MU Peeves Thread
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A request being “forgotten” for nearly half a year. Then going to a different game with completely different people and getting “forgotten” about again.
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@catzilla Yeah, that’s the new innovative method of MU GMing. Respond only to the players you feel like responding to. Get really huffy when someone outside that set asks for timely reponses. Take their request as a hideous accusation. Claim you didn’t mean to ignore them, you’re just really swamped running the game and you’re doing your best. Castigate them for giving you a hard time when you’re doing your best. Don’t actually try to do better by them. Say you will, though. Pretend you don’t know that +requests are numbered and people can do math and figure out that you’re swamped by three requests a day. Pretend you don’t know that people can see you on +where RPing with or GMing the players you feel like responding to for three or six hours several times a week while not providing +request response that will take you five minutes. Punish players who complain that you’re unresponsive by refusing to respond to them. Complain about your inexplicable inability to retain players. Complain to your friends about the killjoy players who destroy the vibe by asking you to be responsive instead of leaving. Blame them for your inability to retain players.
"This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
– A. Bertram Chandler -
Ooh, was looking at old discussions with people, and I just remembered another peeve I forgot about.
Players who do the following in order:
- Start a PRP that only has any meaning of any sort for their PC.
- Expect staff support for that PRP even though nothing going on in the PRP requires a Staffer to portray an NPC, or otherwise adjudicate major narrative.
- Get incredibly irate when the Staff inform them that they don’t see a need to sit in on the PRP, and then shortly after that find out that no other players actually want to participate.
- Throw a fit in Public chat or by paging people they think will back up their tantrum.
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@catzilla @Gashlycrumb lol, I’ve had a similar experience where it’s a “we aren’t like other games, and this is going to be fun, fast, easy…” smash cut to 4 to 5 months later, and nothing has happened on said request other than kicking said can down the road. It’s a strange vibe when you ping a job after a month like… so, what about now? Oh, still nothing… I’ll just keep hitting this job up every couple of weeks, maybe at some point it’ll be worth someone’s time to handle.
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I think that sometimes it is to do with some well meaning GM who are just very conflict averse and struggle to say “no” to a request. And so your request going unanswered forever is the most unconfrontational “no” they can manage. Which is infuriating, but we are in a hobby with a lot of people who struggle socially, so I try and be as understanding as possible.
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@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:
Pretend you don’t know that people can see you on +where RPing
Not to discount everything you just said because it sounds quite specific, but game admin are allowed to rp, they aren’t obligated to defend that time, and anyone who thinks otherwise can go fuck themselves.
Imo if request backlog becomes too big for the expectation a game has set for its players, that’s when you temporarily shut the door on new apps and/or get more GMs. These games are too damn big for one main staffer and a bunch of other admin who are spread thin on every other game.
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@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
Not to discount everything you just said because it sounds quite specific, but game admin are allowed to rp, they aren’t obligated to defend that time, and anyone who thinks otherwise can go fuck themselves.
I would echo this simply to amplify the intent: Game admin should be required to give themselves time to RP. If nothing else but to remind themselves of the joy of the thing they’re working so hard to put forth, but it also allows them to see where things clunk, and where changes need to be made.
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@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:
@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
Not to discount everything you just said because it sounds quite specific, but game admin are allowed to rp, they aren’t obligated to defend that time, and anyone who thinks otherwise can go fuck themselves.
I would echo this simply to amplify the intent: Game admin should be required to give themselves time to RP. If nothing else but to remind themselves of the joy of the thing they’re working so hard to put forth, but it also allows them to see where things clunk, and where changes need to be made.
I agree 100%, so staff enjoys playing, and wants to keep games open, and wants to continue playing and running games.
In games, I think staff should also take long, hard looks at what they do and think about whether ‘the juice is worth the squeeze’ in some of the things they’ve historically done. If you have a process like you must wait X amount of time and spend Y amount of scenes with a staffer/logged scenes with PCs to get some outcome… and there isn’t enough staff time and/or active PCs, maybe rethink that process
Or if you have a process and you have been kicking this can down the road because you are too busy, the process just doesn’t work, or there is some other problem with getting it done… Maybe just call it a flawed approach and change how it’s done. Modernize, as it was once said: Any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion.
This gives staff more time to focus on what matters in running the game and playing, and gives players a game that works…
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@helvetica Not any one specific game, but yeah, I was specifically talking about situations where it’s obvious that staff isn’t spread thin and one really can’t help but notice this.
Of course staff should RP.
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@xCroaker said in MU Peeves Thread:
I agree 100%, so staff enjoys playing, and wants to keep games open, and wants to continue playing and running games.
I agree as well, which brings up another peeve for me.
When players complain about staff having PCs. Yes, in some cases, it’s warranted, especially in games where a staffer’s personal PCs seem to get the focus in 100% of plot 100% of the time. But in the majority of cases, it’s the staffer in question taking some time to enjoy some RP for themselves, and some player somewhere is offended that the staffer is not actively working on requests or builds or fixing code bugs or running plots or whatever. Sometimes they even claim the staffers are ignoring their duties to the game, which usually isn’t the case.
#GiveStaffersBreaks
