Player Ratios
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If you think players act entitled to plot now just wait until you introduce a point system lol my bet? You’ll burn out STs even faster this way.
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I could see a point-like system working if it were a staff-vision-only automated metric of some kind to identify people struggling to either find time or social energy so that staff can make a point of drawing them into things, but as even as a useless shiny-shiny it has too much potential to attract (or promote) competitive behaviour that so easily turns toxic.
I don’t know how one would implement the former and we’ve all seen versions of the latter go bad.
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@Pavel said in Player Ratios:
metric of some kind to identify people struggling to either find time or social energy so that staff can make a point of drawing them into things
I don’t think it’s that hard to spot these players without a point system and if they already don’t have the time or social energy to play why would they want to be drawn into things?
I certainly don’t have the time or social energy to play right now and the last thing I’d want is a GM to single me out and be like YOU THERE, HERE’S PLOT because then I feel forced to spread that plot and I don’t have the time or social energy to do that and bye I’m done lol
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@Faraday said in Player Ratios:
Just look at why +vote/+nom systems fell out of favor. I even stopped using the completely useless (nothing but a public ‘attaboy’) +cookies on my games because of the complaints about so-and-so always getting all the scenes, or cookie-voting circles, or people feeling bad that they never made the leaderboard, or whatever. (There’s a reason they’re a plugin on Ares and not standard in the core code.)
Speaking as one of the people who can sometimes feel kind of terrible in the world of public cookies, public <3s, and public votes, thank you for making this change. It was never rational on my part, but it feels better to me when there isn’t a leaderboard to chase.
That’s been the case for me a lot, actually, when faced with leaderboard systems. Arx had its modeling leaderboard. It was really fun to do big modeling and have big numbers. But with leaderboards it can always feel like there’s an insurmountable lead, too. I don’t know. There’s always some real fucking +/- with those systems. It’s worth keeping in mind on the balance.
It’s a reminder that helps me see why point-based systems can really turn people off. I do still wish there was a way to reward people for their work on games, from running plots to helping people, but maybe the real reward is the friends we make along the way.
@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:
And how much of a not-drag must a player be to get a seat? Obviously much of the time when a staff storyteller is criticised for cherry-picking who to GM what they are doing is GMing the people who are the most fun for them.
If you don’t have GMing staff, and players running stories for one another is just how your game rolls, you really have no reason to worry about Abelard.
I keep coming back to this idea, and to Pyre, LBH – the piece about expectations. Shifting expectations away from staff somehow. But you can’t really do that without empowering players and giving them the tools to tell stories – and, with a nod to KB’s thread, to tell them in a way that people feel like they can touch the world.
I think people would probably still grumble about it, but damn, people always grumble about something.
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@bear_necessities I phrased it poorly, but I meant time as in “you staffers only think about American timezones” and social energy as “I don’t know anyone and I don’t like asking for scenes out of the blue…”
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@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.
I am that person that loves to pull people into things, though. Did you take a point of map making on your sheet for a lark? Boom, now there is a plot where you have to read a MAP and SAVE THE DAY.
Though I can see how if you made your map making pc just to romance your friend the explorer, you might be annoyed if the Gnome King interrupts your date to make you go get a group together to save the Kingdom of Butterbright.
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@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:
@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.
I am that person that loves to pull people into things, though. Did you take a point of map making on your sheet for a lark? Boom, now there is a plot where you have to read a MAP and SAVE THE DAY.
Though I can see how if you made your map making pc just to romance your friend the explorer, you might be annoyed if the Gnome King interrupts your date to make you go get a group together to save the Kingdom of Butterbright.
RP prefs probably help for that. Honestly when I was running games and STing, I would just poke people and be like “hey do you want to get in on this” versus dumping plot into their lap.
Maybe back in the day when games had like 500 players it was really hard to identify the people that were lost to timezones or too shy to ask for RP, but I just don’t think that’s the case anymore. But also it really isn’t my job as a game admin to keep track of your pretendy fun-time points to determine if you’re having enough pretendy fun-time so please just reach out and poke if you aren’t getting plot but want it.
