Posts made by faraday

@ganymede said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

We're two different people! If we ran a game together, you'd be the good cop, and that's okay with me. But, as I said, I don't mind complaints or whining as long as they aren't broadcasted because I think that has a very negative effect on a group of players.

Whereas I think that welcoming and responding to feedback - even in a public venue - is an important way of building trust and rapport with players as long as that feedback is delivered in a calm and respectful manner. So yeah, I think we just draw the line in different places and that's okay. :fistbump:

@ganymede said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

I guess I don't agree here. I've met a lot of good players, and the single, consistent aspect they have is that they do not complain on a consistent basis about the game.

I hear a lot of complaints about games (both my own and ones I'm playing on) even from people I like and respect and consider good players. Even from people who generally like the game overall. Maybe I'm not harsh and draconian enough and people feel more willing to complain to me? Maybe we're talking about different levels of complaining? Dunno.

@ganymede said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

I don't think Apos was talking about people who are simply not proactive; I think he is talking about people who are actively negative. If you let them persist on your game, you're going to quickly find yourself with an empty game because that bullshit gets old really fast.

The examples given were "10 people making sadface emoticons of how no one loves them and takes them to plots, or bitching that one person on their plot got a shiny, or someone whining that Proactive Paul gets to go on every story and on and on and on"

Even good players while and complain sometimes. Even I whine and complain sometimes and I'm one of the most "can't we all just play nice and get along" crusaders on these boards. I think people need to be mature enough to take complaints with a grain of salt. Now if it's bordering on abusive or being so constant and obnoxious that it's causing a disruption, that's different. But kicking someone off the game just for whining? Come on.

@packrat said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

One creepy stalker, one person who is ICly in charge of your character starting to complain that your event takes into account X but they think X sucks and so it is unfair for people who think X sucks, etc. At some point things cross over from a fun relaxation diversion to 'I am going to play a computer game this evening or go to the pub instead.'

Creepy stalkers should be dealt with harshly. But anyone who puts out creative work for strangers' consumption (which includes game plots/stories) needs to be prepared for some amount of criticism. That's just life. If that's too discouraging, then sure -
don't play. But the idea that a game-runner can possibly police a game of all negativity is just absurd.

@apos said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

All it takes is staff tolerating a single negative, whiny player that shows up to stories and makes unreasonable demands. If they tolerate Negative Nancy or Whining William, that proactive player's drive is dead. And staff not saying, 'Sorry, you don't fit in here, best of luck to you, William' means that you are saying, 'We are keeping William, and it's okay if he drives off Driven Dave or Proactive Paula'. So all the tools in the world are worthless if staff and players are unwilling to enforce an environment that keeps a high standard of behavior.

It would be nice if everyone were positive and enthusiastic, but that's really just not realistic. People are people, and if we start banning folks for simply not being proactive enough, you're going to quickly find yourself with an empty game.

If Driven Dave is going to be discouraged by a bit of negativity, then he's really not that driven after all.

@three-eyed-crow Yeah that's a fair point. I guess as a coder I'm just a little less-than-inclined to put a whole bunch of my time into coding special things into a system (and making that system inherently more difficult to use, syntax-wise) just because people can't behave like grown-ups

@roz I think we're just miscommunicating. Let me try my thesis again from the top with hopefully more clarity...

• The event calendar system (aka +events) IMHO is for scheduling "events" (in the lowercase-e sense of 'a pre-arranged gathering of some description').
• There's no implication that "events" would be momentous in nature.
• There's no implication that "events" would be open to everyone. I think that all events should say who they're geared towards - whether that's "pilots only" "everyone in Westeros" or "just people who have been participating in the Foobar plot".
• There's no implication that "events" are staff-only. They can be for PRPs or even a couple friends gathering. I haven't personally seen events used for smaller gatherings any more than I send Google calendar invites to my buddies for movie night, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't use it for that.
• I think that expecting the events system to provide any other plot management functionality (coordination, follow-up, tracking what happened, etc.) is using the wrong tool for the job.

The only thing I'm mildly opposed to is making a bunch of code/commands for marking events as "private" and limiting who can see them. Firstly because it feels a bit exclusionary, and secondly because it would just add a whole bunch of complexity to a system that I don't personally feel is necessary or valuable enough to be worth the effort.

@roz I never said it had to be an IC event as in a monumental occasion (maybe someone else did and I missed it?) "Event" is just the standard terminology for the scheduled thingies you stick on calendars.

@roz said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

Disagree. +Events code is, at its core, just a way to schedule something. There's no reason why using it to post when scheduled scenes are (as for an ongoing plotline) is using the "wrong tool for the job."

Um... a scheduled scene is the very definition of an event, i.e.:

something that occurs in a certain place during a particular interval of time. source

The original criticism (as I understood it) was that having an events system to schedule scenes was somehow mucking up the continuous plot followup type stuff that happens between events. That's stuff that IMHO doesn't belong in the events system. It's not a scheduled happening so the events system would be the wrong tool for the job.

@three-eyed-crow said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

You've just 'granted,' as if it were a side note, the main utility of +events.

Right, events are, well... events. Using the event system for an ongoing plotline is using the wrong tool for the job.

I considered adding private events to Ares but it just didn't seem like there was a lot of utility for that. It struck me as the difference between using Outlook to schedule an important work meeting (i.e. +events) and just sending a text (aka page or +mail) to your two buddies coordinating movie night.

@thatguythere said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

Edit: The first place I heard of that used them was Anomaly which was a trek MU* . I never played there but I do remember the ads for it when it opened.

