SPIRELE

Some people like a structure to work with. Sure, you can sit four people across from each other at a table and freeform combat with a story -- or you can play D&D which has a conflict resolution system and a progression system built in. There are people who do largely crunch-free tabletop games, and a lot of them are really good actually, but others like the structure that rolls/cooldowns/etc. provide.

I think it's really weird that people seem to differentiate stat based forum RP when half of us are D&D nerds anyway and nobody questions why an attack roll happens or why AC is important in that medium. There are people with a lot of very, very valid complaints about D&D and how it essentially came out as an adaptation of a war game and never really shed that combat based resolution system -- and I totally get that! But people play D&D because either A) It's the popular game everyone knows and Billy hates learning new things or B) They actually like it.

Combat systems and rules are important in D&D because it's a huge part of the draw as to why people want to play D&D. They want cool characters fighting giant monsters, getting loot, and leveling up. You can accomplish all of those same things about a structure and with complete free form, yes, but that won't get the audience who enjoys Dungeons and Dragons because the crunch is part of the appeal for those who aren't just held hostage to the system because that's what their friends use. It's completely different audiences for completely different experiences.

Someone who likes crunch will hate a game like FATE or Fiasco much like someone who hates crunch will hate D&D -- especially earlier editions like 3.5, Pathfinder (I'm counting it as D&D for these purposes okay it's basically 3.75), or 4e. If you are the type of person who thinks 5e is too much crunch, then you will hate every other edition and that's fine. It's not your thing, but that doesn't change that people have perfectly valid reasons to like every edition as well as completely different games like FATE or Fiasco which offer a crunch-lite alternative. Even 4e, much to my chagrin, can be argued by someone not me to have some sort of benefit to society.

Not going to lie, if anything for systems for the most part I've had to fend off people wanting it to be more complex more than anything.

Everyone decides that they really want to do something barred by the rules for one reason or another, so they design some kind of super complicated special rule that would allow them to do it and then put it forward. That is the majority of the engagement I've gotten at least about progression systems. Essentially a "Yeah, cool, but if we could remove the part where I have weaknesses that are meaningful that'd be cool."

So basically you're going to get complaints no matter what if you have weaknesses. And if you don't have weaknesses built in people will complain other people have overloaded characters. You can't really win in terms of having nobody complain about finding it too complicated/basic, there will always be both and a good chunk of those complaints won't be valid in the first place because they either don't know or don't care what you intended the system to do in the first place.

Just do what you think is best and roll with it for as long as that takes you imo. You can't please everyone in a subjective hobby like this.

Trying to harness and put forward something that members will latch onto hard enough to do a huge and sustained activity spike is one of my greatest joys in staffing when it works.

This past one was unexpected, frankly, because I threw the bait out but didn't expect like the entire site to latch on so hard about it. As I get better I hope the number of flops goes down to as close to zero as possible, though. Those suck.

Just binged all of Mage & Demon Queen on Webtoons last night.

The entire series is a high quality shitpost and I love it.

Lmao let's be real: people will complain about literally anything and there's a decent subset of people who are used to bullying to get their way because most people in RP sites are self-conscious enough to want to avoid being jerks and thus won't defend themselves no matter what. They realized at some point that bulldozing and being super aggressive gets them the results that they want and take that attitude everywhere.

Over the years I've had basically every level of flame at me from people sending me death threats to writing long hate-fueled rants about how they hope I or my family have horrible things happen or whatever because they can't believe that this behavior would ever get them called out or kicked from a site. All the while they will spin the discussion as something that you must apologize to them for, like it's your fault they're the way that they are. It's not your job as a staff to fix people, it's your job as staff to create an environment where people can have fun in a hobby they collectively enjoy.

Staff burnout leads to dead sites. Toxic people driving off core members leads to dead sites. Keeping toxic people on because you feel the need to not be mean kills sites and is honestly probably the biggest cause of staff burnout in my experience. People just eventually get tired of being walked on.

Note that constructive criticism or communication is not flaming and staff can have that victim mentality of anyone who questions them is bullying them or whatever too. On one site I left in the past year there was a rule that basically enforced a word max that I regularly exceeded for certain types of threads, and I honestly felt like the rule was instituted because I tended to post in that type of thread a lot. That's a red line for me, because I legitimately hate word limits both ceiling wise and minimums. I verified with staff that this was the new policy, and informed them that I was leaving and that was the reason.

