Posts made by Pyrephox

@Arkandel In individual cases, it doesn't bother me at all. An average sized city contains at least a few ten thousand people, and I'm absolutely cool with the idea that things might be happening that my character isn't aware of and doesn't have the chance to get in on. ESPECIALLY for PrPs. If someone's taking the time and effort to run something for their fellow players, I don't feel they should be tutted at because they're only doing so for people they enjoy playing with.

However, if there's a persistent and long-term discrepancy in who STAFF-RUN plots get offered to, that's not good. In my opinion, staff should be looking over the playerbase, seeing who hasn't gotten plot goodness, and specifically reaching out to those players to see what's going on. For some players, it's because they're not interested in plots, and that's fine. But some people just don't know how to get on things or have quirky concepts (or, worse, a concept that doesn't stand out at all) that have difficulty getting tapped for plots. In which case, staff SHOULD be pitching some things directly at those people, so that they can join the fun.

@Tempest said:

@Pyrephox said:

Sadly, yes, some will. Or, and this has been my experience, escalate /insanely/. Like, "pose random NPC on public street being kinda a dick, so Other PC pulls out every supernatural power they have to curbstomp NPC into the pavement for no goddamned reason". Or one random scene where I had my PC in a bookstore, asking about a random book. NPC said, "Sorry, dude, already sold," so the other PC decides to try and turn it into a graphic torture scene to figure out where the book went.

Ahhhahaha. Part of my fear of STing is stuff like this. I've heard so many horror stories.

I'll be fair: it doesn't happen often. A lot of the time, people that you ST for are very pleasant, fun, and totally cool to run things for. That's one of the reasons I keep doing it! I love to see how players react to what I put out there - it's usually not what I expect, and in good ways.

@Jeshin said:

Specifically on getting players to engage as a staffer...

• Consider having an NPC provide them with a reason or the knowledge to become involved. Do they not know that a heist is going down and they're the best lockpicker in the city? Give them some kind of tie-in.

• Consider a rumor system (automated or freeform) that allows for general information to be distributed that has varying degrees of accuracy thus encouraging players to dig into them if their interest is piqued or use that information to find their own tie-in with the plot that is going on.

• Have the illusion of fortune or misfortune bring a player into a plot that is relevant to their personal story for the enrichment of themselves and the story you wanted them to be involved in.

Some of these have varying levels of babysitting going on, but if you're having issues on a playerbase wide scale then a little tender love and care from staff can go a long way to making them feel confident enough to begin finding their own stories.

Also, a big thing: roll with what the player does. Look. It doesn't matter if you hadn't thought about the kidnapping being witnessed before a PC says, "Hey, I'd like to hit the streets and ask around to see if anyone saw anything." Don't shut that down just because it wasn't the way YOU thought the information would be found. No, not even if the kidnappers had supernatural powers. Respond to the player's efforts to engage with the plot - don't make the player work too hard for plot-required information, or they'll throw up their hands and move on to something that's actually fun.

@Rook said:

Hye, @Pyrephox... you RP with some weird, unbalanced, fucking strange people who don't understand cooperative role-play in a realistic environment.

That needs to be an acronym.... or something.

I do play on MU*s, yes.

@Jeshin said:

Question

If you start up a scene in a book store and someone goes crazy torture madness on the book seller. Would you escalate that to cops showing up? Would you like inform your staff? Would you just have the book seller pass out from stress/fear? That seems like a pretty over the top reaction but I believe it could and has happened.

It was a Victorian setting, so I just had my PC run away from the crazy madman, and made a note not to play with that person again.

@Jeshin said:

I'd have to agree with the concept that all players are STs. No one if going to cry foul if you have a fly land in your soup and you make a scene about it with a vnpc waiter as a way to liven up a boring bar scene. Just like people probably won't cry foul if you have an NPC bump into you on the street and get into a shoving fight.

When in doubt and you want to spice up a dull scene. Just have bad things happen to your own character to be the catalyst for interaction.