Yeah, I also remember a fair amount of time before +jobs really caught on. First game I recall playing on that used them over +mail staff for player requests was Battlestar Pacifica in 2007. </tangent>

@auspice said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

If someone wants to do this, they can reach out. I will make myself available to join in, but if a player wants to do legwork? Wants to research? Wants to brainstorm? They should indicate wanting to do so. I am not going to drag people along who show zero interest in wanting to do so.

@ghost said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

At the end of the day, you can lead a horse to water, dump it on its head, push their face into it, beg the horse, pray to the horse gods, whisper it it, and learn to speak in centaur language...
...but if they don't wanna drink, no amount of prodding will make them do so.

These two things go together in my mind. It's not really fair to expect STs or staff to bribe/cajole/browbeat people into playing. It's a roleplaying game. Freaking roleplay. If all you ever want is BarRP, knock yourself out. Otherwise, step up and show some initiative.

Sadly I think most MU*ers come from a tabletop/video game experience where story is presented to them on a silver platter and all they have to do is show up and consume. Oooh look - a questgiver. Click. Do the thing. Job done.

As for the original question, most proactive RPers will do their thing as long as you just get out of their way:

• Don't put up artificial roadblocks. (like having to submit plots in advance)
• Don't be heavy handed. (okay, the city guard probably should have responded in their scene... just let it go if you can, and if you can't? Try to deal with it as encouragingly as humanly possible)
• Give them legitimacy. (explicitly encourage PRPs and publicly recognize them)
• Let them impact the world, within reason.
• Give them little nibbles to run with.

I'm not a fan of offering XP as a reward, and most people don't seem to care too much about softer rewards. I'd say fully 75% of the plot-runners on BSGU never bothered to submit a request for their bonus luck point.

@surreality It has really nothing to do with social systems so I'll refrain from rambling on about skill focus.

@surreality Unless you're making Law and Order MUSH, a single skill of Law seems more than adequate (and probably unnecessary at that.)

@thenomain The average rate for a seasoned programmer is about $50/hour IIRC, so it would not be unreasonable to charge anything up to that value.

Of course, those kind of rates would likely be beyond the budget of what most folks would be willing to pay for a hobby project. $1000 for a custom chargen anyone? Heh.

Which brings us back to the age-old debate about "fair value" vs "what the person can afford value" that tends to devolve into flame wars whenever people ask for people to work for below-market rates on hobby art or writing projects.

Which just leads me to say, in all seriousness (but probably not very helpfully): Charge whatever your time is worth to you.

@Arkandel @Ghost I have immense respect for you guys, but the more I read the more I just think we come from polar opposite RP worlds.

The kind of metagaming you hate? I love. I view MUSHes not as games first, but as a collaborative storytelling community with some mechanics to keep things moving smoothly.

The key words there being collaborative and community. You can't collaborate if you don't metagame to some extent. You can't have a community if you have no connections to the other players beyond the IC interactions.

Now there's a disclaimer on that in that I think everything has to be justifiable ICly or it's cheating. If you and your OOC buddy have IC reason to team up? Go for it. If you read something in a RP log and say "Hey that sounds way cool I want to work with Ghost to get in on that". Awesome. Find a way to make it work ICly.

But if I read something in a RP log about Ghost plotting to poison me and somehow, for no sensible reason have my char decide to start poison-testing all her food? No, that's BS. That's cheating and it needs to be smacked down hard.

:helpless shrug: As usual, I'm in the minority. I'm just gonna go back to my coding hideaway for a bit.

@thenomain I understand your POV. But again, it comes down to how much you view these things as stories and how much you view them as games.

Did John McClane just make a whole bunch of really good Willpower / Courage rolls, or is he just fundamentally not the kind of guy who's gonna sit back and let terrorists threaten innocent people?

@Ghost - Yeah I think we’re more in sync than not.

I think it helps to break conflict into two categories.

There's Minor stuff, like -- Do you believe the employee who’s telling you he needs off Sunday because his grandmother died? Do you pay a little more than you wanted because the salesman sold you some ‘extras’ that you don’t really need? Do you bend the rules to let in that cute girl who “just forgot her purse and will only be a second”? Do you open the email that looks like it’s from your mom sending you a video of your niece’s birthday party (which is actually a virus)?

Unless you have some really darn good reason, trying to pull “my character would never fall for that” is just being a poor sport.

But then there's also Major stuff - like the Leia/Pope examples. The fact that Leia wouldn’t give up the rebels - even with a gun to the figurative head of her entire planet - is a core facet of her character. Indiana Jones would never give up on a quest. John McClane would never cower in the attic waiting for help to arrive.

For our MUSH characters, these are the answers to those character study questions like “Would he ever cheat on his spouse?” “Would she sooner die than betray her cause?” “Would he kill to protect his family?” These are things that define who the character is, not things that you figure out by throwing a few dice.

But I think in part that comes down to how you view MUSHes on the simulation--> narration spectrum. Obviously I favor a more narrative approach with some simulation for spice and fairness.

@ghost said in Social Systems:

One of my cardinal rules as a GM is that TV, books, and movies can help GMs figure out how scenes can make more sense, so here is another example.

Totally with you there actually. And I think that doing that sort of stuff makes it more likely that whatever gambit you ultimately decide to try has a better chance of succeeding because it's not wildly out of character for the mark to fall for it.

Like, maybe you trick the Pope with a faked email spoofing one of the bishops saying "Notes for next week's sermon" or something.

Then target's player won't have grounds to pull a Red Card on the play. And if they try, you'd have way more leverage on an appeal.

@ghost said in Social Systems:

It's all in the context.

I'm good with the salesman argument, but the only info Leia would give up to protect Alderaan is a false, misleading one. It's canon Likewise not buying the Pope example unless that was an existing proclivity. Those examples are exactly the sorts of situations that exemplify my cardinal objection to social systems without the player having a "yeah that doesn't make sense" card.

We can agree to disagree