The 100: The Mush

[Seraphim73]

@Miss-Demeanor said in The 100: The Mush:

So its rather disingenuous of you to say that you never have characters in positions of power/leadership.

Gideon was about as far from a position of power/leadership as possible. She was disgraced, and ended up leaving her clan entirely to start at the bottom again with the Skaikru. I wonder if perhaps there might be some misunderstanding (on your part or on ours -- I'm not discounting the possibility that we have been defining things differently from others) as to what a position of power or leadership is. I would definitely say that Gideon was in the spotlight early on (along with Wren), and that could have been too much or done poorly -- that's entirely possible. But she was definitely not in a position of power or leadership. Also, asking others before making decisions... isn't that exactly what's been suggested? As I remember, while there were some suggestions about how the character was going to be handled -- but no one said it would be a bad thing. (Side note... did we rush Grounder PCs? Yes... we absolutely did, it's one of the errors we definitely made early in the game.)

Doubly so since your husband put his first character into a position where he was very loud and opinionated and strong enough that few people really wanted to challenge him outright, which put him into a leadership position even if he's protesting that he doesn't want to be.

Strong enough and opinionated enough that no one wanted to challenge Grey... except Cameron, Morgan, Fiona, Faolan, Cole, and others. As for my wishes with the character, I didn't want him to be in a sole position of power. It's my belief that no Staffer should ever have a position that a) another character has not already held, or b) another character does not also hold. I don't believe that I've broken that rule -- I try to be very careful not to. Grey was in the spotlight too much early in the game, but thanks to feedback here and on-game, that's a problem that I corrected, and Grey was significantly quieter the rest of the game, and only in a leadership position for a single scene later on in the game -- and that because no higher-ranked Guard showed up for the pre-scheduled scene.

Also.. that you and a handful of your friends had started playing the game weeks before it was open to everyone, and thus were guaranteed to have more xp/higher stats that nobody else was privy to?

This was what... 2 weeks? That's 2 XP. Some players are always going to be on a game first. Do you think that no XP should be given during early Beta period? When should XP start being given, two weeks in? What about the people who join the game four weeks in?

You set yourselves up as players to have every advantage, to be at the front of every new thing, every major decision... and then claim that you don't do that.

Gideon was one of two of the first Grounders, yes. Grey co-led one early decision with Faolan and Fiona, and was one of several ex-Guard Cadets in favor of restricting firearms, but other than that... no, none of our characters were any more influential in decisions than any other character.

I'm not saying you're a terrible person, you aren't. But you are definitely lying to yourself and others about what you do in a game.

This feels really condescending. In that vein, I think that this may be an issue of perception more than actuality. While our characters may not have massive advantages or be in positions that others cannot be in... if we're giving off the perception that they are, that's almost as big of a problem. And that's something we absolutely can and should work on if we ever Staff for someone else on another game.

[TNP]

Okay, feeling the need to add my two cents here. For the sake of transparency, I played Morgan. It was mentioned already way back in the thread but I might as well say so again. I played on 5W but as far as I know, I've never played with @GirlCalledBlu or @Seraphim73 anywhere else and I apped on 100 before knowing it was them who staffed it. I'm also NOT playing on the 5W reboot.

Issue #1.
It's true that their PCs were not in a position of power. However, by dint of being staff alts, they're almost automatically in positions of power. Now, I'm not afraid to be in conflict with staff alts and from day one, Morgan and Grey were pretty much arguing with each other on a near daily basis. But I think I'm the outlier when it comes to that.

Many people have had bad experiences crossing staff alts and that carries over from day to day. Even if that's not the case, many people assume that the goals and attitudes expressed by staff alts are the direction staff want the game to go so they're leery about trying to swim against the current even when, as Andi and Orion expressed multiple times in my hearing/reading both here and on the game, that's not intended to be the case.

