Finally! My dog has taken two pills!

@Aria Yeah. Chewy ships fast enough that I thought it would be quicker to order from them (two days) than to have the human-pharmacy order it for me (two to four days). Then I believed Allipet when they said two days and had an easy web-interface to order, but waited five and found they’d either done nothing and lied about it or contacted my vet via whispering in the keyhole at midnight. Of course, then I believed that spending extra for two-day shipping with the place my vet uses would result in the pills arriving in three days or less.

I should have just handed the paper script back to the receptionist at the clinic and said, “Please order this for me, have it delivered to the clinic and call me when it’s here,” which is what we would have done bog-standard when I worked for a vet. But I try not to be that old guy, even though I am that old guy.

@Aria My vet took a day, because they wanted to check that my dog didn’t have any other kinds of worms and they don’t have an in-house lab. (Which surprised me, looking for parasites in dog shit was my job for a while.)

Then they phoned me up telling me I could come pick up the prescription. I thought it would be, you know, some pills. But it was a paper script. I asked where to fill it. They said Costco, or any big pharmacy. I went to a big pharmacy. They said they didn’t have it. I was not surprised, because it’s for tapeworms specifically, and human beings don’t get tapeworms unless they eat an undercooked bear, which isn’t a common thing to do.

So I tried to get it from Chewy, and they said I needed to mail the paper Rx to them. I didn’t want to wait the extra week for this. So I tried another online pet pharmacy, Allipet. Their website said they’d call my vet for approval and mail the pills that or the following day. They even had my vet in a drop-down menu. Looked good. A week later, I’ve still got nothing from them, so I call them up, and they say they called my vet and got no reply. I call my vet, who says Allipet never called them. I cancel Allipet order and have my vet order through the pharmacy that they use. I pay extra for two-day shipping.

Five days later, nothing. Call the vet. They check the shipment. Tomorrow, says the website.

My dog is shedding tapeworm proglottids on my bed. If I die, don’t eat me, I could have swallowed one in my sleep and if that happened I’ll have tapeworm cysts. Kinda nifty. But also, my dog doesn’t feel so great and her butt itches and is getting sore from licking the itch.

Y’know, I understand why I am not allowed to request a refill (for meds I’m meant to be on for the rest of my life) until a week or less before I am out, but it almost invariably takes three weeks to get the rx actually filled, what with it having to be re-pre-approved every time and the process for getting it re-pre-approved involves throwing the request away and not telling anybody that they need to sign off on it, while telling me the script will be ready in two days so I have to drive around trying to pick it up and then call my doc’s PA, near tears, and beg her to tell the doc to pre-approve it again without ever being asked to and in spite of it being pre-approved four times a year for the last 16 years.

This is just eugenics, they hope eventually my queer disabled working-poor parasite-class ass will die from this or get so tired and frustrated I kill myself.

But why the hell is it happening to my DOG? I’m paying out of pocket. I’m paying extra for expedited shipping. And I still can’t get four dewormer pills, ffs. Call up my vet, tell them my dog’s shedding tapeworm proglottids, they get me a rush-appointment the very next day, but it’s been three weeks dicking around trying to get somebody to fill the script and I am still waiting for it to get here.

@Faraday Yep. I am still talking about those games where you can’t function on par with other PCs without staff attention. This isn’t relevant to your game-running model.

@Faraday said in Player Ratios:

there’s nothing wrong with staff prioritizing ones they’re able to get done over “first come first served”.

First-come-first-served isn’t a great plan and isn’t what I propose.

I am saying that prioritising them with some thought to how it affects playability and fairness is necessary, and there is something wrong with not doing that, even if it’s easier.

@Faraday said in Player Ratios:

Prioritizing based on your available energy vs. the jobs at hand is prioritizing.

As I said, there’s probably prioritising going on there. If there is no prioritising/queue, then it does amount to whatever sounds the most fun.

@Faraday said in Player Ratios:

Now if someone’s waiting 6 weeks and never gets their scene with the NPC, that might be excessive. But so what?

It’s an unfair game. The so what is that people have a reasonable expectation that it’d be otherwise.

Wait six weeks and never get your scene, yeah, so what. Honestly, if it’s not a pattern, and if in this instance you get skipped, well, so what, there’s more game coming. If is a pattern and it seems it is just your place to be ignored on that game? Well, yes, you need to find another game. And you are justified in being irritated that you wasted time and effort on a game that offered you a PC but made you audience. (And maybe it’s not actually such a great thing that this game exists, even for Abelard; this kind of cherry-picking and exclusion is what it looks like when your game is Spidered.)

@Jenn said in Player Ratios:

AwfulStaffer is an entirely different headache.

True. Honestly, I don’t think that the problem of AwfulStaffer will be solved by any of this sort of thing. But the problem of AwfulStaffer lying about it could be.

Please forget the tokens/bribes stuff, since making them non-spendable points and having the same effect would be easy and still get the point without that, and doesn’t outrage people.

