Posts made by Auspice

@Sparks said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

I want to point out we've also just had a whole different thread where various people spent time expounding on the belief that the joy and pleasure derived from staffing should be reward enough for staff.

I just want to say that while I didn't post in that thread, I do not agree with that concept.
I totally think Staff should receive some sort of benefit for the work that they do. Should it be a HUGE benefit? Nah. But there ought to be something.

IMO, re: that idea, yes Staff should totally get something out of it. I'm guessing other people believed the same. So, personally my point still stands. It's a volunteer gig, yes. You're earning (IMO since I fully believe and wouldn't staff anywhere that pulled some sort of 'THE TRUE JOY IS IN STAFFING ITSELF HEE HEE' bs) benefits (just like, say, I help out at a Con and my BENEFIT is getting a pass to the Con to enjoy myself whenever I'm not doing volunteer work!) so you need to balance it out by doing, y'know, the things I outlined.

..if you're staffing on so draconian a place that they're saying THOU CANNOT HAVE ANY BENEFITS EVEN SUCH AS A PLAYER MIGHT HAVE mebbe it's time to not staff there,

Something I have also been considering throughout this thread whenever the 'Staff are volunteers!' comes up: volunteer work is still work. If you volunteer for an organization IRL, you are expected to comport yourself as a professional and you don't really get to pick and choose (generally) what you do. You might get to choose a department or request a 'top 3,' but then you're handed work. You do that work.

When we say 'you need to make yourself available to all players, even the ones you might not like,' we aren't saying: 'you have to suffer the abusive players.' We're saying: 'even if that girl is annoying or that guy poses like he's a piece of set dressing, you need to be willing to interact with them.' We're saying: 'even if taking your NPC out to provide that plot hook to the PC that poses that god awful accent isn't as fun as going to RP with your bff for the second day in a row, you need to do it because they asked.'

It's being responsible with your position of power. It's volunteer work, but it's still work. You took on a mantle of responsibility and if you can't handle those responsibilities, then maybe it's time to step down. Anyone can run plot as a player. Almost every single game out there welcomes and practically begs for players to run plot. If you want to run plot with the freedoms to run it however you want and for whomsoever you want... then relieve yourself of the burdens and demands of being a Staffer to do so.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

but then I remember the one time a prof out of Indiana U called us to investigate a thing and it was.......... well let's just say it has been plot fodder for years.

...share this story? Please? All curious now.

I'll share it sort of in brief because when I try to share the whole story it gets... rambly because I'll begin remembering other parts in fits and starts.

I joined an established group where the members were across Cincinnati and Dayton (mostly Dayton, so I had a bit of a haul when I'd do stuff with them since I was in Cincinnati). A lot of what we did early on was just plan weekend events going out to 'known' haunted sites to see what we could find, if anything. Lot of disproving at first. Basically spending all night out around this haunted bridge or that haunted burned down spot and coming back with nada and the people running the group would post up out findings and go 'nope. nothing here.' Which was part of why I dug it. There wasn't that level of 'THESE DUST MOTES ARE TOTALLY...'

But then this prof calls us and says he had a family reach out to him, begging him for help with their son. Reports of all this 'activity' around him. Well, the prof had found out about us (these people lived on the Indiana/Ohio border) and asked if we could go check it out.

It was a long drive into the middle of nowhere. Their place is miles from anyone else, double-wide trailer on a large plot of land, backing up to a tree covered hill (fuck that hill... it still shows up in nightmares...). Redneck family. Nice enough family, but just sort of what you'd expect in hill country. The four of us who went introduce ourselves, interview the family. This kid is... 10, 11 and he's being tormented by something and it's started to affect the family too (father, mother, sister). We check out the house and... parents seem like maybe they do some drugs but not enough to see any signs that are worrying. The house is clean. The kids are clean, well-fed, well-clothed. Everyone just seems ... worried. Anxious.

But this kid was troubled. And not like, kid-gone-bad type troubled. Like something was affecting him sort of troubled. And overall it was just feeling... off. This wasn't feeling like a haunting deal.

The guy who ran the group decides he wants to check out the woods behind the house. And I'd just had increasingly bad feelings about them. I'm not a 'scared of the woods' type, either. I love the woods. I love hiking, camping, trails...

This is where my memory gets fuzzy. I don't have clear memories of what happened when I tried walking up that hill. The fourth person stayed at the house. Our leader was totally fine on the hill. The other woman who tried walking up with me barely got a handful of feet in before she felt it, too, and had to flee. I got nauseated. Dizzy. The trees just sort of... moved, blended together. It was ... sometimes I think I saw things through them. I don't know. It might have been that it was late by then and I was dizzy. It might also be because of the recurring dreams I've had every so often since. I just know that it was a struggle leaving and it felt wrong. I've never had a place feel as wrong as that hill did.

