Most players come to be entertained.

While I agree with the sentiment, I want to change the wording of this just a tiny bit.

Most players come to have fun. And that should absolutely include staff. It’s a game, after all, being on it should be fun. And that’s where a lot of this talk about staff capacity and limits etc, falls flat: it seems to forget that rather obvious point.

If you, game runner/player/staffer/whateverer, are not having an appreciable amount of fun then something needs to change. Fun is the whole idea.

ETA: To keep the thrust of this back with the ‘STrP vs Prp’ discussion: IF something isn’t fun, players won’t do it. Some players just always find running things fun, some players need encouragement for it to be fun, and some players will never find it fun. If you, as a game runner, can find a way to make the first two categories of player happy then you’ll get more stuff run by players.

RUINS FUN

I said that you HATE fun.

Other people, those who know you way, way better, they said that you ruin fun. Yell at them. I’m yelling for other, weirder reasons.

…I do kind of miss Shadowrun as a setting, only because I met one ST who made it a fun time for me. Normally, I’m a purist and keep my 2020 self in my 2020 box and do 2020 things, and now… well.

@Jennkryst said in Staff Capacity:

RENT IS DUE, PLEASE PAY US EACH 30,000 NUYEN TO KILL THE RATS IN YOUR BASEMENT.

How can I ever afford a suitable trenchcoat to cover my katana AND my mysterious, troubled, and brooding history, huh?

You just hate fun and it shows.

I enjoy fun. Dual-wielding machine pistols for the lulz.

@MisterBoring said in Staff Capacity:

@Jennkryst said in Staff Capacity:

RENT IS DUE, PLEASE PAY US EACH 30,000 NUYEN TO KILL THE RATS IN YOUR BASEMENT.

See, my evil Shadowrun GM brain would just make those Rats incarnate high force Rat spirits.

Nah, they were just Devil Rats. And nobody ever got sick and died and turned into a ghoul from them or anything!

Wouldn’t let people shifter, wouldn’t let people vampire, wouldn’t let people cyberzombie, stopped letting people Otaku, wouldn’t let people Bug or Toxic Shaman or Blood Mage…

AND PEOPLE SAY I’M THE ONE WHO RUINS FUN!

RENT IS DUE, PLEASE PAY US EACH 30,000 NUYEN TO KILL THE RATS IN YOUR BASEMENT.

See, my evil Shadowrun GM brain would just make those Rats incarnate high force Rat spirits.

RENT IS DUE, PLEASE PAY US EACH 30,000 NUYEN TO KILL THE RATS IN YOUR BASEMENT.

How can I ever afford a suitable trenchcoat to cover my katana AND my mysterious, troubled, and brooding history, huh?

You just hate fun and it shows.

I solved this by handing players plots that involved stuff without them having to jump through hoops in advance, too. So like. There’s reasons folks jumped on this.

BUT ALSO keep in mind this is Shadowrun. Players had to go commit crime to earn money to pay their rent, or their apartments kicked them out. Or they had to go on plots to steal ammunition because honestly, sometimes it’s easier to steal it than it is to jump through whatever +req +roll hoops you need to acquire it from contacts.

It had a lot of tracking minutiae, so people had to be proactive about not running out of money. So people ran a lot of plots that were just like… not that thematic, because RENT IS DUE, PLEASE PAY US EACH 30,000 NUYEN TO KILL THE RATS IN YOUR BASEMENT.

Cause I was too lazy to actually run the plot and do the emits, but not so lazy I couldn’t follow the rules and make sure nobody was breaking them, and answer questions if the GM couldn’t come up with anything.

I’m totally stealing this whenever, if ever, I staff anywhere again.

This is true, but it’s also not unfixable. Not in the least.

Trust can be fixable, but I honestly don’t think it’s the biggest of the problems @Pavel listed. Not by a long shot.

Fact is, MUs have their roots in TTRPGs, where the onus of storytelling is on the GM. Most players come to be entertained. There are a few willing to GM (and I am super grateful for them), but they’re the exception.

So fostering an environment where anyone can run stuff doesn’t necessarily lower staff’s workload if staff ends up having to run almost everything anyway.