I didn't kick up a stink, and frankly the site was big enough to where me leaving doesn't matter. Whether it was intended to get me to leave or not is irrelevant -- I really think it was just that staff didn't want to read longer posts in threads they had to read. That's fair, but that also means I'm going to leave because I'm not chopping off words from my posts to satisfy that urge. Me telling staff I'm leaving due to that rule isn't bullying or toxicity, it's me actually deciding I'm not going to ghost because I liked the community and basically leaving the door open to coming back later if it ended up being changed down the line -- like if more vocal people who cared more decided to try and get it changed. Whether it was targeted or not, frankly, didn't matter to me because I don't really care who staffs a site or if they dislike me or not as long as my experience isn't effected by that. Soft push outs are fine in that respect IMO and I prefer that over long hate rants -- so if it was targeted at me they did a good job in making something that would only effect a few people and only cause one person to care enough to drop over it lol. I didn't do this in public, which would have made it spiteful and nasty. I did it in DMs individually with the admins and confirmed that this what what they were going for and basically said that was a deal breaker for me and left at that point.

There was no disrespect or anything, but that's just how it was. When people quit my site for reasons other than time constraints or losing interest, I like to know why because sometimes I legitimately fuck up and cause someone to not have a fun experience like in an event or something because I think something would be cool or assuming PCs would find their way out of something and they just 110% mega fail and the player OOC feels cheated. I also personally like victory lap scenarios where a bunch of weaker mooks come at the end for PCs to basically write their characters being awesome -- but received very negative feedback on it because many felt it was a waste of time and effort that could be spent on other things so I left out the victory laps in future events.

Not everything someone quits a site over is something you need or even should change. If someone is upset they can't play a 3000 year old undead lich on your New York City 2020 Slice of Life site or their cool totally original OC Tiamat the Five Headed Dragon Deity in your Pokemon setting that's their problem for not reading your site. It's also their bad if they decide to come into your light hearted town setting with a concept they decided would turn into the Joker and are amazed that people who are focused on the Tri-State Area Cooking Competition event don't really care or engage with their serial killer and feel left out and overshadowed by cooking. That's their fault because they didn't bother to make a character that fit with the setting or have a concept that meshed with what others wanted to accomplish. But you also get a lot of valid complaints, even if sometimes they're mixed in with salt.

Someone deciding to jump into the lava instead of going around it might be very upset that the lava burned them so heavily they couldn't function or continue adventuring afterwards. Maybe you didn't make the path around the lava obvious enough so the player panicked and assumed the DM would save them if they tried to suicide -- which is a wrong assumption in my case but something that people do when they perceive it to be video game like where consequences don't matter. Then on my end I can make things more obvious and have better prep so people know what to expect from scenarios down the line so it doesn't happen again -- I lost lava jump man as a player, but while I don't feel I did anything wrong I also can make changes that don't change what I'm doing too much and help other players from getting to that level of frustration in the future. This improves my site, and allows people to have fun more... which I consider to be the point of a play by post site.

If you as a staff member are not having fun, especially if you are the admin, that is an existential threat to your site. I, personally, don't like people sending me death threats in chat and will ban anyone who does it first offense. I don't feel as though that's something I need to contest or justify, and have only needed to do it once. The person obviously felt that they were justified and the hero of the situation and raged really hard at everyone who listened, but I'm not putting up with that level of hate towards me or any of my players. If something goes wrong for you IC or OOC there's a right way to complain and there's a wrong way to complain, and if people go well beyond that line I don't see an issue with giving a no warning ban to people so they don't poison your site for a minute longer than necessary. Obviously it's not usually so cut and dry, but frankly some people are just unreasonable and can never be reasoned with or catered to in a way that would make them happy because there is some fundamental disconnect between you and them that is unsolvable and will always be an issue. Every toxic person believes they are the hero of their own story, fighting against corruption and injustice from an autocratic and evil system known as 'Play-By-Post Roleplaying Site Staffers'. That's fine, you can't change that and if someone believes you to be an evil to the level of Darth Vader feel honored that to some people you really are that important, but you also don't need to accommodate that. There are some things you just shouldn't accommodate and your site will suffer for it if you try.

For example, I wholeheartedly believe that National Ice Cream Day is a sacred holiday that nobody should violate by engaging in villainous or otherwise amoral behavior in. If you believe the opposite, we are fundamentally incompatible and I hope you get nothing but vanilla as your options for the rest of your life along with the blandest, flavorless snow cones and complete lack of sprinkles. There are some lines that just aren't meant to be crossed, and that's one of them. If you disagree, you're not only wrong but a category even below that called super wrong.

