RPing with Everybody (or not)
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Well first I want to ensure that it’s clear precisely what I mean when I remark upon a distinction between dislike and not liking, just so as to ensure I’m understood. To me, liking and disliking aren’t two sides to a coin but two ends of a spectrum, with very few people assigned to either end and the vast majority of people in the middle. It’s the middle of that middle that I generally describe as “not liking.” So it’s not people that I dislike, but people for whom I have few (if any) feelings whatsoever, be they old acquaintances or total unknowns. It’s also not a judgement call on the kind of person they are, saints and sinners both sit there in perpetual unexamination.
As to the topic at hand, I go back and forth with my views on it, particularly as my energy levels or general ability to participate waver. I will never say that one owes the entire game’s population anything; however, most games are split in such a way that one is primarily associated with a particular group – vampire or garou, noble families, boarding school houses, people who like using colour codes in their descriptions and those who don’t – and I will argue that one owes a modicum of attention to that group outside of the niche one carves for one’s self. It doesn’t have to be anything arduous, but simply ensuring that newcomers to the group are made welcome, included in a scene or two to introduce them to the game, and so forth. Obviously, it’s not a mandate that everyone must immediately draw in every new fish they see, but if you’ve been in a community for a bit and you see a newcomer or two who haven’t yet found their niche then one might feel behoven to invite them to a scene or two.
That said I would personally avoid any formalised ‘welcome wagon’ team. Purely due to experiences in the past where bad actors have used such a “thankless” and “honoured” position to act badly and draw people in to unhealthy cliques or harems. Formalising the role can also lead to burn out and frustration, especially as we remember that most of us are in our early-to-mid soon-to-be-deads and we don’t have time to sit and work out the roster for who’s sitting at the park gate to welcome the newbies this week.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
@Pavel said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
That said I would personally avoid any formalised ‘welcome wagon’ team.
Wouldn’t that by nature include avoiding interaction with staff, because it’s part of their job as staff to act as a welcome wagon for the game?
@Ashkuri said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
No one thinks people should RP with players/characters they actively despise.
I totally agree with not RPing with Players a person does not like / get along with. It’s not going to do anyone any good to force that. HOWEVER, when it comes to characters a person doesn’t like / get along with, that’s not cut and dry to me. I can understand avoiding RP with characters that drive plots and themes a player is not trying to be a part of, but at the same time, I wouldn’t go so far as to assume that player despises that character. It’s when people start avoiding RP with characters they don’t like that are trying to be involved in themes / plots they want to be involved in. That seems like gatekeeping and conflict avoidance (and I’m not even talking exclusively about PVP, I’m talking about avoiding scenes where other characters are going to offer different viewpoints to the character in question). There’s a big difference between “I don’t want to RP with Captain Lightheart because he’s always trying to lead attacks against the pit demons, and my character Laurent The Ever-Sage isn’t about fighting demons.” and “I don’t want to RP with Captain Lightheart because he’s going disagree with Laurent the Ever-Sage about how to deal with the Cursed Tome of Seven-Skins.”
Also, while I’m thinking about it. Avoiding playing with players a person doesn’t like / can’t get along with is passive clique building if you really think about it. You’re just sort of building a reverse clique where there’s a “clique” of players you won’t play with, and everybody else is in your larger “will play with” clique, even if you’re not constantly positioning yourselves to only play in that player group.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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Are we talking about purely IC reasoning?
Because in my experience, avoidant behavior is often less about not wanting to butt heads with different character ideologies, and far more often to do with not wanting to deal with a player who has proven that they are difficult to interact with.
As for cliques, I think it’s something of a losing battle to try to dismantle the human desire to tribalize, and one we’re unlikely going to solve within the confines of a text-based RPG.
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@Solstice said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
As for cliques, I think it’s something of a losing battle to try to dismantle the human desire to tribalize, and one we’re unlikely going to solve within the confines of a text-based RPG.
I agree with this. I think the sane response to cliques in this hobby is to just have staff on a given game keep an eye on it, and deal with the ones that are toxic. I’ve seen just as many non-toxic cliques as toxic ones over the years, but it’s rare that a staff team catches the toxic ones in time for it to be dealt with effectively.
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@Pavel said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
That said I would personally avoid any formalised ‘welcome wagon’ team. Purely due to experiences in the past where bad actors have used such a “thankless” and “honoured” position to act badly and draw people in to unhealthy cliques or harems. Formalising the role can also lead to burn out and frustration, especially as we remember that most of us are in our early-to-mid soon-to-be-deads and we don’t have time to sit and work out the roster for who’s sitting at the park gate to welcome the newbies this week.
