really criticize them for lack of activity or work ethic'. If you can't do the job, don't volunteer to do it.
You're not a disenfranchised person who badly needs a meal to survive, though; you're a dude behind a screen that I'm putting in time and effort to entertain. So comparing the two doesn't really work. In the former, I'm providing a needed service that, in my experience, makes me feel like I'm making a difference in someone's life. In the latter, I typically have to deal with a lot of entitlement, whining, and accusations. When I have volunteered at soup kitchens and the like, I never got the sensation that the people I'm ladeling soup for or whatever feel they're entitled to the meal, despite the fact that they are, whereas when I staff, I get the sensation players feel they're entitled to all the things, despite the fact that they are not. So conflating volunteer work as if all volunteer work is the same, and especially comparing actually helping people by providing food and shelter with running plots and handling jobs on a MU, is super dumb.
@Miss-Demeanor said:
If I'm interpreting correctly, I believe @Sunny is trying to move away from an issue that rose up (and killed) Staff STing on HM. i.e. the introduction of being able to gain XP via running plots from your player bit. When some people realized they could run a plot they would normally run from their Staff bit on their player bit to gain XP for that bit... Staff ST's died out pretty quickly. 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.
Except from what I understand, she's doing exactly that: if you storytell from your staff bit, you get no XP; if you do it from your PC bit, you do. So it's going to generate exactly that dynamic, as per the HM example.
tl;dr: If my staff are running player level plots from their staff bit, they're goofballs and should be swatted lightly to remember they earn points if they do it from their player bit.
I don't agree on a general level, but if it works for her, then yay!
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@Sunny -- I'm too busy to even lightly RP right now what with my 70 hour weeks and balancing what time I have for a relationship on top of that. However, if you need an idea person, I'm pretty available via email and apparently I'm fairly decent at coming up with things from what I hear. PM me if you want.
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@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?
“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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@Cobaltasaurus said:
The biggest flaw in your logic is that staffing is not a job. It is a volunteered activity.
It's a volunteer job. It isn't serving at a soup kitchen and that's not a great example, but it is absolutely a job. We fundamentally disagree on this level. If they're not doing it for the love of the game, I don't really want them.
@Coin said:
Except from what I understand, she's doing exactly that: if you storytell from your staff bit, you get no XP; if you do it from your PC bit, you do. So it's going to generate exactly that dynamic, as per the HM example.
There's a layered plot system in place. Player level plots should be run by players; staff should generally be focusing on staff plots. There are very distinct differences.
@somasatori: I'll take you up on that.
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@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?
I never understood that either. From all the things to be worried about, uber-powerful Storytellers should probably be on the very bottom of the list.
On Eldritch I've slowed down some but honestly I've ran a crapload of scenes. According to +xp I've gotten 4 XP for it. That's basically enough to buy one point in one attribute - woohoo! In exchange the game got 5-6 people entertained for a number of hours, plus whoever else they engaged on their own past that, both while I was actively doing it and off stage when they were playing about it among themselves with others.
One could argue XP isn't a sufficient way to incentivize PrP running and they'd probably be running (although historically we haven't been able so far to come up with a better one). But it's far from a problem, either - we simply need more mechanisms on top of it.
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@Sunny said:
@Cobaltasaurus said:
The biggest flaw in your logic is that staffing is not a job. It is a volunteered activity.
It's a volunteer job. It isn't serving at a soup kitchen and that's not a great example, but it is absolutely a job. We fundamentally disagree on this level. If they're not doing it for the love of the game, I don't really want them.
The idea that giving them experience also means they are only do it for the experience is fundamentally flawed, though. People who want to run plot, will try to run plot; people who don't, won't. You might get some outliers who only want to run plot for the XP, but those are few and they tend to peter out because their plots are lazy, boring, and/or inconsistent.
I've played on games with and without XP, and I have always ended up running plot--whether there was XP involved or not. Even on games with XP I've ended up running plot and not bothered to request the XP for it, and I know others who are the same. But I think you'll find people will gravitate towards running plot that gets them XP because it's an added layer of incentive; because it allows them to further their character along their chosen stat paths even though they are devoting heaps of time and effort on other people's. It's a fine philosophy for someone who will only be staffing and not playing, but if you are both a staff storyteller and a player on a game, it becomes a basic issue of only having time for one (at least, inasmuch as how much time one is willing to put into the hobby).
Like I said, I don't agree, but that doesn't mean it won't be great if it works out on Dust to Dust.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
