Staff Capacity

[Pavel]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Staff Capacity:

taking away the things the volunteers enjoy tends to go to a bad ending

Not only that, but running a sphere is all ‘high-level’ stuff, so one generally doesn’t have a great deal of contact with, or knowledge of, what’s actually going on for the players. You can get thrown right out of the loop so whatever you want to do and whatever the players want to do are frequently very different beasts.

[Apos]

@Tez said in Staff Capacity:

This bit caught my eye on the Liberation thread because it’s something I’ve seen on other games. While to some degree it is a perennial, forever issue – it also feels like it’s gotten more and more pronounced. Am I crazy? Have we seen a skew to more players and fewer staff? Is staff just at lower capacity as the hobby ages despite keeping the same ratios?

I kind of see it as general boundary setting by a lot of game owners, head staff etc for the kind of scale they are comfortable dealing with. I think in most cases, the more staff you have the higher general upkeep there is in terms of administrative work in just coordinating with different staffers, resolving blockers, figuring who needs what to answer which questions, and just solving the issues of people all waiting on each other before something happens. So people add staff to more quickly respond to players, and generate activity, but most people are really only comfortable dealing with stuff they have personal knowledge of, so there’s always this administrative tax of work that incidentally develops as you have an accumulation of stuff no one really knows what to do with.

As that happens, either the people in charge give up, and you have a really stagnant environment where things just keep piling up, or you have central figures putting in more and more and more work to try to resolve those kind of cross staff issues. So I think a lot of admins just are more quietly choosing to not add people. They know good staffers will create a better experience for players, but the effort of vetting people, and then dealing with the secondary work created by them, just gets too much for a lot of owners.

From a lot of head staff’s perspective, there’s nothing worse than a super energetic person that comes in, creates a ton of stuff for one month then immediately quits, and you’re left trying to awkwardly make shit up every week to answer questions about it for 3 years afterwards.

[MisterBoring]

My personal preference is that staff to player ratio should be around 8-10 players per staff member with some level of power over IC activity. Staff who aren’t directly responsible for IC activity, such as those in purely building or coding roles, can be at a higher ratio to the players, stretching to 40-50:1 if they’re really good at handling their workloads quickly.

Also, I would love to see more games set a cap for maximum numbers of players and PCs. I think one thing that can lead to burnout is when the population of both players and PCs stretches faster than the staff would really be able to handle.

[Pavel]

@MisterBoring said in Staff Capacity:

I would love to see more games set a cap for maximum numbers of players and PCs

I don’t know about ideal ratios or anything, but this is absolutely something I want to see more of. The era of games with hundreds of people on them is over, and the expectations from that era should die, too. We’re not blessed with unlimited free time, and those who are are often more trouble than they’re worth.

[Pan]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Staff Capacity:

@Tez At a guess, it’s a combination of several factors.

One factor is that with Ares games at least, the whole behind-the-curtain operations have become significantly simpler and easier, assuming that you’re not running huge amounts of custom code to be maintained.

Another is probably that by now, we’ve all seen a lot of games go down in flames due to interpersonal fights on staff. Sometimes, it might feel safer to have just a few people.

For us on Keys, the magical number has been three.

Sounds like we need a community project to get a couple of good working WoD plugins (if that’s what it’s called on Ares) going for cWoD 20th, and maybe nWoD 2e. Then games potentially could move to the codebase and thrive?

[Roz]

@Pan While I think that someone coding CoD or WoD for Ares would be great and get a lot of mileage, I don’t think it would necessarily remove that much overhead. It’d remove some administrative lift maybe, especially if gamerunners could feel comfortable reducing things like approvals of spend and whatnot, and just be okay with having logs of stuff in case things need to be checked. But my experience of WoD is that there seems to just be a fair amount of ST oversight needed for running story/plot/etc., and that part of things will be exactly the same.