Is that their fault? No. They're just playing their characters and, especially in Grey's case, forcefully expressing the views and loudly advocating for the desired course of action OF THEIR CHARACTERS. Not of staff. If players choose to follow along with it, that's their choice and not something staff has any control over. That being said, it is something staff need to be aware of and take into account. There is a very, very long history of staff abusing their positions and those who don't toe the line get the boot or relegated to the sidelines. It still happens though, fortunately, not as much as it used to. Still, the BNW thread is a great example of it.

Issue #2.
Regarding playing the game before it is opened to the public and starting out with an advantage, all I can say it that it is an issue. In fact, it is an issue on every single game I've ever played on. People decide to open a game, build it, invite their friends over to alpha and beta test it, and then open it to everyone else. And not once, to my knowledge, has staff ever reset their characters to starting stats. If it's not a game with XP (like trait based supers games), the staff and all their friends end up with all the most popular FCs. That doesn't make it right but as far as I've seen, it is the default state of opening a game.

Issue #3
This one has no qualifier: A husband and wife team should never be the sole staff on a game (not including the coder). I'll expand this to any two people who happen to be close and think similarly about the direction of the game. Two people are not enough to run a game. It's too easy to burn out. And, in regards to this thread, it's too easy to not get opposing viewpoints.

To use the example @Miss-Demeanor brought up, if you have to ask a player if doing something would be a bad idea, you don't have enough staffers to run ideas by. And the answer would have been: would you have given a player permission to do it? If the answer is no, then the staffer shouldn't be either. There's no qualifier here like in the other issues. It's just a bad idea. It doesn't work well.

After a long, long time, someone finally convinced me to staff. And there are things that happen that I have very definite opinions on. But there's 5-6 pretty active staffers and on anything regarding policy, theme or something similar, we talk it out. Sometimes my opinion gets outvoted or I get talked down. And that's fine. I have my biases and they aren't necessarily the best for the game (actually they are but I'm just waiting to say I told you so).

The point being, games need multiple staffers who don't necessarily have the same opinion on how the game should be. It's not only best for the game, it's less stressful for the staff to be able to take a break and not have everything come to a grinding halt.

[ThatGuyThere]

On a mush, as in most fiction, "In the Spotlight" is a position of leadership and power.

[Seraphim73]

@TNP said in The 100: The Mush:

Issue #3
This one has no qualifier: A husband and wife team should never be the sole staff on a game (not including the coder). I'll expand this to any two people who happen to be close and think similarly about the direction of the game.
...
The point being, games need multiple staffers who don't necessarily have the same opinion on how the game should be. It's not only best for the game, it's less stressful for the staff to be able to take a break and not have everything come to a grinding halt.

Based on past experiences (once could have been a coincidence, twice definitely wasn't), I now completely agree with y'all on this.

And the answer would have been: would you have given a player permission to do it? If the answer is no, then the staffer shouldn't be either.

In this case, we actually did allow another player to do it. But yes, that's always the question we've tried to ask one another, and one that every Staffer should ask whether the subject is something another Staffer wants to do or something that one of their friends wants to do. Again, completely in agreement.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Seraphim73 Perception may well be the biggest problem that happened on The 100. Because while you're saying that yes this happened but you fixed it... you're neglecting to mention that it happened for months and only got fixed after people had left the game and this thread had started getting snippy about how you two were handling the game. Having individual people approach you and voice concerns did nothing. You and @GirlCalledBlu were so wrapped up in your characters and your fun (perceived), that actually staffing the game fell into last place on the 'to do' list. People that you were warned about being troublesome weren't 'watched' as you claimed. They were neglected until they became such a huge problem that you had to do something. This wasn't a case of 'it came up and was handled within a week or so'. It was a case of 'it came up and was willfully ignored for months before it became such a huge problem that it drove a lot of people from the game before it was addressed'. By the time it got to the Grounders being open for play, I already had a foot out the door because of unresolved worries and concerns that you and @GirlCalledBlu claimed to be 'watching' and mostly just seemed to handwave off in favor of playing your PC's. And yeah, maybe Grey got toned down later, but it was MUCH later as it was still being talked about after I'd left the game.

