Staff Capacity
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@Pavel I don’t intend to start asking for permission.
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@Pavel said in Staff Capacity:
@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:
I would love to see more single-sphere games because it seems to be what a lot of players really want.
Amen. My favourite WoD game remains Requiem for Kingsmouth. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but it was a single-sphere Vampire the Requiem game - with mortals and, I think, psychics and shit too, but Vampire was the main driving force. The single-sphere approach allowed the whole game to be designed around mechanics vampires use: Territory, hunting, influence, etc.
Requiem was great in its focus, although it absolutely ran into staff capacity issues despite being single-sphere. Which goes back to, I suspect, needing to be aware of how many PCs you can comfortably support per staffer, and being willing to close the game until your staff capacity increases.
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@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:
@Pavel said in Staff Capacity:
@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:
I would love to see more single-sphere games because it seems to be what a lot of players really want.
Amen. My favourite WoD game remains Requiem for Kingsmouth. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but it was a single-sphere Vampire the Requiem game - with mortals and, I think, psychics and shit too, but Vampire was the main driving force. The single-sphere approach allowed the whole game to be designed around mechanics vampires use: Territory, hunting, influence, etc.
Requiem was great in its focus, although it absolutely ran into staff capacity issues despite being single-sphere. Which goes back to, I suspect, needing to be aware of how many PCs you can comfortably support per staffer, and being willing to close the game until your staff capacity increases.
From what I know of the behind-the-scenes stuff it was absolutely about staff capacity but from a different angle. Specifically, it was about one person and their vision, and their recalcitrance when it came to accepting help because it would “spoil their vision.”
Some games can absolutely be run by one person, RfK was not one of those games.
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@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:
Requiem was great in its focus, although it absolutely ran into staff capacity issues despite being single-sphere. Which goes back to, I suspect, needing to be aware of how many PCs you can comfortably support per staffer, and being willing to close the game until your staff capacity increases.
The ratio of PCs per staffer is also going to vary based on how much administrative overhead there is. Obvious statement, maybe, but with something like Keys you can get by with a lot fewer staff than something like Arx.
she/they
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i feel like the answer is just player limits. simple and disappointing, as answers often are.
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@hellfrog Player limits and knowing your own limits. It’s super important that a game runner has the ability to take a break without having to worry about their game burning down while they’re gone.
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@Tez said in Staff Capacity:
The ratio of PCs per staffer is also going to vary based on how much administrative overhead there is. Obvious statement, maybe, but with something like Keys you can get by with a lot fewer staff than something like Arx.
Very much so. The more complex keeping track of plot and faction becomes, the more people you need to do it – and the more people to keep track of that.
@Pavel said in Staff Capacity:
@hellfrog Player limits and knowing your own limits. It’s super important that a game runner has the ability to take a break without having to worry about their game burning down while they’re gone.
Not going to lie, I was worried when I was offline for three weeks this summer due to illness and hospitalisation. But there are three of us and the most dramatic that came out of it all was the care package some of the sweet, sweet players sent me.
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@kalakh said in Staff Capacity:
They’re not designed to have a bunch of PCs playing them at the same time with each other, and while that’d be a delicate balance with tabletop, it’s got to be a nightmare on a MUSH.
With my one-and-only experience playing oWoD being a “all spheres” TTRPG campaign, I am confident in saying it’s just as impossible to balance in TT. (But among friends, imbalance can be less of an issue.)
I think the larger issue is that TT games, by their nature, are adapted for, well, tabletop. Small groups, small GM-to-player ratio, etc. Not just the dice, but the rules, the setting, just… everything. Trying to adapt that to MUs has just never worked all that great IMHO.
What works well on a highly-simulated computer RPG is going to be different from what works on a human-centric MU is going to be different than what works on tabletop with a central GM.
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RfK’s backend was clunky and unwieldy, coupled with systems that were incredibly hands on and very intensive in needing one on one scenes. Not just +jobs and questions answered or resources earmarked for X amount of time. I remember Becca having to spend 1-2 DAYS just doing the spreading sheeting and record keeping for 1 week’s aspirations and getting the xp out for them manually. RfK was great, but some things were just done the hard way.
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I’ve personally found smaller staff work on games where the culture is to tend to crowdsource plot/story trajectory to players to run without a lot of staff oversight and management.
Definitely pros and cons to both methods. Games that want to centralize and keep a tighter leash on plot get to set the pace and keep story to what they imagined, but then it adds a gate wherein everyone has to cross to move story around, and it becomes a wait-and-stare game for staff to drop the next pieces. I’ve played on both types of games myself and experienced upsides and downsides to either style.
Letting players run more freely with things releases its own beasts but can free up staffers, and they can concentrate on more egregious things like responding to system mechanics, more major theme plot missteps, or creepy people creepin’.
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@SpaceKhomeini said in Staff Capacity:
Also OOC masquerades are often laughably dimwitted and flimsy.
Yeah, I see you, obvious Nosferatu. You wrote up that character at 3 am on a fucking Dennys napkin and me pretending to not know what this is makes us all a little dumber.
The curse of the infinite bar scene.
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@kalakh said in Staff Capacity:
@SpaceKhomeini said in Staff Capacity:
Also OOC masquerades are often laughably dimwitted and flimsy.
Yeah, I see you, obvious Nosferatu. You wrote up that character at 3 am on a fucking Dennys napkin and me pretending to not know what this is makes us all a little dumber.
The curse of the infinite bar scene.
You sit down at the crowded bar next to the only other empty stool left.
He finds an empty table in the shadowy corner inexplicably open. He sits down and opens a book.
she/her | playlist
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1 day later his player posts a MUSH peeve about being ignored in a scene.
The circle of life. It moves us all.
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Ain’t nobody got time for small-chat/meeting for the first time in a bar. We already know eachother and get to ‘yes, and’ how the first couple times went.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her -
@Jennkryst Ahh yes, I see. Off-camming the first two dates so you can get right down to the TS.
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@Roz said in Staff Capacity:
@Jennkryst Ahh yes, I see. Off-camming the first two dates so you can get right down to the TS.
Off-camming the initial meeting and starting the scene mid-TS.
Cobalt@Under the Stars
cob.alt@Discord
Cobalt#[email protected] -
@Cobalt said in Staff Capacity:
@Roz said in Staff Capacity:
@Jennkryst Ahh yes, I see. Off-camming the first two dates so you can get right down to the TS.
Off-camming the initial meeting and starting the scene mid-TS.
I have skipped the TS and gone strait to the exhausted, goofy post-coital flirty time before, you don’t know me!
It’s just the initial meeting clashing with my inner introvert that is the problem.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her -
@Jennkryst said in Staff Capacity:
@Cobalt said in Staff Capacity:
@Roz said in Staff Capacity:
@Jennkryst Ahh yes, I see. Off-camming the first two dates so you can get right down to the TS.
Off-camming the initial meeting and starting the scene mid-TS.
I have skipped the TS and gone strait to the exhausted, goofy post-coital flirty time before, you don’t know me!
It’s just the initial meeting clashing with my inner introvert that is the problem.
App’ing a married person on a roster game so you can skip the first meeting altogether, is also a good alternative.
Cobalt@Under the Stars
cob.alt@Discord
Cobalt#[email protected] -
@Cobalt I just keep apping in widowers so I can go directly to the grieving process.
