Posts made by Lisse24

On MSB, we talk a lot about what makes for a more active game. Everyone has opinions and discussions tend to go in circles with the same people making the same points with the evidence provided often anecdotal.

Y'all, I'd like to add some numbers into the mix.

So, I've designed a survey on Google. In creating this survey, I've tried to create something that anyone can answer for any game, whether that game is currently around or was active in the past. It's designed to let both staff, players, and guests respond, because all will have different perceptions of a game, with the truth being somewhere in the middle. I've also tried to balance comprehensiveness with timeliness. In general, the survey should take about 10 minutes to complete.

My plan is to make the data from the survey (stripped of IPs, timestamps, and other potentially identifying information) available to anyone in the community to interpret and use at will. I'd also like to use it as a jumping off point for future surveys.

I'd like to begin taking responses later in the week. Before then, I'd like to make sure I've covered all my bases. I'd like a couple volunteers to read through the questions and let me know if they see any glaring absences.

I will let you know up front, that I have not included a question asking how staff deals with problem players, because I can't think of adequate wording. If you can come up with decent wording for that question, share below! I'll take it.

**Link to the survey is: https://goo.gl/forms/h3Cxeb3AnMTHK0Ij2

I never thought there was much to think about with treadmills. This guy disagrees.
https://www.treadmilldoctor.com/treadmill-review-brand-index

Among the highlights:
"It can make you feel better if your level of working out is buying exercise equipment and sitting the treadmill in your home. Otherwise, with the elevated blood pressure this machine has the potential to cause, your health might be better off without it."
"a tiny little machine that does little to keep you healthy but does a lot to masquerade as a treadmill while performing as a piece of junk"
"Burning up $200 on one of these might be more entertaining if you simply get 200 $1 bills and set the pile of money on fire."

@wizz Maybe, but it comes with all the downsides of multisphere WoD games including incompatible rule sets and misaligned power dynamics, a fractured playerbase, a bevy of confusing house rules, etc. If you want to play multisphere games, they are out there. I, for one, look forward to more single sphere games.

@ganymede I actually agree with you. I like the concept behind Arx's +clues system more than I like it's implementation. Which isn't to say it's implemented poorly, I'd just love to see people iterate on the idea. So, if you're doing something similar, although not exactly the same, that checks the box that I was looking for!

@ganymede I like it! Will you also be implementing a +clue-like system for plots?

@stabeest Last night I walked into a scene with a mental checklist of three things my char wanted to accomplish. The third being to break up with the guy (after he's agreed to the other things, of course), and then the opposite happened. It was great. I loved it!

CoWorkers just assume that a) I have infinite amounts of time and b) What they want done is the most important thing on my plate.

No, I can not turn this newsletter you haven't written yet around by the end of the day. I'm still working on the stuff you sent over last week and this doesn't need to go out until the 23rd.

@phatdenny said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

I think both sides on the Aspirations system debate make decent points. For instance, it can quickly turn into a chore depending on the type of character people want to play and has plenty of opportunity for abuse.

That being said, once in a blue moon I do manage to make use of it and go 'hey this is what I'm trying to do'. It's good for characters who are very active and constantly involving themselves in new things. It's shit for characters with one general goal in mind. I know the long term vs. short-term aspirations is supposed to remedy this somewhat, but I don't think it does a particularly good job.

Yeah, it's not a perfect system, but I really like what it's trying to do, and I think it's the start of a really good system for awarding XP and helping characters find RP based on IC goals, which I like.

Of course, I'm also sitting on a char whose aspirations I haven't changed since chargen, despite her having accomplished them.

@saulot said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

I don't disagree. However, I'm not sure if there are a lot of people that want to fix it or have it fixed. I've gotten enough of an earful on people preferring their stats and quibbles not being known in the public in any form. This is why what I work on has sheets and the whole shebang visible to everybody.

I once suggested a system that had immediate goals/aspirations that were visible to everyone and long-term/secret goals/aspirations that were only visible to staff. That might be a middle ground for people who aren't quite ready to throw everything about their character out there in public.

@saulot said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

@warma-sheen Aspirations are what you're looking for, and it kinda falls flat since almost every 2e game I've seen with them also doesn't have much in the way of STs that can actually see or know what a players aspirations are unless they're staff or the players openly show them off in some capacity.

I feel like that's a fixable problem.

@lithium said in Book Recommendations:

Older books, but, The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny are definitely worth a read.

The Thomas Covenant series by Steven R. Donaldson is good too (and one of the many sources that Robert Jordan swiped idea sfrom)

The Bio of a Space Tyrant series by Piers Anthony is good (I expect most to have read the Incarnations of Immortality series by the same author at this point).

I'm a huge Donaldson fan, but haven't heard of The Thomas Covenant. I'll have to add them to my list. Thanks!

@three-eyed-crow

I mean what's your alternative for this? I feel like this is blaming a tool when the actual problem is player behavior that stems from a lot of things, lemminging to +events being only a rather small part of it.

That's ... kind of everything I've been trying to say all rolled up into one. I don't think the problem is the players. The problem is the tools. We use bad tools to try and accomplish something that they suck at accomplishing and then wonder why nothing is happening.

You know it's not the players, because when you take the same players and give them different tools they act differently. If you want proactive players, then you need to give them the tools and environment where they can be proactive.

@auspice said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

I would not mind running such a scene, but if no one ever tells me they want a research scene, I'm probably not going to just run one off the cuff... because most people don't want scenes like that. In my experience, most people don't show up to scenes like that. They show up to the big flashy action! events.

So you need to at the very least alert your plot runner to the fact that you want to do research via RP. If you never say a thing, they can only assume you don't want that thing.