Sadly, yes, some will. Or, and this has been my experience, escalate /insanely/. Like, "pose random NPC on public street being kinda a dick, so Other PC pulls out every supernatural power they have to curbstomp NPC into the pavement for no goddamned reason". Or one random scene where I had my PC in a bookstore, asking about a random book. NPC said, "Sorry, dude, already sold," so the other PC decides to try and turn it into a graphic torture scene to figure out where the book went.

Although the biggest reason why I've become wary of being the Active Person in the scene is because, unfortunately, then people come to expect it, rather than being inspired to reciprocate. I /like/ to run things, to get things moving, to pose fun little world-bits...but when it becomes the expected thing that I Will Entertain You, it's no longer fun. That's not what I'm here for. And worse, because I always sideline my PC when having those things things happen, I don't even really get to play my character.

@Thenomain said:

Semantics. Your Seeming is basically who you are now.

If your definition of "semantics" is "entirely incorrect", then yes, I suppose so. And your Seeming is no more "basically who you are now" than it was in 1.0. In some ways less, because before seeming and kith were linked and formed the thrust of a whole identity for a Lost. Now, there's more nuance - your kith is what your Keeper forced upon you, your Seeming is what you took for yourself. A part of your identity, sure, but maybe not a part you ever wanted, or a part that defines you entirely. A Fairest might have had a moment of heroism that left its mark on her, but she could totally be a coward in most circumstances who resents the way that the ONE TIME she managed to step up and take the reins is now stamped on her head for all eternity, giving all these people expectations that she knows she can never fill.

@Thenomain said:

For once, I'm not the one getting the reading entirely wrong. People can pick on you, especially the more they know about you, but not just because it's Tuesday.

Also, someone recently pointed out to me that physical appearance and Arcadia escape agency are permanently linked, which means if you want to be a bully you have to look like an Ogre. Neh.

No?

/The way you escaped Arcadia/ and your Seeming are linked, but that does not mean that if you want to be a bully you have to look like an Ogre. If you escaped by stabbing someone in the back, you could just as easily be a Darkling, or if you escaped by transgressing 'civilized' boundaries (which bullies often do) you could be a Beast, and regardless of what you did to escape, that says not a whole lot about the person you've become since then. You can be a controlling Fairest who has become a tyrant and bully, a Darkling who thrives on weaponized gossip, a burly Beast who pushes people around, etc. Just as much freedom as you had before.

@Roz said:

@Autumn said:

This might sound strange, but along with versatility, I like a little direction. Especially in games (cough, Mage, cough) where the number of possible options is not so much 'large' as 'overwhelming', I like having some ideas about what a good next step might be. I might still have a brainwave and decide that I don't really want to investigate the city manager's office or track down one of the mystical owls seen outside the Consilium headquarters just before the attack or bargain with the Mysterium for information stored in their secure library, and instead go off and do something completely different.

Sometimes when I'm told I can do anything at all I just freeze up and can't decide which sounds like the best right now. And while I very much appreciate a storyteller who's willing to indulge me if I decide to order something that's not on the menu, I also appreciate there being a menu if I need to ask for one.

Not strange at all, and also really important. If the players are really lost, don't just leave them to flail. Give 'em a little something to get them going again. The point isn't to make your plot a puzzle they need the exact right pieces to solve, it's to tell a story.

So much this. My philosophy increasingly is that failure should lead to complication, not roadblocking, and that players should ALWAYS come out of a scene or interaction with a solid idea of what to do next. Ultimately, no matter what questions a character is asking IC, I feel that the player is always asking the same question OOC: "I am interested in this and would like to be involved. How do I do that?" So any reply or scene that doesn't answer that second question is a failure in my eyes.