[Tez]

I heard a rumor that someone is working on WoD/CoD for Ares, which is, I think, sorely needed.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Staff Capacity:

First off, async is not a requirement on Keys.

Fair enough! Sorry to paint with a broad brush. I was mostly just turning it in my head if that impacts request pacing as well. It seems to me that scene pacing and plot / staff pacing would go hand in hand, but then you hit me with this shocker:

Another part we don’t feel quite so overburdened is that we don’t have story telling staff.

Wait, what? It’s true. We have a frame plot – this is the island, this is the reason you’re on it, this is what’s going on, yadda yadda – but beyond that, anyone who wants to be a GM is a GM. Every player can create their own realities and settings and take people on adventures there. Some of the ,player created realities and campaigns in those realities are very complex and long-running (and as staff, it’s a delight to be able to participate on equal footing).

We basically set all of Ares’ story teller commands to the regular player role and told people to have a party. It’s my experience from many past online games – muds, mushes, you name it – that the GM role tends to be viewed by many players as a ‘final’ level, the ultimate achievement. Whether you get taken on as a story teller or a junior wizard or whatever the local term is – a lot of these people are then never seen again. They’ve accomplished all there is to be accomplished and now they get bored. That’s what we wanted to avoid.

OH MY GOD YOU WHAT?! I think this might contribute more to your lower staff overhead than anything else. Many games keep a fairly tight leash on who can be storytellers. The fact that you made the decision to open it so widely is – in the context of other games – wild.

Is it the way your game is set up and your theme is laid out that allows you to do this? Compare to a game like Arx where staff are bogged down for years in answering story requests for someone because it is something where it is impossible for just anyone to GM, for example.

@Apos said in Staff Capacity:

I kind of see it as general boundary setting by a lot of game owners, head staff etc for the kind of scale they are comfortable dealing with.

I definitely think this is part of it too. Shout out to @Tat for being a shining example of boundary setting. The number of games that look neat and get flooded is out of control.

[mietze]

I too think that the solution is very much less “add more staff” and more “cap players/PCs at a level that allows the staff team to function and enjoy themselves.” If the decision is made to hire more staff because that would aid the staff team (vs. praying that the new person will actually ease the burden rather than just expanding the staff list) then that cap can be raised. Or if a problematic or just unpleasant player needs to be tossed, then there’s another spot for someone else (or wait until you’ve had to boot a few or the 8 week after opening time period has passed where you get the sense of how much sustained interest the game really has, to cull unused/unplayed PCs and then open up again.)

I know nobody likes to be seen as being exclusive or disappointing people, but expanding beyond the reasonable capacity for a happy, involved staff and well integrated non-starving PCs means that the attention is pretty exclusive and it will be noticeable and everyone will be disappointed anyway.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Tez said in Staff Capacity:

OH MY GOD YOU WHAT?! I think this might contribute more to your lower staff overhead than anything else. Many games keep a fairly tight leash on who can be storytellers. The fact that you made the decision to open it so widely is – in the context of other games – wild.

Is it the way your game is set up and your theme is laid out that allows you to do this? Compare to a game like Arx where staff are bogged down for years in answering story requests for someone because it is something where it is impossible for just anyone to GM, for example.

That bogging down is exactly what we wanted to avoid. The way Keys works is that we have a prime reality – the one where the game is set in – that players aren’t allowed to make more than superficial changes to without staff approval. You don’t go shoot the mayor or blow up Chincoteague’s Main Street.

But beyond that, we have infinite realities that people can access with magical keys that players can learn the spell to make. This means that any player can design a reality where things works exactly the way they want and they themselves are the judge of how the story goes. They don’t need to wait on staff requests and verdicts because they are the designing power of that reality.

This takes the onus away from us to moderate campaigns and it lets players participate in more than one storyline at a time. The last part is very handy when some GMs are slower movers while others respond with lightning speed.

[Pavel]

@Roz said in Staff Capacity:

But my experience of WoD is that there seems to just be a fair amount of ST oversight needed for running story/plot/etc., and that part of things will be exactly the same.

