@Cobalt said in Tips for GMs:

@bear_necessities said in Tips for GMs:

@KDraygo said in Tips for GMs:

Try to keep the scene moving,

Please. Please keep things moving. I’ve been in GM’d scenes where we haven’t even finished “posing in” and have already hit the 1 hour mark.

I know this is a few days ago, but this irks me so bad. It is why in the last few years that I was GMing for people, I instituted a rule that if you had not posed after 5-10 minutes when it was your run and not responded OOC your turn would be skipped.

But scenes moving so slowly that I’d lose all focus on them, is a big reason why I stopped GMing and RPing altogether.

To help with that, I try to make sure the beginning of a major event is “on rails,” like a guided tour. That is, everyone has 10 - 15 minutes to post before the next thing happens (NPC does a thing, everyone move to the next room, etc.). Everyone sticks together until the beginning is finished, and then you’re set free to go wherever you’d like, RP about the situation, take actions, etc.

Having a beginning prepared in advance helps to strike a balance between player agency and moving things along.

Unrelated: if someone wants to do something that’s beyond what you’re capable of handling, such as using everyday household objects to make war crime weapons in your My Little Pony game, you’re allowed to say, “I’m sorry, we don’t have support for handling that type of RP in this game. It’s outside the scope of the game’s theme.”

Somewhat related: Be prepared for mediating players’ interpersonal issues in a calm and helpful manner. That includes banning, if necessary. Unless you have a positive reputation from past games, you need to understand that players are usually entering your game with zero trust of staff. The odds that a player has been burned by staff in the past is very high. So be keenly aware that you are the one who needs to earn their trust. Not the other way around.

Also unrelated: Give your players things to do in their downtime. PRPs, RP about current events, take actions leading up to the next event, and optional scenes that produce tangible results are great for player engagement. Things like, “Make some clothes for the donation bin; we’re low on shoes,” or “The cows can be milked once a month to improve our town’s reputation,” or “The camp needs 20 pounds of wood to repair structures and 20 pounds of boar meat to survive the month in a healthy state,” can motivate players to do optional scenes in between major events.

And it helps to fill in the four levels of player engagement:

Metaplot: The reason why everything is happening. You’ll barely touch this, but it’s important to write down. You can drop little lore nuggets at the end of every chapter as a reward, but your players won’t directly interact with the metaplot.

Chapter / season plot: These are the major plots that take months to resolve. They’re the backdrop to what’s happening in the story right now. These are the ones that are resolved over the course of multiple major scenes, as well as player actions over time. When a chapter plot resolves, it should usually cause a major dynamic shift in how the players RP, and what they RP about. For example, the PCs successfully opened the door to Twinkle Town, and now scenes are possible there, but it’s a very dangerous place to explore. The next season may be about making Twinkle Town a safe place to live as their homes on the Tiny Islands collapse.

Episodic plot: Your “monster of the week” plot. These are the small steps forward in the Chapter Plot. They could also be unrelated to the chapter plot, too. Not everything that happens needs to end with a TV displaying Moriarty’s laughing face.

Day-to-day plots: These are the things your players will be doing during their downtime, which I explained above. This is the most common type of RP that happens, so it’s really important to facilitate it however the players wish. They should be instantly accessible, either through guidelines or through automation (pre-written rules about rolling dice, adding code if that’s an option, etc.).

Write down the metaplot, at least 3 chapter plots, at least 3 episodic plots per chapter, and at least 5 day-to-day plots. Now you’ve got a plan for keeping your players engaged for at least a year.

Building a game is the easy part. Keeping it going for years is the real challenge.

And on that note, it’s okay to have an ending in mind! You don’t have to run your game forever. A satisfying conclusion will be far more memorable than a game that just fizzles out due to lack of engagement. And, as a counter-point, it’s also okay to say that the game isn’t going in a direction you can handle, and wrap it up for the players. Sometimes experiments don’t work out, and that’s okay.

@hellfrog This. Exactly this. I want players to do things and be rewarded, not be rewarded for logging in.

The system I have in my mind may not work at all. But it can be changed. I just don’t want to continue doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting different results.

Well, fine, I guess I’m finally going to have to build my VtR in Victorian London game I keep threatening to do.

@Pavel said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:

@hellfrog said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:

yeah applications are to tell you about the player more than the character, I think. "Name a non-fictional woman that is smarter than you’ would be a perfect application prompt.

Faraday and Cobalt. Next question.

you’re in, buddy!

@howyadoin said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

@MisterBoring Silent Heaven already exists

ETA: joke

You joke, but Silent Heaven players will 100% sign up for all of that and have a great time. The first event I ran that was tagged “risk of character death” had 31 characters sign up for it. I’m impressed by their ability to find brief moments of IC fun, relief and happiness for their characters, even in the direst situations.

@Yam said in Other People:

I was def curious about how often most RPers even consider Other People’s fun.

I’m so worried about other people’s fun and happiness that my therapist wishes I would just be a selfish asshole once a month.

firan. i had never even heard of MUs.

a man is holding a statue of a bride and groom with a laurel wreath behind them

finding the creative spoons to gm a little story in my little mu* corner

@somasatori In game is good!

