RPing with Everybody (or not)
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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?
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In the end I feel that it comes down to tolerance. If you can tolerate a player you don’t like in a court scene or work together occasionally on a mutual plot for the betterment of the game and enrichment of plot, you’re probably fine. When it becomes exclusionary or hateful, then it’s bad. There’s a serious gut check here sometimes too, because how does staff police things that are happening in pages or on discord? It’s not something that’s ever been solved on MUSH as far as I know.
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@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
I cannot fathom how people having fun with each other telling stories and generating scenes would be considered “inactivity” by any sensible MU metric.
If they never respond to the goings-on of the game, and never leave a single grid square, are they really active? What structure are they using?
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@MisterBoring said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
If they never respond to the goings-on of the game, and never leave a single grid square, are they really active? What structure are they using?
You’re making a leap from “prefers to play with their friends” to “never responds to the goings-on of the game.” That may be true for a few people, but it is simply not true in all cases (or even most, in my experience). There are plenty of folks who engage with the game in their own way, and plenty of people who contribute the logs of said RP to the public repositories. It’s really not that hard.
But even in the most extreme strawman, assuming there are two players who only ever RP with each other, never share anything, and literally never leave a private grid room, I say again - so what? They’re having fun. They’re not hurting anything. Why do we need to shame/wrongfun them? Nobody gets any more RP if you run them off the game.
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@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
You’re making a leap from “prefers to play with their friends” to “never responds to the goings-on of the game.”
You misread my example then. I was specifically referring to pairs of people who join a game only to play in a single grid room, never interact with plot, often times become hostile when asked to join RP / plot, and usually get upset if plot events ever effect them. I’ve run into it a few times in my 20+ years of hobby, and it’s possible that they are the same two people each time (as every time I’ve encountered this phenomenon, it’s gone down almost identically to the others).