Having been a person who was in a ‘welcome wagon’ role both formally in that it was a thing my staff-bit position was supposed to do, and informally, there is nothing that kills a person’s desire to RP broadly and inclusively than turning it into a clock-punch gig. This is how you make staffers or active players who do this naturally turtle up or quit.
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@MisterBoring said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
Wouldn’t that by nature include avoiding interaction with staff, because it’s part of their job as staff to act as a welcome wagon for the game?
Not in my specific instance, since I’m talking specifically about player-led initiatives similar to those I’ve seen in the past – I’m keeping my remarks, generally, about players rather than staff. Though I do believe that staff need to take an active hand in ensuring people are included and, potentially, investigating why they’re being excluded.
@Third-Eye said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
kills a person’s desire to RP broadly and inclusively than turning it into a clock-punch gig
Hey if you could get your quarterly RP KPI report done by the end of the day that’d be greeeeeeat.
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I play with people I enjoy playing with. Expecting players to do otherwise feels like trying to control who you socialize with at a club/party. It’s just not what people are there for.
If a clique is being exclusionary to an unhealthy degree (in terms of rudeness, hogging resources, etc.), that’s a different story, but I don’t think that players should be penalized just for playing with their friends.
As staff, there are things you can do (public events, involving players through your PCs, offering incentives through cookies, etc.) to spread the RP out a bit, but I think those efforts should be encouraging, never punitive.
All that said, I do think it’s helpful to play outside your normal circles sometimes just for the overall health of the game. That benefits you as well, presuming you like playing there and want the game to continue.
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I think trying to RP outside one’s standard circles is always good for the game, and in the long run could lead to new people a person enjoys RPing with.
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@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
I don’t think that players should be penalized just for playing with their friends.
Agreed, indeed I’d much rather see some nature of reward or encouragement for the opposite. But at the same time I’d want to mitigate people doing the thing just to get the reward and then leaving the newcomers floundering.
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@Ashkuri
My hot take on this is that Mushing, while often described as a “hobby” and a “game”, has elements of both but doesn’t fit neatly into either category, and that while hobbies and games can be solitary, the defining feature of a Mush is that it is not solitary. Other people are required or you are merely writing. Who those other people are is a question for the owner/staff team of the game to decide.We have (probably) all played on large games that took a laissez-faire approach to playerbase and character creation, but these days, at least in this neck of the woods, that is not the norm anymore. Most games are smaller, shorter-lived, and more focused. On a big game with 70 connections, it is a lot more defensible to take the position of “I played with this person a few times and didn’t love it, so I will never play with them again”; presumably someone out there sees them and will love them for who they are. On a smaller game, this is much less likely to be that person’s reality.
At the same time, a Mush is too big to be treated like a tabletop game and has more in common with a sports team or even a sports league. Past a certain size, you simply do not know enough people that are your favorite people to make up a team with, and necessarily there will be some you do not enjoy. While you are not obligated to pass them the ball every time they are open, if you never do, they will notice, your team will notice, and your team’s performance will likely suffer for it. If everyone on the team feels the same way, then that is a matter for the coach (staff) to resolve; that player should be removed from the team. The team will operate better without them, and there may be another team that that player coheres with more ably.
People should play with people they don’t know and people they don’t actively enjoy. I don’t think anyone should feel like they need to do it all the time, or even most of the time, but what’s “fun” is not written in the stars either. Sometimes someone I love to play with will produce a bad time. Sometimes I am the one producing the bad time. Sometimes someone I don’t normally enjoy surprises me.
A sidebar to say that I don’t think RP incentives ever work well. The RP must be the incentive or you’re barking up the wrong tree.
he/him
this machine kills fascists -
I am going to briefly opine from the opposite end, which is that I have major selective shyness about breaking the ice for RP’ing with specific characters and players. This is still true today, which is why I have only one scene on Elliot at The Becoming despite knowing people there, some for much longer than I thought I did!
There are other factors involved, especially for those of you who have given me feedback during Arx days might recall, but I mentally squirm sometimes trying to work up the nerve to just say hello about setting up RP. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the autism side coming in to play, despite the “high-functioning” part of that diagnosis.