Basically this.

And every additional sphere you add increases this in an almost logarithmic way. You’ve got different mechanics for every group, different story needs, figuring out how that story interacts with the stories for the other spheres and any metaplot you’ve got cooking… WoD/CoD games are often three or four games wrapped in a single framing device.

@mietze said in Staff Capacity:

I know nobody likes to be seen as being exclusive or disappointing people

I think it’s a combination of this and the (fear of) entitlement of potential players. Woe betide those who stand between a thing and a bunch of entitled prats who want the thing.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Pan said in Staff Capacity:

Sounds like we need a community project to get a couple of good working WoD plugins (if that’s what it’s called on Ares) going for cWoD 20th, and maybe nWoD 2e. Then games potentially could move to the codebase and thrive?

It’s my impression that a decently skilled coder (i.e., not me) can whip up the required plugins without breaking too much of a sweat – at least not when compared to building up an entire codebase.

It’s also my impression, though, that the main issue with WoD and other tabletop-to-mu* games is the oversight needed to keep the story on track. Tabletop games are designed to be 5-6 people against the world. It’s a lot to oversee when it’s actually 5-6 groups of 5-6 people – or more.

[Tez]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Staff Capacity:

It’s also my impression, though, that the main issue with WoD and other tabletop-to-mu* games is the oversight needed to keep the story on track. Tabletop games are designed to be 5-6 people against the world. It’s a lot to oversee when it’s actually 5-6 groups of 5-6 people – or more.

I agree. There are ways that Keys is set up that other games aren’t which allows you to manage the staff overhead by delegating storytelling. With WoD/CoD/everything else, all of the systematized tabletop mechanics in the world aren’t going to also automate the storytelling, which is actually what I would expect is a large chunk of most staff brain.

You know, when it isn’t just people-management, be it managing other storytellers as @Apos mentioned or the ever-present player issues.

[Tat]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Staff Capacity:

It’s my impression that a decently skilled coder (i.e., not me) can whip up the required plugins without breaking too much of a sweat – at least not when compared to building up an entire codebase.

I would not say this is true. I’d think even someone who knows Ares and how to code in it would have months of work to get a WoD plugin working - maybe MANY months, depending on what exactly they’re doing.

I’d say that to do it well, you probably have quite a bit of work that’s literally just figuring out what you want to code/support and how it’s going to fit into how Ares does things.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Tat Seeing as that you are a far better coder than I am, Tat, I’m going to point at you and say, listen to her, she knows her shit.

[Pavel]

An additional issue with WoD games - though not entirely unique to the genre - is expectation. Many (most?) folk who want to play a WoD game have already played one before. Probably more than one. Some of us have played WoD in its various incarnations for two decades and more.

With such a long history, there are traditions, expectations, and strongly held beliefs that can impact how a player approaches the game. And if you want a game open to all comers, no matter how many, that’s another facet you have to contend with. Which “common” house rules will you introduce, if any? What “standard” organisational structures are you going to implement? etc, etc.

And that’s not mentioning figuring out which version of WoD/CoD you’re going to use, and which bits of that version’s story you’re going to ignore.

[somasatori]

@hellfrog Agreed, also the only players should be staff alts so if they DO mess with the code, we can yell at them on the staff channel.

[Roz]

@Pavel said in Staff Capacity:

@Roz said in Staff Capacity:

But my experience of WoD is that there seems to just be a fair amount of ST oversight needed for running story/plot/etc., and that part of things will be exactly the same.

Basically this.

And every additional sphere you add increases this in an almost logarithmic way. You’ve got different mechanics for every group, different story needs, figuring out how that story interacts with the stories for the other spheres and any metaplot you’ve got cooking… WoD/CoD games are often three or four games wrapped in a single framing device.

