Start with people having not a full pool of resource at the start of any kind of an interaction that might require it, and go up from there. Give a vampire 3 Vitae unless he is part of a territorial claim. Give a werewolf 3 Essence for his Gifts. Then people who want to really play the game can go get that Resource and have the full suite of benefits. 
I feel kind of like the odd man out here, but I feel I have the courage to ask the question anyway: The idea that something is a bar to rp, or a hurdle, or unfair because not everyone wants to play that way, or wants to play politics, or hold territory. These things kind of confuse me to some extent because in my mind I think:
. o O (If I'm playing a Vampire, don't I want to feel hunger, and want to feed to recoup the danger of being too hungry?)
. o O (If I am playing a werewolf, don't I want to have territory, and possibly even a loci?)
I'm confused on general principal. If the game has a territorial system, and that system is integrated with my template, such that I need to feed to maintain my suitability for other kinds of RP, I can see a holiday/vacation mode where you just opt out of running to 0 (zero) and becoming a monster, just because nobody can be online 24/7 and be sane, but the idea that there should be zero consequences ever to such a thing... Why am I playing a vampire?
TR is a great example. You can just log in, and idle for 3 years, nobody'll say boo to you running out of blood. But if you are going around torturing activity out of the game, burning a lot of vitae points, and finding yourself in a situation where you are punished with difficulty getting more, or worse, to get more requires you to stake a claim and defend it, my answer would be:
Don't go around the fucking game torturing it for activity that makes you spend too much vitae.
The game is the game. Am I the only one who is thinking this way? I can't be the only one who is thinking the game is the game, and you sign-up for all parts of it when you accept the disclaimer logging into that game. I mean, do we really believe the game's rules should just not apply to us because they're inconvenient to our happy funtime?
I feel like saying, if you don't want the responsibilities that go along with playing a certain thing, then don't ask to play it.. . .
I mean this is true of nearly every game you can play. Cards run low in card games. Resources take thought. Chess has a finite number of pieces you can lose to achieve your objectives. If you don't like playing, why are you playing?
@Thenomain agree to disagree. When people have things to do, I watch a PVP shouting match that spills over to Channels like once every year. When people have nothing to do, they're always screaming at one another and complaining about being blocked somehow from destroying one another and who's a staff pet and who's a whack job and who's a jerk for having too many dice and who's entrenched and who's not flexible and who's unenlightened.
@Sunny has a point. We know by now with a pretty empirical record that the community thrives off people being allowed to tell stories with very little oversight. While it will never be 100% possible to trust 100% of the people to run 100% of the things in a way that does not some % of the time turn out to be a spectacle the staff were never expecting. The general rule of thumb is, if the people invested in storytelling aren't telling any stories because your game system has so many hurdles in the way of their running something that it's a job to run anything... you only hurt your game. You're discouraging people from participating, and yet, you want them to go through this inordinate volume of hurdles to participate. It goes both ways. They want their contribution to be uncomplicated and fun, and you want them to participate.
This means a game's first line in defense of inactivity is to look at just what their PRP rules are, and to think about quickly rewriting them and relaxing them to the point that activity starts again.
I find much of PVP stems from the lack of PRPs. People have no Pure to rip apart, so they turn on one another. All the loud mouthed people you love to hate stop sitting around spewing vitriol at everybody and go out and eat something when there is something to be had. Take away the something, they only have other people to turn on.
@Sunny I keep picturing this scene where the dancer is doing high leg kicks in a saloon girl dress at the gate to occupy the guards who are scratching their heads wondering wtf just happened, while the 3 werewolves abscond with the truck on their backs, will powering through death rage so they don't break anything as they tip toe out of the industrial parking lot.
@Catsmeow man, if someone changed my Template without asking me, my boot would lodge so far up that ass, it'd require a new zip code.
@Thenomain a lot of players seem to come from some strange (to me) dice less continuum of gaming that involves raising baby dragon eggs, dancing in Disney ballroom scenes, putting on musicals, and shit like that, without dice, and getting titles from something called feature characters where the title came with the char they asked for off a list.
So I think it is just the clash of various cultures meeting in the same river crossing. With 300 wagons abreast you're bound to have folks who don't get that the game line involves a measure of success and failure through rolling, or who find that boring because of the time consuming effort behind trying to control success in your favor. Just as you're bound to get folks who have only ever dealt with that and who spend far too much time working on figuring it out, even eschewing a lot of RP to do it.
