Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen
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Potentially hot take: you shouldn’t have to write an application to pick up a roster character ever.
There’s a trend in recent Ares games where you just click ‘claim’ on a roster and it generates the password right there for you and I very much appreciate that.
If the issue is that the roster character could presumably be popular and you don’t want to give it to the first come first serve, just put up a lottery system. No application required. “If interested in Sparkle Pony, the Prince of Ponyland, put your name in the hat and we’ll randomly draw in 5 days.” Done.
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I agree with @bear_necessities. not to get all foucault and shit but the application process is a sort of prison, and the prisoner is both the staffer and the player. The main rationale for apps is generally twofold:
- preventing people from metagaming or powergaming or playing something that’s too powerful
- keeping characters in a fairly regimented theme
To some extent I feel like the community has largely moved on from the necessity of point #1. General powergaming and being the best combat monster is an extremely unsatisfying thing to play long term and it seems like most of the folks who went that route (at least in WoD) have disappeared.
On the second point, metaplot and strict staff-run plots have been on the outs for something like 10 years now. If you’re introducing PRPs into your setting at all, you’re relinquishing control over your setting to other players. Hell, if you allow other staff to run plots on your game you’re relinquishing control. My argument is that there is, therefore, no need to strictly monitor stats to maintain a theme, especially if you’re running a MUSH that emulates a TTRPG system. The system will inform the fiction and you will get characters that fit your theme because of the point allotment they have. Highly unbalanced social sexpot psychic? they absolutely exist in both WoD and other modern fantasy settings. Combat-focused werewolf who ignores any other skill aside from Hit The Guy? 100% part of any urban, medieval, or other fantasy setting. If someone apps in with these concepts in mind and does an overall bad job because they didn’t understand what they were making, they’ll probably be avoided by the rest of their fellow players because they are genuinely not thematically enjoyable RP, or they’ll find themselves on the short end of a plot that they could never have prepared for.
Put another way: if someone apps into a Mage the Ascension game and has no understanding of how paradigms, practices, and instruments work, nor how to implement them into practical use within the storyline, that will work itself out eventually (and possibly in short order)
"And the Fool says, pointing to the invertebrate fauna feeding in the graves: 'Here a monarchy reigns, mightier than you: His Majesty the Worm.'"
Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destines -
@Third-Eye said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:
Even as somebody who still plays on-client a fair amount, I wouldn’t want to do CG in a pure text interface again. It’s just so much easier on web to save things/proof things/edit things.
I second this. I’ll forever be a client-first user, but web chargen has spoiled me forever for the reasons listed above.
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@MisterBoring Apologies, but because of rising inflation, I have gone completely paperless. You can refer to my geocities site for all the necessary information for my chargen application. Thank you.
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@somasatori I get what you’re saying, but it always makes me a bit nervous relying on the court of public opinion/free market of the playerbase to handle an… arguably unthematic app.
The playerbase might’ve known they’d be encountering all kinds of people, but they probably don’t love the weight of social enforcement. Turning people away sucks no matter how steely you are, and if players are openly avoidant, unwilling to use public channels to search for RP, this is a problem. Watch how your very active, very social dynamo player handles a character like this. Watch the energy get drained from their bones as they try and fail to work with this character that probably shouldn’t have seen the light of day.
This tends to happen ANYWAY in situations where the staff is unaware of how someone is RPing their powergamey werewolf, or a little more hands-off in general. I’d strive to work against it, not encourage it, since in my experience someone really dedicated to their twinky character will stubbornly linger on a game far longer than short order. IDEALLY they get bored and leave on their own. It happens! Not always.
Although we might be getting off topic here.
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@Yam I think you hit on something I found really significant in my time in the mines. Don’t leave it to your players to enforce your theme, if it matters to you.
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Nowadays, for games I create, I use web-based only. I shy more and more away from the traditional MU shell and more toward web-based for all my RP needs.
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@KDraygo said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:
@MisterBoring Apologies, but because of rising inflation, I have gone completely paperless. You can refer to my geocities site for all the necessary information for my chargen application. Thank you.
