As a PLAYER, how many staff would be ideal in a game?

[MisterBoring]

Additionally, what staff roles should always be given their own staffer or groups of staffers? What are some positions that games tend to overload on?

[mietze]

@MisterBoring this is so indivdual I’m not sure I can even answer really.

I do think that at some point either in numbers or personality too many staff can lead to even more dropped balls than when there’s just 1 or 2, like how easy it is for people to drown in a crowd because everyone thinks that other people are watching out.

[Testament]

When everyone is staff, no one will be.

[SpaceKhomeini]

Yeah I don’t know if a simple integer can answer this question as staffers can just get resentful and burned out real fast.

You could have 6 active staff and three of them have the morale of angry goblins.

Then you basically have 6 angry goblins.

[Roz]

I tend to think of this in ratio terms. Like how many staffers per number of players.

[junipersky]

I needed ranges on this one. 3 minimum, with decision making powers equal. 6 max or things never get done.

[Gashlycrumb]

Some sort of funtion of work-hours put in per staffer and hours of work generated per active player. Having as few as you can is desirable. Needing them to regularly do long ‘overtime’ sessions to clear backlogs is not.

A work-flow helps.

[Jennkryst]

I want more staff than players, so when the player nagging inevitably burns someone out, there are plenty of replacements available until the burn-out fully recuperates.

[Wuff]

@Jennkryst said in As a PLAYER, how many staff would be ideal in a game?:

I want more staff than players, so when the player nagging inevitably burns someone out, there are plenty of replacements available until the burn-out fully recuperates.

[Pavel]

This is definitely a ratio question rather than hard numbers. Ideally I’d like something like one staff member for every twenty-ish players. But that doesn’t take into account code staff, build staff, or any other specialties I can’t think of.

As far as organisation goes, I’m of two minds:

1. I’ve got a primarily WoD-based background, and having staff (and players) split off into semi-independent spheres (Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, etc.) certainly seems to work, and it’s my preference on games where there are multiple factions of players that intersect but also have their own things going on.

However,

2. There’s something to be said for having a centralised, cohesive staff unit capable of dealing with any player regardless of affiliation, especially on games where the factions are less well-defined or seldom have their own unique things going on.

All that said, it’s not a purely numbers or organisational game. As far as I, as a player, am concerned, so long as the staff is efficacious in their work, able to take breaks without the whole thing crumbling down, and capable of operating within a prescribed ethical framework I don’t care how many there are or how they’re organised.

[Polk]

@Jennkryst said in As a PLAYER, how many staff would be ideal in a game?:

I want more staff than players, so when the player nagging inevitably burns someone out, there are plenty of replacements available until the burn-out fully recuperates.

I now know I want staffers who are allowed to have player bits, so it’s not like pulling teeth to recruit new staffers when breaks happen.