RL-Friendly Game Design

[Devrex]

When many of us started MU*ing, we were in college, had far fewer responsibilities, and had far more stamina.

Now most of us have demanding jobs and a whole passel of responsibilities. Homes to clean. Errands to run. In some cases pets to take care of. Or kids to take care of. Or elderly parents to take care of. Or gardens to take care of! Some of us have chronic illnesses.

Stamina is at a premium for most of us too.

But many of us still enjoy text-based RP, writing, storytelling. And I've been thinking for a long time about techniques that could be used to help a game, overall, be more do-able for more responsibility-laden hobbyists.

Have you seen things that worked on other games? Had thoughts about what would help you? Had things you thought were worth trying? Would love to hear about it!

[Ghost]

@devrex This is one of the issues I had when I was mushing, and part of my decision to give it up.

Basically, I'd have work, home life, kids, etc. While all of that was going on I was in this constant state of FOMO (fear of missing out) to the point that I downloaded a MU client onto my phone and would sneak in logins while at work. I'd also do google doc writing where we used Google Docs as the space during the day when I couldn't login.

Basically, the 24/7 "something's always going on and you're missing it" state was a FOMO nightmare.

What worked best for me was just to take the "when I'm here, I'm here" approach, sign up for events when I was able, and do my best to stay relevant. Regardless, the "all the time" crowd are usually the big movers and shakers, and due to that they tend to get the most RP. I would have liked to see a MU or two in my day that was "only active during specific hours". I think that would have resonated with me. Something that was like "We open our doors at 1pm PDT and close our doors at 11pm PDT" where people login at the same time, RP, and then log out to sleep.

[Ganymede]

@devrex

I think the opposite.

I think we need to plan RP. I think games need to ensure there are scenes available for “off times.” I think we should try to embrace async RP.

But honestly I am out of the RP game because I don’t want to right now.

[Lotherio]

I vote for a mix of sync/async play. Ares is great for this from what I've seen. Loggers on older Mu*s can be set up to to allow folks to play asynchronous.

I'd like to springboard off @Ghost. A lot of it feels like if you miss the right time, you miss out. The staff only doing big things at a certain time. I've been there, I've always been daytime and to date, I've yet to ever have staff run a plot an another Mu* that I've been able to partake of. I think more things during the day would help for sync plots. Scheduling times is good.

There is another issue I've noticed of late, on a busy place, not everyone signs up for player plots. If the event was set up by someone not staff, the turnout isn't always so good.

Something to solve both issues would be good. I like synchronous play but async is a solution. Having it in the culture of the game (directly in Ares, loggers for others) is a bonus. I think I need to embrace it more, async play. It tends to feel like forum RP to me and it was always slow but I agree it allows more of the folks with more RL obligations to participate. Async and empowering of players to run things that count just as much.

I think less focus on one 'plot' would help too, that way if someone misses the event its not like they missed the world changing thing - or more avenues for players to affect/change the world too.

[Hella]

Possibly some way to interact with the story/metaplot without engaging in metaplot scenes which might be during your off hours, so that when you do get the chance to RP you still have something related to RP about. I know the action system was popular for that, but I don't know how you would adjust it for scale to avoid burn out. I imagine it would work well on smaller games though.

[Derp]

@hella

I've been thinking about ways to do this, too. Maybe some kind of Token system where you can 'cash in' some chips or something to have an effect on the game that you don't have to worry about RPing out and scheduling and finding the time for.

Like, if your character is a Renowned Banana Expert and the plot requires something to do with Bananas, and you're finding it hard to get into, maybe you cash in one chip to be able to make a profound discovery about the Ultimanana and its effects on the Potassium Monster or something.

Not sure how it would work out though.

[Hella]

@derp I like the idea of this because it allows everyone to participate in metaplot AND that could lead to more RP all around. You'll have a contingent of folks who won't want to deal with the mechanics of it but you could make the use of the tokens inclusive of RP too. Ie. A player could submit a log of a scene instead, with RP focused on their special area of focus, alongside their token (or whatever the mechanic is) instead of a write up.

[il-volpe]

No game is really 24/7. Some of these problems are fixed if you just lean in to that fact.

MUs have a prime time. Or two. Often it corresponds to tee-vee prime times.

It's really a pity about MUDstats no longer adding new games, because its charts showed you when a game's prime time was.

Schedule stuff. During prime time. Don't do major events without scheduling, it drives people to wonder if they're missing out. Do not piss people about with scheduling; if you scheduled it, do it. If you do random events and cancel scheduled ones last minute you are probably going to give the impression that you think players are or should just be hanging about the game all the time. Make it possible to participate without having to hang out waiting for opportunities. Make it clear that odds are enormously against anything world-shaking happening at 9:45 am on a Wednesday, and that checking up at that time is not necessary.

[faraday]

@il-volpe said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

It's really a pity about MUDstats no longer adding new games, because its charts showed you when a game's prime time was.