Geocities applications must be first processed through the webform on the game’s Tripod site, which will generate a 26 character code. This code must be posted to the game’s Myspace so that staff can process it in the special webform on the game’s hidden Angelfire staff page.
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@MisterBoring And then you must provide evidence of RP skill with three logs from other MUs that you have, naturally, put on your lifejournal.
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@Yam said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:
There’s another thing. The CONTENT of the CharGen/Application. For 2k5 it was a big fat written app that was e-mailed. The length of it was determined by the specialness of the roster character you were picking up.
In contrast Arx was like “you want THAT weird old man that’s in the freezer? ok yam sure” which was oddly refreshing.
I’ve often wondered how much applications actually filter anything.
I pretty much was just looking for the ones that obviously couldn’t really speak english or clearly had no idea what a writing game was or woulnd’t work out.
‘i want 2 kill tings on ur mud’ or ‘我对你的网络游戏很感兴趣’ there were people that wrote like 6 paragraphs giving a very long breakdown of the character dynamics and were obviously really stressing out on whether they captured the intricacies of the character motivations when I was mostly skimming for whether they were a nazi irl
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yeah applications are to tell you about the player more than the character, I think. "Name a non-fictional woman that is smarter than you’ would be a perfect application prompt.
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@hellfrog said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:
yeah applications are to tell you about the player more than the character, I think. "Name a non-fictional woman that is smarter than you’ would be a perfect application prompt.
I expect this for any hypothetical Arx 2 OC applications now.
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I used to hate web-based CG, now I prefer it.
I was an application staffer on TR for a few years (for Mortal+ and changeling), but have staffed other smaller places too where I had to review some apps (TR burned me out bad though so I tend to avoid that particular task if I can).
My experience is that it’s not very useful for screening the worst kind of problematic people out. Abusive or manipulative people will almost always look fantastic on paper, you won’t find out about them until they’re hurting people on your game.
Player ooc behavior during the application process will catch more people. How do they handle being told no? How do they handle a mild wait time? How many arguments/how much showboating do they do on channels in the wait time?
It can also kind of alert you to the kinds of folks that probably won’t be problematic in a big way on the game, but will annoy people a lot because they don’t have discretion (like the folks who insert explicit and elaborate sexual content into the application bg knowing or perhaps not thinking that it’s making a real life staff person have to read that) or don’t understand the theme or splat. That may or may not be important to the game at large.
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@hellfrog said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:
yeah applications are to tell you about the player more than the character, I think. "Name a non-fictional woman that is smarter than you’ would be a perfect application prompt.
Faraday and Cobalt. Next question.
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@mietze said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:
Player ooc behavior during the application process will catch more people. How do they handle being told no? How do they handle a mild wait time? How many arguments/how much showboating do they do on channels in the wait time?
How someone handles thematic correction during the App Process is incredibly telling. It’s also much easier to screen Problems out at this point than it is once they get on the grid and feel empowered because some staffer rubber-stamped them.
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@mietze said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:
Player ooc behavior during the application process will catch more people. How do they handle being told no? How do they handle a mild wait time? How many arguments/how much showboating do they do on channels in the wait time?
The reverse is also true, and oft-overlooked I think. It’s an excellent time for one to judge staff, beyond job progress time. What’s their communication style and does it mesh with yours? Are they sticklers for things you don’t care for? What’s the atmosphere of OOC chatter like? Etc.
Most people, in my experience and this does include myself, are more preoccupied with getting their application done over assessing whether the game, and those running it, are suitable for our needs.
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As I watch another app on a game enter its third week of inactivity, I draw a great many conclusions about the people who staff it. Volunteer or not, after a certain point, my interest doesn’t wane, it rots.
The concept of “the squeaky wheel gets grease,” combines with “the second rat gets the cheese,” really. If someone speaks up against staff idleness, they’re being un-mutual to the game itself; if they remain silent, well they clearly enjoy the silence, and are hoping it doesn’t change.
What constitutes a polite reminder by intent may not appear as such to a particularly-idle staffer.