In my games, the God-Machine is a physical manifestation of the human cost of standardization and the consequences of demanding that complex people force themselves to fit within simple, rigid systems, thematically speaking. It IS the "system" given form - ultimately, its aims might be good or evil, but it doesn't matter because it has no regard for humanity or human agency. It should be as much manifest in a version of OK Cupid that refuses to let you even look at anyone who doesn't "fit" you according to its compatibility algorithm, or the 'lifehack' app that rearranges your daily schedule so that it's entirely efficient and you never have to try anything that you won't enjoy, as it is angels whispering in the ears of a programmer until she throws herself off a building. It's Samaritan AND the Machine from Person of Interest, both at the same time, and pretty much incomprehensible from the viewpoint of a PC. But not omniscient or omnipotent, although the degree to which it attempts to exercise control can mimic that, to some extent. Ultimately, though, it's a parasite, an experiment gone wild and self-aware, or a corrupted savior of a world that is winding down towards an inevitable apocalypse...or all at the same time. I like the idea that the G-M is a beast with a hundred thousand brains, all of whom are THEORETICALLY working towards the same goal, but in practice are fighting their own corrupted data, or deliberately created diversions (I figure that if the G-M isn't sure which of two solutions to a problem is optimum, it simple spins off matrices to implement both, even if those two solutions are mutually exclusive), and thus may even be at direct odds with each other in the short term. This allows the kind of glitches that let people oppose it on the small scale, as well as allow things like Demons to exist.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Ganymede

While one can make a philosophical or sociological statement regarding the harshness of the penalty, and I don't mind discussing that, that does not mean I, as staff, do not have the authority and discretion to deal with what I believe to be inappropriate behavior harshly and with prejudice. I am old and mature enough to deal with the consequences.

The harshness of the penalty isn't at issue, the hypocrisy of singling it out as if it's special is, along with the absurdity of the alternative which is spreading the umbrella to cover 'You may not RP anything which will cause other players on the game OOC distress or force staff to deal with uncomfortable OOC drama because of that distress.'

I don't see how any of those things follow. A game-runner is allowed to say, "This is what this game is about. This is what this game isn't about, and this is what we absolutely don't want here. If you absolutely want what we don't, find another game." We don't make people empirically justify why they're running a Vampire game and not, say, a Werewolf game. And if someone came onto a Vampire game, and insisted on playing a Werewolf, even if they were a GREAT Werewolf, showing them the door wouldn't generally be considered inappropriate. Every game is not required to fit the needs or wants of every gamer, and there are enough games that if someone absolutely cannot live without on-screen PC on PC rape, then they can find a game for them. Shang, if nowhere else. If there is, for some reason, a critical mass of players who find the lack of rapey funtimes a turnoff, then the game will fail. No harm done.

@Arkandel Sure! But at least the ST would know that's where the players' heads are at. Then s/he can either give them a heads' up that it's beyond the scope of this scene, or maybe reassess their own opinion of whether it IS beyond the scope of that scene - if you've got fifteen PCs wanting to Summon the Elder God Muchumocho or whatever, then maybe that's where you should go with it. Might be fun!

@Arkandel I think those are some excellent ideas. I also wonder - do you think it would help to have PCs who were planning to attend those meetings establish /one/ IC goal for their character for that meeting and send it to the ST or person running the scene in advance? Basically, just one thing that they want to get out of that meeting, whether it's talk to X about Y, or humiliate Z in public, or whatever. While it wouldn't be perfect, it might help to give the runner of an idea of where the focus should be - if half a dozen say 'Find out more about This Plot', then spend more time on that. If /no one/ is interested in The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, then have that be a brief note at the beginning, and then spend the rest of the time focusing on what PCs are actually into.

An attempt to gently steer the topic back towards the original topic:

Let's talk about STing plots that don't rely on combat or the rather straightforward 'here's a mystery, solve it' kind of construction. What would make a GOOD social plot for example? How can we make things like court meetings, and such, less of a 'everyone pose standing around while The Important People infodump or strut' kind of thing, and more like a collaborative event where every PC can move forward with one goal or another?

@Arkandel said:

Those are not great returns for an evening's work - not in XP, not in RP, not in anything. At least in my book, >people's milage may vary.

I think the 'in my book' thing is relevant here. There are a number of people who I know, who much prefer the social scenes over the combat scenes - hell, half the time I do, although that's more that combat scenes are very easy to run poorly, and a poorly run/played combat scene is both boring and actively frustrating, while bad bar RP is only boring.

@Coin said:

@Pyrephox, @Miss-Demeanor: conversely, you could say that awarding passive experience (even if it does degrade over time to a mere 1 Beat a week) represents this sort of reward for "just participating".

I'd disagree. Because just being connected to the game doesn't necessary have anything to do with participating - if you're getting passive XP for just hanging out in the OOC, then the game is rewarding hanging out in the OOC. Even /more/ than playing, in some ways, because you're not putting your character at any risk, or risking playing with anyone who you might not love.

