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Staff and playable pcs
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Erm, as I said:
@Gashlycrumb said in Staff and playable pcs:
from time to time, let their PCs be stars, same as (I wish) every PC
I don’t think staff should GM themselves to get to have fun on their own games. They should get to actually be Big Damn Heroes in proper RPG fashion.
Though, yeah, if as you say, nobody will ever organize a plot to further your PC’s development, well, that does suck and I wouldn’t hold it against you of you do a plot to showcase your own PC. I have seen this happen and be done well, and also done good-enough.
It is yet another not-all-the-time thing. I’d also make a distinction between, “This is a plot to explore and develop my PC” is different from a “This looks like a job for my PC!” story where it’s simply written so that your PCs’ abilities are the ones needed and everybody else’s role is to learn that they can’t do it.
But even that is a matter of taste. I’ve seen games where pretty much every plotline resolved with a staff PC/NPC saving the day but people still enjoyed themselves.
I would not want to attempt to ban staffers from doing either, and I really don’t think players will mind even quite egregious ‘only the secrets of basketweaving can unlock the curse and staff-alt is the only basketweaver’ stories if there is not a pattern of that, or the pattern is closer to five percent of the time than fifty. Or whatever it is they personally find reasonable.
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One thing we sometimes forget about MUSHes and text-based RPGs is that they’re ultimately just a hobby—something we all do for fun. These are games where we pretend and tell stories together, and while they can be incredibly engaging, they shouldn’t become a source of stress or drama.
That said, we’ve all probably encountered situations where people took advantage of others’ trust or good nature. This is where the importance of staff integrity comes into play.
I believe it really comes down to having staff members you can trust. If you have a solid staff team with a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of manipulation or favoritism, and everyone stays focused on the main goal—making sure all players are having fun—then most other concerns tend to sort themselves out.
So to address the specific points:
A) Yes, I think staff members should be allowed to have player characters. They’re part of the community too, and restricting them from actually playing the game could lead to burnout or disconnect from the player experience.
B) I don’t think staff should necessarily have to disclose their player alts. I’ve seen cases where players actually felt more uncomfortable knowing they were interacting with a staff member’s character, as it changed the dynamic of their roleplay. However, I wouldn’t object to a game that required this transparency—both approaches can work well with the right implementation.
It really comes down to having clear policies and trustworthy staff who understand the responsibility that comes with their position.
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I think ideally they shouldn’t play because they will benefit from insider knowledge and bias, and will also form their own positive biases about characters their character becomes close to. But as multiple people have pointed out, that’s kind of an insane ask. Nobody wants to put in that kind of work for no reward.
In my opinion the next best thing is for staff characters to be totally anonymous. That way they can be just another guy in the background without getting mobbed by people looking to do a little bootlicking for brownie points. If their identity is known, they are constantly going to be thrust into the spotlight ahead of anyone else, and people will be afraid to oppose them.
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Making staff, but not everyone else, disclose alts, sounds rubbish.
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For me my preferences are this:
- Staff should be allowed to play on the game.
- Staff should not be allowed to run anything their PC is involved in. No GM-PC Mary Sue nonsense for me. It only leads to complaints in my experience.
- On games that allow alts, full disclosure. I think it would help players guide each other into plotlines that work better for their various alts if everybody knows who’s playing who. Also, if it becomes obvious that character X’s player is a bad actor, knowing who their alts are makes it easier for the playerbase to just stop playing with all of their PCs, which can help get them to leave.
- That said, I’m actually not a fan of alts. I’ve seen way too many people get altitis in MUs, and it really starts to affect their ability to keep up with stuff they’re involved in. It’s a huge peeve of mine because I’ve had multiple plots in games get shelved for months because literally all of the other players (who had many alts each) decided they were taking a break from the specific set of PCs involved in the plot that my single character is working on pushing forward. In one case, it went for so long that the Staff person running the plot gave me some XP for making a fair attempt and then just retconning the entire plot from ever having happened.
Roleplaying is our hobby. It’s a collaborative effort that is only helped by freely sharing information. I’m all for privacy for personally sensitive information, but not the fact that Player X has 14 alts, or that Staff Y is playing PC Z. When I’m playing a game, I could care less if other players know what alts I have, or what’s on my sheet. Where I draw the line privacy wise is situations such as when another player somehow found the email address I use to pay my bills and started sending me messages there to try and sway me to supporting their PC’s push for in game power. (Yes, that’s actually happened to me. It was not fun. I informed the staff on that game and they did nothing.)
Also, I have in two cases in the past, been staff on a game that I had no PCs on. I did that because I was very passionate about the stories I was running and wanted to see the game succeed. And in both cases, I was still trying to run stuff right up to the point they were shuttered.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@Juniper said in Staff and playable pcs:
I think ideally they shouldn’t play because they will benefit from insider knowledge…
Of a MUSH plot. Just to keep the stakes in mind.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Staff and playable pcs:
I don’t think staff should GM themselves to get to have fun on their own games. They should get to actually be Big Damn Heroes in proper RPG fashion.
Though, yeah, if as you say, nobody will ever organize a plot to further your PC’s development, well, that does suck and I wouldn’t hold it against you of you do a plot to showcase your own PC.
I think we’re on close to the same page. It’s just that in the first paragraph you say you don’t think they “should” like there’s some kind of moral or ethical problem with doing so. That’s where I passionately disagree. Some staffers who can’t do it well maybe would be better off not (to @Pavel’s point) but that’s different from a blanket rule that people shouldn’t even try except maybe as a matter of last resort. It’s a pretendy–fun-time game with no real stakes. As long as people are having fun on the game, who cares?
