Hypothetical Game Design

[3543thrh67]

I think @Misadventure is misunderstanding me. I'm not talking about the people who login and pretend the stuff they do is to help more than themselves. I'm talking more about people like @Fortunae who have limited availability but do as much as he can in the time he has. Like.. say I'm a player who is rarely on when all the major plots or scenes are going on but any I can attend I do. HOWEVER! I also open jobs when I hear about the cool plot of a government building burning down (not able to attend due to the plots for it are at times I'm working). Will I be able to become the Fire Commissioner dude or will I be 'punished' because my time zone or available hours are more of the lines of a person who would be classified as a casual gamer?

[Misadventure]

@icanbeyourmuse Wasn't me.

[mietze]

Ultimately, if there is a list of expectations that staff have for a certain role, they're not "punishing" people who can't make those expectations. I advocate for specific lists of expectations, because it allows for more flexibility OOC, and for more diverse people being given a chance, if they can approach staff with a team proposal or other thing that still meets all of the requirements even though it's not Ye Old Typical person who can afford to be online 24/7.

But frankly, @icanbeyourmuse your example is confusing to me. If a person cannot participate in most major things regarding the role they wish to fulfill, and are largely limited to +Request and other non-RP avenues, and the role requires that (not all will, sometimes it's better to have someone in there who's an excellent delegator and tabs-keeper, and off-hours folks are often excellent at that), then why would you want a role that you're not going to be able to fulfill, regardless of how much you really really really really really want it? Just for the fancy title?

[surreality]

@mietze said:

Ultimately, if there is a list of expectations that staff have for a certain role, they're not "punishing" people who can't make those expectations. I advocate for specific lists of expectations, because it allows for more flexibility OOC, and for more diverse people being given a chance, if they can approach staff with a team proposal or other thing that still meets all of the requirements even though it's not Ye Old Typical person who can afford to be online 24/7.

This nails it.

In the specific case of less populated time zones, someone who is able to do things at that time can actually be a great help to players in the same situation, provided they actually get stuff done.

[spasticgoat]

I'm leery of this model when it comes to "casuals versus actives". The difference seems to be who is blowing which staffer at the time or is in a popular time-zone. That's either clique behavior or omitting someone for where they happen to live, versus their idea being good or not. For my time, neither of those is really "cool" behavior.

[surreality]

It may just be that I have staffed with @tragedyjones before, but I don't think the 'who is blowing which staffer' thing would ever, ever be permitted to be a factor on any game he was running. I just can't see it happening; he not only pays attention, he officially gives a damn.

As for the point more broadly, I don't know if the time zone thing is as much of a factor as it's being made out to be. I also don't see someone with a good idea who is capable of generating play being counted out simply because they're in the odd hours camp. After all, the odd hours camp, sometimes more than any other, needs active storytellers to keep things from stagnating for them, if they're a small group. (I know I specifically look for people who can tackle odd hours if I can find them for exactly this reason; this is a wanted niche, not a reason to discount someone.)

I wouldn't go with the model exactly as presented, either, but I have my own very freaky ideas of how to go about things.

I will say that if part of the job is creating RP for others, and you're only doing things that relate specifically to yourself and doing them through jobs and no interaction with anyone other than staff, you're... not creating RP for others. At all.

Flip the considerations around for a moment, and some of the problem becomes more clear, I think. There's a responsibility attached to the perks in this scenario. If the responsibility, for whatever reason, cannot be met, one does not qualify for the perks. Step that one up a notch: say you're hiring someone for a staff position. The responsibilities are X, Y, and Z, and the person you hire is expected to handle each in a turnaround of 3-5 days. (Random example for the time frame.) Is it 'fair' to the game when they don't log in for two weeks, and everyone's X, Y, and Z languish? Do they get to say, "Well, really, I felt like going to a movie tonight instead of doing X, and you know I can't stand Y and Z, so I've just elected not to do those." How long would that person remain staff? (Sometimes, a long time, but that's not remotely good.) If the good of the game is the goal, they shouldn't be sticking around for long, because they're not doing their job.

The examples sound like 'people without any responsibility to the game, can do whatever they want', and 'players with additional responsibilities, granted perks because of those responsibilities'. "It isn't fair they get more because they do more for others!" is... not entirely sensible. (Staff don't really get perks, other than a generalized notion of WTF is going on they can never act on in the personal fun ways, but even that tends to be fairly generalized.)

@Glitch is pretty spot on, in that if someone has an effective means of Doing Things, they should get any and all possible benefits of Actually Doing Things. Artificial caps get in the way of that, and that's not good. I'm in the 'earn it' camp all around. I don't care who someone is or what they do to earn a thing, if they earn the thing, they get the thing. "I want the same thing but I don't want to have to earn it," on the other hand... that's some entitled bullshit.

[Misadventure]

How about perks on by numbers served or incidence of service model? That way everyones reward is proportional to services rendered.

