Posts made by ThatGuyThere

I think a lot of it comes down to the culture of the sport and the fans of it.
No one keeps an NBA ball that bounces into the crowd and that happens pretty regularly given the closeness of court side seat to the action.
In baseball both at the minor league and major league level it is pretty much given a ball that goes into the stands will become property of the person that gets it, even to the point of certain collectors balls that get auctions off for millions, and there are numerous instances of players wanting a home run ball for personal reasons and working out a deal to get it back from the fan who ends up with it.

@Jennkryst said in Would a meta-shadowrun game be fun?:

@ThatGuyThere Does Chummer for 5e work for the Karma/Lifepath build? Or is it just Priority? We hates the Priority rules, worse than we hates the hobbitses!!

Last I looked at it it was just Priority rules but that was also before the life path stuff was published. Have not played a Shadow run table top since then so have not looked to see if they have added an option for that since it has been published.

@GangOfDolls said in Would a meta-shadowrun game be fun?:

So, I'd play just about any version of Shadowrun as long as the CG wasn't like trying to do your income taxes in long form while blind folded.

Check out Chummer it is available in versions for 4th and 5th editions and makes Shadowrun Cg about as painless as possible.

@Ominous said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

Is staffing a MU* different from this, other than the obvious coding?

Yes in one very significant way. When I run a table top, which I do often it is for friends. Or at worst friends of friends I am OK hanging out with.
When you staff on a mush you spend a lot of your effort on strangers and even people you actively dislike.

They can make you give it back, though in 90 percent of cases they do not. I have never heard of that happening at a major college or pro level.
It does happen on occasion at lower college and high school levels due to budget issues.
So while most of the time you get to keep it that is a gift from the team not a mandatory situation.
Edit: In pro sports there is a collectors market for special homerun balls and the like and the fans that catch can make millions and the MLB allows it. Also some football teams make it a practice of handing touchdown balls to fans even if they do not go into the stands in the course of play. So while in a lot of cases it is the default the fan keeps things it is not a guarantee.

@surreality
I agree there. I think terminology might be where I lot of contention comes from.
To me a "Plot" implies planned in advance and going for multiple scenes. Sometimes the planned in advance part gets pretty loose but still the multiple scenes aspect is what makes something a plot.
The pick up game style hey lets run something quick to me are "One Shots" not "Plot" and I totally agree that everyone Staff, Player etc should be able to run those while playing in them. They are a good thing and those type of scenes are very much what hooked me on MUSHing a long time ago and a big part of what keeps bringing me back.

@surreality
That started as a one off scene that my PC participated and I ran. Which is something we both agree everyone should be able to run in and participate in.
Then when people took it to the plot level I wrote out my PC by playing up the injury he received in the one off scene. (I know it did not end up being a one off scene but it was intended to be at the time) The injury became the excuse for why he did not join the rest of the motley for the PRP end of things. So my PC slides from active participant to quest giver, again I have no issues with people using their PCs as quest givers in PRPs they run.
To me the issue would come up if I had my character healed (another of the PCs involved could have done this, after all supernatural healing is not rare in WoD) and then lead the charge for his own vengeance. That would be what I am against people doing becoming an active part of the plot they run.

@surreality
I am fine with staff having their own fun, I am definitely in favor of players running scenes for each other. To me it is a far different thing between making your own fun a.k.a. running a pick up scene and choosing to run a preplanned scheduled scene where your character is the focus. I don't want to be in that preplanned scene whether run my staff alt or joe player.
And I believe motivations are shown through actions, so if staff alts run a lot of scenes to focus on their PCs (yes I know a lot is a undefined quantity but again this in practice is more of a feel thing) then I will conclude that providing an audience for those scenes is the main goal of the game, because that is what the evidence available to me shows. I am willing to reassess my view when new evidence becomes available of course.
Conversely if a Player run a much of scene just to focus on their PC I would also conclude that that person's main goal for the game would be to have an audience for their story and would avoid RPing with that person.
I do not see this as a staff vs player issue, the only difference in my mind is the scope they effect. I can still RP and find fun on a game while avoiding Joe Player, where if it is Joe Staffer it is usually best to right off the game and move on.

