Posts made by Coin

@Ganymede said:

@Arkandel said:

What do you hope to gain with it? What's the goal, that is?

@Sunny has already stated that she wants to return to an older system of governance. I can't say that I disagree.

Not really a responsive answer.

@Arkandel said:

I have two issues. Someone like @Coin with personal experience on the staff-side of it could chip in.

1. Just because you have people offering to run spread plot around doesn't mean they will, especially after the game first opens. Even on Eldritch the number of people who were pledging themselves as PrP runners versus the number of PrPs that actually got ran over its first months don't align.

Yup. Even well-intentioned people who started plots petered out, didn't want to anymore, or had real life smack'em in the face unexpectedly (or expectedly, but they didn't prepare for it enough).

2. As noted in this thread, it's pretty common for staff to underestimate the amount of work they're signing themselves up to do. This fact is compounded by factors outside your control - nasty players with entitlement issues, real life blowing up good intentions in key people, the creeping realization you don't have spare time to play your own game any more and so on.

This, too, is a factor. I know I overshot; but I overshot a lot less than I would have before, and less than others did. Frankly, if I had to do it again, I would probably lobby for more storytelling staff from the get go, so it's good that @Sunny is doing that. It doesn't guarantee anything, but it's more foresight than we put into it (at least, I assume so; I actually had another person who was going to ST but things fell through. Oh well).

That, along with my previous remark about STs (staff or otherwise) actually giving up their opportunities for advancement in order to run plot for others is the reason I'm arguing against this.

I already commented on this above.

@Sunny said:

While I do maintain that I feel that it's unethical (that's never going to change) I recognize that other people don't agree, and I'm not judging anyone for the opinion itself.

Heh. I you, but telling me you think it's unethical and then saying you're not going to judge people for it is an oxymoron. If you think something someone is doing is unethical, you are judging them as acting unethically. I mean, I get what you meant; but the way you expressed it is entirely contradictory.

@Sunny said:

@Cobaltasaurus said:

The biggest flaw in your logic is that staffing is not a job. It is a volunteered activity.

It's a volunteer job. It isn't serving at a soup kitchen and that's not a great example, but it is absolutely a job. We fundamentally disagree on this level. If they're not doing it for the love of the game, I don't really want them.

The idea that giving them experience also means they are only do it for the experience is fundamentally flawed, though. People who want to run plot, will try to run plot; people who don't, won't. You might get some outliers who only want to run plot for the XP, but those are few and they tend to peter out because their plots are lazy, boring, and/or inconsistent.

I've played on games with and without XP, and I have always ended up running plot--whether there was XP involved or not. Even on games with XP I've ended up running plot and not bothered to request the XP for it, and I know others who are the same. But I think you'll find people will gravitate towards running plot that gets them XP because it's an added layer of incentive; because it allows them to further their character along their chosen stat paths even though they are devoting heaps of time and effort on other people's. It's a fine philosophy for someone who will only be staffing and not playing, but if you are both a staff storyteller and a player on a game, it becomes a basic issue of only having time for one (at least, inasmuch as how much time one is willing to put into the hobby).

Like I said, I don't agree, but that doesn't mean it won't be great if it works out on Dust to Dust.

@Thisnameistaken said:

@Bobotron said:

@WTFE
I blame hipsters.

@Thisnameistaken
http://www.buzzfeed.com/emofly/wait-meat-sushi-is-just-mini-meatloaf#.ppDK9p8mX

I don't understand how that is sushi. It's a bacon cheeseburger.

Maybe because you didn't scroll all the way down and see:

(And before you throw any kind of shade, internet, recognize that this is basically just meatloaf that’s very special.)

I mean, the person writing it is clearly aware it's not sushi. It's just a joke because it looks like sushi.

@Admiral said:

Staffing -is- a job. Just because you volunteer to do it doesn't give it any fewer responsibilities. If you volunteer at a soup kitchen you can't just hang out and not do anything. You're given a job whether it's ladling soup or doing dishes or something else.

I dislike the notion that people seem to have regarding staff that says 'Staff are volunteers, therefore you can't really criticize them for lack of activity or work ethic'. If you can't do the job, don't volunteer to do it.

You're not a disenfranchised person who badly needs a meal to survive, though; you're a dude behind a screen that I'm putting in time and effort to entertain. So comparing the two doesn't really work. In the former, I'm providing a needed service that, in my experience, makes me feel like I'm making a difference in someone's life. In the latter, I typically have to deal with a lot of entitlement, whining, and accusations. When I have volunteered at soup kitchens and the like, I never got the sensation that the people I'm ladeling soup for or whatever feel they're entitled to the meal, despite the fact that they are, whereas when I staff, I get the sensation players feel they're entitled to all the things, despite the fact that they are not. So conflating volunteer work as if all volunteer work is the same, and especially comparing actually helping people by providing food and shelter with running plots and handling jobs on a MU, is super dumb.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

If I'm interpreting correctly, I believe @Sunny is trying to move away from an issue that rose up (and killed) Staff STing on HM. i.e. the introduction of being able to gain XP via running plots from your player bit. When some people realized they could run a plot they would normally run from their Staff bit on their player bit to gain XP for that bit... Staff ST's died out pretty quickly. Everything went to player-run (or Staff-run through player bits), which some people used to game the system for bunches of extra XP. I believe she's trying to halt that before it starts.