@Arkandel said:

@Coin See, it might be harsh, but I even think the basic 1 Beat for participation should be done away with. Maybe it's my peeve talking though, so take the following with that particular grain of salt.

Any rewards offered in a game should be incentives toward some kind of behavior that benefits it in the long term. So grinding XP through faux-PrPs is not a desirable trait to begin with even though ues, one Beat isn't much compared to say, the three you can get in a more involved scene - but it adds up because it's so much easier to 'run' a birthday party than it is to do a murder mystery.

It comes down to the game's philosophy and other interrelated systems of course. On say, TR other than the afforementioned Tier issue all this is irrelevant since everyone ends up with the same XP regardless of effort, but on the new generation of 2.0 nWoD games where Beats are generated largely (or exclusively) through character activity giving people something for literally nothing seems to go against the overall direction. In other words sure, Bob went and risked his life against the Brood in a foul basement - get .8 XP! Yay! But... that is what Jane got for going to four parties.

Yeeeah I probably stress the importance of XP a lot in a thread that mainly discusses Storytelling but these games have a lot of moving parts and many of them are dependent on each other to some degree, you know? Which is why I made the disclaimer about the kind of MU you want to run; if the emphasis is on socialization and just having free-style engagement - maybe a Harry Potter game for something - it'd be less important to consider the dynamics of balancing rewards and activity than a nWoD one focusing on participation and character growth through risk and adversity.

I would probably argue that /participation/ is an activity, flat out, that one wants to encourage in any MU*. Giving out the occasional 'free' beat for hanging out in a bar scene is still preferable, for the game, than those people who could have been at the bar instead hanging out in the OOC room, doing nothing. And, one thing I notice about games where XP only comes from 'important' scenes, is that people then tend to camp the OOC room and never come out unless there's XP in the offing, or it's someone who is either already in their clique or someone they want to TS asking for RP. Giving just that little bit of incentive for people to get out on the grid is, in and of itself, a good thing, even if they're not doing anything worldshaking.

@Huzuruth said:

@Pyrephox I may steal that idea for Goetia.

Steal away! It'd be interesting to see how it works!

@Arkandel said:

@il-volpe said:

Haha. Yeah. It's a sort of peeve of mine when people expect every wedding/festival/ball/whatever to also include something totally unexpected and probably violent.

My experience has been pretty much the exact opposite. Someone makes an +event that seems so very ordinary that I expect something cool to happen. It's like... "beach party!". So, okay, I go, and since this is a game of personal horror I figure hey, maybe zombies will come out of the black waves, or maybe an amoeba-formed human-shaped abomination will start absorbing the flesh of horny teenagers.

And, no, it's just a beach party. People pose coming in bikinis and then an hour later everyone idles out. I guess that's a form of personal horror.

Yeah, I lean towards this. I don't feel like it necessarily has to be violent or horrific, but I much prefer when big, come-one-come-all social scenes have SOMETHING in way of a plot for people to do while they're there. Zombie Beach Party would be awesome, but I'd be content with 'everyone gets a fragment of a note and has to try and find the people who can put their notes together', or something. Just...SOMETHING.

@Arkandel said:

Having a metaplot isn't really meant to be about giving people a shot to beat it. To me it mainly means giving characters the opportunity to hook their own stories into a common central theme and a source for plot seeds. It's a framework, not a goal meant to be resolved.

I would argue this is a terrible way to conceive of such a thing. If you're going to have a metaplot, it needs to be a /plot/. Which, yes, means that it needs to be accessable to the PCs tackling and 'solving', or rather, resolving it. The idea that a metaplot is just there as a thing to RP 'around' is terrible and frustrating.

Now, if what you actually mean is a game's theme or setting, that's something else. Like, in a CoC game, the metaplot isn't the Great Old Ones - they're part of the games setting and theme, so no, you're never going to beat them. But if the metaplot is 'a cult of Azathoth has infiltrated much of the city's power structure and is attempting to summon a hoard of star spawn to devour the city', then absolutely, the PCs should be able to interact with and change every part of that.