Player Ratios

[Gashlycrumb]

@Jenn Capitalism isn’t ‘exchanging tokens’.

I get you about the vibe.

You seem to have missed some of my posts, it’s an idea to think about, not necessarily something I want to try.

Anyway, what do you think of it when there is no exchange, only accumulation of points?

[Jenn]

@Gashlycrumb

Points make me think of keeping score, and days of PvP. I like the modern vibe of games where we’re all on the same dysfunctional team together, telling the stories, and we survive it or we don’t, but. we’re doing it together.

Once we start tracking points on something that’s a spare time pretendy collaborative writing game, that loses the creativity and story-driven side of it - at least for me. I maintain that the only thing needed for an active, involved game is an understanding of your scopes and limits, and letting the characters who want to write and play in it do just that.

We’re all adults. We don’t need every scene to have story-tellers, or every piece of plot spoon fed. We can figure it out pretty well by just asking each other for the scenes we want, and saying yes when they pitch back at you and it sounds like fun.

Is it important to have a vague expectation of how much official ST plot your playerbase needs? Probably.

Is it important to look at bribes and rewards just to figure that part out? Probably not.

But. I’m also super low crunchy. I rarely look at dice outside the wondering of hey, this is iffy, am I able? Even as a ST, I rarely ask for rolls unless something isn’t natural and normal to the character. Most of the time, just letting them do their things with their words while I steer the plot part doesn’t need it. They usually all write good mixes of both wins and losses, and the few who miss that vibe usually are super fine with it once they’ve been politely paged.

I think getting bogged down into mechanics of things makes it lose some of the magic. And I think that goes double when the opposite side is lets bribe people into making sure there is RP, the thing they’re here to do and should be mostly able to manage on their own.

And, if folks WANT bribe games, like, sure. Build them, have fun, and that’s ok. Not everyone likes everything. I’m just not sure why bribe mechanics are the main topic on a thread about how many story-tellers are needed per average number of players. To me… Bribe mechanics aren’t what tells or even shows there were or are good stories. They’re entirely separate. And if a game is relying on the bribes to ensure there are stories getting told… That seems more game issue than ratio problem.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Jenn It’s just not for very-low-crunchy lots-of-PrP games. If you can rp happily along and your pc affect the world as much as anybody else with no staff-ST, it wouldn’t make sense to bother.

Generally people kinda like points, even ones that don’t really do anything like the cookie count. Perhaps especially ones that don’t really do anything. Dr. Skinner can explain.

This is relevant to the ST/Player ratio because what’s wanted is the ratio that doesn’t leave players underserved or (STs burned out). And relevant to the thread because the OP brought up giving people tokens for running PrPs which could be exchanged for staff attention, in one of the top two posts.

ETA:

@Jenn said in Player Ratios:

And you’ll always have the folks with two jobs, or kids, or sick parents who may only be able to go to one single social scene a month. And they’re not earning points, and even if they were, they wouldn’t know how to spend them. But they chat a few minutes every day on chat while they commute, and answer questions,

This person is earning (unspendable) Carnegie points all the time for answering questions, and never getting (also unspendable) Emmy points, so their ratio would alert the staff-STs to try to give their character a major role in something next time the player has an afternoon off. It seems fair to me that somebody who does a lot for the game but hardly RPs ought to get a leg-up to the Important Stuff if they want it, even if they don’t have friends who are STs.

[Jenn]

Agreed. It was mentioned early on. I wasn’t a fan then, but it was early on, so figured I’d give it longer, and read more.

More folks agreed with points.

I still think they’re weird. Games that I’ve played that use them, and especially rely on them, usually they’re not the best games I’ve been on.

The best games, in my opinion, have been ones where people don’t keep track. They just write. The majority is PrP with staff support/guidance on questions, but where story-tellers weren’t NEEDED for any scene, though, when able would host events or dole out new plot trickles or whatnot. But. In between, folks are just responsible for telling their own things in ways that makes sense to the characters and game themes.