@surreality
If it is a one scene thing then it less of a deal still a scene i will avoid no matter how much I might like or trust the person running it, if it starts to become a regular thing I will start to suspect the goal of the game is to provide an audience for those types of scenes.

@Seraphim73 said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

@Sunny Again, just so that everyone is on the same page, I'm not talking about metaplot scenes. I'm not even talking about PrPs with tangible benefits, I'm talking about gathering some friends together (who you have warned previously of the type of scene you're planning) to run a scene that furthers your character's storyline.

Yes you can absolutely do this but that removes any defense about what the game is truly about. Whether it is against stated rules or not if the main reason you are running a scene if to further your characters story, then despite all protests to the contrary then your highest concern is your character's story. It is no longer at attempt at collaboration it is a desire for an interactive audience.
If you are good at it yes you can find that audience but then don't be surprised in matter that are open to the public when people so signed on to play a game then complain that they were relegated to audience member.

@GirlCalledBlu said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

I think the biggest issue I have had when running stories for another character is feeling like I don't know the character very well, because you ALWAYS know your character better than anyone else because you share headspace. Maybe have a way for people to list out things they hope for their character beyond power leveling, or reputation gains? I dunno. Would you have that be more of a request thing? Going back to my arm loss scenario, I would put in a +request I want my character to lose a limb?

Or a +bbpost. Fallcoast and a couple other places I have played have a board dedicated for PrP requests. You put up what you want to have run for you, and I have seen some very detailed and some fairly vague and if that strikes someones fancy as a thing to run, then you contact the poster and something gets set up.
I am sure it could be done with +request as well but in this case I think the wider the audience the better since the goal would be to get more things run.

An addition to what I earlier wrote. If you do run a one off action scene that your PC participates in, it is also on you to insure that later your participation does not become a benefit.
For example lets say I am playing on a Wild West game me and Bubba are about to RP, Bubba doesn't feel like Saloon RP so I say hey lets go for a ride and get attacked by bandits. I run the scene my PC and Bubba fight off some bandits fun was had by all. I don't think any sane person would have an issue with this.
But lets say a month down the line there is an opening for county sheriff for the setting. It would be fine for Bubba to point at cleaning out that group of bandits as a reason he should be sheriff because he did not run the scene. If my PC tried to used it as a reason to be sheriff I should be slapped down because that would be using a scene I ran for a benefit.
I think this is true weather I am staff on the game or not.

@GirlCalledBlu said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

And I know I've used murdered family member and limb loss as examples, but I've been whacked on the nose for even just having a one-off adventure where my character was present rather than RPing yet-another-social-tavern-scene. I'm told that's spotlighting, and thus problematic.

Double post because this really to me is a separate issue. I see a large difference between a plot and a one off hey lets do something action-y rather then social.
There I think it is perfectly alright to have your character present and participating as long as you do not show favoritism to your PC over anyone else.
Honestly if I ever got groused to about something like that i would just stop running anything in that location if it was someone in authority doing the grousing.
I really do not see any problem with running a one off scene where your character participate but does not gain anything besides the standard benefit from being in such a scene.

@GirlCalledBlu said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

@Roz said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

"I want to explore this story for my character but I don't know anyone who would run it,"

I think this is a key thought. I know I have struggled on countless games to find someone who wants to run a plot for my character's development. My experiences as a Player has often been that Staff will happily run events/plots that impact/effect a multitude of characters, but don't seem keen on putting in the effort to run something that is more character-centric and less metaplot-centric.

I'm not saying that's the case everywhere, just on games where I have been a player.

This is a definite issue one that is common a lot of places, the best way I have found to counter that is by finding a few or even one person you gel with and enjoy RPing with and run plots for each other in that small group.
I probably would not say something as specific as I want my character to lose and arm can you run something like that? But I have asked, hey I want my char to suffer a traumatic loss if you happen to have any ideas for that plot wise I would really appreciate you running something along those lines.
Or as i have been asked recently and ran a short PrP, hey I am really wanting an adventure can you run something.
On any game there far more plot need then staff can provide so finding a good group to toss little plots back and forth for each other is a great thing.
Also on the topic of having your PC in the plot you are running, acting as a quest giver is awesome, but other then that it should be minimized.
For example Once I was running a plot where the PCs were stuck. they decided to go to my PC in character to ask for advice. Now I could have just said I think you should do x, but that would make my character looks smarter then the rest and is likely a bad call, what i did, and think was a better call was instead of having my PC recommend anything I had him ask questions to get the players thinking along some lines of progress they had overlooked. That caused things to get moving again. the end result was the same after talking to my PC they went about the rest of the plot but the impact my character had was greatly reduced compared ot if he had told them an answer.