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@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:
I am that person that loves to pull people into things, though.
So long as you ask, of course. I have too many not-so-fond memories of staff foisting random “events” onto people who were quite happy doing their own RP thankyouverymuch.
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NGL one of my favorite thing about Horror 2 was the fact that if you were in an open scene, it was fair game for the storyteller to drop in with something unannounced, but she made that pretty clear right out of the gate. It certainly made it feel like there was something that could happen at any second and was an easy way to rope people into plot.
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@Pavel said in Player Ratios:
@dvoraen said in Player Ratios:
@Pavel said in Player Ratios:
@Faraday said in Player Ratios:
incentivize the behavior you want, without incentivizing negative behaviors
That goes double for taking things that are typically “free” (staff attention, entrance into plots, add your own example here) and making them require points. The EA or Ubisoft approach to staffing.
Don’t you dare try to coin “microstaffing” or “microplots” as if we’re going to reach the MU* equivalent of microtransactions.
We aim to give every player some pride in accomplishment.
“I do hope you’re satisfied with our product.”
^ You could’ve done that quote/GIF from BladeRunner. But you didn’t.
Getting a little bit back on topic, I find it a little interesting how some posts are aiming to quantify a standard for storytelling. This isn’t meant as a criticism, but as someone eyeballing data analytics/data science as a career, it intrigues me how we’re trying to take something I very much find qualitative (how much can a storyteller handle and who the recipients of their time are) and trying to put a definitive value to certain points of interest (“green/yellow/red” players as @Gashlycrumb went into).
I’m not saying we can’t ascribe numerical analysis here insofar as MU* participation (both giving and receiving) is concerned, but like D&D, the numbers are a guideline and the DM can (arguably?) yeet them whenever they want.
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I’ve seen the points for play/spotlight/equity thing tried and floated a lot over the years.
I think it’s easy to understand why that might be desired.
The problem is it never has the effect that the advocates/wishers want. Never.
Not because players or staff suck, but because participation and spotlight is rarely about numbers. Minutes of screentime. Number of mentions in staff posts. Length of title bestowed upon player/character. Number of scenes present. All of that can be a component for feeling engaged, satisfied, or like things are as accessible to you as you see certain other individuals getting–but it doesn’t solve the problem which is largely rooted in feelings and we are all imperfect human beings whose feelings and perceptions may or may not obey the laws of those numbers.
You can’t points calculate your way out of feeling like maybe other people are getting the kind of impact you want and don’t think you’re getting. Racking up and using points or other acquired resources honestly can lead to feeling even more disappointed in the result if it’s not perceived to be “as good as” what a similar group got. I don’t even want to think about the pressure and just real feeling of defeat/morale bust that places on staff.
I saw this play out again and again and again on Arx and other places, with a huge diverse set of people that I perceived to have similar levels of engagement/spotlight complaining about how they got nothing but the other person got everything (sometimes the same people complaining about each other verbatim), or some people being terribly upset about their writeup that at least from my perspective was even better than one I’d gotten, but they were complaining to me that my group got the favorable one. Again, not because ANY of these people were bad (staff or player) but perception and feelings of disappointment are difficult. And storytelling isn’t like knowing you have to earn ex amount of tickets playing skeeball to “win” a laffy taffy or glow in the dark kazoo–maybe you won’t like the spotlight you get, maybe you won’t like the storytelling you get for your plot, maybe both you and the person that you’re wishing you’d gotten their writeup/storytelling are thinking the same thing (and hopefully no one is telling the poor ST this always). I mean hell, I whined about it as much as anyone else too because…well, perception. And humanity.
I think it’s just the human part of our hobby.
So I actually think there’s no magic number to staff to player ratio. I wish staff felt free to not have to numberize things, to feel like they could close down apps or take breaks when they’re feeling overwhelmed and be reasonably certain players would take it with grace. I like it when staff feels free to gently (or firmly) show players that stress them out or drain them too much the door, even if those players haven’t done anything “wrong”, because they’re protecting the staff enjoyment and stress balance.