If you are inactive, no perks.
If you can't or won't render service to those available, no perks.

I wouldn't link certain positions to high activity, but to some.

[SG]

When I hear about Casuals Vs Actives.

It's really difficult to integrate the two.

[mietze]

Sometimes I wonder how much of a conflict there really is. I play with people from a wide variety of time zones and available log in time. And I have to say, I have never played with someone with a very limited amount of game time who was resentful that they didn't get Head Honcho/Super Visible Leadership Position on a game and who said it wasn't fair. (I try to stay away from stupid people mostly though).

I have seen terrible things happen because leadership positions were given to people with no lives but the ability to be on game 24/7 though, and who were chosen because of the presumptions of greater ability, instead of choosing the more balanced, capable, proven abilities of people who were not on 24/7 but who had excellent skills in putting together a team to help, delegation, organization, and willingness to extend play and fun stuff across diverse group.

So again, I'm not against alternative ways to meet responsibilities. But if someone is really angry over not being "allowed" to get something that has defined responsibilities (not just some vague stupid Be Active garbage) that they are incapable or unwilling to fulfill, honestly I tend to think there's something more wrong with that person than the situation.

[Arkandel]

@mietze said:

Ultimately, if there is a list of expectations that staff have for a certain role, they're not "punishing" people who can't make those expectations. I advocate for specific lists of expectations, because it allows for more flexibility OOC, and for more diverse people being given a chance, if they can approach staff with a team proposal or other thing that still meets all of the requirements even though it's not Ye Old Typical person who can afford to be online 24/7.

The problem isn't coming up with lists. That's in fact the easy part.

The problem is monitoring all those people to make sure they're compliant with the objectives on that list over time, offering warnings and taking privileges away when they aren't met. Not only is that a constant burden on staff but also it's much harder to take something away than never giving it to begin with.

Even if you consider strong-willed, professional staff (which is in no way a given) the method of 'taking back' the privileges is far from easily implemented. How do you 'take away' someone's Discipline dots? His Primal Urge? The fact they are a freakin' Elder? Sure, some mobile things like Status and Resource dots could be clipped but none of the big things, since there are no great IC methods of trimming things (then giving them back once the player is once again compliant...).

[SG]

@Arkandel said:

Sure, some mobile things like Status and Resource dots could be clipped but none of the big things, since there are no great IC methods of trimming things (then giving them back once the player is once again compliant...).

Could you have some NPC mage somewhere do something like that? Like put a curse on a lineage or something?

[Arkandel]

@SG said:

Could you have some NPC mage somewhere do something like that? Like put a curse on a lineage or something?

Maybe, but would that Mage be doing this habitually? I mean it's a game, people go lax and play less all the time. Players will be failing to meet any set goals fairly regularly, and systematizing the consequences ought to be flexible enough to take that under account.

[SG]

@Arkandel You could have the mage be the mayor or something, and the Mage knows all the players thanks to a crystal ball or some other McGuffin. When the mayor sez jump, yous jump, capiche?

You could have said Mage/Mayor be as reasonable as needed, but that could be an in universe reasoning behind depowering individuals who get on the mage's shitlist.

Of course, I'm not up to speed on WOD, but I frequently hear complaints about how powerful mages are, you could also go with some sort of godling/demon/alpha complex super computer if you wanted.

[tragedyjones]

A wizard didn't do it, that'd be silly. The God-Machine does it.

[Misadventure]

Or you could be repsonible and only give out perks that aren't tracked as in-game powers. Rerolls, perks that can become absent easily like allies, companions, etc, story control etc. Anything where outside influence is already expected.

[mietze]

@Arkandel said:

@mietze said:

Ultimately, if there is a list of expectations that staff have for a certain role, they're not "punishing" people who can't make those expectations. I advocate for specific lists of expectations, because it allows for more flexibility OOC, and for more diverse people being given a chance, if they can approach staff with a team proposal or other thing that still meets all of the requirements even though it's not Ye Old Typical person who can afford to be online 24/7.

The problem isn't coming up with lists. That's in fact the easy part.

The problem is monitoring all those people to make sure they're compliant with the objectives on that list over time, offering warnings and taking privileges away when they aren't met. Not only is that a constant burden on staff but also it's much harder to take something away than never giving it to begin with.

I disagree. If someone is not performing in a leadership position then it is pretty easy for staff to take it away. I think the reluctance often comes when there is no list of clear expectations. If someone apps in a higher powered PC and then doesn't meet their obligations, then depending on how large that boost was, perhaps they lose that PC. (Or if it was a minor boost, such as free status coming out of cg vs having to be voted in, ect, then that sort of thing is easy to strip. If it was a boost of # XP, and it was more than a month of passive XP that people would normally get, the difference is stripped, with the player's choice of where to strip from.)