If you and others see relevance or want to tie rewards to stories for whatever reasons, feel free. I’m just a player, I’m not gonna stop anyone from doing what they’re doing. But to me? They’re not at all the same. It’s apples and oranges. Sure, they’re both fruits and you can store them in the same bowl. But if you do… The apples rot faster and the oranges dehydrate.

I think maybe part of this is you think I’m talking to you specifically, @Gashlycrumb. But other than this specific comment, and the one where you asked me a direct question, I was just replying to the most recent end thread.

It’s absolutely fine that for you, that’s a mechanic that would be interesting and might work out. If it would, I really do hope that you and others who enjoy that same reward points make it work and have amazing successes! Not every game is for every player, and there’s nothing at all wrong with that.

It’s just, that at least for me, they’re two separate things, and I only enjoy one of them. My dislike of the other is strong enough that it would ruin my fun and I’d personally find the games where that isn’t true to be weird. But weird is just different from how others see it, not wrong or bad. It makes the vibes off, for me, that so many folks are I guess ok with the concept of it, but. Again. It’s ok that a lot of us like and enjoy different things.

I’m not trying to wrong fun anyone here, and I’m sorry if it came across that I was. I’m just having different fun as my opinion on it.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Jenn said in Player Ratios:

The majority is PrP with staff support/guidance on questions, but where story-tellers weren’t NEEDED for any scene, though, when able would host events or dole out new plot trickles or whatnot. But. In between, folks are just responsible for telling their own things in ways that makes sense to the characters and game themes.

This is probably the best model for generating player fun for less gamerunner time, and the best bet model for opening a game that’ll work.

But I do like dedicated GMs and flinging dice about.

[Pavel]

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

Generally people kinda like points, even ones that don’t really do anything like the cookie count.

Some people like points. Some people don’t. Some people fucking crave points and the associated validation like their lives depend on it.

If you’re using it as a metric as in your example:

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

This person is earning (unspendable) Carnegie points all the time for answering questions, and never getting (also unspendable) Emmy points, so their ratio would alert the staff-STs to try to give their character a major role in something next time the player has an afternoon off.

Then it doesn’t need to be public information, or even information available to the player themselves. At which point it becomes out of sight and out of mind for the vast majority and simply becomes a metric of player opportunity.

Otherwise you fall foul of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

[Faraday]

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

Otherwise you fall foul of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Related to this, I think folks are vastly underestimating the level of toxic behavior that can result when players don’t get the points they feel they deserve, or don’t have the points to do what they want. Just look at why +vote/+nom systems fell out of favor. I even stopped using the completely useless (nothing but a public ‘attaboy’) +cookies on my games because of the complaints about so-and-so always getting all the scenes, or cookie-voting circles, or people feeling bad that they never made the leaderboard, or whatever. (There’s a reason they’re a plugin on Ares and not standard in the core code.)

Like @Jenn said - if someone wants to make a game like that and feels they can make it work, knock yourself out. I just don’t think it’s a good idea, and a game with systems like that would be a hard pass for me.

[bear_necessities]

If you think players act entitled to plot now just wait until you introduce a point system lol my bet? You’ll burn out STs even faster this way.

[Pavel]

I could see a point-like system working if it were a staff-vision-only automated metric of some kind to identify people struggling to either find time or social energy so that staff can make a point of drawing them into things, but as even as a useless shiny-shiny it has too much potential to attract (or promote) competitive behaviour that so easily turns toxic.

I don’t know how one would implement the former and we’ve all seen versions of the latter go bad.

[bear_necessities]

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

metric of some kind to identify people struggling to either find time or social energy so that staff can make a point of drawing them into things

I don’t think it’s that hard to spot these players without a point system and if they already don’t have the time or social energy to play why would they want to be drawn into things?

I certainly don’t have the time or social energy to play right now and the last thing I’d want is a GM to single me out and be like YOU THERE, HERE’S PLOT because then I feel forced to spread that plot and I don’t have the time or social energy to do that and bye I’m done lol

[Tez]

@Faraday said in Player Ratios:

Just look at why +vote/+nom systems fell out of favor. I even stopped using the completely useless (nothing but a public ‘attaboy’) +cookies on my games because of the complaints about so-and-so always getting all the scenes, or cookie-voting circles, or people feeling bad that they never made the leaderboard, or whatever. (There’s a reason they’re a plugin on Ares and not standard in the core code.)

