Player Ratios

Tez

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.

dvoraen

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

@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.

Don’t you dare try to coin “microstaffing” or “microplots” as if we’re going to reach the MU* equivalent of microtransactions.

Roz

@dvoraen if you pay save up 50 share points, you can get a cool new player skin

Faraday

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

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.

Yeah that’s why these kinds of systems always felt icky to me. We’re all here to tell stories. I’m not going to bribe you to do it, and I don’t want to be coerced to do things I wouldn’t already do just because you racked up some kind of brownie points.

Jenn

I’m kind of with Faraday here. As long as the lore files on what is and isn’t allowed on PRP are clear, and especially if there are a few ‘plot in a box’ options that get pinned up now and then to be claimed…

We’re all here to be telling stories with, to, and for one another. We take turns running, or we just pitch and idea and co-run, or we just tell the stories we want and trust others to do the same.

But as long as there aren’t barriers to people starting, seeking, and running their own RP, a lot of story-telling needs take care of themselves just as long as a +req about:

Gonna run this plot, out of A/B/C which big bads are most appropriate, what outcomes need avoided at all costs, and any information in that setting I should know while running it.

It takes a few minutes to drop that knowledge onto a PRP that anyone (no storyteller needed outside the participants) can run, and that group is off and going, same as any of the others. If they overlap, cool. If they don’t, also fine. But for the most part… As long as we’re trusted with the pieces of plot that are relevant, we’re all capable of entertaining ourselves without hopefully becoming overly burdensome.

Gashlycrumb

@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.

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

Yep. Honestly, I suspect that no matter what you did for transparency people would still percieve bias there just because it has an icky feel to ‘pay’ for shit. I am not sure it would really work on any game, but it’s an idea I had. I am now quite curious as to how it worked on Firan.

I really would like some method of displaying a player’s desirable-activity/inclusion-in-cool-shit ratio but if you do it openly it has this ‘paying for stuff’ ick feel, and if you did it secretly people would soon find out and it’d look weird and bad that way too.

I have had GMing staff put me off by saying I get a lot of votes and am thus a star.

Third Eye

I’ll admit I would probably nope out pretty hard of an environment where I had to pay-for-GM on a MUSH, even if the currency was fairly fluid. Might work for some players. Not my thing.

Gashlycrumb

@Jumpscare said in Player Ratios:

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.

Or you could just cap them. Say they max out at 12. 8-12 is ‘Green’ level, and GMs are encouraged to write stuff to pull greenies in with individualised hooks, and greenies get first chance at seats for GM-run events. 7-4 is ‘Blue’ and is where you try to keep everybody, 4-0 is ‘Red’ and that doesn’t mean you kick them out of the plot, but other characters get first chance at event seats and GMs should try to shift the focus.

First you’d need a unicorn player-base who don’t walk at the idea to begin with, and then they’d need to be patient as you dinked around with the levels to have it balance right. And you’d need to hand vet all the +share votes, since you should not be able to grind them by telling everybody about the borage blight, maybe a borage blight is only worth five. (Which is a spot where it would be nigh impossible to avoid being seen as biased. along with the ‘that was never a spotlight just now!’)

Pavel

@dvoraen said in Player Ratios:

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

@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.

Don’t you dare try to coin “microstaffing” or “microplots” as if we’re going to reach the MU* equivalent of microtransactions.

We aim to give every player some pride in accomplishment.

Gashlycrumb

So what if you never ‘spend’ these points at all, you only accumulate Carnegie points (for sharing plot, being helpful, doing crowdsourced tasks, etc) and Emmy points (for being on the show, so to speak.)

Use the Carnegie/Emmy ratio in the same way, but both types of points will probably appear desirable to accumulate regardless.

ETA: Especially if you gave a ‘real’ MU Carnegie and Emmy out every quarter, with announcements and possibly even a download code for a free Chuck Tingle book or similar cheap little e-treat.

Jenn

NGL. The vibes on this are getting weird. I feel like most every game these days is pretty strong anti-capitalist vibes.

And like, don’t get me wrong, I’m HERE for that.

But. If we’re all hanging out designing new worlds and games and governments that aren’t based around profiting from labor…

Why do we think that buying/selling stories with points and perks is going to make anything better?