We interviewed the family again at length and that's when it came out that the phenomena around the kid would stop happening there and pick up at his grandmother's whenever he'd go to visit her. That was the ah-ha moment. It was tied to him. We sort of came through that and what all else we put together that this was not a haunting or 'spirit' in the sense of what we dealt with and we felt it more fell in the realm of, well, the church. We ended up passing it back to the prof and recommended he speak to the church to have them step in and handle the rest.

...and well, see, even wanting to 'nutshell' it I still rambled. I can't help it. It's sort of scarred itself into me. And I know a lot of it is just like, 'Auspice, dude, that's totally just a plot scene come on' but it wasn't. And before that I was totally a skeptic who had just watched so much Ghosthunters shit that I wanted to run around cool abandoned places and record things and be that person disproving everything. But after that night I wanna be a legendtripper and disprove more so I can find the things that are real. ...even if I end up with a few more mental scars.

@scar

@Wretched said in RL Anger:

@Ghost Theres all sorts of moaning coming from the basement!

DONT COME IN HERE!

knowing what I do of Ghost's SO...

...those would be moans of pain as someone was separated from their genitalia.

I kind of

sort of

miss the RL ghost hunting I did

but then I remember the one time a prof out of Indiana U called us to investigate a thing and it was.......... well let's just say it has been plot fodder for years.

@Pandora said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

But what it all eventually boils down to is that NPCs are going to play where their player's interests and enjoyment lies. Being someone that gripes about staff not paying them attention doesn't make you fun, interesting, or enjoyable. So you're probably going to live your best life on a game where being fun isn't as important to staff as making sure everyone is getting their turn, deserved or not, in the spotlight.
Serious question though: Why would anyone ever want staff/NPC attention from anyone they had to bully/harass/shame into RPing with them? I'd feel super gross if I thought someone was begrudgingly RPing with me.

I need to point out here that some of the people arguing the points in this thread (or upvoting posts doing so) are people I know for a fact are really positive members of the community. Like Seraphim74, Wretched, Derp.... They've been really strong. uplifting people (ST a lot, help fellow players out, active, don't publicly complain on-game, etc) when I've seen them on games. So I'm not really digging the tone of this post.

I was doing some chores around the apt a minute ago and I think a lot of the issues here are:

we all agree on the bad ethics of 'Staff who spend a lot of exclusive time with just one or two people via NPCs' - that can be agreed on. We're muddying around in other places. The issue is that for so, so many years, it has been acceptable practice to do so. So many Staff on so many breed of games have just done this that it's become an acceptable (if bad) practice. And it sounds like, out of everything else we've agreed or disagreed on (such as whether Staff NPCs should be shared among Staff or can be exclusive to a single Staffer): this needs to change.

Staffers should be available and approachable on their NPCs. Yes, of course, within reason. We all have a limited capacity for how much we can play, but no Staffer should be letting one or two players monopolize all of their time on an NPC. And it's a practice we should all start voting on in the ways we can. If we're a fellow Staffer, speak up/out. If we're a player, vote with our feet. It's not cool.

@krmbm

but why can't we RP toothbrushing together all the time?!

@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Ghost

I completely agree. I just have a different perspective than the community on it; I'd rather fire the unethical staffer every single time than make a particular plot element off limits.

I'm not saying omg no sexual aspects in plot.
On Reno there was a plot where one of the PCs slept (off camera) with a plot NPC (only existed for the plot). All happened off camera AFAIK and was kind of humorous in context..

I am totally ok with that. It was hilarious and fit with the plot.

What I'm not OK with is long-term exclusive relationships with Staff NPCs be they romantic or not (like my protégé example). Because that's something inaccessible to other players. It's elevating one player beyond everyone else and giving them something no one else can have on a long-term basis.

You used games like SWtOR or DA in previous examples: that works there because YOU are the singular player. In ME, I can hit up Jack because it's just her and me. But on a MU not everyone can hit that because she is one jealous B.

I'd have just as much issue with BobStaffer exclusively taking Nick out to the gun range three days a week on his NPC for plot RP and denying that route of play to anyone else as I would if he was TSing Jane three days a week for plot and denying that route to anyone else.

It's basically elevating those people to a level no one else can ever have or hope to have and giving them access no one else can achieve. Giving them a window into plot that no one else can get to.

It just so happens that nine times out of ten, exclusive plot opportunities like this occur in relation to relationships. Other examples might be some esteemed leader taking on a protégé under their wing. That'd also get the side eye and cries of favoritism and the 'Why do they get this inner path to plot that the rest of us don't?! What did they do that's so special to make them an A-lister on the game while we're all just B-listers to look on while they take center stage?'