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@Trashcan said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
At the same time, a Mush is too big to be treated like a tabletop game and has more in common with a sports team or even a sports league. Past a certain size, you simply do not know enough people that are your favorite people to make up a team with, and necessarily there will be some you do not enjoy
The sports analogy doesn’t really fit for me. If I sign up for a softball league, we need 9 players on the field at any given moment to actually play the game. You have to work together, and I think that signing up for such a thing is more of a group commitment. But that’s just not true for a MUSH. I absolutely can RP with just a single other person, and that’s not stopping anyone else from playing with others.
Sure, at some point the gamerunner might decide that there’s “not enough RP” to make it worth keeping the lights on, but even that isn’t a given. I’ve seen sandbox games with just a handful of players. Either way, gamerunners shouldn’t expect me to spend my free time not having fun just to make their game work. I may choose to, but I’m never obliged to.
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@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
I absolutely can RP with just a single other person, and that’s not stopping anyone else from playing with others.
You can, but the question is whether players should, I assume from the perspective of what’s best practices.
A Mush, if it’s healthy, feels like a world. You can “go” there. There are people there. Some of them, yes, are not your favorite people, but that is what a real place is like. You can certainly choose to ignore certain people, as I described in the analogy. It doesn’t break the game. It’s also not productive to building a healthy community that feels like there are possibilities and unknowns rather than another window for chatting with pals.
he/him
this machine kills fascists -
@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
I absolutely can RP with just a single other person
I have sadly seen some incredibly toxic behavior come out of people joining a game to try and do this. It’s fine if they’re just chill and keep to themselves, but I’ve seen duos get incredibly antagonistic OOC just because people invite them to events or social RP. Even worse so if they get touched by the plots they didn’t bother to even read about, let alone interact with.
That said, if a person intends to RP with a single other person to the exclusion of both the rest of the players and staff run plots, I seriously have to question, especially in the age of Discord and Free VTTs, why people are choosing to pad a MU’s numbers with their secluded RP that might as well be inactivity as far as the census and statistics for the MU in question is concerned.
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I think a lot of this ALSO depends on the TYPE of scene something is or isn’t, too.
If it’s a one on one social scene, and I’m not at least neutral to someone OOC’ly - Negotiated, good natured IC conflict is fine - I’m almost always never going to pursue that scene or will politely turn that down.
My time and energy are precious, and they are non-renewable resources. Why would I waste them in something I do for fun and for free with people who don’t spark joy? Marie Kondo that ish and throw it out.
However, if it’s a small to medium scene about something plot-related rather than slice of lifing, as long as I don’t actively DISLIKE someone OOC’ly, I’m fine with interacting with and including just about anyone relevant. A lot of times, that’s HOW the neutral parties become friends to start out with. Plots, events, all of that should be open invitations and OOC’ly welcoming to anyone participating in good faith.
Lastly, if it’s a large scene, an event, or something strongly plot relevant? Even if I don’t like a person at all OOC’ly, as long as it’s not so awful they’re on a block list or avoid at all costs level of dislike… I’ll still include them. I’ll interact with and involve them. I don’t have to like someone to make them feel welcome in a big game plot. Meta-plot is bigger than any individual characters, and everyone interacting in OOC good faith should have the same chances to participate.
All of these are grey areas. All of these have to be individually defined based on personal tolerance levels, time, energy, and attention. For me, personally though? As long as someone isn’t totally toxic… I would always rather be somewhere fostering an atmosphere of warmth and inclusion.
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I don’t see anything at all wrong with players only RPing with other players that they explicitly like – unless they’re hoarding plot in doing so. I think it’s an entirely healthy reaction to want to prioritize RP with those whose RP you explicitly enjoy.
However, I do agree with those who have said that it’s better for the health of the game (and usually the character too) if you expand that pool to at least try RPing with folks you don’t know, or have neutral feelings toward sometimes. Sure, you might find some people you have absolutely zero interest in RPing with again, but you might also find some people that you’d like to add to the list of folks you’re interested in RPing with regularly. Beyond that, it allows stories and plot to spread from group to group across the MU*, connecting play groups in organic ways so that it’s not a setting with a half dozen scattered and separate plots going on, but a world with interconnected stories taking place in it.
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@Roadspike said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
I don’t see anything at all wrong with players only RPing with other players that they explicitly like – unless they’re hoarding plot in doing so.
That’s usually the point when cliques go bad, when they start hoarding plot and staff resources for their group and take toxic OOC action to prevent others from accessing them.
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Yes I think it’s generally good for your RP health and the game health to eat your vegetables/RP with people outside of your circle. It’s just not something you can really enforce in other people, or guilt them into, or pressure them, or posit questions like why they’re even ON a game (if you’re trying to be effective in getting the result you want). All you can do is encourage it, lower barriers, make it easier, and that’s on you as a staffer, not a player. To me this is one of the important roles of a staffer. I think the platform plays into this as well. Easier to roll into a rando on a grid, for example.