@Jumpscare said in Player Ratios:

The order that I do them? Whichever I have the energy for.

There are no tokens, no queues, no priorities. Yes, it means some people will wait a while for their scenes, but it’s more important to not burn out Storytellers.

Probably some form of prioritising is going on here, or some people would never get their scenes, not wait a while.

If it’s just ‘whatever I have the energy for’ with no queue at all, then it’s "whatever sounds the most fun for me’. I’ve certainly seen games where this is how it’s run.

Thing is, if Abelard is AwesomeStaffer’s favourite person and Awesome always enjoys playing with them, Abelard always goes first in such a system. He goes first when he wants to go see NPC Enya about buying a bulldozer. He goes first again when he wants to see NPC Enzo about welding armour and spikes onto his bulldozer. Bridget, who is just okay, gets to take the bus to talk to NPC Enrique when AwesomeStaffer is both done with Abelard and still has energy. No matter how many +requests Abelard puts in after Bridget’s or how ICly long his task ought to take, or how ICly quick Bridget’s task is. And Camille, who’s a bit of a drag in Awesome’s opinion, has to wait for the time when both Abelard and Bridget don’t want anything and Awesome is extra-energetic.

My experience, it goes like this:

Abelard spends hundreds of IC hours building a killdozer in a week and a half, Bridget waits two weeks to take half an hour to visit Enrique, and Camille waits until AwesomeStaffer closes the job because the plot it was about got resolved before Camille’s turn came up. And now Camille and Bridget are both annoyed with AwesomeStaffer because this isn’t fair. And Camille is annoyed with Bridget because Bridget’s complaining too but at least she got to do something. Bridget and Camille are both annoyed with Abelard and think he ought to step aside for a minute ffs, and Abelard is annoyed with Bridget and Camille because prioritising these scenes is not what he signed up for and he knows it won’t go over well if he says, “Naw, Awesome, do Camille’s scene tonight instead, she’s been waiting since a couple weeks before my scene two nights ago,” because, well, prioritising the scenes isn’t Abelard’s job and AwesomeStaffer didn’t ask for his advice. And AwesomeStaffer is annoyed with Bridget and Camille for criticising by asking for their turns. Everybody’s pissed and uncomfortable and quite justified in blaming AwesomeStaffer for creating the situation. Awesome feels their resentment and says, “Bridget and Camille’s demanding additudes burned me out on staffing. Imagine how fast it would have happened if I’d been expected to interact with them.”

@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.

@Jenn said in Player Ratios:

The majority is PrP with staff support/guidance on questions, but where story-tellers weren’t NEEDED for any scene, though, when able would host events or dole out new plot trickles or whatnot. But. In between, folks are just responsible for telling their own things in ways that makes sense to the characters and game themes.

This is probably the best model for generating player fun for less gamerunner time, and the best bet model for opening a game that’ll work.

But I do like dedicated GMs and flinging dice about.

@Jenn It’s just not for very-low-crunchy lots-of-PrP games. If you can rp happily along and your pc affect the world as much as anybody else with no staff-ST, it wouldn’t make sense to bother.

Generally people kinda like points, even ones that don’t really do anything like the cookie count. Perhaps especially ones that don’t really do anything. Dr. Skinner can explain.

This is relevant to the ST/Player ratio because what’s wanted is the ratio that doesn’t leave players underserved or (STs burned out). And relevant to the thread because the OP brought up giving people tokens for running PrPs which could be exchanged for staff attention, in one of the top two posts.

ETA:

@Jenn said in Player Ratios:

And you’ll always have the folks with two jobs, or kids, or sick parents who may only be able to go to one single social scene a month. And they’re not earning points, and even if they were, they wouldn’t know how to spend them. But they chat a few minutes every day on chat while they commute, and answer questions,

This person is earning (unspendable) Carnegie points all the time for answering questions, and never getting (also unspendable) Emmy points, so their ratio would alert the staff-STs to try to give their character a major role in something next time the player has an afternoon off. It seems fair to me that somebody who does a lot for the game but hardly RPs ought to get a leg-up to the Important Stuff if they want it, even if they don’t have friends who are STs.

@Jenn Capitalism isn’t ‘exchanging tokens’.

I get you about the vibe.

You seem to have missed some of my posts, it’s an idea to think about, not necessarily something I want to try.

Anyway, what do you think of it when there is no exchange, only accumulation of points?

So what if you never ‘spend’ these points at all, you only accumulate Carnegie points (for sharing plot, being helpful, doing crowdsourced tasks, etc) and Emmy points (for being on the show, so to speak.)

Use the Carnegie/Emmy ratio in the same way, but both types of points will probably appear desirable to accumulate regardless.

ETA: Especially if you gave a ‘real’ MU Carnegie and Emmy out every quarter, with announcements and possibly even a download code for a free Chuck Tingle book or similar cheap little e-treat.

@Jumpscare said in Player Ratios:

What if any spotlight cost half your points?