The problem I see here is that you and your wife, while lovely people, are more invested in your own fun than you are in actually running the game. Which, as mentioned previously, is fine with a sandbox where everyone involved has largely agreed to what you want to do anyways. But on a public game that's open to everyone and anyone, that means that you quickly become the 'absentee landlord' in your own game. The impression that I personally got anytime I spoke to you or @GirlCalledBlu was that of trying to speak to someone playing a video game. Which is to say that you were distracted, uninterested, and just wanted me to go away so said whatever you had to to make that happen so you could get back to your fun. On the few occasions where either of you would poll players about something, the questions were pretty clearly worded to direct people towards a desired answer. As in, you had the answer that you wanted, and the question was worded to point people directly at the answer you desired. And no, polling a handful of players regarding what standards and practices staff should adhere to? Not at all what people are asking for here. They're saying you need someone else that's on the same level as you and your wife (ie. another staffer) that can be the balancing force for you.

Going to a player as staff on your staffbit and asking if they personally would have a problem with you doing something as a player that could well affect the game at large? Generally not the best way to get a real answer. All that shows me is that you have no sense of separation between staff and player. And yes, that is CRITICAL if you're going to play on a game you staff. If you cannot separate what happens to your characters as a player, and your authority as staff? That is a HUGE problem. You cannot blur those lines. Ever. That @GirlCalledBlu acknowledges having difficulty separating the two while being one of the only two staffers (the other of whom is her husband) on a game is truly worrisome. That neither of you see that as a problem is seriously worrisome.

I really do wish you both the best and I hope your sandbox 5W game is successful for you both. But I personally will never play on a game where the two of you staff until I have concrete evidence that the problems I saw on The 100, and here, are no longer an issue. Maybe its just perception, but what I perceived was utter ignoring of basic staff etiquette.

[mietze]

I actually do think no xp or other goodies should be given in beta, which is supposed to be testing and not hard open and usually pre advertising. It sets up an unfriendly environment to "outsiders."

[Auspice]

@mietze said in The 100: The Mush:

I actually do think no xp or other goodies should be given in beta, which is supposed to be testing and not hard open and usually pre advertising. It sets up an unfriendly environment to "outsiders."

Wholly agreed. XP, etc. should be reset before the full/live opening (as in some cases, it does need to be earned to properly test).

There's definitely something to overcome if you join a game 'late,' but if you're joining within the first couple months a game is open and there's already a massive power curve... something is wrong.

[mietze]

I don't care about power curve per se. After a few months there's always going to be a differential in an xp system. If your game is ready enough to give out xp though (that's not part of a tiered cg) I don't know that I agree it's really "soft rp" or in testing stage. But the fact that many places do allow people to gain territory/influence/xp in "beta" and "soft open" and there is a not entirely incorrect assumption that you'd better get in on it or else never have a chance to advance to top tier or be influential or get a territory or whatever...I think that's a reason that sometimes there's an overwhelming surge before a game is even ready in "beta" which has cause ld significant number of problems for quite a few new games (up to and including total burn out even before they reach hard open). And I think invite only (or vouch only) but accumulation of assets beta games once they open should label themselves more accurately as "sandbox game now letting the public in". As I've said before, no problems with sandboxes or changing status at all--but it doesn't do anyone any services to not call it what it is.

[Seraphim73]

@Miss-Demeanor said in The 100: The Mush:

@Seraphim73 Perception may well be the biggest problem that happened on The 100. Because while you're saying that yes this happened but you fixed it... you're neglecting to mention that it happened for months and only got fixed after people had left the game and this thread had started getting snippy about how you two were handling the game. ... By the time it got to the Grounders being open for play, I already had a foot out the door because of unresolved worries and concerns that you and @GirlCalledBlu claimed to be 'watching'

Actually, the last log on the Wiki from your character (assuming I have the right character, if not, I apologize) was IC Day 5. So, 10 RL days. The Grounders were introduced 2 RL weeks into the game (1 IC week). Grounder PCs beyond the first two were on-grid and RPing by IC Day 11 (22 RL days into the game). Just to be clear on the timeline here. And here we come into the perception issue, because we were watching many of the "problem players," and we talked to some of them who we thought were doing things the worst. We may not have come down on them as hard as you would have liked, or, given how things ended up, as openly as we perhaps should have. But your perception that we were doing nothing is not consistent with what we were doing.