Every time I tried that they just repost within a few days so I just stopped.

It's whack but if they're that committed I figured it wasn't worth the effort in deleting when they already put it back up 4-5 times in like 2 weeks.

Not gonna lie, my favorite part about DMing events is to lead players to the edge of a conclusion and then just let whatever happen, happen.

A deranged serial killer just got free weapons from one, despite the fact that his story about what he was doing changed twice and he had already checked out a ton of weapons a few hours earlier that seem to have magically disappeared. I left all the shady behavior in, but refused to actively give it up in the post itself and outright declare he was evil OOC. I instead focused on outward behavior and his sense of righteous confidence, and what do you know -- tons of weapons!

I'm sure this will have no consequences down the line at all. I love dramatic situations, and the character finding out they just let a crazy and violent person take a bunch of weapons right in front of them and only just waved at them in response is going to be fun to read down the line. I know that players tend to prioritize their own character's safety in a metagame sense, and I hope this event helps break that a bit because the failure states have nothing to do with the PCs getting injured or hurt. In fact, it's better for the villains to not have to fight any PCs because that just makes their objective easier.

After all, what better way to show that the heroes of the setting really are unreliable cowards than presenting them with flashy but ultimately small danger and having them be too scared to do anything? Villains who try to win through raw power and murder are fine sometimes, yeah, but I've always been much more interested in villains who try to win by breaking the spirit of their opponents instead by proving character assassination correct in the moment that it happens. Someone hiding off in a safe space all boarded up while people are dying doesn't sound very superheroic to me, and having evidence of that happening just makes the kick back to the public all that more believable.

I set expectations at the beginning of the event, but I've noticed that some players still view things as player vs. DM and I'm somehow out to get them. I told them flat out the power level of their characters didn't matter so characters of all levels could join, because trying to hurt their characters wasn't the point and would need to be actively sought after. Now different people have different clues and varying levels of knowing what to do with them, and it all comes together soon.

I don't see my job as a staffer who runs events to make sure characters win, it's to ensure that any outcome that happens both reflects their decisions and is dramatic enough to be worth the buildup. Failure is fine, but having different levels of failure is just as important, so the tension doesn't die immediately when the first thing goes wrong.

Like, if you're trying to sneak into a fortress or whatever and the first time you fail a stealth check all the guards in the place start charging at you screaming bloody murder... that kills all the tension. There's nothing for the PC to do there except run, they have no options. It's much better to have different stages of failure. Maybe the first time you accidentally kick a pebble and a guard goes "I think I heard something." and another guard tells them to stop being dramatic. Maybe the second time the guard slowly walks over, all cautious like and ready to fight but you can easily just hide again until he goes away or gives up assuming it was just him being paranoid. Maybe the third time the guard alerts the others and puts everyone in earshot on high alert for a while.

Each of these things ratchets up the tension rather than killing it entirely like it would if you just had all the guards aggro immediately the second the PC stepped out of line. I see it as my job to enable and draw out that tension, because to me decisions made under that tension are much more meaningful because it's obvious to the player that their decision will actually effect outcomes -- and that's the goal. For the player to go Hey, what I do actually matters and will significantly effect the events going forward.

And part of making those choices matter are offering scenarios where player agency leads to bad decisions. The player can choose to save the day, or they can choose to let the shadiest person in the scenario randomly decide to take a bunch of high-tech weaponry right in front of them and just waving and telling them to be safe as they leave. With all the talk of 'railroading' and 'artificial choice' in at least the tabletop community, I think it's fair to point out that removing the possibility of catastrophic failure regardless of what the PCs do is also in and of itself a form of railroading. In the same way that most DMs would see a total success as a good thing, also see the catastrophic failure as a good thing so long as the decisions of the PCs are the things that drove the adventure to that conclusion. Giving players and thus PCs the choice to significantly effect outcomes means letting them fail as well as succeed, or their choices only matter sometimes.

It also has already helped curb metagaming, since I don't flat out say whether characters are good, evil, or just randos who are just trying to live their lives away from all the superpowered freakshows running around making property damage. I won't type the words This person is not normal. but I WILL type out how they twitch randomly, scratch their neck constantly, jerk their head in weird ways when they talk, stare off into space, and change their story every five minutes to something completely unrelated to the last one and never acknowledging that their last story was ever told. Not everything will be that obvious, mind, but you'd be amazed at how many of these you can throw at someone and still not have them perceive anything is abnormal OOC as long as you don't say the words This person is not normal. or the equivalent. If they fail to get it even after all of that, I still won't tell them.