@Juniper said in Staff and playable pcs:
In my opinion the next best thing is for staff characters to be totally anonymous.
The idea that staff alts will stay anonymous is perplexing to me. Even on games where it wasn’t required to be disclosed, it was generally widely known. People just aren’t that good at keeping secrets or varying their playstyle. So all the “anonymity” does is erode trust and encourage people to play guessing games about who’s playing who.
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Whenever I share stories about Silent Heaven, it feels like I’m always doing something different, and yet it works for the game.
In this case, we have a policy for a right to OOC privacy. That is, nobody is required to share their OOC identity, but you can share privately with people you trust.
Staff are marked as staff in the Discord chat, and they, too, don’t have to reveal who they play. I also strongly enforce a rule that staff cannot be on their staff account at the same time they’re on their alt, which eliminates a lot of mischief that could happen. They also have to mark other characters that they interact with frequently on a “conflict of interest” list, which codedly hides all information, notes, jobs, and requests of those characters. This makes it so they specifically give the most RP to the characters they play the least with.
I can’t imagine this would work for every game, but it works exceptionally well for us.
Game-runner of Silent Heaven, a small-town horror MU.
https://silentheaven.org -
@Jumpscare I like the idea of a system to track staff conflicts of interest. That definitely sounds like it could help a lot of games with those types of issues.
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To @Pavel’s point, I agree that the problem is perception, but I also think that perception is important. I also know that my own experiences of legitimately having my character in the spotlight and having players call me on it have colored my perceptions.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that staff PCs should never be out in front of a story – I don’t think of myself as a Sith, so less with the absolutes. I wonder if a better description of my position is that staff should be incredibly careful about the dangers of spotlighting or appearing to spotlight. Because as noted, players will notice if you or another staff member runs plots that are well suited to your characters.
If players want to, that’s fantastic, but to @Faraday’s post, that tends to be rare (very special and appreciated, but rare). I think that it’s absolutely reasonable to run a scene to develop your character’s story, as long as you’re up front about it. I also think that it’s entirely reasonable to be one of the Big Darn Heroes, but I don’t ever intend to be THE Big Darn Hero on a game where I’m staffing.
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I’m not sure I have an opinion on whether staff should disclose their alts on any kind of ‘this is good/bad for the game’ basis. I mostly think there’s no point in this kind of secrecy. People will find out, you better believe they will talk about it, so why not be upfront about it? Feels like it just saves time/drama.
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@MisterBoring said in Staff and playable pcs:
Also, if it becomes obvious that character X’s player is a bad actor, knowing who their alts are makes it easier for the playerbase to just stop playing with all of their PCs, which can help get them to leave.
When it becomes obvious that Player is a bad actor, what you do is borrow the courage of a bunny and tell them they are no longer welcome and now must leave. Don’t fucking torment them or the rest of the players.
However, one very good reason for alt transparency is that indeed, nobody should have to play with someone they don’t want to play with. Letting people try to work their way in with another alt disrespects that. Let Abelard avoid playing with Bridget, and do not make him have to work out that Camille, Dante, Eliphias and Grimwood are all Bridget-player too. How many crap times should the poor bastard have to endure before he’s done dealing with Bridget? And please don’t put him in a situation where he can’t say, “Bridget won’t leave me alone,” because he’s not supposed to know that Camille is the same player and will get in trouble for “breaking the OOC Masque” by figuring it out.
@Faraday said in Staff and playable pcs:
I think we’re on close to the same page. It’s just that in the first paragraph you say you don’t think they “should” like there’s some kind of moral or ethical problem with doing so.
Naw, I’m talking best-practices for a fun game. The only ethical problem I see with this sort of thing is doing it but hiding the fact. That’s a bait-and-switch for players.
I had a lot of fun on Anomaly TrekMUX. The overarching grand big plot was all centered on the gamerunner’s PC, a Chosen One who would save the universe. I did not like this, but I knew it before I apped. I also knew there was Lesser Plot stuff to do, and so.
This didn’t mean that I and other players didn’t roll our eyes and bitch about that plotting-choice all the time. But I don’t/didn’t feel jerked around or fucked with like I do when I’ve been playing a while and am invested and find out it’s The Staff PC Show.
Thing:
You’re GMing. You have friends. Staff teams are often groups of friends. You chat with your friends more than you do with everybody else. You chat about the game. Storylines that suit your friends’ characters occur to you more readily because of this. This is just how it is.
If alts are secret it’s eaasier to just proceed with those storylines that occur to you without thinking about how far you are falling into The GM’s Friends’ Show territory. Just having it be game-wide knowledge encourages you to adapt your idea to less-familiar PCs, or invent something else so you can space things out a little more.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Staff and playable pcs:
When it becomes obvious that Player is a bad actor, what you do is borrow the courage of a bunny and tell them they are no longer welcome and now must leave. Don’t fucking torment them or the rest of the players.
That only works if staff has the courage to tell them that. I’ve experienced the fallout when players try it and it turns out the player in question is in solid with staff.
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@MisterBoring Oh, yeah. It’s up to hosts to ask people to leave. If they won’t, ugh, and you’re right.
Making a new character and trying to pass yourself off as a different person because you’ve annoyed people and they don’t want to play with you is a Bad Idea even when it’s as innocent as that can be.
