Dust to Dust (Formerly the nWoD grenade thread)
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The other thing you never want to do is penalize players for running plot.
Since your character isn't present in scenes you run they don't stand to gain Beats, gain/resolve Conditions etc. Plus even outside mechanics while you run PrPs your character isn't making political connections, doing cool things for Renown, furthering his agendas, and so on.
So there's that as well.
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Games did just fine for storytellers (even player storytellers) prior to the introduction of XP for plots for staff. Really, there's been a significant decline in staff storytelling since the introduction of it, really. I'm sure this could be an example of correlation not equating out to causation, but I don't think it is.
The fact is, people will plot and run plot because they want to. I am sure this will work; I've had a number of people volunteer to ST after they were made aware of the fact that we were going to do this. Caused by this policy? Probably not. Willing to step up and show me that people I respect as ST staff will work as ST staff with this policy in place? Yep. I still have a great team. I understand that there are people that don't agree, and that's fine. While I do maintain that I feel that it's unethical (that's never going to change) I recognize that other people don't agree, and I'm not judging anyone for the opinion itself.
There's an established way of doing things that did not used to be done , and I think that while it was certainly a grand experiment, it doesn't work. I'm going back to the way it was.
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@Sunny said:
Games did just fine for storytellers (even player storytellers) prior to the introduction of XP for plots for staff. Really, there's been a significant decline in staff storytelling since the introduction of it, really. I'm sure this could be an example of correlation not equating out to causation, but I don't think it is.
Fair enough, but I'm curious as to your reasoning. Did people think "oh, I'm going to get XP for this crap? No way - I'm done here!" and stop running plot?
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@Sunny said:
While I do maintain that I feel that it's unethical (that's never going to change) I recognize that other people don't agree, and I'm not judging anyone for the opinion itself.
Heh. I
you, but telling me you think it's unethical and then saying you're not going to judge people for it is an oxymoron. If you think something someone is doing is unethical, you are judging them as acting unethically. I mean, I get what you meant; but the way you expressed it is entirely contradictory."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.
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I have two issues. Someone like @Coin with personal experience on the staff-side of it could chip in.
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Just because you have people offering to run spread plot around doesn't mean they will, especially after the game first opens. Even on Eldritch the number of people who were pledging themselves as PrP runners versus the number of PrPs that actually got ran over its first months don't align.
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As noted in this thread, it's pretty common for staff to underestimate the amount of work they're signing themselves up to do. This fact is compounded by factors outside your control - nasty players with entitlement issues, real life blowing up good intentions in key people, the creeping realization you don't have spare time to play your own game any more and so on.
That, along with my previous remark about STs (staff or otherwise) actually giving up their opportunities for advancement in order to run plot for others is the reason I'm arguing against this.
What do you hope to gain with it? What's the goal, that is?
- 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 said:
I have two issues. Someone like @Coin with personal experience on the staff-side of it could chip in.
- Just because you have people offering to run spread plot around doesn't mean they will, especially after the game first opens. Even on Eldritch the number of people who were pledging themselves as PrP runners versus the number of PrPs that actually got ran over its first months don't align.
Yup. Even well-intentioned people who started plots petered out, didn't want to anymore, or had real life smack'em in the face unexpectedly (or expectedly, but they didn't prepare for it enough).
- As noted in this thread, it's pretty common for staff to underestimate the amount of work they're signing themselves up to do. This fact is compounded by factors outside your control - nasty players with entitlement issues, real life blowing up good intentions in key people, the creeping realization you don't have spare time to play your own game any more and so on.
This, too, is a factor. I know I overshot; but I overshot a lot less than I would have before, and less than others did. Frankly, if I had to do it again, I would probably lobby for more storytelling staff from the get go, so it's good that @Sunny is doing that. It doesn't guarantee anything, but it's more foresight than we put into it (at least, I assume so; I actually had another person who was going to ST but things fell through. Oh well).
That, along with my previous remark about STs (staff or otherwise) actually giving up their opportunities for advancement in order to run plot for others is the reason I'm arguing against this.
I already commented on this above.
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@Arkandel said:
What do you hope to gain with it? What's the goal, that is?
@Sunny has already stated that she wants to return to an older system of governance. I can't say that I disagree.
“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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@Ganymede said:
@Arkandel said:
What do you hope to gain with it? What's the goal, that is?
@Sunny has already stated that she wants to return to an older system of governance. I can't say that I disagree.
Not really a responsive answer.
"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.
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@Arkandel
Honestly even when I am on a place that gives out xp for running things I never turn things i in to staff to get it.
To me the hassle of paperwork is always a bigger issue then the reward. Of course I also don't run general plots. I just run things for people and characters I know.
In a play where I had to do the paperwork hassle to run things and could just say oh I'll do this and not take the xp, yes I would stop running things. -
@ThatGuyThere said:
@Arkandel
Honestly even when I am on a place that gives out xp for running things I never turn things i in to staff to get it.