I generally add OOC notes to my stuff, wrap up scenes with OOC notes, etc. for people to let me know if they want to do more. If they want to follow up on something. If they want to see more scenes. I try to make myself as available as possible (as a Staffer, a player, an ST). I know I am an available person because when I Staff, people are generally perfectly comfortable coming to me with questions (about CG, wiki help, concerns, etc...)...

...but I almost never get followup on plot. This is why I think that the vast majority of people just want to be spoon fed their plot.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but have you ever scheduled a follow-up/research/discussion/planning event for a plot? Because it seems PRPs are usually just these quick action events. More often then not, I walk away from PRPs confused and thinking "Well, what am I supposed to do now?" I can't quite process the action with what I was supposed to have learned with how my character should follow-up. It's not even clear to me whether I should be following up or whether the event was just meant to be a one-off kill-a-thing.

Something isn't real to me and doesn't really penetrate into who the character is until I've had plenty of opportunity to RP about it. I love doing RP about what my character is achieving/accomplishing/involved in, even if no one else picks up quite what's going on. To that end, I, personally, love a library/research/planning scene. I don't think they take away from the story. I think they make the story. I mean, there's a reason those scenes are in every Buffy episode.

Although, I'm probably not the best person to critique PRPs, I largely don't participate in them for all the reasons listed above. If I thought that a PRP would be a meaty thing that really gave me something to sink my teeth in and RP about, though? If I knew there would be follow-up and the plot wouldn't just disappear after a random scene or two? I'd be all over that in a sec.

@auspice said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

Why should that be on the ST? Why should the ST have to schedule time for the players to do their research? To do their planning? To do their legwork?

Because the ST is the one person who absolutely needs to be on hand during that time in order to answer questions? Because it's more time effective to discuss in person than through a +job/@mail. Because if a player tries to do it, you'll have a char who ignores everything. Because if it's your typical PRP, the characters involved have been cherry picked according to who hit +event/signup first and not who might make the most sense to handle something. They probably don't interact with each other a lot or even know each other and there are probably a lot of barriers that prevented them interacting in the past, and if you're going to design a plot that caters to random players the least you can do is make it a bit easier for them to interact with each other. Finally, because what you're doing right now isn't working and this isn't hard and requires no planning on your part, so what do you have to lose?

Note that I'm assuming your typical PRP/+event plot where people just sign up for a random thing with no knowledge ahead of time of what sort of plot it is or who is involved. If you're running a plot for the Circle of the Crone, or a similarly already affiliated group, and they can't be bothered to talk to each other that's a different story.

And +actions are nice, but you're assuming all plot is run by Staff.

Not all plot is run by Staff.

No, I'm not. There's no reason that you can't design a +action-like system that is either just for people who wanna run plots or a mix of staff/player run plot. My point is that you need to allow players to actively work on their own goals, and begging on +boards for GMs or putting wishes on wikis isn't going to get that done.

@auspice said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

I see more interaction on sandbox games than non-, personally. Might be a YMMV there. But then, I consider WoD to be sandbox? So that might be why.

When I think of active games, I think of RfK, Arx, and Firan. None of them are Sandboxes, but in any of those games, you can take a char and find RP within moments of hitting the grid. F&L, for all it's issues, was also not-a-sandbox and also far easier to find RP on than other games of its size. I can't think of a single game that was a sandbox that I would characterize as active. I define active as logging on and being able to tell through +where (or similar command) that several scenes are ongoing, and also easily being able to drum up RP.

I'm kinda extroverted in MU* terms, but I have no idea how to approach this person. I need some form of OOC engagement. NO OOC!!! would be a reason to never, ever touch a game for me.

OOC engagement inspires me. I've had plots spark out of OOC joking around.

I agree 100% that there has to be OOC interaction. I fundamentally disagree with the people who are all "keep it IC." It's all about balance though. I've seen a lot of games where people just hang out OOC and never do anything IC. I've never seen a game where people were gently encouraged to hang IC, where there wasn't also a good deal of on-grid activity.

But as an ST... it is so. freaking. disheartening. to run plot and basically have people disengaged unless I'm constantly holding their hand and leading the way. Show me you're interested? Please? Somehow?

Like if you're enjoying what I'm doing, let me know. Somehow. Otherwise, why am I even doing it?

I feel like this comes from the nature of how plots are planned and run. Plots tend to be run top-down. PRPs lean monster of the week, but these things aren't necessarily what players want to do, which makes it hard for them to be engaged, even if they want to do things.
I'll again point to Arx's +actions, which is a way for players to get STing for what they want. I know you tried to have wiki pages where players filled in what they wanted, but that's actually a very passive way to accomplish something (I'm going to write on my wikipage that Cerise is hoping to set-up a lab to study changelings and I really hope that someone might write a plot with that! as opposed to, Okay, I'm going to set up a lab to study changelings, lemme submit a +action and see what's needed).

While I'm thinking about it, games where some measure of the results of plot actions/PRPs etc. are posted and emitted help drive action by keeping players informed of what's going on and by putting weight on player actions. It also reminds players that if PlayerA put in a request to do reallycoolthing they wanted to do, PlayerB can too!

@botulism said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

@auspice I have to second part of this. There are lots of players who will show up to events, but have zero interest in follow-up. You can leave a dozen threads for them to pull on and they just don't. It gets discouraging.

Personally, I find it hard to reply in a thread or +request to a plot action until I know what to do. I need to sit down and talk with people and RP it out. In plots and PRPs, the people who sign up often have very little IC ties to my char and it's hard to get together and chat with them. Maybe schedule a post-action/downtime scene in between action scenes to give the chars involved a chance to debrief/talk/plan? I mean, when I want to discuss something at work, I either schedule a call or set up a channel on Slack when I know that everyone is at their desk. I never try to get things done through email, because it's such a horrid way to do that type of communication.