Cause I was too lazy to actually run the plot and do the emits, but not so lazy I couldn’t follow the rules and make sure nobody was breaking them, and answer questions if the GM couldn’t come up with anything.

So there are totally ways for staff and players to work together. Just gotta step outside of the box.

there are lots of ways to learn that skill

Lesson one: Leading is different to ruling.

I think the root of all of this is a lack of trust between players and staff and STs on either side. A lack of trust makes it hard to feel confident to engage. Am I gonna set someone off? Am I gonna offend someone? Are these people gonna snark about me and my RP or PRP to everyone behind my back or on staff chan and kill any credibility or reputation I have built for other players to trust me? Those things. So building (or rebuilding) that trust is hard because of so many bad experiences people have had from both sides. And that’s something I don’t know how to fix.

This is true, but it’s also not unfixable. Not in the least. It’s not a problem unique to M*s, either.

Which means there is a lot of research (and anecdotal stories) about how to build trust with teams, and about how to do it as a leader. There are blog posts, books, and articles on the topic.

If someone is really interested in game running, I think some real curiosity aimed in that direction can teach lots of valuable things. Running a game is, for better or worse, leadership, and if you want to be good at it, there are lots of ways to learn that skill.

@Faraday said in Staff Capacity:

I still had to run most events myself

I only have my own anecdotal experience with which to remark upon this, but I believe this is due to three things (alone or in concert):

1. Staff-run plots always feel more important. Whether this is owing to the prestige of a staffer running things, a perception that staff-run plots have more of an impact than player-run, something else, or some combination of these, I can’t say.

2. Running things is hard, occasionally stressful, usually thankless work.

and

3. Many, or at least some, people just don’t have the confidence to run things. That’s either confidence in their social adroitness, storytelling skills, or ability to concentrate and multi-task. I know that running things always triggers some sort of imposter syndrome-like sensation in me when I try my hand at it.

There’s probably a doctoral thesis in organisational psychology in trying to work out a solution to these issues.

I think 2 & 3 are very closely related. Depending on the game you’re on or the player base in it, the thankless part of running things is sometimes an optimistic outcome. Players like to complain a lot and argue a lot and when something doesn’t go their way, fits are easily thrown. It can be daunting to have to deal with when you know that if you forgot or made a mistake on one of the fifty bajillion details of the rulesets some games have, someone might rules lawyer or drama-splode all over your brand new ST hat. Most players go along and play along just fine, but it just takes that one pain in the ass to ruin your day and your ST-running experience to make you not want to try it anymore.

This is also one reason cliques form up, at least in my experience. Not to exclude people out of social superiority, but to have a safe group with people you know and trust to play in where you can feel confident that drama won’t erupt. Stranger danger is real. I know they have a bad rep, but I do see the appeal.

@Selira said in Staff Capacity:

@Pavel Regarding point one of this, I don’t know how you get around it. Player run plots often have significant lore deviation and, in games where there is a larger metaplot, need to be basically integrated back into that plot by staff. There’s always a lingering question of ‘is this really canon’?

I think that’s the point addressed by the @Roadspike practice of giving players plothooks and information on what staff has opened up for PRPs. It doesn’t just inform players on what PRPs they can run, but it lets other players know that it those PRPs are legit and canon. It also allows the staff to more easily incorporate those storylines into the metaplot so that what happens in them means something to the world around them. Too often PRPs are looked at as throwaway sessions that never connect to the other stories so they have no effect, which leads back to @Pavel 's first point on why staff end up having to run most scenes themselves, even if they open things to PRPs. Players are used to staff not taking PRPs seriously because they seem to happen in a vacuum so many don’t bother with them.

I think the root of all of this is a lack of trust between players and staff and STs on either side. A lack of trust makes it hard to feel confident to engage. Am I gonna set someone off? Am I gonna offend someone? Are these people gonna snark about me and my RP or PRP to everyone behind my back or on staff chan and kill any credibility or reputation I have built for other players to trust me? Those things. So building (or rebuilding) that trust is hard because of so many bad experiences people have had from both sides. And that’s something I don’t know how to fix.

It has real potential to turn a job monkey into Planet of the Apes if you don’t put hard lines in the sand.

I agree, and think hard lines in the sand should be par for the course across the board. A lot of games I’ve watched fall apart throughout the years was mostly due to nobody putting hard lines in the sand where they needed to be.