I feel it's my job to lead them right to the conclusion, but let them pick up that conclusion by themselves. A catastrophic failure does not need to be Everyone dies because quite frankly that's boring and unimaginative. It removes your ability to actually let people fail by ensuring that you as the DM won't allow that outcome to happen. If you want player choices to matter, have a set of outcomes that you're actually willing to let loose into the RP and let the players decide which outcome they want through their actions.

Then sit back and watch the players make it 1000% harder by sabotaging themselves under the weight of this new responsibility. Players really are their worst enemy when they realize they can actually make things worse as well as better. Then just sit back and laugh evilly. IC infighting over what decision is best because the characters realize their choices actually matter is amazing and I wish I saw it more. It's even better as the DM because you know what decision will lead to what, and know which is more likely to work but won't tell them. It allows you to have all the warm fuzzies of giving players agency and decisions that matter, but also all the thrill of sitting back in your chair and laughing evilly as they choose their own adventure into the worst possible outcome -- or the best! It doesn't matter to you, the DM, because ideally you would have created a situation where both the best and the worst outcome is still dramatic and exciting to play. So you win no matter what!

The skateboarding mini-game was my favorite.

I spent more time in that area than playing the actual game I stg

Double posting but zero shame. It's rare that I get irritated for any prolonged period of time, but that's honestly the time I'm most productive as a staffer. If something else in my life irritates me, I'm irritated at everything including my own stuff. Any attachment I have to things I made is evaporated and I can just change a bunch of things that maybe aren't great around all at the same time that I put off because effort or I worked hard on it or whatever.

"Because this is how I've always done it" is not an excuse I want to ever use to justify why I keep crappy things in 2020. New year, new me. New decade, new ideas.

I've found it's much more efficient to write evil character hooks than good character hooks. Realistically, most PCs despite what they say care about #1 first and foremost it seems like and will resort to murder/maiming/etc. at the mildest inconvenience even against annoying things/people who can't actually hurt them in any way.

I kind of miss when I could write hooks that only relied on people naturally trying to be heroic, instead of being forced to have it effect them specifically all the time. Even on hero sites/genres I find it's actually rare for anybody to try and be anywhere close to a classic paragon type unless there's literally zero stakes/personal danger involved.

If I was a random villager and the so called 'heroes' acted like that, I'd be fucking terrified of them and avoid them at all costs... which only results in more evil actions because running away and hiding is suspicious.

Boku no Hero Academia is having its best arc animated right now and it's basically a master class in how to introduce characters in a superhero setting. It's currently the best thing airing that I've seen, and I've been looking forward to this all year. Pls watch Boku no Hero Academia guys it's amazing. One of my favorite things to do each week is see tiny percentage of people complaining about that week's episode and just seeing the insane mental gymnastics they have to jump through in order to come up with anything wrong with this season.

Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia is another Fate series and holds up to their usual standard despite a new animation studio in CloverWorks. This is one of the two fan-voted campaigns from the game to have an adaptation, and is considered by people who are wrong to be the best of the campaigns of the first nine or even overall. I say they're wrong because nothing tops Camelot, but Babylonia is a solid #2. The fight scenes are really, really good and deserves special mention.

RWBY Volume 7 has the potential to be the best season in RWBY if they maintain the quality level they've had this season. The writing, frankly, leveled up and the action scenes have kept up with the huge jump they had in Volume 6. They're basically running my favorite type of antagonist in fiction right now, so I'd actually put them above Fate/Babylonia in terms of how much I'm enjoying it right now -- and anyone who knows me also knows that I am a GIANT Fate fan. I think it's risen to the level to actually compete with anything in terms of quality, which is really cool to see from a show that initially had a budget of roughly seven dollars and a piece of gum for its first volume.

I just want y'all to know that I'm still dying of laughter. I sometimes forget what my username is because I've just had it for so long it's just normal and I don't notice it. The awoo made me lose my shit.

For the serious and contributing part

SPIRELE I definitely feel like smaller staff teams are better. I've just always been used to bloat in the past so I never really saw that as abnormal. 1 staff member for 5 people, even if it should have been 1 staff member per 10-15, was just such common practice that I never really questioned it until super recently. If your site has 100 members like the one I staffed on before I got frustrated enough to make my own you can have like... 100 members and 20 of them being on the staff team and needing to feel included in every decision.