I think the problem is that people take stuff really personally. I’m not saying I’m a saint and I don’t because I do. Luckily for me I do tend to have great friends on game who are able to tell me that I might need to check my reaction (and I think they tend to tell me that because I’m for the most part good about listening to that, and returning the favor). But like–I don’t think you can build that into an OOC clout/spotlight numbers game.
I get the impulse for people who find it really hard to initiate RP, or find that for whatever reasons they’re passed up for invites in favor of those that to them seem less “deserving.” I really do. I just don’t think there’s an external system that will solve that.
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@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:
@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.
On a similar vein, one thing I always like to do is get personal with plots and incorporate aspects of a character’s background. But I always find myself hesitating. I’m gunshy about possibly ruining some idea they had about their character and stepping on toes.
Based on my experience, that’s very rarely the case, but it has also definitively happened before and it just feels bad. Now, of course, you can just ASK the player in question if you can use some aspect of their background in a plot, but that is sometimes really, really awkward if you don’t know the player very well or if the point you want to touch would have a much better impact if it was a surprise which would be ruined by asking for permission.
So having some sort of RP preference like for violence scenes/death/metaplot involving given carte-blanche to utilize a character’s background in plots would be handy.
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@Pavel said in Player Ratios:
Some people like points. Some people don’t. Some people fucking crave points and the associated validation like their lives depend on it.
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@STD my experience as staffer and player is that a lot of people say this and mean it, but a lot of people say it and think they mean it but only in very specific ways and will get very upset or just not respond/claim to be railroaded because they didn’t think they voted say no if they ever wanted attention again.
Even having prefs (and I’ve seen that done very thoughtfully and well on a few places!) slides into tricky territory when staff initiates something that alters a character that that character didn’t chase (and let’s be honest, even some chasers still dont like the end result if it doesn’t meet unspoken or even unrealized at the time expectations.)
I am all for prefs and pick me flags though. I just think that unless there’s good personality and crowd control on a game, it’s very hit or miss if utilizing that is going to be actually helpful. I think in part because a lot of people think staff attention for a period will solve their engagement issues with other players, that it will open doors, but I’ve yet to see that happen for people that weren’t capable of doing that on their own. Which leads to more resentment on the temporary spotlighted pc.
It’s just complicated. I love knowing what people’s no go or yes please prefs are as long as theyre honest though!
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Ratios?
Staff: Exactly as many needed to run the game. It could be 1 person it could be 100.
Players: As many as needed to survive the game detonating because of OOC drama. Every time I see a neat game with 10-15 people, all I can think of is the first OOC drama is going to crater it and it will be dead.
Everything else comes from the character of said players and staff.
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@bear_necessities said in Player Ratios:
If you think players act entitled to plot now just wait until you introduce a point system lol my bet? You’ll burn out STs even faster this way.
Entertain, for a moment, the idea that they act entitled to plot because they are.
It’s not an issue in PrP games where what RP-staff does is answer questions and provide support like NPC sheets and whatnot, say, “this idea fits our world proper-like, roll it!” and post announcements like “Cardassian voles infest the ship! They act like so and have these abilities, RP encounters as you please!” For a model like that, the player/st ratio question doesn’t make sense, because that ratio is 1/1 by nature, and everybody’s access is limited only by their own RL contraints.
On a game where staff storytellers are a thing and their availability is a factor, then the question of player/ST ratio makes sense. But before you can answer it you need to know what pace you’re aiming for, how much time STs are likely to devote to the game, and how far the STs’ reaches will, uh, reach.
And ST reach is a thing that doesn’t seem to get looked at much, in spite of it being a pretty big issue on the games where staff-storytellers are a thing. There’s nothing wrong with an ST who focuses on a playgroup of four, or seven, or whatever, but when your ST that all mage PCs depend upon only pays attention to the Etherites and has everybody else pound sand, it’s not a problem of the non-Etherite PCs having a bad ‘entitled’ additude.