Player run plots often have significant lore deviation

Well I guess step one would be for players not to do that, and for staff to give plenty of tools to ensure they don’t feel the need to.

Really, when the issue becomes paramount is when Headstaffers are absent for months at a time and then rely on job monkeys/VASpiders to be indispensable so they don’t have to do things, and corruption starts to run rampant.

It has real potential to turn a job monkey into Planet of the Apes if you don’t put hard lines in the sand.

I still had to run most events myself

I only have my own anecdotal experience with which to remark upon this, but I believe this is due to three things (alone or in concert):

1. Staff-run plots always feel more important. Whether this is owing to the prestige of a staffer running things, a perception that staff-run plots have more of an impact than player-run, something else, or some combination of these, I can’t say.

2. Running things is hard, occasionally stressful, usually thankless work.

and

3. Many, or at least some, people just don’t have the confidence to run things. That’s either confidence in their social adroitness, storytelling skills, or ability to concentrate and multi-task. I know that running things always triggers some sort of imposter syndrome-like sensation in me when I try my hand at it.

There’s probably a doctoral thesis in organisational psychology in trying to work out a solution to these issues.

‘job monkeys’ and ‘general staff’ become a thing

I personally feel that in the proper environment and under the correct guidelines, general staff / job monkeys can be a big help in a larger game. But again, correct guidelines, like not touching jobs with plot relevance or significant levels of potential player conflict.

An example of a job that I would give to a job monkey is xp spends for things that don’t require heavy plot justification to increase or simple bug fixes, like “My character sheet isn’t displaying the correct HP for my attributes.”

Headstaff in particular has a problem with this, and also the disappearing for months at a time thing only to come in and give a swirly to the staffers outside of their TS/Discord groups before poofing into the aether once again for six months and not approving literal years-old jobs before doing so.

Or worse, the dreaded system of HR approval in some games where every staffer was able to add input even outside of their spheres. I am very glad for games like Liberation who don’t even let other staffers outside their spheres see unrelated jobs for this reason. These kinds of jobs become grudge matches where reason goes out the window and people fight because their character bits had a spat a decade ago.

It’s really quite annoying and not conducive to a good experience as a staff member especially when ‘job monkeys’ and ‘general staff’ become a thing; doubly when those staff members don’t pull their weight and only get online to talk shit on staff channels and post negative stuff on jobs that they have no business reading at all. This combined with obvious favoritism killed most of the games I staffed. In actuality, this problem is exacerbated when spheres and games have TOO MUCH staff, not too little.

Too many cooks, and none of them are actually cooking–just standing on the line, judging the way you cut your onions.

Why would anyone want to be a staffer after OOC experiences like that?

I meant that instead of all the burden of creating RP and running scenes being on the staff, the players are empowered with what’s necessary to easily take on some of that. In this way everyone on the game isn’t solely dependent on staff to keep activity going. That responsibility is spread around more evenly.

I’m not sure it works out that way in practice, though. My games have been “run what you want, just don’t break the game” since the early 2000s. Now I’ll admit I haven’t always executed it perfectly, but the games were nonetheless a series of good-faith efforts to empower players to tell their own stories.

Even with action-oriented settings, automated combat (which was also optional if you just preferred rolls), and various attempts at plot hooks and scene prompts, I still had to run most events myself.

Well, it doesn’t entirely take the burden off of staff, though it is a different kind of burden that they may find difficult or not. Keeping up to date plot documentation in a concise format easily accessible to new players is it’s own kind of work. It is often work worth doing, but it does require a lot of upkeep.

I’m also a big fan of “Current Adventure” pages like we used on The Savage Skies: a page that details the current metaplot, with links to subplots or concurrently-running plots, descriptions of common allies and enemies, a map if appropriate, some plot hooks to start scenes or plots, etc. It keeps players and staff on the same page, lets players run their own scenes, and gives one place for everyone to look for information about what’s going on at the time.

All this is something that I think would be really helpful in other places. It takes the entirety of burden off of staff and spreads the responsibility for people’s fun more evenly on everyone’s shoulders. Less burden on just a few people means less stress on them and more fun for everyone.