AresCentral shows it for Ares games. For example: https://arescentral.aresmush.com/game/5e5966e2bbdbe407682b05a2/detail

Though I think what you'll see overall is that activity is a lot flatter than it used to be. With web players popping on throughout the day and people staying logged in to hang out or wait for someone, you don't see the big peaks and valleys that I remember seeing in things like MUDStats ages ago.

[il-volpe]

@faraday Ares is so darn good. I like line graphs better, but hey.

Yeah, people staying logged in skew it. Ideally activity charts would start to ignore you after 20 minutes inactivity, would record OOC activity separately, and would allow you to view them both separately and overlapping.

It's not really that big a deal, though, because the game's prime time is at least in part set by gamerunners. Just overtly stating something like, "We schedule all open GMed events for between 5 and 11 pm EST Sunday-Thursday and between 3 and 11 Saturdays, and we post them at least 3 days before," seems to help both reduce FOMO-anxiety for players and bump the prime time activity numbers up.

I do kinda fancy the idea of at least seeing how it goes to run a MU that you literally turn off except for its normal running hours, but this also seems likely to be contrary to the building-a-happy-community goal.

[Misadventure]

Would something like the +job system be a good/great/terrible tool for async RP?

The systems I have used have several benefits: invite based participation, on game resource, can (usually) send +dice rolls to it if desired, a player can see a list of their scenes, date and time of activity.

It lacks privacy from staff, although maybe it could be configured so that only one staffer has access. It also could take up a lot of room unless scenes were eventually removed, either logged or just deleted.

[il-volpe]

@misadventure I've encouraged people to do async scenes in +jobs when scheduling is rough. I find it more fun to RP a round of poses every day or two than to wait for three weeks. This is particularly appropriate for debriefings, Q&A sessions and reconnaissance trips that aren't too likely to get action-packed -- some scenes are really more fun to RP about after than they are to RP.

The suggestion didn't fly recently, but I was being jerked around. It's worked fine for me as a GM and allowed me to include people whose timezones don't mesh with mine.

[Ganymede]

@il-volpe said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

I find it more fun to RP a round of poses every day or two than to wait for three weeks. This is particularly appropriate for debriefings, Q&A sessions and reconnaissance trips that aren't too likely to get action-packed -- some scenes are really more fun to RP about after than they are to RP.

I do not think async RP is great for active-shooter type scenes, but is good for debriefings for missions. The commander should pose once a day after reviewing the scene, to keep it moving along, but other players can chirp all they want meanwhile (within reason).

[faraday]

So for all that I've worked to make Ares async-friendly, I don't actually enjoy async RP that much personally. I have had a few good google doc scenes with friends that otherwise wouldn't have happened, but for the most part one of these things happens:

• the scene stretches on so long that it begins to muck with my sense of internal continuity
• I forget the scene exists and never get back to posing
• I'm so worried I'll forget the scene exists that I check it obsessively for new activity
• My partner forgets the scene exists and the scene just sorta...dies

So my version of RL-friendly is planned and short. If it's planned, people can adjust their schedules around it. If it's (reasonably) short, they know they're not going to be at it all night.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

If it's planned, people can adjust their schedules around it. If it's (reasonably) short, they know they're not going to be at it all night.

And we come back to a discussion on TS. Again.

(Just kidding: I concur that planning important get-togethers and keeping them short is a good policy to keep for non-sexy-time RP ... and sexy-time RP.)

[Hella]

@ganymede said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

(Just kidding: I concur that planning important get-togethers and keeping them short is a good policy to keep for non-sexy-time RP ... and sexy-time RP.)

Do people plan sexy-time RP? Like. "Thursday nights, we bone."

[Ganymede]

@hella

I know that some couples plan it out in real life. Why not in RP?

[Derp]

@hella said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

@ganymede said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

(Just kidding: I concur that planning important get-togethers and keeping them short is a good policy to keep for non-sexy-time RP ... and sexy-time RP.)

Do people plan sexy-time RP? Like. "Thursday nights, we bone."

I would be as likely to lose track of time and forget in RP as I am in RL, so I don't know that this would help. <.< >.>

[Devrex]

@faraday Yeah I struggle with the same things in async unless it is straight up just a one on one scene.

Like one of the suggestions here was to async GMing. I've tried it but man do I hate it. I run on energy and excitement. If someone doesn't pose for four days I conclude they are bored and I am doing a bad job, and don't have any of that energy-excitement gas it takes to keep going. I finally had to stop offering them for that reason. Maybe it's just a brain weasel and they're having a great time and that's really the fastest it can go, but it's still a struggle.

@L-B-Heuschkel does a great job of GMing async and making it really fun and I'm not sure what his techniques are there or what he's doing differently that I'm not doing (or if he's just wired differently as a GM) but.

[silverfox]

@devrex said in RL-Friendly Game Design:

@L-B-Heuschkel does a great job of GMing async and making it really fun and I'm not sure what his techniques are there or what he's doing differently that I'm not doing (or if he's just wired differently as a GM) but.

I think it's just that they HAVE TO DO IT or they'd never RP. You grow into whatever restraints you have to.