Except from what I understand, she's doing exactly that: if you storytell from your staff bit, you get no XP; if you do it from your PC bit, you do. So it's going to generate exactly that dynamic, as per the HM example.

tl;dr: If my staff are running player level plots from their staff bit, they're goofballs and should be swatted lightly to remember they earn points if they do it from their player bit.

I don't agree on a general level, but if it works for her, then yay!

I find True Detective to be a little ... trying too hard, this season. Vince Vaughn is fantastic, though. I like the characterizations, to a point, but the plot sucks and the amount of coincidences needed to move it along are astronomical, which is a little eh.

I still watch it, though.

Yeah, I don't have that insane love for bacon either.

@Derp Heh. I've seen that before. I also like:

Red chorizo is spicy, though I'll grant spicy chorizo might be the more usual/popular one up in the States/Canada. Down here, chorizo isn't spicy at all, unless it's chorizo colorado, i.e. red chorizo, which depending on its provenance and preparation can be mildly hot to fuckfuckfuckfuckmytongueisfallingofffffffff.

@Arkandel said:

@Pyrephox said:

I think that sounds wonderful. The biggest thing to make sure of, though, is that there's follow through on the part of staff. If you set up the expectation that hey, here's a thing that will help you get involved in the plot, and then don't follow through, players will feel more put off than if you offered nothing at all.

Yeah, this. Very often staff vastly underestimate the amount of work things like this take. The idea is sound but scales up very poorly.

This is essentially the hurdle on Eldritch as far as plots go. I am happy to run things for people, but it takes effort, time, and commitment. I can't do all the things all the time, and if I don't run something big and inclusive, people will think there is nothing going on (not necessarily true) but at the same time I'm letting those smaller plots stall a bit.

This is why more storytellers is always good. I can and will hand out plot stuff for people to run for others.

It's very similar to what we do in Eldritch, except we do it far less formally. I often wonder if we should formalize it but then I get distracted by the other metric ton of shit I need to do. XD But yeah, it should be good. Make sure you don't give people things that would fuck the game plot up if they idle or drop.

@ThatGuyThere said:

Well there would be a house rule about it. If not then put in a request to have a ruling and wait I guess I would not feel staff had to deal with the matter any quicker then when it's turn in the queue came up. The second one is example about the ghoul is exactly the type of PvP thing i would not have staff get involved with unless they wanted a PvP heavy game, as is the third.

I feel like your approach would lead to a drama-infested game the likes of which are only possible if you gave Spider some sort of MU-version of prima nocta or something. Seriously.

I think I just gave myself nightmares.

Usually I close the window or do a hard refresh with CTRL+F5 and then I try again and it works.

Miracle Whip is bad. mayo is bad. Ketchup sucks. Long live honey mustard. And pickles are horrible.

@Misadventure said:

Story requirement based combat penalties.

If you haven't had enough story, you have a hard time killing one another off, and an easier time surviving. Mooks etc are not so protected. Extra points if players are allowed to play mooks.

Man, it's hard enough getting people to accept needing to be active to buy shit that requires actual action by the book's rules (like Renown). If you tell people they can't even beat each other up unless they have "enough story" (could you be more ambiguous?) they won't even bother. They are much more likely to accept "you just can't get into fights with other PCs", even, IMO.

@TNP said:

@Lithium said:

The themes would have to be adjusted, some splats would be completely destroyed (Demons) and others would be completely crazy (Mages with no paradox if everyone believed magic was real now).

Umm, no? Because opens sheets change nothing ICly. Knowing someone is a demon OOCly - which I do without seeing their sheets - doesn't mean I know they are ICly. And knowing someone is a mage OOCly doesn't mean my character suddenly believes in magic.

Many genres use open sheets and somehow they manage to avoid devolving into chaos.

I think they mean more along the lines of being able to metagame by playing in ways influenced by the other person's sheet. As for the latter, you must have missed the bit in the original post about how the veil is gone and supernaturals are out.

@Groth said:

I agree with the various persons in this thread that have pointed out that our current policy is not clearly written out on the rules page.
EDIT: We've now updated the rules page, hopefully it's more clear now.

Cheers.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Coin
2 is also amazingly fun. ^_^

Wannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnt

@HelloRaptor

Man. I really want to get a version of Orcs Must Die on Steam. I haven't played 2, but 1 was hella fun.