Staff Capacity

[L. B. Heuschkel]

Documentation, whether of admin stuff like player so and so did this thing to player so and so, or of plot points that GMs have to know is the lifeblood of a game in my not all that humble opinion.

A strong centralised GM can keep the show running story-wise until they burn out. Some people don’t burn out.

Once players get the feeling that they can take advantage of the system by sucking up to Admin A who will then do favours without telling Admin B – the game is done for. Players who can’t trust staff vote with their feet. I’ve seen several games crash and burn this way.

And that’s why we document on Keys to the point of anal compulsive. Every little change warrants a request so that later on, that player’s name can be searched on in the jobs archive and their entire history with staff can be revisited.

I’d never staff with people I don’t trust – but I have trusted and been wrong before.

[Pavel]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Staff Capacity:

Some people don’t burn out.

Mmmn, this isn’t really true.

It’d be more accurate to say that they haven’t burnt out yet. It can absolutely happen at any time, like an aneurysm.

[kalakh]

There’s also the problem where WoD spheres, at least oWoD (I’ve no personal experience with nWoD) are just so fucking everywhere with power levels. Most Garou kick the everliving shit out of most vampires. Mages can vaporize everyone with a sneeze. Hunters…hahaha. I have no idea where Changeling sits because I’ve never tried it, and literally no one in the history of ever has played Wraith (shut up, you’re lying). They’re not designed to have a bunch of PCs playing them at the same time with each other, and while that’d be a delicate balance with tabletop, it’s got to be a nightmare on a MUSH.

I also think an OOC masquerade is just terrible for a WoD game. It seems to cause way more problems than it solves.

[MisterBoring]

@kalakh said in Staff Capacity:

There’s also the problem where WoD spheres, at least oWoD (I’ve no personal experience with nWoD) are just so fucking everywhere with power levels.

It’s this thought that has me now believing that WoD games (and it does apply to nWoD in both versions) should be single (or possibly 2-3) sphere games. Full WoD crossover is just a nightmare mechanically.

[Pyrephox]

@MisterBoring said in Staff Capacity:

@kalakh said in Staff Capacity:

There’s also the problem where WoD spheres, at least oWoD (I’ve no personal experience with nWoD) are just so fucking everywhere with power levels.

It’s this thought that has me now believing that WoD games (and it does apply to nWoD in both versions) should be single (or possibly 2-3) sphere games. Full WoD crossover is just a nightmare mechanically.

It could work, if games took the time to thoughtfully integrate the spheres in a way that made sense. But IME a lot of WoD/CoD games became willfully Balkanized, with both the players and the staff isolating themselves from other spheres, and basically just being separate games with a shared grid space. Which sort of worked, right until someone TSes the wrong person, or has a brawl in the wrong bar, and suddenly a whole fucking sphere boils out to do battle. Or something goes up on a board in public, but Wolf Staff doesn’t want to touch icky Vampires so if you’re a vamp don’t think about asking questions about this, it’s a sphere plot.

I would love to see more single-sphere games because it seems to be what a lot of players really want. But a lot of players also still have the idea that ‘well, if there’s not at least thirty people on, it’s a dead game’.

[Pavel]

@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:

I would love to see more single-sphere games because it seems to be what a lot of players really want.

Amen. My favourite WoD game remains Requiem for Kingsmouth. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but it was a single-sphere Vampire the Requiem game - with mortals and, I think, psychics and shit too, but Vampire was the main driving force. The single-sphere approach allowed the whole game to be designed around mechanics vampires use: Territory, hunting, influence, etc.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@kalakh

Also OOC masquerades are often laughably dimwitted and flimsy.

Yeah, I see you, obvious Nosferatu. You wrote up that character at 3 am on a fucking Dennys napkin and me pretending to not know what this is makes us all a little dumber.

[Polk]

@SpaceKhomeini I still feel like OOC Masquerade derives from the old RPI MUD mindset, where literally any communication OOC about anything about IC events constitutes cheating and can be a ban worthy offense.

Whereas in MUSHes, particularly post-Everquest, the people left generally have more of a collaborative, tabletop mindset. Around the tabletop you know who the other players and the storyteller are, and you’re working together to make something fun.

In an RPI MUD, if I reach out to a player to choreograph the starting of a rivalry, I’m gonna get banned. In a Tabletoppy MUSH, I’m going to have a great time.

I still want to see a game with open character sheets.