In essence, the Pure RPer thinks the Rules Lawyer has lost sight of the point of the game, and the Rules Lawyer thinks the Pure RPer never got the point of the game in the first place.
So my answer to the question of Whose Responsibility Is It Anyway? is that it is the responsibility of the participant to not stick their dick in anyone's ear. Which is to say, play the game, and if you spy out someone who doesn't play how you like, or a ST who is resistant to the same, take a step back and ask yourself if if is worth alienating everyone involved by pushing for no poses/tons of rolling (or tons of poses/no rolling).
Where we seem to make our mistake is in foisting our preferences all over the game screen and screaming at anyone with a different vested interest. There's usually so many people around, if you just can't stand that dice just rolled by, be pro-active and get thee to a room where people don't like them dice. Or if there's no dice to speak of, and you're bored, get thee to a room with dice.
There's no need to perform a real time exorcism with the people present, trying to banish the dice, or summon them, as your gamer-religious preference might be.
@Corruption don't y'all got like 3 more months of winter? 
@Catsmeow You know what I hate, is the "ST" - and I use those quotes loosely - who start the combat by saying, "We won't be rolling any dice today. Just have fun and pose what you think your character can do!"
@Arkandel which is why historically the Dungeon Master has usually said this is a Level 3 Campaign and your characters need to all be Level 3. Didn't they actually attempt to do this with White Wolf for a while? They did their little Storytelling Adventure Synopsis or whatever that had like Mental 2, Physical 4, Social 2, and required a character between 40-80 xp to qualify.
So maybe the point is that the way in which Plots are advertised is too lazy. inviting the All Game to the rodeo instead of saying Characters 100-200 with Social primary is an option we should be exploring.
@Darinelle said:
[i]f you walk into a murder mystery, roll dice once to reverse time to see what happened, say who did it, and walk out - well, good job asshole.
I think your expectations are high. You're counting on the idea that the average player's level of intelligence has baked into it the word subtly. Given all the crazy top-heavy broads and 98 lb str 6 feral guys and the like floating around, do you really think people are smart enough to handle their Time and Space Arcanum in a better way?
If you are expecting someone to be subtle enough to step in, use their Arcanum, find this information out, and then spend 4 hours dropping really subtle clues as to the identity of the culprit, such as pointing out the lone gun casing hidden behind the dumpster, or pushing the forensics test into making an identifiable thumbprint, or pushing the computer into finding a correct match with a little bit of legerdemain, you're setting your bar really high.
This is the modern era Internet. We want all the things instantaneously. Patience died in 1999.
@Darinelle said:
When every scene becomes centered around the same person because they min-maxxed and I didn't, that's going to make me take my ball and go home.
I think this is actually a separate issue, if seemingly related, and has more to do with people than sheets at all. Some people walk big. There are players who just walk big. This is something which is hard to define. Some players want to be the center of attention, and really the sheet can be a tool for that kind of behavior, but it isn't wholly necessary. They can take over the RP in the blink of an eye just by virtue of walking big. It becomes about them, because they choose it to be about them. Most of us don't try to walk big, and when we encounter someone who does, we sometimes feel like we're just the audience to their moments.
Feeling like the audience to someone who is being larger than life is a real, tangible thing that certain people dislike-that sense of being overshadowed. We don't need to so much qualify it as we need to understand that it happens. I wouldn't lay blame on the sheet, however. While the sheet might be a helpful tool in that scenario, really, it's just the take no prisoner's attitude of the person walking big that is the real challenge to be overcome - how to approach them about sharing the light, so we aren't always in their shadow.
The truth is, if you are feeling overshadowed, then a change of scenery might be in order, because certainly there is RP somewhere that would lead to feeling more or less important, certainly. Your Storyteller could hear your feelings, obviously, and try to include more ways to share the light. You could point out to the big person that they're being big, and wielding a cudgel wildly, and you would appreciate sharing the light a might.
Even something as simple as, "We feel like our RP is being impacted here, and you're being a bit disruptive, can you tone it back some so we can finish up?" One person'll scream at you like a child and stomp a foot. But the average person is going to go, "Oh, oh, sorry, my bad," and take it on the chin without a flinch.
@somasatori has an idea, and runs with it. There should be room, given there is room within the rules and setting. The reason we cleave to the tried and true ideas of tank or healer or crafter is that they are easy to fit into. The entire point of these kinds of roles, and the classes that reflect them, is that you can take the idea and walk right into the role. Whether you're a great tank, at the end of things, depends. But anyone can make a tank.