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@Ashkuri said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
No one thinks people should RP with players/characters they actively despise. But there is some gray area here in RPing with people who are not your top 8 favorites, RPing with people who are “just ok”, RPing with total strangers, and ST obligation (or lack thereof I suppose) toward attention/activity/fairness to the entire game population, crappy people and great people all.
I’m interested in people’s thoughts here.
I strongly, strongly, strongly believe that people should only tell stories for people that are fun. STRONGLY. BELIEVE.
Storytellers are a precious commodity. Their time and attention is the lifeblood of a game. If there is a storyteller who only wants to tell stories for a certain group of people, then that’s GREAT,and those people are HANDLED, and other people can get their attention somewhere else. And if no storytellers want to tell a story for someone? Maybe that someone tries telling stories. Maybe that someone agrees to swap with someone.
The above said, I do think Faraday is right here as well:
@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
All that said, I do think it’s helpful to play outside your normal circles sometimes just for the overall health of the game. That benefits you as well, presuming you like playing there and want the game to continue.
Temperature checks of a scene, a game, a hobby – whatever it takes. It’s not a bad idea for staff to keep your thumb in to gauge whatever it is, however you measure.
There’s a difference to me between a scene, a story, and a game, and how much effort someone puts in is part of that as a player, a storyteller, and as staff.
@Trashcan said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
At the same time, a Mush is too big to be treated like a tabletop game and has more in common with a sports team or even a sports league. Past a certain size, you simply do not know enough people that are your favorite people to make up a team with, and necessarily there will be some you do not enjoy. While you are not obligated to pass them the ball every time they are open, if you never do, they will notice, your team will notice, and your team’s performance will likely suffer for it. If everyone on the team feels the same way, then that is a matter for the coach (staff) to resolve; that player should be removed from the team. The team will operate better without them, and there may be another team that that player coheres with more ably.
I think a team captain – storyteller – should be able to pick whoever they want on a team – plot. I think the coach – staff – should try to encourage as many players to be team captains as can fit on the field, to give everyone a chance on the field. And yeah, the coach is the one to let someone know if it isn’t the right field for them.
But players – including storytellers – should not have obligations to each other beyond the obligation of courtesy. You don’t have to play with people that you aren’t interested in playing with. There’s value in playing with people who are new to you, but making it an obligation makes it a chore makes it something that people don’t want to do. And if they don’t want to, they won’t, and if they do, they resent it. It’s a burden.
If it’s not obligation, though, it can be a tasty treat and maybe a fun new surprise. Most of us have met our favorites via one fun new surprise or another. I just don’t think making it an obligation for players or storytellers is the way to go.
Staff, tho, have some level of obligation – not as players, not to RP with people, but to create the conditions for play. I think that’s different.
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@Trashcan said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
You can, but the question is whether players should, I assume from the perspective of what’s best practices.
A Mush, if it’s healthy, feels like a world. You can “go” there. There are people there. Some of them, yes, are not your favorite people, but that is what a real place is like. You can certainly choose to ignore certain people, as I described in the analogy. It doesn’t break the game. It’s also not productive to building a healthy community that feels like there are possibilities and unknowns rather than another window for chatting with pals.
When talking “best practices”, you have to ask: best for whom? Every player comes to the game with different desires and different needs, and I really don’t think it’s fair to expect them to put those aside for some vague “good of the game”. That’s not their responsibility. As long as they’re not doing active harm to the game (toxic cliques hogging resources is one example of that) and are playing within the established bounds of the story, who cares what they do or who they do it with?
@MisterBoring said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
That said, if a person intends to RP with a single other person to the exclusion of both the rest of the players and staff run plots, I seriously have to question, especially in the age of Discord and Free VTTs, why people are choosing to pad a MU’s numbers with their secluded RP that might as well be inactivity as far as the census and statistics for the MU in question is concerned.
That’s easy - MUs have structure. Even if you don’t directly engage in scenes with people outside your circle, you can still respond to the goings-on of the game. You can make your own stories within their world. You can even cause ripples that generate RP for other people. And sure, maybe occasionally you step outside your circle for a big event or to take a chance on someone. You can’t do those things on a private discord.
I cannot fathom how people having fun with each other telling stories and generating scenes would be considered “inactivity” by any sensible MU metric. Would you seriously rather them just not be there than be there having fun in the world you built?
