Don’t forget we moved!
https://brandmu.day/
What stops you from running a game?
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For a great deal of years it was fear of admin duties. The parts of staffing where you have to put on your grumpy teacher face and lecture people on basic human decency are not the fun ones.
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Responsibility and commitment. Even if I could ST (I can’t) or code (I can’t) and was up for having difficult conversations (I’m not), I’m always going to be a player who fucks off for a while, sometimes. And the minute I feel an OBLIGATION to log in, the less I want to.
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Knowledge of myself. ‘Motivation’ is a very fragile thing and the instant something starts feeling like an obligation to me, my executive function rebels and insists i really really really don’t want to do it.
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Definitely a personality thing on my end, too. I’m a tabletop GM. I like to flatter myself that I’m pretty darn good one. But with that comes certain assumptions. One, it’s my table and my game. You’re free not to play if I or the game don’t match your desires, but you are not free to make the experience unfun for me or others or try to ‘have it your way’ once I’ve said no - on a MU*, this translates to me being pretty ban happy. Two, I very much prefer small scenes where I can tailor the experience to the specific players and characters; in a MU*, this tends to lead to burnout for myself pretty quick when I expand it beyond ‘I want to run this thing for these characters I know and like’. Three, I honestly want to GM for people who are on board with picking up what I’m putting down, and don’t have a whole lot of patience with people who come in wanting things entirely different.
In my previous attempts at staffing, I have been called exclusionary and unreasonable for not approving characters that were submitted without things asked for in chargen, or in opposition to things asked for in chargen. In the end, it’s probably just better if I don’t staff anywhere, for both myself and others.
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“What stops you from running a game?”
The main thing? I don’t wanna.
I have ideas and plans and desires but I don’t have the time, energy, or emotional capacity to see them to fruition. I also don’t know if just having those ideas et al. means those are good ideas. -
I need blinders to keep me from being distracted by NEW HOTNESS.
Why? Because I glanced in the direction of the Battletech shelf at the FLGS and now I’m trying to plan an Il-Clan or Dark Age mush.
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I can code, write, and have experience managing a community.
But I have abandoned many projects in the past and am afraid of doing that again. I have a strong desire to create but I’m scared of it all being for nothing the next time I get burned out and run away.
It doesn’t help that I am no longer a student, I work a lot so time constraints are a thing.
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I work in Human Resources.
I get more than enough drama at work from petty things like, “He put the pencil down aggressively.”
Current Projects:
Twitch -> https://www.twitch.tv/dukewhisky
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@Jennkryst I only code Rhost and Tiny, so I’m outdated lol.
Also, no DM’s, I’m not popular coder.
Which I am 100% fine with.
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@Whisky said in What stops you from running a game?:
I work in Human Resources.
I get more than enough drama at work from petty things like, “He put the pencil down aggressively.”
I was in the middle of typing out a haha-HR-buddy post about how you have to make sure to document the pencil aggression or it doesn’t count–
And then I had flashbacks to spending years documenting bad player behavior before showing them the door.
she/they
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The worst thing you can hear:
“This investigation won’t take long, you should be able to do it in a week.”
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now, what stops me from RUINING a game?
Nothing. Nothing at all. -
Oh, also Arx has put me in the mood to roster every game ever now, so. There’s that extra effort needed at the start.
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@hellfrog said in What stops you from running a game?:
now, what stops me from RUINING a game?
Nothing. Nothing at all.I expect you and @Herja to fight over who gets to fling the meteors first, now.
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@dvoraen Why would we fight when can just drop the meteors together?
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@Herja said in What stops you from running a game?:
@dvoraen Why would we fight when can just drop the meteors together?
I stand corrected.
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Time. I just don’t have the time I used to when I was a high school/college student and before kids. Back in the before times when I used to staff on games I liked to run at least one little plot a week with a bigger plot running through the month and I probably still have a spreadsheet out there somewhere from a game I ran with every active character and the possible hooks and arcs I could throw at them. I definitely don’t want to start something where I couldn’t devote the time to get/keep people involved in all the stories I want to tell.
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@lordbelh said in What stops you from running a game?:
For me it’s time and a willingness to commit on an extended timescale. I’ve written up game ideas in the past, with pages and pages of theme and system documentation. But anytime I’ve gotten close to pulling the trigger and bringing in others to make it a reality, I’ve paused to ask myself if I’m seriously going to follow through.
And the answer’s always been either: no, or I don’t know.
I’m happy to waste my own time worldbuildings, but not so much other people’s time.
Absolutely true. I have a game 95% ready to go, and another 1-2 written out in game design docs, but don’t have the time to put in to keep a storyline moving along, and I would feel really, really bad to open a place up and then have to close it 6-9 months later – again.
@Pyrephox said in What stops you from running a game?:
In my previous attempts at staffing, I have been called exclusionary and unreasonable for not approving characters that were submitted without things asked for in chargen, or in opposition to things asked for in chargen. In the end, it’s probably just better if I don’t staff anywhere, for both myself and others.
See now, I consider this to be good Staffing. Staff should know what game they want to run, what type of characters they want there, and what they (generally) want players doing. And they should be firm with it. Otherwise it becomes a mishmash of themes and settings, and it’s also no longer the game Staff wants, which makes it (at least to me) a job.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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@Roadspike said in What stops you from running a game?:
See now, I consider this to be good Staffing. Staff should know what game they want to run, what type of characters they want there, and what they (generally) want players doing. And they should be firm with it. Otherwise it becomes a mishmash of themes and settings, and it’s also no longer the game Staff wants, which makes it (at least to me) a job.
Agreed. And I say that while staffing on Keys which has – not quite wrongly – been called the ultimate fan fic game because we do allow a bizarre mish-mash of themes and stories. We have clear guidelines nonetheless as to how to get all that stuff to mesh and when people don’t obey those guidelines, their characters do not get approved.