You’ll always have some players who have more time than sense, and they will farm those points and buy things that no one else wants.

And you’ll always have the folks with two jobs, or kids, or sick parents who may only be able to go to one single social scene a month. And they’re not earning points, and even if they were, they wouldn’t know how to spend them. But they chat a few minutes every day on chat while they commute, and answer questions, and since they’re on the game, so are all their friends, two of whom are storytellers - but wouldn’t be if their friend wasn’t barely sometimes there. And that person’s on monthly scene and the friends who are there for that are contributing SO MUCH MORE than your points farmer ever could.

And now, we’re not telling our anti-capitalist stories and building our fictional dreamt of utopias (IC’ly, OOC’ly we’re planning to fail because we don’t want to kill the game and theme) by instead making the game itself the example of the capitalist hellhole we’re all trying to escape in our pretendy happy fun times…

It’s getting too complicated.

Plan out what parts of plot need to be super secret, and how/when/to whom it will or won’t get doled out.

Put all the rest of plot in your lore pages and outline the acceptable scopes of PRP, ST arcs, and Plot in a Boxes. Give folks a few bingo cards and scene randomizers. Make one or two totally normal looking bingo card entries actually tie into one of the few secret plots that aren’t just lore-filed and up for everyone so that they can run for each other and their friends or just do whatever they’re doing.

And if you get innundated and can’t keep up, be honest about it. Say so on the forum. Pause new characters or ask folks hey, can everyone chip in and find a buddy, and each of you tell a story about THISTHING for each other, and up to 2 of their other friends. By then, we should be caught up enough to finish up plot stuff, and after that catches up, we’ll look at re-balancing things and then repoen. CG, or instead realize this is our limit, and where we’re going to keep it.

Like. Honestly. Micro-transactions aren’t the answers here. Honest communication, periodically re-evaluating capacities, and trusting each other to take care of our own fun, and to help others do the same is the only solution I personally think it would take.

But. I’m also not known for being a game runner. Maybe ymmv. But as a player? Those were the setups I always found to be the most fun to write in. And they tended to be the best ran and most stable player-bases, too.

Gashlycrumb

@Jenn Capitalism isn’t ‘exchanging tokens’.

I get you about the vibe.

You seem to have missed some of my posts, it’s an idea to think about, not necessarily something I want to try.

Anyway, what do you think of it when there is no exchange, only accumulation of points?

Jenn

@Gashlycrumb

Points make me think of keeping score, and days of PvP. I like the modern vibe of games where we’re all on the same dysfunctional team together, telling the stories, and we survive it or we don’t, but. we’re doing it together.

Once we start tracking points on something that’s a spare time pretendy collaborative writing game, that loses the creativity and story-driven side of it - at least for me. I maintain that the only thing needed for an active, involved game is an understanding of your scopes and limits, and letting the characters who want to write and play in it do just that.

We’re all adults. We don’t need every scene to have story-tellers, or every piece of plot spoon fed. We can figure it out pretty well by just asking each other for the scenes we want, and saying yes when they pitch back at you and it sounds like fun.

Is it important to have a vague expectation of how much official ST plot your playerbase needs? Probably.

Is it important to look at bribes and rewards just to figure that part out? Probably not.

But. I’m also super low crunchy. I rarely look at dice outside the wondering of hey, this is iffy, am I able? Even as a ST, I rarely ask for rolls unless something isn’t natural and normal to the character. Most of the time, just letting them do their things with their words while I steer the plot part doesn’t need it. They usually all write good mixes of both wins and losses, and the few who miss that vibe usually are super fine with it once they’ve been politely paged.

I think getting bogged down into mechanics of things makes it lose some of the magic. And I think that goes double when the opposite side is lets bribe people into making sure there is RP, the thing they’re here to do and should be mostly able to manage on their own.

And, if folks WANT bribe games, like, sure. Build them, have fun, and that’s ok. Not everyone likes everything. I’m just not sure why bribe mechanics are the main topic on a thread about how many story-tellers are needed per average number of players. To me… Bribe mechanics aren’t what tells or even shows there were or are good stories. They’re entirely separate. And if a game is relying on the bribes to ensure there are stories getting told… That seems more game issue than ratio problem.