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Jumpscare

Whenever I share stories about Silent Heaven, it feels like I’m always doing something different, and yet it works for the game.

In this case, we have a policy for a right to OOC privacy. That is, nobody is required to share their OOC identity, but you can share privately with people you trust.

Staff are marked as staff in the Discord chat, and they, too, don’t have to reveal who they play. I also strongly enforce a rule that staff cannot be on their staff account at the same time they’re on their alt, which eliminates a lot of mischief that could happen. They also have to mark other characters that they interact with frequently on a “conflict of interest” list, which codedly hides all information, notes, jobs, and requests of those characters. This makes it so they specifically give the most RP to the characters they play the least with.

I can’t imagine this would work for every game, but it works exceptionally well for us.

Juniper

I think ideally they shouldn’t play because they will benefit from insider knowledge and bias, and will also form their own positive biases about characters their character becomes close to. But as multiple people have pointed out, that’s kind of an insane ask. Nobody wants to put in that kind of work for no reward.

In my opinion the next best thing is for staff characters to be totally anonymous. That way they can be just another guy in the background without getting mobbed by people looking to do a little bootlicking for brownie points. If their identity is known, they are constantly going to be thrust into the spotlight ahead of anyone else, and people will be afraid to oppose them.

Juniper

@Warma-Sheen I’m so sick of having to justify my stats. I shouldn’t have to write that my character was a career chef just to beg enough points to make toast. I’ve been told multiple times my character needs more experience for their build but I look at what I’m asking for and my character is in the range of “fucking useless”.

Pavel

@Faraday said in Staff and playable pcs:

Just maintain a healthy balance and most players aren’t going to care

Unfortunately, for every Faraday there’s ten… you can fill in the blank yourself. So for staffers just starting out, “it’s probably best that you just don’t” might be solid advice. Until your players have worked out whether you’re a Faraday or a James Watson, at least.

Pavel

@Roadspike said in Staff and playable pcs:

I also think that a staffer’s PC should never be “out in front” of a story.

I keep going back and forth on this idea, though I think I agree with it generally. I know it makes me grumpy when staff seem to be hogging the spotlight. But, I also know that our perceptions of things like participation are terrible (in general: studies have shown that men see women as more talkative/participatory than they actually are (Crombie et al., 2003)). So I’m more cognisant of the fact that just because I think staff are participating in the plot a lot more, that doesn’t actually mean that they are.

Additionally, given the limited number of games in any given genre, I’m a lot more forgiving than I used to be about “letting” staff take the lead in a plot run by a different person. It’s not as if there’s a hundred WoD games out there these days, so if you’re staffing on the only V20 game, it’s likely you really like playing V20. So it’s only fair that you get to shine occasionally, too.

Reference

Crombie, G., Pyke, S. W., Silverthorn, N., Jones, A., & Piccinin, S. (2003). Students’ Perceptions of Their Classroom Participation and Instructor as a Function of Gender and Context. The Journal of Higher Education, 74(1), 51–76. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhe.2003.0001

Roadspike

I agree with @Pavel and others that staff should play on their game. I also agree that staff’s alts should be disclosed for transparency purposes – if someone is telling me something wild about the theme (ICly or OOCly), I’d like to know if I’m dealing with a random player or a staffer.

I also think that a staffer’s PC should never be “out in front” of a story. They can be right alongside the PCs of multiple non-staffers, but shouldn’t be out in front unless they’re serving as a glorified plot-giver – and even then the balance is very tight, and should always tip in the direction of non-staff PCs.

bear_necessities

100000% staff should play their own games.

I’m on the fence about whether or not they should disclose who their PCs are though, especially on story-driven games. Being able to just dip into a PC skin and turn off Godmode is part of the appeal of having a PC on your own game; you don’t feel forced to provide story for anyone if no one knows who your PC is, and you don’t have to worry about people only playing with you because they think you are a plot dispenser.

Pavel

@STD said in MU Peeves Thread:

go the Old Man Henderson route

For those unfamiliar, here is an excellent audio rendition: The Tale Of Old Man Henderson

Pavel

A. Staff should play on their games. That’s not even optional, they must play on their games. Especially as the game gets larger, they’ll lose touch with the average player’s needs and wants if they’re not down in the dirt with them. (ETA: Specifically staff who make the decisions. Coders can just code, if they really want.)

B. It depends on how staff is organised. If you are the Starfleet staffer, and you have a Starfleet character, then you should have that information publicly available. There are likely other instances, but I can’t think of them off the top of my head.

While I acknowledge the desire for privacy, I think the playerbase’s right to staff transparency is more important.

Third Eye

@chorus said in Staff and playable pcs:

A: What staffer in their right mind is going to want to ONLY “work” on a game, rather than play it?

They exist, but in my experience a lot of them treat their NPCs like PCs, which becomes it’s own special problem and I’d rather just have a clear staff-alt at that point.

T	Tez
P	Pavel
C	catzilla
C	Cobalt
C	chilling
S	somasatori
S	sonata
L	Laurel
K	KQ
U	untitled
B	bored
B	Belle
M	mudcirclejerk
M	Mercutio
N	Narrator
R	Rucket
T	Templari
R	Roo
N	Nala
A	Artemis

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