There are, however, things that we have learned from this experience. We do not plan to Headstaff on other public games. We've discovered that it's not our cup of tea, and we that have some issues as Headstaff (especially as sole Headstaff, as has been mentioned by you and others here, and we admitted previously was not a good choice) that while we will certainly try to correct going forward, are even easier to simply avoid by not putting ourselves in that position again.

I think you strongly underestimate our intentions to separate player and staff roles and our (general) ability to do so. We definitely did slip up a few times, but I am a very, very strong proponent of the separation between player and staff, always tried to shift any Staff discussions to Staff bits rather than player bits, apologized whenever I answered an on-channel question from a player bit rather than Staff bit, and always tried to separate myself from my role as a player whenever considering something as a Staffer. I explicitly stated on channels and in OOC many times that Grey's words were the words of a character, not a Staffer, and in fact, he ended up being wrong more often than he was right -- by quite a bit -- because I wanted to discourage people from simply taking what he said as the Word of God (and because it can be quite amusing for your character to be wrong). And to be clear, @GirlCalledBlu mentioned sometimes failing to separate the Staffer and Player bits -- as in, talking to someone from a Player bit about Staff issues. Yes, it blurs the lines, yes it's bad, but it's an "oops, my bad" sort of bad, not a "OH GOD, THESE PEOPLE DO NOT SEE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING A STAFFER AND BEING A PLAYER" bad.

@Auspice and @mietze - I can definitely see that perspective, and would absolutely suggest such a thing to the Headstaff of any game I beta'd or assisted with going forward.

@Auspice said in The 100: The Mush:

There's definitely something to overcome if you join a game 'late,' but if you're joining within the first couple months a game is open and there's already a massive power curve... something is wrong.

Definitely not a massive power curve. It was a few XP, I believe 2-3. In fact, we had to boost the power of the starting Delinquents after the introduction of the Grounder/Adult Arker PCs to bring the Delinquents up to the starting level of other PCs. Still, the point, as noted above, is well taken.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Miss-Demeanor said in The 100: The Mush:

Going to a player as staff on your staffbit and asking if they personally would have a problem with you doing something as a player that could well affect the game at large? Generally not the best way to get a real answer.

Wow did this actually happen? To me is is like a superior at work going to the subordinate and asking for a day off, or course the person in a lesser position of authority will say it is cool basic pack socialization and fear of possible reprisals will almost guarantee that.
Sure a few would give honest answers and I might depending on how well knew the staffer but in the majority of cases a blind rubber stamp will be given because that is the course of least resistance.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Seraphim73 Yes. Because everyone has every single scene logged and posted to the wiki. I don't feel the need to trumpet my every interaction for one and all to see. But thank you for your assumption that just because I wasn't posting logs that it meant I had left the game! And no, I had @GirlCalledBlu approach me about a player matter from her staff bit. Speaking from a staff bit carries with it an inherent authority that I am not eager to test the boundaries of.

[Ganymede]

@GirlCalledBlu said in The 100: The Mush:

L&L games draw players in who want major political power. TFW was a war game with a L&L component, and you're not wrong that L&L games have a certain set-up to them that might not work, but all of them have. I don't have a feasible solution to that, beyond staggering where positions of power open and provide more easily-accessible ladders to those lower on the totem pole.

Starting off a game with NPCs at the top isn't a bad start. It's a problem when it never changes for no explicable reason.

NPCs on top is a great way to start activity in a house. Once one or more houses seems to attract a good number of players that are self-generating RP, then there are ways to transition the NPC out. If it's a matter of internal status, you could implement an IC voting system where, each week or other cycle, players can upvote and downvote PCs in the House, with status changing based on the up-down vote. Whatever floats your boat.

