RPing with Everybody (or not)
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I am friendly but I don’t have friends really or join games with groups of people. If I recognize someone from a previous game that I enjoyed RP with, I’ll wave and smile and hope to RP with them again.
As a ‘lone wolf’ type, I heavily rely on people breaking away from their friend groups to RP with me (or let me in on the RP with those groups).
Do I expect it though? No.
If I can’t find RP on a game, I’ll just leave without a fuss and find somewhere else.
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@Yam said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
ya’ll want a No Dead Weight policy, which seems like it’s usually applied to staffers.
And IC leadership. In theory.
The problem arises when a staffer or IC leader plays only with favourites. So they’re not dead weight to everybody but they’re absolutely dead weight to some players.
In my experience, this happens regularly.
AwesomeStaffer is the Blue Faction GM, but she’s too busy with stuff for Red Faction to respond Blues. She’s dead weight to Blues and active and fun to Reds.
The PC Squad Leader loves to play with PFC Parts and PFC Eye and PFC Jet, but isn’t interested in PFC Property or PFC School, and refuses to pass info to them because he’d rather spend his limited RP time RPing playing poker with Parts and Eye. He’s dead weight to Property and School, and active fun to Parts, Eye, and Jet. Very likely he will not have to face the IC consequences of being a squad leader who only does the job for half the squad.
"This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
– A. Bertram Chandler -
Yes. Everything about this!
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All of that seems fair. But, I’m not sure that the expectations I would have for staff and ST’s to be inviting and inclusive would be the same as the onus I think is on players. It’s GREAT if players are or can and want to be. But. They don’t owe it to a game to include folks, as long as they’re not actively pushing people out and away.
We're all mad here.
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Given my current schedule, I’m waiting for the “RPing with Nobody” thread
(all good points from Gashly and LB)
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@Jenn said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
All of that seems fair. But, I’m not sure that the expectations I would have for staff and ST’s to be inviting and inclusive would be the same as the onus I think is on players. It’s GREAT if players are or can and want to be. But. They don’t owe it to a game to include folks, as long as they’re not actively pushing people out and away.
Yes – I don’t think expectations for staff should be the same as for players. And I don’t think expectations for IC leaders should be the same either.
Still, as player complaints go, this theme-and-varients is common: GM has a three-day turnover time for +requests from Group A, and runs plot-scenes for them every week or two, while we in Group B wait two weeks for a +request response and GM takes a month and a half to give Group B “You visit the chapel and the priest tells you to fuck off,” minimal sort of things.
With IC leaders, it’s more common, but maybe less complained about, because of those different expectations. Faced with an IC leader who was unavailable and unpleasant to play with, I just asked the GM to give me ways to access plot without that person, and was annoyed that GM would not do it. Though honestly, I think it’s utter rubbish to put gatekeepy players in positions of IC power that allow them to gatekeep. (UNLESS you are going to also allow the natural IC consequences of this to smack them inna face.)
There’s also the reverse – Ages ago my PC was the police chief. There was a PC cop who was a problem player. He would basically wander around and interrupt people’s RP to harass them, commit unlawful searches, false arrests, etc, etc. He did not follow orders, would not RP getting dressed down by his boss, would not accept a dressing-down in an @mail as IC, and staff refused to let me fire him. (Inexplicably, since they also admitted that they really just wished he’d go away.)
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The problem there is gating plot behind a single access point. Story should not bottleneck.
let it be a challenge to you
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One of the better things I’ve seen to counteract this is what Arx did with leaders and their “voices.” A second-in-command-type person who carried all the same weight as the leader for when said leader was inactive, unattentive, unwilling or unable to deal with you, etc.
Generally, I prefer IC leadership to be a mix of staff and players (players can be the deputy personal private secretary, but the prime minster will always be staff), but if there’s a built-in fuckery-avoidance mechanism like Arx had, I’d be more amenable to player-oriented leadership.
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@sao said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
The problem there is gating plot behind a single access point. Story should not bottleneck.
This is the point. Story should not bottleneck. Players who are exclusive and RP only within their own small group invariably bottleneck the story,
Consequently, theirs is not a behavior to be encouraged. It creates work for GMs, who must create more story access points, and it frustrates players, who not only have to find the story access points, they need to find the ones that aren’t gatekept against them.
And players who endulge in that behaviour should not hold IC positions where they serve as story access points. If Squad Leader Affair refuses to take the time out from playing with his favourites, PFCs Eye and Parts, to loop in School and Property, he shouldn’t be squad leader.
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@Gashlycrumb I disagree. Players playing in small groups can’t bottleneck story if staff is attentive to how story is seeded. This is not a player problem. If your IC leadership structure has the ability to prevent OOC story access, your game is not functioning correctly.
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@sao said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
@Gashlycrumb I disagree. Players playing in small groups can’t bottleneck story if staff is attentive to how story is seeded. This is not a player problem. If your IC leadership structure has the ability to prevent OOC story access, your game is not functioning correctly.
This exactly. People playing amongst themselves CAN bottleneck story if you let it, but it’s not that hard to design the story in such a way that it doesn’t. If Anne, Bob and Cathy only like to RP amongst themselves, don’t give them the McGuffin that Dave is going to need to propel the story forward. That doesn’t mean that the ABC club can’t make their own stories, or can’t contribute to other stories in their own way.