I don’t know how that would work in practice, but I suspect it would discourage absurd grinding of points. And over time, the spotlight-stealers would have to put in twice as much effort to not fall behind the little guys. Inevitably, though, the little guys would have their chance in the spotlight.

Or you could just cap them. Say they max out at 12. 8-12 is ‘Green’ level, and GMs are encouraged to write stuff to pull greenies in with individualised hooks, and greenies get first chance at seats for GM-run events. 7-4 is ‘Blue’ and is where you try to keep everybody, 4-0 is ‘Red’ and that doesn’t mean you kick them out of the plot, but other characters get first chance at event seats and GMs should try to shift the focus.

First you’d need a unicorn player-base who don’t walk at the idea to begin with, and then they’d need to be patient as you dinked around with the levels to have it balance right. And you’d need to hand vet all the +share votes, since you should not be able to grind them by telling everybody about the borage blight, maybe a borage blight is only worth five. (Which is a spot where it would be nigh impossible to avoid being seen as biased. along with the ‘that was never a spotlight just now!’)

@Roadspike said in Player Ratios:

@Gashlycrumb The whole idea of share points might work for some games, but it feels like it is absolutely rife with the possibility of the perception of bias.

Even if none of that is actually true, the perception can destroy trust in a game.

Yep. Honestly, I suspect that no matter what you did for transparency people would still percieve bias there just because it has an icky feel to ‘pay’ for shit. I am not sure it would really work on any game, but it’s an idea I had. I am now quite curious as to how it worked on Firan.

I really would like some method of displaying a player’s desirable-activity/inclusion-in-cool-shit ratio but if you do it openly it has this ‘paying for stuff’ ick feel, and if you did it secretly people would soon find out and it’d look weird and bad that way too.

I have had GMing staff put me off by saying I get a lot of votes and am thus a star.

@Tez said in Player Ratios:

Maybe Abelard is just a drag.

It’s inevitable that that will happen.

Is it actually that hard to spot, though?

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.

@Tez said in Player Ratios:

You’re right, though. People love points go up, and having a visible badge. (Achievement unlocked.)

Crowdsourcing all sorts of game stuff and just giving people silly titles on the Wiki etc. for contributing seems to work. I think people are pretty into it and it fosters the ‘our game’ community feeling.

I never played Firan. I wouldn’t want ‘share points’ to be a publically viewable thing. They ought to be kinda squishy – you have too many, GM-staff start looking to include you in more stuff. You have too few, well, if there are a limited number of slots for an event, you fly on standby. Since I’m imagining things I can also imagine an event +signup system that isn’t first-come-first-serve but gives people an amount of time to sign up and then assigns the slots to them with the most share-points.

@Roz Yeah, but the actual numbers for that ratio will vary depending on what pace you want to keep and how much time individual GMs want to put in.

@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 had an idea along these lines.

A secondary +vote system that’s specifically for spreading plot – When Abelard tells Bridget and Camille about the borage blight, they give him +share votes or whatever one calls it. He accumulates points, which all kids love. When staff do stuff for him, they take a number of his share points depending on what it was. Something like a mage seeking might be expensive, joining the away-team and not really getting to do much cheaper, turning out to be the away team HERO a few more, etc. You don’t get to negotiate or haggle for shit with them and running out doesn’t stop you from getting to join the away team if there’s room. But on the staff version of WHO (etc) it makes your name a different colour if you have shitloads of such points accumulated, and a third colour if you’ve very few, and staff try to make the whole WHO show up in the middle-ground colour.

In theory this makes player-run stuff more valuable, as those events would generate +share points and not cost any, but people are just weird about staff-run events being ‘better’. You just put the kibosh on the idea on channels and, y’know, play in and vocally appreciate them with your PC. (And have alt transparency for all.)

The actual ratio probably isn’t the important bit.

People don’t mind a long queue if they can see that it’s moving.

Can I take an action on a reasonable timeline compared to the other PCs?

If Bridget and Camille can build a magical Killdozer in their garage in the same OOC length of time it takes Abelard to take a 40 minute bus-ride across town to ask Enrique-the-NPC how much borage it takes to cure the marthambles, Abelard will be justifiably annoyed. No matter how busy the staffer may be. Not because Abelard thinks he’s entitled to staff-attention on-demand, but because he’s been deprioritized and essentially denied his turn for several rounds.

If Bridget and Camille are in exciting GMed events every week or two and Abelard tries to get involved in things that lead to that but still doesn’t get to participate, or only ends up in such events three times a year, Abelard will be justifiably annoyed.

If the pace is slow and it takes a couple weeks to take the bus to see Enrique, but also takes a couple months to build a Killdozer, and everybody who wants to gets to be part of plot events but only three times a year, well, some people will look for a game with a faster pace and some people will be fine with it.

@Roadspike

Kids called them unipegs in 1983. This is clearly very wrong.

@Hobbie That was John Bunyan. No wait, that was the Slough of Despond. Evidently John Bunyan was inspired to it by the fact that to get to church he had to cross the Squicky Fen. 17th century white people problems, sheesh.