RPing with Everybody (or not)
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@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
You’re making a leap from “prefers to play with their friends” to “never responds to the goings-on of the game.”
You misread my example then. I was specifically referring to pairs of people who join a game only to play in a single grid room, never interact with plot, often times become hostile when asked to join RP / plot, and usually get upset if plot events ever effect them. I’ve run into it a few times in my 20+ years of hobby, and it’s possible that they are the same two people each time (as every time I’ve encountered this phenomenon, it’s gone down almost identically to the others).
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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If they’re not bothering anyone and they’re not taking up ST resources, let them play.
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@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
When talking “best practices”, you have to ask: best for whom? Every player comes to the game with different desires and different needs, and I really don’t think it’s fair to expect them to put those aside for some vague “good of the game”. That’s not their responsibility. As long as they’re not doing active harm to the game (toxic cliques hogging resources is one example of that) and are playing within the established bounds of the story, who cares what they do or who they do it with?
Best for the community of players that make up “the game”, which is all a Mush really is. The good of the community, of which all players participating in the game are a part, absolutely is the responsibility of each individual player. If we’re talking best practices, then it should hold that, generalizing the behavior to everyone on the game, it would result in a net benefit for the average player. I think that it’s pretty easy to make the case that if everyone is playing with people who aren’t their most favorite experience on occasion, on balance, everyone will probably have more fun. I think it’s also pretty easy to make the case that if nobody is, there will probably be less total fun.
It can be true that what results in the most fun for everyone and what results in the most fun experience for a particular person are not the same thing.
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@MisterBoring said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
I was specifically referring to pairs of people who join a game only to play in a single grid room, never interact with plot, often times become hostile when asked to join RP / plot, and usually get upset if plot events ever effect them.
I’m very confused by this. If they never leave, and they never interact… Where and how are you then intersecting with them? How are events affecting them, how do they even know it’s happening?
Either they’re on their own, hurting nothing and no one… OR, they are interacting, just not in the amounts or ways you want them to be.
But I’m unable to see where/how it might be both?
We're all mad here.
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In theory, I’d like to RP at least once with everyone unless there’s some obvious red flag about them.
In practice… a good intro scene long enough to feel like I have a grasp on what that character is about can run 2-3 hours. A healthy RP community can have up to 30 regular writers. I also have to work to live, get 8 hours of sleep a night, cook, eat, wash dishes, tend to my real-life relationships, and I also have hobbies outside of writing.
Also, some people are only online for 45 minutes at 3am on Thursdays.
I can barely find time for the people who are specifically trying to follow up RP with me. So I have to be realistic. Whenever someone makes a fuss that I didn’t have time for them it really bums me out. Most of the time it wasn’t a conscious choice, that’s just how it shakes out.
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I don’t rp with people I actively dislike because life is too short. I will totally rp with anybody I don’t know because they might be cool. I will also rp with anybody who answers when I ask for rp publicly because you get what you get and you don’t get upset.
I cannot rp with just one other person because it will get stale. More stuff needs to happen than just between two people or what am I even doing here.
My rp time is so much more limited than it used to be and sometimes that is a huge bummer in terms of connecting with anyone and if I can only rp once in a 2 week period I am probably going to privilege somebody I know I will enjoy. Because I’m only human. God where did all my hobby time go? But like, in a universe where rp is happening.
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You must have stopped reading when I mentioned “often times become hostile when asked to join RP / plot”. I have politely approached a duo like this and asked them if they’d like to come join a plot, as they were nominally part of the same faction as myself, and received a rather angry response. I’ve seen staffers on other games politely send a duo like this an invitation to a plot event and get told very plainly to get bent for trying to force them to play the game the staff intended to run. I’ve also witnessed these people throw tantrums when they were suddenly touched by plot they refused to be a part of.
@Jumpscare said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
If they’re not bothering anyone and they’re not taking up ST resources, let them play.
My personal game running / staffing philosophy is such that I would rather all of the players connecting to my game interact with either the plots my staff is running, or with PRPs (that ideally include a cross-section of the players on the game). I see it as a trade. My end of the bargain is the server, the game itself and the plots I and my staff devise, and the players end is their RP with the game at large and whatever PrPs they choose to run for the rest of the players. This is also part of why the next game I run won’t have Generic RP rooms. I’ve seen too many toxic groups form around RPing only in Generic RP Rooms to let that happen in any game I might try to run in the future.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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What is a Generic RP room?
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@Juniper Some games have (usually around 5-6) rooms just off of the OOC area that aren’t desced and can be used to act as places that aren’t necessarily built into the grid. I have a personal dislike of RPing in those because they lack the feel of the game world the rest of the grid has.
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I’m going to phrase my thoughts on the general topic of this thread a slightly bit differently - I think it’s good if everyone is playing with their friends, so long as everyone doesn’t have the same friends.