@GirlCalledBlu
I wouldn't characterize it as stalking since that has all sorts of shady connotations when I was actually honestly checking out a game I was considering.
And for me it was both the number of the scenes posted and the role within the scenes. I didn't read every log but i looks for the ones that seemed plot-y in title and spot read. I do that for most games just to make sure my style fits with the general style of the game.
It is a very unscientific method just a feel thing if the same name appears in a lot of scenes in a significant role it starts to feel like they are the star. Think of it like a movie, in the first Star Wars trilogy the highest ranking rebels on screen are Mon Motha and Admiral Ackbar but if you jumped to random scenes in those films it would be fairly obvious after the first few you picked who the important characters were.
As far as the tag cloud I rarely remember those exist and never use them as any sort of guide.

I think this goes back to what @Roz was saying about balance. If Yolo is trying to make sure his character isn't a major lynchpin in the metaplot, but has decided to run this story for his own character's development, is he balancing his role as a Staff with his role as a Player? Or should he have not run this story, because he is the main character of that particular storyline even if it he's running/telling the story as a Player and not a Staffer?

In this example I would say it was perfectly fine for Yolo to have a central role in a personal plot. Staff PCs are PCs too. Though I would be concerned about anyone staff or just a player running a prp who was running a plot with their character as the centerpiece.

It is one of those topics where a right answer is hard to define. absolutely believe staff should be free to enjoy and play on the games they put effort into. I also believe that staff should not be excluded from having spotlight or leadership completely.
I do think staff need to be extra careful not to go over their fair share of the spotlight. No one should have to play a character then never gets a chance to shine and that definitely includes staff, but any character staff included has to share that spotlight.
I will be honest I looked at Playing 5th World when it was open the first time. I didn't for one reason when I looked at the plot logged there were three or so characters who seemed to be the center of everything. I have no clue whether or not they were staff alts or not but I didn't want to be a bit part I MU* to be part of an ensemble.
To the outside it does not matter if the chars are staff alts or not but to the inside it does. While there are definitely cases of non-staff monopolizing a game, staff being perceived as doing the same tend to lead to greater hard feeling among the player base because right or wrong they are perceived has harder to oppose ICly.
I don't think as a community we have reached any sort of real consensus for how much is too much but like the wording of the famous pornography case we do know it when we see it.

Honestly, I think you guys running a private game is a good step. While the tone of this thread have hardly been positive or constructive it does seem like you two are taking the complaints as things to earnestly work on.
It is easier to try out new approaches with a smaller group, and as people has said doing something generally makes you better at it.

@GirlCalledBlu
For me it is less distrust and more if the decision has been made why rock the boat sort of thing.
Most of the time once a decision has been made the person speaking against it is vilified or excluded this happens in plenty of social situation not just mushing. And getting proven correct later rarely changes the situation.
Personal experience both on-line and off has shown it to be better to go along with a bad idea rather then speak out against it, whether by thought turns out to be right or wrong later, at least if you want to maintain that social position.

@GirlCalledBlu
How you ask the question is very important. Asking "How should I introduce Grounders?" will get you a lot more of an honest answer then "Should I introduce Grounders like this?" especially if asked from a staff bit.
The first will likely get real answer (even if a lot of the answer are going to be I'm not sure) while the second in most cases will get some variation of that works because why rock the boat when you have given the appearance that the direction has been decided on.

@Miss-Demeanor said in The 100: The Mush:

Going to a player as staff on your staffbit and asking if they personally would have a problem with you doing something as a player that could well affect the game at large? Generally not the best way to get a real answer.

Wow did this actually happen? To me is is like a superior at work going to the subordinate and asking for a day off, or course the person in a lesser position of authority will say it is cool basic pack socialization and fear of possible reprisals will almost guarantee that.
Sure a few would give honest answers and I might depending on how well knew the staffer but in the majority of cases a blind rubber stamp will be given because that is the course of least resistance.