@somasatori said in Re: Dies Irae:
I did want to note, btw: I’m not headstaff there, really.
…who is? That could be a substantial part of the problem.
We kinda don’t have them? I mean, there are some folks whose words are probably more listened-to than others, like Scylla, me occasionally, and Charybdis, but we’re ostensibly supposed to be doing things democratically.
Edit to add more context: For instance, when we banned Polk, we deliberated about it. I think this probably is not the best way to go about it, especially if there’s someone who’s doing something imminently bannable. Polk didn’t actually do much on DI which would have been considered harmful to anyone, which is why there was a lot of deliberation on the topic (and for transparency’s sake, I abstained – not because I have a particular love for Polk, but because I haven’t had much interaction with the guy outside of “wow, he sure loves crashing games”). He was banned for being Polk, which didn’t sit well with some folks, and that’s okay. I mean, the democratic process is such that it allows for that kind of thing. People are allowed to disagree and voted as such. The vote to ban him won out in the end.
Super worried when we do have an immediately harmful or threatening player, though. Deliberating over the course of a week and a half when Johnny PKGriefing-SexAssaulter is going around committing his namesake is not grounds for a good MUSHing experience.
@Pavel said in Re: Dies Irae:
Yeah, I must have missed reading that previously, @somasatori. Your title of “Storytelling Coordinator” sure as hell sounds like a headstaffy one.
It does, I agree. So the project was originally started by Scylla back in June, around the time NuMetal got crashed (I guess the first time now? The Polk time). I was asked if I could come on to do the Mage stuff and write metaplot details for the game as a whole. After a time, there was a clear indication that we needed some additional guidance in the back end, or someone to be an arbiter, and a vote was called. Charybdis and myself were elected. This was before Kuma had his life explode and couldn’t do code anymore, which is when I inherited that role too. Then I somehow got looped into being a co-lead for Werewolf and Fera.
though I’m fine with my side of the Fera. I handle Mokole, Rokea, Ratkin, and Ananasi and I like my weird little gross/slimy/fish-scented dudes. Nagah’s in there too, but it requires a group app (3), and we all know how easy it is to get a group of people to get rolling on a game.
Anyway, I didn’t really want to be headstaff, especially not in the administrative sense. Storytelling coordinator, to me, means that I manage the theme elements of the game. To paraphrase Hephaestus’ description of how he’s seen it on other games: the role is to ensure consistency and fairness across different groups, that players have adequate hooks into plots and that there are enough staff to run them (HA!).
I’ve done the administrative headstaff thing on three places now (Metro2 [Saturnine], The Reach [Roanoke], Fallcoast [Toska]), and I 100% get burnt out so fast by having to make all of these quibbling little rule calls. It’s why I was cool with Storytelling Coordinator, as it feels more vibes based: coordinating plot, making sure there’s a cohesive story, making sure equal attention is had by all, all that jazz. Sometimes I wonder if I even like WoD all that much anymore. I certainly don’t play it as a TTRPG; I tend to do more PbtA or other hippie-dippy story games. Sometimes I will break out things like Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun.
That said, I have also been playing WoD games (and all of them, really: Vampire, Mage, Werewolf, Changeling, Wraith, Hunter, Demon, KotE, blah, blah, blah, and then all the CofD variants) for something like 29 years now, and remember the rules better than I remember most of my undergraduate classes. So, it’s a path-of-least-resistance thing.
Prior to this, I was writing a Cyberpunk Red game using Evennia as my base. It’s even almost done.
Edit to add: That doesn’t mean I’m leaving! Just that it’s been nearly finished for a while now and I might one day go back and finish it up and release the code with an install.sh installer file for folks to run Cyberpunk games.
That’s a lot of words to say: <begrudgingly> “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” If I were the actual headstaffer, as in quasi-benevolent dictator, I’d probably do that San Diego Zoo of Darkness thing I mentioned (stealing @labsunlimited’s term there).