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@MisterBoring said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
You must have stopped reading when I mentioned “often times become hostile when asked to join RP / plot”. I have politely approached a duo like this and asked them if they’d like to come join a plot, as they were nominally part of the same faction as myself, and received a rather angry response. I’ve seen staffers on other games politely send a duo like this an invitation to a plot event and get told very plainly to get bent for trying to force them to play the game the staff intended to run. I’ve also witnessed these people throw tantrums when they were suddenly touched by plot they refused to be a part of.
Then that goes back to the part where I said: “Unless they are engaging in other problematic behavior” (paraphrased). If someone’s being rude to staff or throwing a tantrum or whatever, then talk to them about their inappropriate behavior and/or show them the door. Otherwise, they’re not actually doing any harm sitting their in their private room playing with each other. It’s not like the game is charged for the bandwidth of their bits (at least on any normal modern server).
@Trashcan said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
Best for the community of players that make up “the game”, which is all a Mush really is. The good of the community, of which all players participating in the game are a part, absolutely is the responsibility of each individual player.
We’ll just have to disagree then. When I join a game, I’m not signing up for any sort of responsibility to the greater good of that game, nor do I expect that of any players that join a game I’m running. It’s just a game. Players should be free to engage with it in whatever way meets their needs / playstyle (within the bounds of the rules of course).
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When I join a game, I’m not signing up for any sort of responsibility to the greater good of that game, nor do I expect that of any players that join a game I’m running.
I agree but I think this is a really interesting topic. We talk about what people expect of staffers a lot, but what about the average expectation of players? I’d like to know if there are more folk that think that if you app into their game, you’d better get your ass out of your room with your pal(s) and dig into the plot.
Personally I could not be happier when I see a few folks on my games kinda’ doing their own thing, being chill, not causing issues. Less overhead for me, and someone’s enjoying themselves in a framework I built. I would rather have them than not have them!
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@Yam I think the difference there is Staff have an expectation on them because they chose to either make a game or take a title of responsibility on said game. Setting expectations of players past the ‘follow game rules’ could make it seem like people have to earn the privilege to be on a game.
People don’t have to run or staff games. Players don’t have to play them. One choice gives you more control and influence in the overall dynamic though.
That being said, there’s some aspect of common sense. No you don’t have to play in scenes or participate or attend events. However, also don’t be the player that doesn’t do those things and then complains when your char doesn’t get certain plot/results/interaction.
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@Faraday said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
@MisterBoring said in RPing with Everybody (or not):
You must have stopped reading when I mentioned “often times become hostile when asked to join RP / plot”. I have politely approached a duo like this and asked them if they’d like to come join a plot, as they were nominally part of the same faction as myself, and received a rather angry response. I’ve seen staffers on other games politely send a duo like this an invitation to a plot event and get told very plainly to get bent for trying to force them to play the game the staff intended to run. I’ve also witnessed these people throw tantrums when they were suddenly touched by plot they refused to be a part of.
Then that goes back to the part where I said: “Unless they are engaging in other problematic behavior” (paraphrased). If someone’s being rude to staff or throwing a tantrum or whatever, then talk to them about their inappropriate behavior and/or show them the door. Otherwise, they’re not actually doing any harm sitting their in their private room playing with each other. It’s not like the game is charged for the bandwidth of their bits (at least on any normal modern server).
Yeah. The example here isn’t problematic because a couple players sit in a room and only RP about each other. They’re problematic because they act nasty to people for extending an offer of RP/plot and get mad about plot impacting the game’s setting.
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I think the couple or trio who only RP with one another are fine. If anything, it’s a matter of neatness. Having RP rooms available for unapproved pc-bits takes care of it.
It’s more an issue of what the gamerunner or GM rewards and what failings they rescue which characters from.
If Abelard RPs with everybody, he’ll probably find out a lot of stuff. After a month or so he knows that the Secret Code is Jon Bon Jovi’s shorts size, he heard it from Harold, who was there when Ignacio found The Letter. Abelard knows the shorts size because he got there and looked just before Evil Edith and Feral Faith burned down the Rock and Roll Underwear Museum. Bridget and Camille and Darius have the Useless Haliburton Attache Case and are looking desperately via +request to learn the Secret Code to open it, but Bridget, Camille and Darius only play with one another unless it’s an ST-run faction event. Is Ghormengast doomed because they’ll never figure out the code to the case, or will they learn it from Enrique the NPC and save everybody?
Or if plot drops are even split, did the ST give Bridget, Camille and Darius The Letter and the Useless Haliburton Attache Case?
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I’m going to just quickly point a spotlight at another variant that hasn’t been mentioned so far (from what I saw): The player who wants to RP with everyone but can’t.
Whether it’s social anxiety, bad health, busy life – at least on Keys, we have a couple of folks who never or almost never actually RP. When they do, it’s one on one, with only a few chosen folks.
They’re not harming anyone, though. They just want to be part of the OOC community even if for whatever reasons they don’t have spoons to actively play. They hang around and chat, and in that, contribute to a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.
I think Roadspike put it well above; if the player isn’t hoarding plot or otherwise obstructing things for others, they’re still a gain for the game.