[hellfrog]

@Polk this is amazing

tell us more about your thoughts on staffing WoD games

[Polk]

@hellfrog said in Staff Capacity:

@Polk this is amazing

tell us more about your thoughts on staffing WoD games

I mean, if you want to be constructive, I’m happy to. But we both know this post wasn’t made with a constructive intent.

[Meg]

@Polk There’s no rule that every single post in the Game Gab forum has to be constructive. The description is: ‘Conversations and questions about current, upcoming, and advertised games and the hobby as a whole.’

We just aren’t in the Rough and Rowdy section, so we can’t be rough or rowdy, but that in no way means that we all have to collectively forget what you just did to a game that you were staffing on, as we talk about Staff Capacity.

[Pavel]

Give it a decade, and some folks might let you talk about it.

[Polk]

@Pavel I don’t intend to start asking for permission.

[Pyrephox]

@Pavel said in Staff Capacity:

@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:

I would love to see more single-sphere games because it seems to be what a lot of players really want.

Amen. My favourite WoD game remains Requiem for Kingsmouth. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but it was a single-sphere Vampire the Requiem game - with mortals and, I think, psychics and shit too, but Vampire was the main driving force. The single-sphere approach allowed the whole game to be designed around mechanics vampires use: Territory, hunting, influence, etc.

Requiem was great in its focus, although it absolutely ran into staff capacity issues despite being single-sphere. Which goes back to, I suspect, needing to be aware of how many PCs you can comfortably support per staffer, and being willing to close the game until your staff capacity increases.

[Pavel]

@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:

@Pavel said in Staff Capacity:

@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:

I would love to see more single-sphere games because it seems to be what a lot of players really want.

Amen. My favourite WoD game remains Requiem for Kingsmouth. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but it was a single-sphere Vampire the Requiem game - with mortals and, I think, psychics and shit too, but Vampire was the main driving force. The single-sphere approach allowed the whole game to be designed around mechanics vampires use: Territory, hunting, influence, etc.

Requiem was great in its focus, although it absolutely ran into staff capacity issues despite being single-sphere. Which goes back to, I suspect, needing to be aware of how many PCs you can comfortably support per staffer, and being willing to close the game until your staff capacity increases.

From what I know of the behind-the-scenes stuff it was absolutely about staff capacity but from a different angle. Specifically, it was about one person and their vision, and their recalcitrance when it came to accepting help because it would “spoil their vision.”

Some games can absolutely be run by one person, RfK was not one of those games.

[Tez]

@Pyrephox said in Staff Capacity:

Requiem was great in its focus, although it absolutely ran into staff capacity issues despite being single-sphere. Which goes back to, I suspect, needing to be aware of how many PCs you can comfortably support per staffer, and being willing to close the game until your staff capacity increases.

The ratio of PCs per staffer is also going to vary based on how much administrative overhead there is. Obvious statement, maybe, but with something like Keys you can get by with a lot fewer staff than something like Arx.

[hellfrog]

i feel like the answer is just player limits. simple and disappointing, as answers often are.

[Pavel]

@hellfrog Player limits and knowing your own limits. It’s super important that a game runner has the ability to take a break without having to worry about their game burning down while they’re gone.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Tez said in Staff Capacity:

The ratio of PCs per staffer is also going to vary based on how much administrative overhead there is. Obvious statement, maybe, but with something like Keys you can get by with a lot fewer staff than something like Arx.

Very much so. The more complex keeping track of plot and faction becomes, the more people you need to do it – and the more people to keep track of that.

@Pavel said in Staff Capacity:

@hellfrog Player limits and knowing your own limits. It’s super important that a game runner has the ability to take a break without having to worry about their game burning down while they’re gone.

Not going to lie, I was worried when I was offline for three weeks this summer due to illness and hospitalisation. But there are three of us and the most dramatic that came out of it all was the care package some of the sweet, sweet players sent me.

[Faraday]

@kalakh said in Staff Capacity:

They’re not designed to have a bunch of PCs playing them at the same time with each other, and while that’d be a delicate balance with tabletop, it’s got to be a nightmare on a MUSH.

With my one-and-only experience playing oWoD being a “all spheres” TTRPG campaign, I am confident in saying it’s just as impossible to balance in TT. (But among friends, imbalance can be less of an issue.)

I think the larger issue is that TT games, by their nature, are adapted for, well, tabletop. Small groups, small GM-to-player ratio, etc. Not just the dice, but the rules, the setting, just… everything. Trying to adapt that to MUs has just never worked all that great IMHO.

What works well on a highly-simulated computer RPG is going to be different from what works on a human-centric MU is going to be different than what works on tabletop with a central GM.