As a staffer, I also tried to cater plots towards character sheets for the people who showed up. Did someone take a bunch of nonsense points in diving and underwater basket weaving? Then by god, they're going to need to roll those to trap an underwater somethingorother in a basket made from kelp! I loved rewarding people who spent points on character stuff that they probably thought they'd never use.
@ThatGuyThere Ahh, okay. That makes sense. Yeah, I wouldn't really distinguish between the two then. You're still sending up a flag to say, "Hey, I'm interested!" I've definitely been on games where people who hated +requests would befriend me because they knew I liked them and would inevitably dole out the information when I got it!
@ThatGuyThere How do you do that though without having a staff member always be around in every room any RP is happening in just in case someone wants to RP researching something related to a plot? Seriously asking.
I wouldn't mind doing library RP looking for things, but if I also put in a +request, I could then actually get something without the staffer having to be there in the scene and could just RP it with the other PCs around. It doesn't even have to be long "X PC is going to be looking in the library for things related to X in the plot scene the other night."
I think that's when you have to know the kind of group you've got, which can be hard to tell if it's the first time they're all together. Some people will NEVER legwork a thing. Some people need someone to actively say, "If people want to follow up on this there will be other things coming from this plot for people that put in research requests!" And some people will legwork that plot that had no followup because it was just helping an old lady cross the street, but hey, when that happened I'd throw something together because A+ for effort even if it was misplaced!
I think the most important thing has to come from staff:
Give people things to do.
This doesn't mean 24-7 staff has to be running something, but they need to be giving players some way to engage with the theme and their fellow players. I'm a big fan of Monster of the Week type deals, which can be one offs or things people can follow up on. Doesn't always have to be combat, could just be a big social thing. A dance, a festival, something to bring people together and give people a reason to be somewhere and talk to other people. Big A+s from me if it is involving EVERYONE and not just the same five people over and over again. If I think staff is trying to get everyone involved, I will go out of my way to try to give players who can't figure out an excuse to get in a way to do so. I'm a huge legworker. I LOVE investigating the shit out of things and then passing the information along to other people.
That said, I think there's an ebb and flow to this kind of thing. Sometimes you get a group of people that wants to proactively chase down leads. Sometimes the current crew is the stand on the corner and wait for a monster to drop no matter how long it takes sort.
Giving people something to do empowers players to entertain themselves and one another. Bar RP, okay, I can do it. Bar RP where we're all talking about That Thing That Happened and Making Plans? Way better! Even better? Allowing players to run PrPs. One off PrPs or PrPs tied to things that are happening in a major plot. Maybe zombies are attacking the city! Not every scene has to be a big staff plot. Let someone run someone's Aunt Edna coming back to kill her nephew for bad mouthing her fruit cake recipe!
The saddest things are games with great themes that players can't ever interact with. I'll RP with anyone and try to drag people onto the grid, but being proactive doesn't matter if there's nothing to do.
Maybe they were using the metric system.
Ha, that was like after I had my c-section and they gave me oxy. Instructions said something like take 3 a day for 3 weeks. They gave me 12 pills. Thankfully, I actually got by on just advil and only ever took like two of them, but come on, guys. Did no one read the label?
@tributary Holy shit! I only just passed quals in September, but I was hoping to be further along than I am right now due to life/work being crazy. Everyone I know of that's ever done a PhD laughs at me when I say that, though. I'm currently racing another guy in my cohort to see who finishes first. He doesn't have any kids and he's like 24, so that bastard is probably going to win. But, it's a good way to get me to haul out that prospectus every so often.
@fortydeuce You just reminded me I need to renew my library books. Again. And yeah, it's amazing how my committee went from "we want to get you through this as fast as possible!" To "let me nitpick this to death and suggest something to push you back a year, that's cool right? Cool."
ABD 4 life!
...hopefully not really
Yeah, my husband's entire paycheck and a tiny bit of mine goes to pay for daycare each month. Then half of mine goes to the mortgage, and the other half to bills and basically food and kids clothes. We burned through our savings doing daycare for the first for the first year (people are not kidding, BEFORE YOU WANT TO BE PREGNANT GO GET ON THE FUCKING WAITING LIST) since we ended up at one of the most expensive ones as all the "cheap" ones had five year waiting lists, and when we realized we wanted another one we started cutting things out hardcore and throwing money into savings. As a result, we have like, zero savings right now, which is the worst. And I am kind of dragging my feet on my PhD so that I don't have to start making student loan payments this year 
It is if you count in the raises/promotions/401k contributions you'd miss out on being out of the workforce for seven years. Trust me, I've run the numbers. A lot. It SUCKS right now, but in three years we won't even know what to DO with all that money!
haha yes we will pay off student loans 
I try to look at the bright side: we'll be really used to paying for college when that rolls around.
The numbers still make me wince every year.
A month and a half? Where do you live? Cause dude, where I live it's $3900 a month for the two of them and it's only that cheap because the youngest just got out of the infant room. Still better than the $4500/month we were paying last year, though.
They are not fucking around when they say kids are expensive.
It never fails, doing taxes every year and having to figure out how much we're giving to daycare is just the worst. It's god damn criminal how much we pay. I might as well be sending them to college. Seriously.
@ghost said in ROGUE: It is coming...:
Take them to the stars and give them war. Make it big, explosive, and take the fight from one corner of the galaxy to the next.
Yeah, I think this is key. Bar RP is still just bar RP even if you're sitting in a space-bar. And it gets oooooooold.
@ortallus I was last really active there...man, probably about ten years ago. 2008? I left earlyish 2009. But while I was there, there was lots of grid RP and some of the best grid-wide plotting I've ever seen. I heard they allow unlimited alts there which just seems...exhausting. And like it would be impossible not to get alt-incesty. But maybe they have the playerbase to make it work? Almost everyone that I know that played there isn't there anymore. Someday @Cheesegrater will convince me to open a D&D game.
When we're retired.
@karmageddon I dug up my old Sagas log and there was so much I did not remember! It was Cartwright and did they seriously have you pay XP for plots?! What?!
@cupcake Check with your local synagogues and rabbis as well, a lot of them do trips and may be able to offer some kind of scholarship or point you towards things that can help even if you don't do some kind of project around it. For actually planning the trip I always recommend checking out skiplagged (website) or hopper (app) for cheap flights and then if I recall correctly (though it has been uh, over a decade since I was last there) there are lots and lots of amazing hostels around that are usually cheaper than hotels and allow you to get to know your fellow travelers. Though with airbnb in the mix, I don't know that this is still true.