Player Ratios

[Pavel]

@Tez said in Player Ratios:

I’m not happy with just closing the gates on people, and wait lists are an imperfect middle ground.

Unfortunately, there’s the rub. Or one of them, at least. You’re going to have to do things that feel sucky, that’s part of the burden of being in charge. Do you want a solid game of fifteen people or a shitty game of a hundred and fifty? You don’t like saying no. I get that. You will have to do it anyway.

To that end, there’s no ideal storyteller-to-player ratio. It depends entirely on the quality of the storyteller, their activity level, how many different groups of players are involved, etc, etc. If you’ve got Steve over there specifically telling long-running stories exclusively for his little cadre of were-mages, but you’ve also got Candice over there doing one-shots with all and sundry, they don’t math out to be equivalent.

So I would recommend that one establishes what it means to be a storyteller before looking at ratios. Not that you necessarily want to set minimum number of scenes or any of that, but it’s very likely more of a vibe-based idea.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

We don’t have storytelling staff in the first place. We have a plot that is very easy for players to tell stories in – and we expect them to do so. They do. There aren’t any rewards besides the joy of storytelling itself.

Of course, this works because no one expected our game to ever become more than a small handful of friends hanging out and telling their stories to each other. Keys is a sandbox, a framework for people to go off playing plots and stories of their own making and then returning to the central hub to interact and catch up. It probably wouldn’t work with a very large playerbase – we’re typically sitting around 30-60 active characters at any given time, so we’re hardly taking over the hobby here.

In short, I agree with others above: Players should help drive story and entertain each other. You don’t have to leave it all to them – but even if you were paid to sit online 40 hours a week, storytelling, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with everyone. It’s not unreasonable to expect people to perceive the hobby as a two-way street.

[Tez]

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

You don’t like saying no. I get that. You will have to do it anyway.

No.

If you’ve got Steve over there specifically telling long-running stories exclusively for his little cadre of were-mages, but you’ve also got Candice over there doing one-shots with all and sundry, they don’t math out to be equivalent.

Absolutely true. For me, I’m more interested in giving structure for a bunch of Steves to tell for various groups, while giving Candice the freedom and tools she needs. I think both are valuable, but for my purposes I’d structure around little knots of Steves.

I actually think it’s GREAT if there’s a storyteller who just wants to tell stories for their friends, but we as a broader culture have a problem with feeling like someone needs to include everyone.

ETA instead of doubleposting again:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Player Ratios:

Keys is a sandbox, a framework for people to go off playing plots and stories of their own making and then returning to the central hub to interact and catch up.

I respect the approach, but I like more structured metaplots and the immediacy of a grid. I think your formula works fantastically well for you, though. 30-60 active is actually pretty respectable, and you’ve been around long enough to be notable. There’s clearly an audience for it, and there’s probably something to be learned about what you do to let players feel empowered to tell stories. Portal games carry a sort of ease that other settings will struggle with a bit more.

[Gashlycrumb]

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.

[Gashlycrumb]

@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.)

[Roz]

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

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?

The ratio is still important with the timeline being able to generally keep a steady pace, even if that pace is slow, and not constantly and consistently fall behind, though.

[Gashlycrumb]

@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.

[Pavel]

@Tez said in Player Ratios:

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

You don’t like saying no. I get that. You will have to do it anyway.

No.

[Tez]

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

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.

I get your point, but that circles back around to this issue for me:

@Pyrephox said in Player Ratios:

I wonder if a shift in expectations is also in order. Big, multi-scene plots that have a lot of people involved are exhausting. Sometimes the fun outweighs the effort, but it still IS a lot of effort and so many of us are at a point in our lives where we’ve got other things to do.

Maybe Abelard is just a drag.

I don’t want staff to be the gate on story. I want storytellers to be the keepers of their own stories. Staff gives storytellers the tools they need, but I would rather storytellers be able to tell the stories they want for the people they want.

Abelard wants a big plot? He can offer to run things for someone and then they run something for him, and maybe Abelard learns something along the way.

There’s also one thing @L-B-Heuschkel said which I stick on:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Player Ratios:

We don’t have storytelling staff in the first place. We have a plot that is very easy for players to tell stories in – and we expect them to do so.

Again, shifting the expectation. Some players wait for story to happen. Some players make story happen. Admittedly, Keys makes it very easy for that, but any time we can lower barriers to make it easier for people, it seems like an obvious win. See: Tat and Roadspike’s prepackaged plot pitches.

@Gashlycrumb - On your pother point, the spreading plot / etc. system. It reminds me a bit of Firan’s community points. I don’t think their documentation lingers anywhere, but if anyone has it, I’d love to see it. One thing that I liked about the system is that people got CP (sorry) for running stories, obviously, BUT ALSO for helping out with admin tasks and helping people. I’d think any system would have to account for the value in both.

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

[Faraday]

@Tez said in Player Ratios:

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

The thing about OOC reward systems is that you have to find rewards that people care about enough to incentivize the behavior you want, without incentivizing negative behaviors (like ticking boxes to get points, grinding points, getting bent out of shape when the thing you want to do requires points you don’t have, etc.) It’s the same set of issues core to all of these vote/nom/etc. systems. It’s very easy to do it poorly and very hard to do it well.

[Roz]

@Gashlycrumb said in Player Ratios:

@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.

Yeah, the ratio number will be different depending on the specifics of the game. My point was more that I don’t think that makes the ratio unimportant; it will always be important for every game. It’s just that it’s dependent on the situation.

[Gashlycrumb]

@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.

[Roadspike]

@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. Like, “X told me that it only cost them 3 share points to get spotlighted at a plot, but it cost me 5” or “how does Y always have so many share points?” or even just “I never get into a plot, even when I have share points, Staff must be manipulating event signups.”

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

[Jumpscare]

@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. Like, “X told me that it only cost them 3 share points to get spotlighted at a plot, but it cost me 5” or “how does Y always have so many share points?” or even just “I never get into a plot, even when I have share points, Staff must be manipulating event signups.”

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

I don’t like these systems for this very reasoning. But I just now thought up a suggestion for games that do use these things. 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.

[Ashkuri]

IMO dealing with points, levels, ranks, tokens, achievements, etc are just levels of bureaucracy that take ST time from actually doing the things that points, levels, ranks, tokens, and achievements are meant to unlock.

[Pavel]

@Faraday said in Player Ratios:

incentivize the behavior you want, without incentivizing negative behaviors

That goes double for taking things that are typically “free” (staff attention, entrance into plots, add your own example here) and making them require points. The EA or Ubisoft approach to staffing.