Speaking as one of the people who can sometimes feel kind of terrible in the world of public cookies, public <3s, and public votes, thank you for making this change. It was never rational on my part, but it feels better to me when there isn’t a leaderboard to chase.

That’s been the case for me a lot, actually, when faced with leaderboard systems. Arx had its modeling leaderboard. It was really fun to do big modeling and have big numbers. But with leaderboards it can always feel like there’s an insurmountable lead, too. I don’t know. There’s always some real fucking +/- with those systems. It’s worth keeping in mind on the balance.

It’s a reminder that helps me see why point-based systems can really turn people off. I do still wish there was a way to reward people for their work on games, from running plots to helping people, but maybe the real reward is the friends we make along the way.

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

And how much of a not-drag must a player be to get a seat? Obviously much of the time when a staff storyteller is criticised for cherry-picking who to GM what they are doing is GMing the people who are the most fun for them.

If you don’t have GMing staff, and players running stories for one another is just how your game rolls, you really have no reason to worry about Abelard.

I keep coming back to this idea, and to Pyre, LBH – the piece about expectations. Shifting expectations away from staff somehow. But you can’t really do that without empowering players and giving them the tools to tell stories – and, with a nod to KB’s thread, to tell them in a way that people feel like they can touch the world.

I think people would probably still grumble about it, but damn, people always grumble about something.

[Pavel]

@bear_necessities I phrased it poorly, but I meant time as in “you staffers only think about American timezones” and social energy as “I don’t know anyone and I don’t like asking for scenes out of the blue…”

[DrQuinn]

@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.

I am that person that loves to pull people into things, though. Did you take a point of map making on your sheet for a lark? Boom, now there is a plot where you have to read a MAP and SAVE THE DAY.

Though I can see how if you made your map making pc just to romance your friend the explorer, you might be annoyed if the Gnome King interrupts your date to make you go get a group together to save the Kingdom of Butterbright.

[bear_necessities]

@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:

@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.

I am that person that loves to pull people into things, though. Did you take a point of map making on your sheet for a lark? Boom, now there is a plot where you have to read a MAP and SAVE THE DAY.

Though I can see how if you made your map making pc just to romance your friend the explorer, you might be annoyed if the Gnome King interrupts your date to make you go get a group together to save the Kingdom of Butterbright.

RP prefs probably help for that. Honestly when I was running games and STing, I would just poke people and be like “hey do you want to get in on this” versus dumping plot into their lap.

Maybe back in the day when games had like 500 players it was really hard to identify the people that were lost to timezones or too shy to ask for RP, but I just don’t think that’s the case anymore. But also it really isn’t my job as a game admin to keep track of your pretendy fun-time points to determine if you’re having enough pretendy fun-time so please just reach out and poke if you aren’t getting plot but want it.

[Pavel]

@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:

I am that person that loves to pull people into things, though.

So long as you ask, of course. I have too many not-so-fond memories of staff foisting random “events” onto people who were quite happy doing their own RP thankyouverymuch.

[bear_necessities]

NGL one of my favorite thing about Horror 2 was the fact that if you were in an open scene, it was fair game for the storyteller to drop in with something unannounced, but she made that pretty clear right out of the gate. It certainly made it feel like there was something that could happen at any second and was an easy way to rope people into plot.

[dvoraen]

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

@dvoraen said in Player Ratios:

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

@Faraday said in Player Ratios:

incentivize the behavior you want, without incentivizing negative behaviors

That goes double for taking things that are typically “free” (staff attention, entrance into plots, add your own example here) and making them require points. The EA or Ubisoft approach to staffing.

Don’t you dare try to coin “microstaffing” or “microplots” as if we’re going to reach the MU* equivalent of microtransactions.

We aim to give every player some pride in accomplishment.

“I do hope you’re satisfied with our product.”

^ You could’ve done that quote/GIF from BladeRunner. But you didn’t.