None of the previous ones were that bad, but I wasn't kidding when it felt like the DMV. It incentivized people slipping through changes without telling anyone or else it'd take a month+ to do even basic stuff, which wasn't an environment I wanted. It's why for mine I went so transparent that sometimes people complain about it because I hated that secrets/politicking/etc. going on OOC. The only time I go private is for specific member moderation stuff so the 'Yo dude stop being a dick to everyone' talk isn't public. For everything site related that effects other people from the idea phase to the `ok we doing it` phase and even how sure I am of a system are all public.

Sometimes it's `Yeah I'm a genius I solved all of our problems.` and sometimes it's `Yeah idk wtf I'm doing but there's an issue here and I'm going to try and fix it with this. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else.` USUALLY it's the second one, because I'm just flinging shit on the wall and hoping some of it sticks sometimes. It also makes sure people are more comfortable criticizing things because they know I'm not sure about it and anticipate problems. If something sucks, ultimately I want people to tell me it sucks so I can fix it faster.

bc If you're the people in the creepy black hooded robes muttering doomsday prophecies, let go of the hate and you'll feel better. I'm a hypocrite and still have hangups of sites from forever ago that I'm still upset about. I still deep in my heart believe that Dheynor in 2013 was the best idea for a site I've ever played on and had a lot of really innovative and groundbreaking ideas for the time that made it THE premiere fantasy site that our staff team including me RUINED with incompetence. RUINED. I'd still be on that site in 2020 if we hadn't have made a dumpster fire out of a jewelry store, like dang.

But even the people I had massive disagreements with on other sites I try very hard not to hold grudges or anything anymore because quite frankly in the grand scheme of things that doesn't matter. If you screwed me over after like 2015 we chill and we fine. A bad staffer on one site can be a great member on another site. If you screwed me over in like 2013 and there's enough residual HATE for me to still remember your name I'll just leave if they join. There's literally only 1 person that I had a blood feud bad enough to do this with even almost a decade later, but that's not healthy. I keep tabs on them once or twice a year to feel better about myself seeing them fail in making sites even years later, but that's also really petty and not something that I would encourage anyone else to do.

If you're the edgy one trying to get mortal enemies, then I encourage you to not do that because pettiness should really not be your driving force in a hobby. Again, I'm a hypocrite and made a site with all the ideas rejected by other admins and was fueled for the first 3-4 months entirely by spite. That's not a healthy mindset to live in long term and memeing with your potential rivals is much more fun than actually hating them. Like I always try to make a point to even try and help out people who are staffing rival sites in my genre because I want the community to be bigger. The more long-term sites there are the more people there are in my genre and the more people end up watching RWBY.

Like the only people who upset me there are the people who write 30 page essays about how your favorite character sucks and how you're wrong and bad for liking them. But I just block them, because it's not worth any effort to try and convince someone that Neo isn't actually the worst written character in all of fiction. They're just saying that because I use her a profile picture everywhere and they're just trying to get a rise out of me. I'll admire the dedication, never read the 30 page long essay, and block them halfway through. Then I go on with my day as if nothing happened. You can disagree with someone without hating them, and if they don't want to do the same you just say Bye Felicia and let them wallow in their own bitterness without you.

Or to look at it more cynically, when someone explodes on you and expects you to be an angry toddler back and you're calm and not vindictive about it everyone sees the shining light you are as a person and makes the wannabe mortal enemy look even worse in comparison! You can be petty AND healthy! If you're not getting your drama fix from your own life, you can offer to let others vent about their drama so you get all the juicy thrill of seeing something burst into flames while also having the moral high ground of having nothing to do with it!

TL;DR if anyone wants to tell me some wild drama stories I am living for it because being the adult in the room sucks and I love drama but can't be part of it anymore. It's half the reason I'm so active here. Someone goes into a long rant and I'm just sitting there like:



It's why I like DMing things, because I really like drama and dramatic things. Idgaf if we win, lose, or die as long as it's dramatic enough to get me excited. My life is like that too but I'm like the most boring vanilla no avocado milquetoast person ever so I don't get any of it so gotta live vicariously through RP and other people to bring me my fix. The thing I miss the most about being a normal member isn't the lack of responsibilities or whatever, it's literally just the ability to randomly just toss in an overly dramatic HOW DARE YOU over something stupid in the cbox without everyone going all

Gimme a goddamned Fate site.

Let me do a Holy Grail War you cowards.