Yeah, exactly. What an Ares plugin would do, I think, is make starting up a game more accessible to more people. But it would, I assume, mostly just provide a similar functionality to something like Theno’s code suite for MUX: you’d have your WoD sheets, a dice roller to roll stuff from them, ways to track spending and regaining your various pools, etc. But a good plugin would hopefully just make WoD game setup and maybe the maintenance a bit easier, and have the benefits that come from core Ares that people enjoy. But it can’t replace or automate away the areas that need staff oversight, arbitration, and storytelling.

[mietze]

It’s definitely important to consider the history of the genre too, yeah, and maybe make some very deliberate choices of structure as well as being willing to cull mercilessly when it comes to players who cannot or refuse to “get it” that a game that’s going to significantly alter in style of Ye Olde Skool of the past.

That’s not to say that people who are bumped for that are bad people, but it’s true that folks get very hyped up in nostagia and past expectations (good or bad) and either they can adapt or they need to move on. I also think that decision needs to be made relatively swiftly too, because constant ‘why can’t i/i don’t understand/oh could i just get this little change so it’d be more like’ can be disruptive to the game. But that can be tough to do! So I think that intimidation factor definitely can be a huge one.

I’ve had the non-code theme and scope written up for a Fading Suns game for many years now, and even was halfway done with an ares system for it, but then covid hit and other things blew up so I knew I didn’t have the energy. Mostly because I didn’t have the spoons to deal with the people who would come in with HUGE baggage from old Fading Suns games (and some of those folks hold grudges with the best of 'em) and while it’s not like I haven’t kicked people off or out before (including friends and we stayed friends after most of the time), it can be very draining. Even when I looked at keeping it small and private, I just wasn’t sure I had it in me.

I think anyone opening a public WoD ares game would have to deal with like…that on a outrageous scale, and my god I think i’ll have huge admiration for the first person to do such a thing.

[Pan]

@Roz said in Staff Capacity:

@Pavel said in Staff Capacity:

@Roz said in Staff Capacity:

But my experience of WoD is that there seems to just be a fair amount of ST oversight needed for running story/plot/etc., and that part of things will be exactly the same.

Basically this.

And every additional sphere you add increases this in an almost logarithmic way. You’ve got different mechanics for every group, different story needs, figuring out how that story interacts with the stories for the other spheres and any metaplot you’ve got cooking… WoD/CoD games are often three or four games wrapped in a single framing device.

Yeah, exactly. What an Ares plugin would do, I think, is make starting up a game more accessible to more people. But it would, I assume, mostly just provide a similar functionality to something like Theno’s code suite for MUX: you’d have your WoD sheets, a dice roller to roll stuff from them, ways to track spending and regaining your various pools, etc. But a good plugin would hopefully just make WoD game setup and maybe the maintenance a bit easier, and have the benefits that come from core Ares that people enjoy. But it can’t replace or automate away the areas that need staff oversight, arbitration, and storytelling.

Yeah, I think the accessibility is the winning feature, the ability for more people for good or bad to spin up games. The good: good games can come out of it. The bad: bad actors as reported here spinning up games and being bad. But I’d imagine they’d be figured out quickly and pointed out to be avoided or played on at ones own risk.

[Jennkryst]

@Pan said in Staff Capacity:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Staff Capacity:

@Tez At a guess, it’s a combination of several factors.

One factor is that with Ares games at least, the whole behind-the-curtain operations have become significantly simpler and easier, assuming that you’re not running huge amounts of custom code to be maintained.

Another is probably that by now, we’ve all seen a lot of games go down in flames due to interpersonal fights on staff. Sometimes, it might feel safer to have just a few people.

For us on Keys, the magical number has been three.

Sounds like we need a community project to get a couple of good working WoD plugins (if that’s what it’s called on Ares) going for cWoD 20th, and maybe nWoD 2e. Then games potentially could move to the codebase and thrive?

Technically, you don’t need a plug in for that. You could just have a diceless WoD for the lulz and see where that leads.

Or a WoD setting started up with FS3. Or or or…