Just remember that NPCs-on-top is a great way to start a game, but it's better if it is not permanent. Let the PCs of invested players eventually take over.

[BobGoblin]

I believe, from reading the posts of others, having talked to people and knowing the background of Seraphim and blu, the issue is this being a pattern. A pattern of placing their chars in positions of authority and using those positions to manipulate players into behavior patterns they want. Whether it is as staff of their own games (fifth world/the 100) or of games they've staffed on (Various SW games), the result is always the same.

Play characters and insert self into position of authority ICly and OOCly.
Manipulate things OOCly to match their desires.
Get upset when things don't go right.
Quit.

I think the issue people have is that this cycle occurs and when you are making/running the game there is no check/balance on this happening. That's why other staff are important. It's also why when they do this on games they don't run (see: SW games) and the other staff dont' hold them in account, things get rough.

SImply understanding the dynamic you guys create, intentional or not, and bringing it to light is my own attempt. Love RPing with you two, love the stories. Wish that 'self' would come later; especially when in positions of OOC authority.

[Sunny]

@Seraphim73

What you say, no matter how many times you say it, no matter how loudly you say it, will never be as important as what you do.

[Auspice]

@Seraphim73

I was just agreeing with it as a general point. I didn't play on The 100 (the theme didn't interest me), so I don't know what the 'starting' range was. I saw it as a general point for games that roll from beta to live and was agreeing with it. Don't worry.

[Cupcake]

@Auspice said in The 100: The Mush:

@Seraphim73

I was just agreeing with it as a general point. I didn't play on The 100 (the theme didn't interest me)

Uh. That is NOT why you told me you wouldn't play there.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Cupcake snitches get stitches

[Auspice]

@Cupcake said in The 100: The Mush:

@Auspice said in The 100: The Mush:

@Seraphim73

I was just agreeing with it as a general point. I didn't play on The 100 (the theme didn't interest me)

Uh. That is NOT why you told me you wouldn't play there.

It was one of the reasons. I gave you a couple, but I do know I said that I had no interest in the theme. Not wanting to play on another game run by Seraphim and Blu is another and I've spoken with them about this.

[GirlCalledBlu]

Perceptions are important.

People are presenting their perceptions of events, and -- while I do not agree with how they think something happened -- I respect that their perceptions are important and count, just as I hope they respect my perceptions.

Not once have I felt that I was abusing players, my role as a Staffer, or the way in which we ran games. Obviously that is not how some of you feel. So, best I can do is apologize for any point in my Staffing career where my actions were perceived that way. I appreciate those who have given constructive feedback.

Because I feel my perception of the whole Gideon/Grounders thing should be noted. Running the idea of two PCs being the Grounders captured and introduced to the 100 was suggested to me by a friend of mine that I have Staffed with in the past. They suggested that I ask a variety of players about how to introduce Grounders, because of the very reasons people bring up about the "echo chamber." And frankly, I asked @Miss-Demeanor because I had asked a couple other players, they gave me some feedback, and one of those players suggested I ask her because they believed she would provide me with some good feedback. She was presented as a person who would be a good one to ask, so I asked.

That's really all my intentions were, and if they were perceived as poorly, then I apologize for that.

At this point, I feel like there's really not much else I can say. I feel that some perceptions here are incorrect, and the accusations accompanying them are something I am thinking about more.

I adore being part of this community, but the impression I am getting here is that I am not a good Staffer, so there's that. I'm not going to turn into that person that people don't RP with or interact with because I made poor decisions, or thought I was doing a good job and I wasn't.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[ThatGuyThere]

@GirlCalledBlu
How you ask the question is very important. Asking "How should I introduce Grounders?" will get you a lot more of an honest answer then "Should I introduce Grounders like this?" especially if asked from a staff bit.
The first will likely get real answer (even if a lot of the answer are going to be I'm not sure) while the second in most cases will get some variation of that works because why rock the boat when you have given the appearance that the direction has been decided on.