The bookkeeping is easy. I agree that a lot of time staff has a hard time saying no or upholding players to standards, yes. And in that case I agree, if you're not willing to hold people to a standard you say is important or comes with benefits because you are asking for things in return then absolutely, don't have boosts or anything like that if you're only going to enforce it 'sometimes'.

Leadership roles and status in particular are not supposed to be static. And again, if you decided to create a PC with a significant boost by agreeing to uphold clearly written expectations and then cannot meet those obligations, then that was part of the risk assumed.

I do think that it's also good to have a very clear policy of what happens when someone is not able to meet those obligations. Are they given a certain amount of time to turn it around? Can they get an extension if they proactively notify staff or do so as soon as possible, vs. staff having to chase them down? If someone cannot stand the idea that if they can't keep up with the obligations they knew about in advance they might need to forfeit the benefits they received, then perhaps they ought not apply for/agree to a boost out of chargen or a high visibility position.

I think the amount of leadership/high power boost positions would usually be relatively small. So I don't think it's harder to keep tabs on "all of them" no, not unless there's been unwise decisions about how many of these to offer. And the list doesn't need to be complicated. To go and see if the player has run and posted their 3 events in three months (it would be their responsibility to do so) or other measurable, simple as possible obligation, is no harder than processing apps. Significantly less so.

And it's not that someone's "elder" status (like the age of a vampire) would be taken away, it would be their CG power boost that would be taken away. They'd be like any other PC that decided to be old for flavor benefit, or a long time resident, or whatever, but did not elect to take on additional obligations to get extra starting points to play with.

At least, that is how I think it should be done. Most places let you be however old you want within certain parameters, but you don't get extra points for being over 30 (for example) or less for being 18. (But maybe you should, that's a whole different thing though!). It's just a flavor thing, and perhaps a good bg excuse for having more eclectic skills, if that's even monitored (I'm not sure many places do these days!). If you can't bear the risk, don't ask for the boost, just earn the XP as per normal. No big. And if someone really must be a god out of CG, then it's easy enough to just stick to the high power passive XP games or rollover that allow you to do that.

[Coin]

@mietze said:

At least, that is how I think it should be done. Most places let you be however old you want within certain parameters, but you don't get extra points for being over 30 (for example) or less for being 18. (But maybe you should, that's a whole different thing though!). It's just a flavor thing, and perhaps a good bg excuse for having more eclectic skills, if that's even monitored (I'm not sure many places do these days!).

I toyed with some age-based Xp shifts at chargen for Eldritch (where you got more the older you were, to a point, but you also got less passive XP during the course of the game). Didn't do it, for several reasons, including "@Thenomain would choke me". But depending on the game, it could be cool.

I'm still waiting for a game that operates on a slightly longer timeline IC, with timeskips! Play 6 months, timeskip 2 years, play a year, timeskip five! Play another year, timeskip ten!

I don't know. I think if it's a small game, it could work. And you could address other problems, too: only let people spend X amount while "active" and any other Xp they make, they can spend during the timeskip--amount based on how long the timeskip is.

This model is obviously best for Vampire, but if you don't over do it with the timeskip length you could run any game on it. I mean, most games have ways not to age, or age very slowly. Playing a werewolf that goes from a young, brash 19-year-old lunatic to a wizened 70-year-old master hunter could be fun...

[il-volpe]

@Coin I love the timeskip idea, and would like to play that, too. On some other occasion when it was brought up, there was the objection that when you choose to skip is going to end up being good timing for some PCs and not for others. Still, I really don't think this would be that huge a problem, even for a large game. So long as you're clear about it to begin with, why would people bitch except for the sake of bitching? I'd actually set it up so that the last month or two of the RP time would be 'wrap up anything you need to RP out, folks," time. And be sure everyone knew at the start of each cycle when the time-jump would happen and how long it would be.

[Coin]

@il-volpe said:

@Coin I love the timeskip idea, and would like to play that, too. On some other occasion when it was brought up, there was the objection that when you choose to skip is going to end up being good timing for some PCs and not for others. Still, I really don't think this would be that huge a problem, even for a large game. So long as you're clear about it to begin with, why would people bitch except for the sake of bitching? I'd actually set it up so that the last month or two of the RP time would be 'wrap up anything you need to RP out, folks," time. And be sure everyone knew at the start of each cycle when the time-jump would happen and how long it would be.

Yeah it's really only a problem for people who aren't paying attention. If you know it's coming and have some time to figure it out, it should be fine.

The real issue comes for people who come in late and only get to play a month or two before a timeskip. But them's the breaks. If you're clear and honest about when the timeskips will happen, then that's that.

The timeskips can also be good moments to change the Start XP so everyone can be more or less at the same level. For example: everyone starts with an amount of XP equal to however much was available for spending in timeskips. That way, the only real advantage older players have is XP spends they made during play, which are limited anyway.