And part of it, too, lies in how the players handle it.

How often do we see those players stop RPing with the rest of the player base? How often do they start RPing more and more exclusively with Staff NPCs or just their BFFs where before they might have been more social? Sure it might be intended to 'okay you got the plot from me, Staff NPC, now go share it...' but then they go RP with other NPC, then three others,and only two weeks later do they RP with their besties who RP in a big circle for the next four months and outside of that little group the player base doesn't get that plot thread that the super special scene 'handed out' until nearly half a year later.

That is why people chafe at the idea. Because by the time they, the not-center-cast get to it, it's been picked over, investigated, maybe even solved and everyone is on to the next.

So IMO players who get these lauded spots should maybe feel some of that obligation to get out there beyond their usual circles and share and Staff should make sure they find other venues to share the plot to make sure it gets out, too, rather than just hand it to one singular person (even if they intend / hope that person spreads it because usually that spread takes many months and is what leads to people feeling really left out).

I've tried to bring this up before, but I sort of feel as if the last time I did it sort of delved into a 'but because I was burned by someone I know giving people any sort of leeway is how we end up with Spiders and Cullens' because my attempt to say hey, don't assume the worst of everyone and don't approach everyone as the worst possible scenario was...Apparently instead taken as 'give blanket forgiveness to everyone that has ever harmed you'? (This is at least how it had read to me and was my feel on the response)

Or maybe people do just firmly stand on the side of 'because I've been burned in the past I know I will absolutely definitely be burned again so it's best to just assume everyone has fire for hands'.

I'd rather that not be the case. And I know I can be guilty of kneejerk reactions myself sometimes (it's sort of a human nature deal, esp in those of us with anxiety since our fitefitefite mode is flipped to always on), but damn if I'm not trying to be better.

I will make dragons for y'all.

My favorite to this day was the Maleificent-inspired green. She was amazing.

ETA: that I wrote for someone else that is. My favorite that I received was my bronze on HT.

After a couple decades I finally got my dream gold and the game died during weyrlinghood so.

Fun times.

I'd transfer her somewhere if there were somewhere to go. I liked being SearchCo during the days I did that on StS and HT. Designing dragons for people was hella fun.

@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Thenomain said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

There is so much packed in that statement that I'm just going to leave it there and walk slowly away, around the corner, and break into a flat-out run.

Well, now you have to fail weyrlinghood and do the entire 12 weeks over again.

Poor weyrlinghood experiences are, I swear, why a great many people idle out before they graduate.

I sometimes multi-scene. Depends on what the primary scene is. Is it 3+ people? If so, I prob ain't gonna multi. Is it a one-on-one and the other person is taking 20+ minutes to pose?

...sorry chief I'm prob gonna multi-scene or watch Netflix between poses cause otherwise you are risking me wandering afk and forgetting we were RPing in the first place.

There is a teeny tiny part of me wondering how much plot I've missed out on over the years because I've never flirted with / tried to bang an NPC.

@Derp said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Auspice

No, no.

Ok. Let me try this again, since this doesn't seem to be doing the thing.

You are a staffer running an NPC. You have, for sake of argument, two people with regular access to this NPC. One person RPs with this NPC almost every night (because, I dunno, they're the PCs mentor or something).

You still need to make sure that you are giving screen time to the other person. The way that you do that is:

1. Either run multiple scenes,

-or-

2. Make sure that they are getting access to said NPC in another fashion.

If you aren't doing one of those things, and just cut the PC off from the NPC for no valid reason, then you are failing in your duties as the staffer running said NPC.

Okay. Yes. We are in agreement on that.

It's just that your phrasing previously used seemed to imply that staffers should be required to multi-scene to give everyone the time they want and I am sort of heeeeeeell no on that idea.

@Derp

Yeeeeah, but that sort of reads like (I mean really? 'dereliction of duty'?): if you staff and run NPCs then you absolutely must be willing to run multiple scenes at once or else you are a bad staffer and uh

Dude.

You're better than this.

Because there is no fucking way I am running a +event in one window and then multiple NPC scenes in other windows 'just because' the tools exist.

You know what doesn't exist? My mental capacity to do so.

@Tinuviel said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Auspice said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

some people can't handle multiple scenes at once.

And some people don't appreciate people they're with being in multiple scenes.

(actually I've never multi-scened when we RP)

@Derp said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Auspice said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

It also, on platforms like Ares, gives a very convenient place to attach logs.

I hear that on Ares you can have your PC in multiple scenes at once without the need to proxy things over, which is a point in its favor, and I think would resolve a LOT of issues around PC/NPC access.

You can so long as the others are via web portal.

Though you do miss an important factor of the multiple scene factor: some people can't handle multiple scenes at once.