So the real question becomes, how can you take your concept and make it indispensable to others, and gleam RP as your reward? Or, at the very least, this is the question I would ask.
@Darinelle there is a time and a place for everything, and sheets are one of the everythings. If you RP being intimidating, and I ask to roll Resistance, and you lose, and storm out of the scene because I didn't RP being cowed, I have to ask myself why your RP was so important I couldn't succeed without ruining all the fun?
Fun shouldn't happen at the expense of others, but in an ever changing climate where fun has many different definitions, fun can be defined many different ways. When just having a sheet is enough to offend you on a game that isn't statless, I have to beg the question: Why are you even logging in to such a game? Surely there are statless alternatives out there.
@somasatori This is why where minmaxing originated had a system - or tried to anyway - of difficulty. In other words, you knew that it was a Level 4 challenge so you needed Level 4 characters to meet that challenge. If you brought a level 1 along, chances are, they would not survive the challenge.
Now days in gaming we have a different sentimentality, we want all the things for all the peoples, and so you sometimes have Joe Nobody next to Jane Awesome. And Jane Awesome is going to rock the shit out of that content, if it is scaled for Joe Nobody to survive.
i've always separated characters myself. If you have Captain Amazo and your partners are Sidekick Kennys then I go to the effort of having Sidekick Kennys doing things that are challenging for them, like cracking the electronic lock to the warehouse and hijacking the security cameras inside, and I separate Captain Amazo out to take on the army in the parking lot alone.
@Arkandel anything that you can do to make you feel safe should be something - within the rules - that you are allowed to at least attempt. I know most people who try to keep a low profile do so with the knowledge that it's ultimately useless. But if it makes you feel better for a while, hey, why not?
I come in at the opposite side of the spectrum to the alt transparency discussion. I only keep tabs on alts of people who have burned me in some fashion in the past, expressly for the purpose of simply finding something else on a game to be doing that avoids involvement with them.
Call it metagaming all you like, or label it and package it how you feel, but the bottom line is if I left HM to get away from the person who was playing all 10 of the alts my 1 alt had interaction with, because Staff questioned me about COI when they caught me playing in the business her 1 alt worked at, her 2nd alt owned, her 3rd alt funded, and her 4th alt was after in a hostile takeover, was getting shaken down by the alt in the alley outside, and was living with her alt cross-town, and the idea I was only ever playing with was 1 basically stalking player had turned my stomach, and then when I go to TR and she follows and makes a new 10 alts to brush into mine, I feel entitled, upon finding out it's her, to have my stomach turn and try to find another spot on the game to play. Or to avoid the Sphere she is in charge of when she finally swaps to Staff.
That's really the only reason I watch for signs of altaholism. Self-preservation.
I become frustrated when minmaxing players are automatically presumed to be dicks, bad RPers, terrible folks, and so on.
I become more frustrated when minmaxing, you are approved, and then a game actively engages in a house rule overhaul to manipulate their internal systems into either flat-out removing the benefits of your minmaxing, or making what you decided to minmax into an actual method of cheating.
I become even more frustrated when the staff refuses to let you start all over in light of their manipulative house ruling immediately after your trip thru CG.
There is nothing more obnoxious to me than sitting on a character that has been effectively neutered, actually liking the character you made, story-wise, and having little reason to play the character because it's sheet is now either effectively a mess, or completely useless, or worst case, completely inappropriate to the game.
But the worst is when players automatically treat you badly when it gets around that you minmax characters. I've seen players engage in everything from rumors - "Don't play with them, they're just out to PK you, ruddy minmaxers!" - to outright complaints to staff that you should be sanctioned, punished, or even removed from the game because you 'ruin it for others'.
We all log in to have fun, and to be entertained. Sometimes players don't think that minmaxers have feelings too.
@Thenomain said:
I can undermine it even as staff by simply ignoring it and leaving no paper trail, giving you no way to enforce it or even know it's being undermined.
That begs the question. If someone does not log, what do you do?
I have seen crime come up on a variety of games, but it has led to a lot of troubles in my experiences across numerous games. The question I have this morning is, how could Crime be handled better?
In my experience, most games become anti-Crime. Criminal RP is about catching, containing, and then finishing a character, typically through retiring the character. If we proceed from the assumption that all RP is good RP, why does it seem so often that Crime RP is not only bad, but unsustainable? Can Crime be handled better? Must characters be forcibly retired from Crime RP? Are there alternatives that could be seen?