Player Ratios
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I was talking to @Yam about my constant forever problem of games: not having enough staff / storytellers / plot runners for your players. We’ve all been on games where this is true.
I’m mostly looking at the issue of plot runners / storytellers here, rather than the staff who handles admin work. We all know that admin work can be a real drain on staff. But forget that! Let’s talk story!
Two questions:
- How do you deal with maintaining a good ratio of people who can tell story to people who want story? What are some things that have worked? What are some things that have not?
- What’s your ideal ratio of players to storytellers? What factors impact your ratio?
she/they
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NOW TO ANSWER MY OWN QUESTION.
I’ve been kicking around an idea in my head of gating the entry of new players based on only allowing people in if there are enough storytellers to handle them: either existing storytellers, or incoming storytellers. If someone wants their friends to join, someone in that squad better be eager to tell the stories for them.
I’ve also considered the angle of giving people tokens for running story which they can cash in for Insert Incentive Here. I’ve toyed with the idea of the incentive being staff attention, but I very, very, very much want to kill the idea that staff attention is better than player attention.
My ideal ratio is 5 players per storyteller, more or less, I think, given that the responsibility of storyteller rotates among players. No one person should be the forever GM.
she/they
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Mostly, I get Discords at random from folks who have more players than stories and pop by to tell some. Then folks peep I’m there and they get MORE players but I’m already telling stories and then things begin to explode.
I dunno. I’m spammy and I write a lot and it seems to usually get my friends both out of and into lots of troubles on the regular.
And yet. Most of 'em still keep putting up with me. And messaging for more.
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@Tez said in Player Ratios:
How do you deal with maintaining a good ratio of people who can tell story to people who want story? What are some things that have worked? What are some things that have not?
I don’t. I expect players to make the majority of their own fun, and I enable them with tools and freedom to do so. A MU isn’t a TTRPG, and unless you have an entire fleet of storytellers, I don’t think it’s feasible to entertain everyone to the degree they wish to be entertained.
Of course I’ve also run stories on my games, but that’s as much for my own fun as anyone else’s. It’s never been intended to be the primary way to keep people involved.
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For me, I think it comes down to the intention of the staff from the start. If the staff intend to ensure that every PC has a moment or two in the spotlight and want to run big specific plots, then I would hope the radio of plot-running people to players skews a bit more toward the plot-runners. On the other hand, if the staff are really only building a set for people to play in, and not worried about having an arching plot throughout the life of the game, then the ratio can skew toward the players.
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@Tez said in Player Ratios:
I’ve also considered the angle of giving people tokens for running story which they can cash in for Insert Incentive Here. I’ve toyed with the idea of the incentive being staff attention, but I very, very, very much want to kill the idea that staff attention is better than player attention.
I’ve tried this, and a surprising thing happened: the people who ran stuff almost never asked for their tokens (I was using FS3 luck, which had a pretty wide variety of benefits you could spend it on). Not //never// asked, but it was far more rare than you’d think.
I don’t think that’s really what motivates people to run stories, honestly. I still like it as a way to offer something to people who do, but I don’t think anyone ever said ‘I’m gonna run a thing to earn me some luck’. I think the actual rewards are things like seeing their friends have fun, making a real impact in people’s stories, seeing the stuff they do matter.
I think the most effective thing in getting people to run things lies in two things: making it easy and making it matter.
Making it easy is NOT about ‘do whatever you want.’ In fact, I think that often makes it harder, because people are uncertain about what’s feasible. It’s more about building support.
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Have different levels of ‘running things’ available. GMs have to walk before they can fly - even experienced GMs need to practice with the basics of a new system. Have a way to run basic, repetitive encounters that add spice to RP, the sort that require almost no rules or guidelines beyond using the system. If you do ‘plot in a box’ type things, make sure some of them are really basic ‘smash x’ or whatever your theme’s equivalent is. Something you can run in a single evening.
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Build a community where people are polite and supportive of GMs even when they kind of suck. At least in public. No groaning about dice, everyone says thank you, and if you’re frustrated or annoyed, do it in private. Make it safe to try stuff.
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Have different types of running things available. Some people will never run combat, but they do a killer party or make up really cool holiday traditions.
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Support people doing bigger stories. When they want to run one, get them on a private channel with STs, or a go-to ST, so they can ask questions. Be proactive about talking through their plan. Tell them it sounds great but they might need an extra day for everything they have planned, or did they think about involving NPC X because that might be a cool tie-in to meta plot. Be a partner. It’s still less work than running something yourself, and next time they’ll need LESS help.
