MU Peeves Thread

Snackness

Herja

@mietze I think talking about it openly is good because I generally try to believe that most people are not intentionally acting entitled. It’s just a difference in mindset. If you have someone who spends a lot of time on a game, they might feel like a lull in activity is a bad thing where a less active player might feel relief that they aren’t trying to keep up with the more active players that are pushing story along very quickly. I would like to think that once people are aware that they are being unkind and a little unfair to others, they might take some time to reassess.

Staff putting up strong boundaries is also good and being willing to let people walk away if they want to, as much as that sucks. I also know that part is not so easy for smaller games where losing a small handful of players can really wreck the entire thing. Losing a few players on Arx doesn’t create as much of a vacuum as losing a few players on a game where there are only 20 consistent log-ins. Still, setting up boundaries and enforcing them helps. As much as I am tempted to remain logged in 24/7 on the game because of FOMO, I also have created the expectation that if you find me on /who, then I am available for questions, pages, etc. I had to create a line there to force myself to take time and let my brain rest while also being available to players because I never want anyone to feel like they are a bother for reaching out to me.

I think also normalizing playing multiple games for players that need more activity than one game staff can fulfill would help as well. Or even staff encouraging players to check out other games during lulls. It’s not a competition and if a very active player can get their need for story and engagement met by playing on a couple of games rather than devoting all that energy to one, I think the entire community benefits.

bear_necessities

@Herja said in MU Peeves Thread:

I think also normalizing playing multiple games for players that need more activity than one game staff can fulfill would help as well.

I wish there were actually enough games for people to be playing multiple ones

Herja

@bear_necessities Yeah, same.

GF

@mietze said in MU Peeves Thread:

I think it should be okay for activity lulls.

I agree with everything you said, especially the bit about entitlement, but I also think it should be okay to not be okay with activity lulls. If a given player can’t maintain a scene’s given energy during a lull, then that sucks for everyone but isn’t necessarily a moral failure; and I hope that person finds someone they can RP with at the speed their creative process requires them to hold.

bear_necessities

@GF said in MU Peeves Thread:

but I also think it should be okay to not be okay with activity lulls.

I agree with this. I’ve quit games when the GM goes on a break - not because they are not ENTITLED to a break, but because the way the game was created meant there was nothing to do while the GM was on a break. After a certain length of time, I get bored, wander away, and that’s ok.

I think the problem is in games where there’s a lull in GM activity after maybe a big push to tell a lot of story and despite there being stuff to do outside of the GM activity, everyone screams THE GAME IS DYING RUNNNN!!! Or people start being assholes. Or people start demanding shit happen. Or whatever number of things people end up doing in this situation.

And sometimes, you can give people enough shit to do or play with while you’re gone and they’ll still wander off and there’s nothing you can do. It’s OK, it just means less and less people want to make games because of all the WORK that is involved in it and the knowledge that if they don’t WORK all the time on the game, it’s more likely than not to fail during a hiatus.

sao

I just wish I could get people to stop trying to manufacture IC urgency that doesn’t match up to OOC timelines. Like, say I have a GMed scene scheduled to potentially resolve a thing 2 weeks from tomorrow. I do not want to spend every night up to that 2 weeks away GMed scene RPing the imminence of the GMed scene. Just. Fucking. IDK, people, learn to chill.

mietze

@GF I think people should be able to leave a game at any time, for any reason, and as long as they’re not a flailing asshat about it, it should be no harm, no foul. If someone cannot depart without getting a dig in, when the reason is all about personal prefs rather than something wrong/wonky of the game itself or a concern about conduct, then honestly, I think that’s asshat territory. Everyone has their needs/base levels. I have left lots of games that were a mismatch in activity levels or style, for me. There would be no reason for me to complain or catastrophize about it to staff, especially if I wanted /more/ when it was very clear they needed to dial it back. I just don’t have a lot of patience for the nitpick/neg-plucking these days.

L. B. Heuschkel

Alternatively, no one should be expected to provide content – and everyone should be.

That’s the approach we’ve taken on Keys and while I don’t want to sit here and harp on how awesome we all are (obviously our players are the best ever), it was somewhat of an experiment and it seems to have paid off.

We don’t have storytelling staff. Everyone is the storytelling staff. We don’t have a metaplot as much as we have a framework story within which anyone can create a setting and a storyline and run it. Some players never run anything. Others run a story now and then. Some run stuff all the time. But the very important thing there is that people do not burn out.

Because no one can run content all the time. Even if, like me, they do very little but sit in front of a computer all day, people need creative breaks. And assuming otherwise is indeed the worst kind of entitlement.