To me the hassle of paperwork is always a bigger issue then the reward. Of course I also don't run general plots. I just run things for people and characters I know.
In a play where I had to do the paperwork hassle to run things and could just say oh I'll do this and not take the xp, yes I would stop running things.I've never been on a game where you had to ask for XP. A ST is always able to run scenes and not ask anything for them.
On the other hand I've been on games where you did have to file +jobs in advance in order to run what you wanted, laid out in varying amounts of detail, whether they awarded anything in the end or not.
Those two things are orthogonal. I can definitely agree though that red tape is the bane of PrP running anywhere.
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@Coin said:
@Ganymede said:
@Arkandel said:
What do you hope to gain with it? What's the goal, that is?
@Sunny has already stated that she wants to return to an older system of governance. I can't say that I disagree.
Not really a responsive answer.
Not a good question. Vague antecedents led to misunderstandings.
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What does the older method do better than the newer method? Does this in particular back up any aspect of play you wish to emphasize?
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@Coin You're right. I'm not sure how to express it. I do feel like it's unethical, but I recognize that according to other value systems it is not unethical and I have accepted your value system as just as valid as my own, so I don't think you're behaving unethically precisely.
Everyone else:
Time spent reading applications, processing jobs, chatting with players about concepts: all of these things require staff time and attention that they could use for their characters' advancement. They could be doing things to earn themselves XP, too.
The reason that I feel it is unethical is that someone would be benefiting from staffing in a virtual-material fashion. On this game, there is a line between staff run story and player run story. Players do not have access to the staff material and will not, because while I do believe that the OOC masquerade is stupid, I do not think everyone should be privy to the game's story for the benefit of the people playing it.
Staff will be given pieces of the plot to run. They will have access to my metaplot and tons of hooks / ideas that the rest of the playerbase does not. Therefore, staff have a potentially easier time running plots than the rest of the game. They are now getting a virtual-material benefit from staffing that is not available for other people.
What I hope to accomplish with this system is reducing the advantage staff players have over other players. I want the game itself to have a distinctive story/plot that even our player storytellers can participate in and have fun with. The game needs to be about something, which means that there is a chunk of the plot that staff has to run.
As well, again, there is a not-insignificant difference between what players run and what staff runs. If you run a PRP do it from your character. It's a PRP. If you're running game story, there isn't going to be a reward for that. If the only thing someone is interested in is running player-level story, they don't need to be staff to do that. I would encourage them to re-evaluate why they want to be on the team, because they're just shooting themselves in the foot with it.
@Arkandel
1: I am aware. This is why I am overstaffing on storytelling. Most of the people I currently have working with me are not people I have to worry about bailing on me. I've got a group of people I've been online tabletopping with for a while.2: I appreciate the sentiment behind it, but I know what I'm signing up for. I ran a beast of a game myself for several years: Ashes to Ashes. I'm the one responsible for having approved the toe-ring of doom. I've learned a ton since those days, and I'm ready to implement it. My staff structure is going to be different than the traditional model, and I hope to solve a lot of the RL-exploding burnout-inducing-overwork issues with it.
I addressed my goal up above.
Fair enough, but I'm curious as to your reasoning. Did people think "oh, I'm going to get XP for this crap? No way - I'm done here!" and stop running plot?
No. Staff teams essentially said 'whew, the players have mostly taken over storytelling' and stopped.
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Fair enough, but I'm curious as to your reasoning. Did people think "oh, I'm going to get XP for this crap? No way - I'm done here!" and stop running plot?
No. Staff teams essentially said 'whew, the players have mostly taken over storytelling' and stopped.
this right here is what I miss about the old days, staff plots even weather ones I would rather ignore do provide game unity, with out them I think games get to feel more like connected sandboxes then a unified whole.
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I am so blowing up a volcano at some point, I guarantee it. Unless one goes off around here for real. Then it will probably be too soon.
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@Sunny
"Unethical" seems like a weirdly hyperbolic way to describe the decision to award XP for PrP-running. I dislike throwing the term around in MU* situations anyway, but there are things that staffers do that actually can be described as breaches of personal ethics. This is just...one clearly quantifiable thing that XP can be given out for. Whether it's a particularly good idea to award STs for it, idk. I agree with the notion that people who will ST will ST anyway, and I don't think there's a way to motivate it mechanically. But talking about differences of opinion about game policies that can be clearly-worded and clearly-enforced strikes me as wrong-headed. -
@Sunny
Dang it now you have me considering playing despite GMC rules. -
Anyone who says 2nd Edition rules are worse is either an Idiot, A Jerk, My Brother, Spider, or a combination of the abover. :neckbeard:
I'm a rodeo clown.
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@tragedyjones said:
Anyone who says 2nd Edition rules are worse is either an Idiot, A Jerk, My Brother, Spider, or a combination of the abover. :neckbeard:
Wait, Spider is your brother?