@MisterBoring I could be wrong, but there’s no indication in the forum post that it was continuing after the initial ban.

alt text

@Pavel Agreed. Self care and boundaries are important for game runners and staff too. In my experience this doesn’t get supported enough.

@Superbia I don’t recognize the username, and basic attempts to check their post history did not work, so shrug

I’m a person who often joins and becomes invested in a game on a whim - I can’t tell what the formula is, but if a game is hoping to attract people like me who just hop in without knowing someone, at least some percentage of the playerbase needs to feel open to interacting with, chatting with, getting excited about new characters and new people. Not every game has to be that - I don’t mind the existence of games that are built with a network-only approach and are meant for people who already have connections to have a good time together.

But as a new player approaching an open game, seeing people only rping with one or two others a lot sets off yellow flags that a game isn’t a place where people have the time or energy to open their circles to me. I don’t mind reaching out a lot when I’m in the shiny new excitement phase, but in order to feel welcome, it helps to see signs that it’ll be reciprocated.

I don’t think activity checks or a quota on interactions with people outside of your circle are meaningful solutions, because activity requirements can’t generate enthusiasm.I’ve roleplayed in forums like Dreamwidth where gamerunners often have monthly activity rules. The rules don’t actually stop a game from slowing down, or dying, or becoming a playground for one group. But I think the urge to implement them comes from the wish to have a particular game environment. Two people playing alone in a corner aren’t hurting anybody - but the more people who are doing that, the harder it is for new people to jump in and have a good time, and a lot of games want, at least in theory, new people to have an easy time joining, to buff up the population as people need to slow down or leave for various reasons.

And on a personal level, I find its important to my RP enjoyment to be open to new connections, because sometimes my old connections can’t RP any more! And it’s so much easier not to be bitter and discouraged if I’m not rebuilding my character’s network from scratch.

As I said elsewhere – if I had a single spoon to spare from Keys, I’d be over here, rolling up an arrogant Alphatian nobleman. Prince Haldemar, move over, there’d be a new explorer in town.

@InkGolem People like me but older and somehow worse.

@somasatori said in Everworld of Darkness:

I don’t really know enough about Demon to figure that one out.

God Machine divided by Zero and that basically nuked the Gauntlet, Demons are trying to build Infrastructure to re-stabilize things.

@somasatori said in Everworld of Darkness:

Sin-Eaters

… and Mummies, who also need the Underworld/Duat… but due to the shattered nature of reality, they are temporally locked to now, solving their time-travel shenanigans.

@somasatori said in Everworld of Darkness:

Stuff about Poles

Something something Exalted Creation something.

@somasatori said in Everworld of Darkness:

Prometheans

Always gotta do something about them tainting the land and drawing in people to kill them. It’s just the way of the MU world.

i think you’ve got three dials: game size, nuance/specificity, and staff involvement. Cranking any of these up or down is going to affect the others. You can (and should! if you want!) make a game that is highly specific in a historical or fictional setting, but doing so is going to turn down max players and probably increase staff involvement in direct relation. You can turn down staff involvement and let your players mostly self-police if the guardrails are broad and high enough, until that player size gets to a certain limit.

I think you can pull off most any kind of niche or historical setting if you are willing to accept and spend your time curating a small and like minded player base.

This is a community-building issue.

Okay, yeah, probably you can never have outright let’s-murder-each-other-on-sight factions and have it work. But why would you want to? If they only interact to fight, there is no reason for the opposing group to be PCs.

But stuff like “Green apple Fossoways hate red apple Fossoways and they’re each trying to be the ruling branch of the house,” and the deal where everybody’s trying to steal the McGuffin from whoever has it right now, can be fine fun.

It needs a supportive community to be fine, though. It works on private games because everybody there thinks everybody else’s feelings count and actively wants every other player to have a good time. When this trust is broken things crumble.

Which is no surprise. There are big differences between:

Dracula: “Well shit.”

Van Helsing: “Yeah, the dice were cruel to you! But that was great, loved the way you played it out, I had a blast.And you’ll get yours once you climb out of that hoiy-water-contaminated well.”

And:

Dracula: “Well shit.”

Van Helsing: “I understand that you’re very upset. In this essay I will explain how you are wrong and a problem…”

And:

Dracula: “Well shit.”

Van Helsing: “It sucks to suck.”

Also, yeah. There’s gonna be drama. There’s just gonna be drama. Making some space for the dramas of RPG-related fee-fees is part of gaming. Gamerunners and players can draw a line about how much space and what kind of expression of ye feels. But “never express any kind of upset about the game or your interactions with others on it” isn’t reasonable. Games nobody cares are not good games. You want players to be invested. Passions will rise. Characters don’t have to die for passions to rise.

Players in general and game runners in particular really ought to try to avoid drawing that line at who’s drama rather than what kind of drama. 

Drawing the line at a who is how you get bullshit like it not being ‘drama’ when Abelard raises a “Bridget refuses to compromise in RP!,” fuss, but when Bridget replies, “You refused to turn off your camera, you were obviously bluffing, I’m more afraid of proposed-betrayee I am of your threat, and I don’t even have the information you were trying to blackmail me to get,” somehow Bridget is the drama-creating problem.