Making it matter is mostly about taking the stuff they do into account - but the last bullet about being a partner to player-GMs can help a lot, too. Honest to god, sometimes we were able to straight up let players GM a thing we were struggling to find time to do, because we could slide certain things so easily into their plans and they were usually pretty excited (I think!) to be allowed to do it. BY ALL MEANS run that scouting scene we know we need but don’t have the spoons to run. SURE, pass on this useful info! ABSOLUTELY make up a town and let it get destroyed by the enemies we want to feel scary.
I don’t have great concrete thoughts about ratio of STs to players because I think that has a lot of variables about activity and game type and and and, but I apparently have many thoughts on building a game where people GM stuff.
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Basically, what Tat said.
Additionally, however, I’ve always been an advocate for gating entries. Don’t have enough staff to deal with the number of players, be that administratively, storytellerly, energyly, whateverly? Stop letting players in. This is perhaps easier when staff are split into teams, a la the traditional WoD sphere/splat-based divisions, but I always support the idea of having a pause or moratorium on applications until things become managable. So if you’re looking for external permission to have such a policy, this is it. It might not be a TTRPG, but it’s still your metaphorical table to manage how you need to.
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I wish I knew how to incentivize prps because when I want to run I find it so fun and when I don’t want to run I feel terrible trying. I think the biggest hurdles for me are feeling comfortable enough in the playground to mess around – if I know the theme or system will be way more inclined to tell stories than if I actively know I am guessing or full of shit. But the validation I want for running story is people having fun with it or maybe seeing my story having impact on other people’s – I don’t know if there is a way to incentivize that.
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Lots of good stuff here.
I do wish you’d said ‘actually, I find incentives totally work great’, though. I want there to be an easy answer.
@Pavel said in Player Ratios:
Additionally, however, I’ve always been an advocate for gating entries. Don’t have enough staff to deal with the number of players, be that administratively, storytellerly, energyly, whateverly? Stop letting players in.
200% agree on this, but at the same time, I’ve always struggled to implement it. I’m not happy with just closing the gates on people, and wait lists are an imperfect middle ground. That’s why I’ve been kicking around the idea of a predefined storyteller : player ratio and letting people in based on that – and yeah, being a storyteller or bringing one along can be a way to skip the line.
This is perhaps easier when staff are split into teams, a la the traditional WoD sphere/splat-based divisions
While I don’t have traditional WoD sphere experience, Firan did something a bit similar – in theory – with having a very structured staffing hierarchy. I’ve toyed with building out something similar for storytellers – breaking them out across factions, clustered around main storypoints – where teams can work together.
@Yam accuses me of dreaming of a corporate bureaucracy of staffing.
she/they
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@Tez I do think managing player load via storyteller numbers is an interesting idea from a sustainability perspective, particularly if your STs can be self-aware of their own boundaries and not pathologically incapable of saying no.
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I wonder if a shift in expectations is also in order. Big, multi-scene plots that have a lot of people involved are exhausting. Sometimes the fun outweighs the effort, but it still IS a lot of effort and so many of us are at a point in our lives where we’ve got other things to do.
I wonder if there’s a way to encourage and promote people doing player-run-scenes first, and then for those who discover they enjoy it, build up into longer plots. But really, just having self-contained scenes that have a bit of excitement or plotty goodness to them can do a lot to excite people. And they might be less intimidating.
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Tangentially related but I thought we kinda’ figured out that gating/limiting/waitlisting wasn’t ideal. As in the people that generally got waitlisted were more or less uninterested after several months passed.
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@Tez said in Player Ratios:
I’ve also considered the angle of giving people tokens for running story which they can cash in for Insert Incentive Here. I’ve toyed with the idea of the incentive being staff attention, but I very, very, very much want to kill the idea that staff attention is better than player attention.
What about cashing in the tokens to be able to make plots that actively change the world without having to go through ten layers of bureaucracy?
That, I find, is a big impediment to players running stories. So if you’ve proven yourself with smaller plots (like, say, plots personal to a specific character), you earn the right to just go with something that changes the world?
Wanna blow up a building? Two Story Tokens. Have a major political figure assassinated? Three. A war? Four. World-wide apocalypse? Five.