Getting a little bit back on topic, I find it a little interesting how some posts are aiming to quantify a standard for storytelling. This isn’t meant as a criticism, but as someone eyeballing data analytics/data science as a career, it intrigues me how we’re trying to take something I very much find qualitative (how much can a storyteller handle and who the recipients of their time are) and trying to put a definitive value to certain points of interest (“green/yellow/red” players as @Gashlycrumb went into).

I’m not saying we can’t ascribe numerical analysis here insofar as MU* participation (both giving and receiving) is concerned, but like D&D, the numbers are a guideline and the DM can (arguably?) yeet them whenever they want.

[mietze]

I’ve seen the points for play/spotlight/equity thing tried and floated a lot over the years.

I think it’s easy to understand why that might be desired.

The problem is it never has the effect that the advocates/wishers want. Never.

Not because players or staff suck, but because participation and spotlight is rarely about numbers. Minutes of screentime. Number of mentions in staff posts. Length of title bestowed upon player/character. Number of scenes present. All of that can be a component for feeling engaged, satisfied, or like things are as accessible to you as you see certain other individuals getting–but it doesn’t solve the problem which is largely rooted in feelings and we are all imperfect human beings whose feelings and perceptions may or may not obey the laws of those numbers.

You can’t points calculate your way out of feeling like maybe other people are getting the kind of impact you want and don’t think you’re getting. Racking up and using points or other acquired resources honestly can lead to feeling even more disappointed in the result if it’s not perceived to be “as good as” what a similar group got. I don’t even want to think about the pressure and just real feeling of defeat/morale bust that places on staff.

I saw this play out again and again and again on Arx and other places, with a huge diverse set of people that I perceived to have similar levels of engagement/spotlight complaining about how they got nothing but the other person got everything (sometimes the same people complaining about each other verbatim), or some people being terribly upset about their writeup that at least from my perspective was even better than one I’d gotten, but they were complaining to me that my group got the favorable one. Again, not because ANY of these people were bad (staff or player) but perception and feelings of disappointment are difficult. And storytelling isn’t like knowing you have to earn ex amount of tickets playing skeeball to “win” a laffy taffy or glow in the dark kazoo–maybe you won’t like the spotlight you get, maybe you won’t like the storytelling you get for your plot, maybe both you and the person that you’re wishing you’d gotten their writeup/storytelling are thinking the same thing (and hopefully no one is telling the poor ST this always). I mean hell, I whined about it as much as anyone else too because…well, perception. And humanity.

I think it’s just the human part of our hobby.

So I actually think there’s no magic number to staff to player ratio. I wish staff felt free to not have to numberize things, to feel like they could close down apps or take breaks when they’re feeling overwhelmed and be reasonably certain players would take it with grace. I like it when staff feels free to gently (or firmly) show players that stress them out or drain them too much the door, even if those players haven’t done anything “wrong”, because they’re protecting the staff enjoyment and stress balance.

I think the problem is that people take stuff really personally. I’m not saying I’m a saint and I don’t because I do. Luckily for me I do tend to have great friends on game who are able to tell me that I might need to check my reaction (and I think they tend to tell me that because I’m for the most part good about listening to that, and returning the favor). But like–I don’t think you can build that into an OOC clout/spotlight numbers game.

I get the impulse for people who find it really hard to initiate RP, or find that for whatever reasons they’re passed up for invites in favor of those that to them seem less “deserving.” I really do. I just don’t think there’s an external system that will solve that.

[STD]

@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:

@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.

On a similar vein, one thing I always like to do is get personal with plots and incorporate aspects of a character’s background. But I always find myself hesitating. I’m gunshy about possibly ruining some idea they had about their character and stepping on toes.

Based on my experience, that’s very rarely the case, but it has also definitively happened before and it just feels bad. Now, of course, you can just ASK the player in question if you can use some aspect of their background in a plot, but that is sometimes really, really awkward if you don’t know the player very well or if the point you want to touch would have a much better impact if it was a surprise which would be ruined by asking for permission.

So having some sort of RP preference like for violence scenes/death/metaplot involving given carte-blanche to utilize a character’s background in plots would be handy.

[Jenn]

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

Some people like points. Some people don’t. Some people fucking crave points and the associated validation like their lives depend on it.