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@STD said in Player Ratios:
What about cashing in the tokens to be able to make plots that actively change the world without having to go through ten layers of bureaucracy?
If somebody has a cool idea to change the world in a way that fits with your game vision, why would you require them to have OOC tokens to do so?
Conversely, if somebody has a terrible idea to change the game world in a way that wrecks the game, who cares how many tokens they have? It’s still not something you want.
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@Yam Yeah, I don’t really like waitlisting, but I don’t have a great solution for the storyteller to player ratio problem. If you have more players than storytellers, then instead of a waitlist at the entry, it’s a waitlist for staff attention: put in a request and wait two years because there’s 150 players on the game.
@STD said in Player Ratios:
What about cashing in the tokens to be able to make plots that actively change the world without having to go through ten layers of bureaucracy?
I see your point, but I totally agree with Faraday here:
@Faraday said in Player Ratios:
If somebody has a cool idea to change the world in a way that fits with your game vision, why would you require them to have OOC tokens to do so?
Conversely, if somebody has a terrible idea to change the game world in a way that wrecks the game, who cares how many tokens they have? It’s still not something you want.
I want players to be able to tell big stories, personally, without feeling like their tokens entitle them to remake the scope or scale of the game. Then again, that comes back to expectations too, so maybe Pyre’s right here:
@Pyrephox said in Player Ratios:
I wonder if a shift in expectations is also in order.
It’s really just about setting expectations and being clear about them. Like, yes, you can join this game, but we have a limited number of storytellers and thus–.
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@Faraday said in Player Ratios:
@STD said in Player Ratios:
What about cashing in the tokens to be able to make plots that actively change the world without having to go through ten layers of bureaucracy?
If somebody has a cool idea to change the world in a way that fits with your game vision, why would you require them to have OOC tokens to do so?
Conversely, if somebody has a terrible idea to change the game world in a way that wrecks the game, who cares how many tokens they have? It’s still not something you want.
It was mostly just a way to prejudge storytellers so that constant permission wouldn’t be necessary. The whole “fits your game vision” is the problematic bit; someone who has run a few dozen smaller scenes can just go ahead with whatever big idea they have without having to bother staff.
I donno, it probably wouldn’t work. I was just spitballing without really thinking it through. OP wanted some sort of inducement system.
Alternatively, maybe tokens would be equivalent to spaces. Like… there can only be one big world-changing plot active at any one time and tokens are used to reserve those spaces. The effort involved in gaining those tokens might reduce flake-outs.
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@Yam said in Player Ratios:
Tangentially related but I though we kinda’ figured out that gating/limiting/waitlisting wasn’t ideal. As in the people that generally got waitlisted were more or less uninterested after several months passed.
My experience with trying a waitlist was largely negative, it’s very counter to the way players behave and engage with MUSHes even though it’s easier on staff in a lot of ways, but it was a suggestion by someone who couldn’t get in during a ‘come everybody’ open window and I’m not sorry to have tried it. I’m still pretty pro some kind of population limitation, even if I don’t have the perfect system for it.
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@Third-Eye I can accept it as something rough but necessary. I recall putting a TON of emotional attention (unwise on my part) into getting through that window, and missing it meant I was pretty much out of RP with my pals for several months. Not really sure where I would’ve gone from there, but as an ST that has been thoroughly fried, I definitely understand.
Back to ratios though, I agree with tez that 5 players per ST is a decent number.
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@STD said in Player Ratios:
It was mostly just a way to prejudge storytellers so that constant permission wouldn’t be necessary. The whole “fits your game vision” is the problematic bit; someone who has run a few dozen smaller scenes can just go ahead with whatever big idea they have without having to bother staff.
Well I can only speak for myself, but I don’t care how good of a storyteller you’ve been in the past. Anything that has the potential to knock the game off its axis should go through staff first.
I’m also more lenient than most, though, in what you can run without any staff permission, so YMMV.
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I agree with a lot of what @Tat, @Faraday, @Pyrephox, and others have said. One incentive that I think can help get people interested in running PrPs is to have Staff weave references to the actions in their PrPs into larger metaplot scenes.
Did they stop a pirate ship from taking a merchantman? The important plotgiver for the next metaplot scene happened to be on that merchantman and is effusive in their thanks.
Not only does this let players know that player-run-plots matter, it provides a thank-you to player GMs, shares a little spotlight with all involved, and might even make it easier for player GMs to feel more comfortable taking on bigger plot ideas.
