Support our GMs

Community Larp discussion
#1

So there’s been another Big Crucible Announcement and, to my complete and utter lack of surprise, there’s been a huge uproar over them.

To be perfectly honest, this post is long overdue. Because quite frankly this is getting out of hand. And I know this is going to generate a lot of negativity towards myself, but that doesn’t matter at this point. And I know it’s probably not entirely articulate, or properly convey what I’m trying to, but I had to write this.

To begin with, I want to congratulate the GMs on consistently doing such a fantastic and incredible job. The Crucible is a huge project, far bigger than most of us can probably understand without, y’know, actually being a GM. The scale is simply unbelievable and lot of what you are doing is new and innovate and completely exceptional and fantastic.

But the avalanche of negativity that gets directed at the GM team following these announcements is unbelievable. In the space of a few hours it generated a heap of comments, discussion and complaints that grew excessive very quickly.

And it isn’t just these major announcements that have led me to write this. It’s the small, minor things which keep piling up, in addition to these.

I have seen GMs literally clench their jaw and fists in anger because somebody complained that moving the date of the day games directly and personally inconvenienced them.

I’ve seen GMs almost throw their phones across the room because they had Facebook messages in the double digits, each a small, petty question or complaint, every single day following a major announcement.

I know of multiple occasions where several GMs have very nearly thrown in the towel and quit the project on the spot, because they simply could not deal with the mountain of negativity being directed towards them.

I’ve known GMs (and players) almost abandon LARPing entirely, because they did not want anything to do with the hobby any longer.

This has got to stop.

There is a proper forum, and manner, in which to give feedback to the GM team. Voicing every single minor complaint, over and over again, all over the internet and in person is not that.

Especially in person. For crying out loud, give them some space. They have lives of their own. Every single second of their lives is not devoted towards this game.

Every single minor complaint made about the game, every single nuisance voiced aloud, all of this adds up significantly. And it impacts our friends so greatly.

I’m not saying that you aren’t allowed to have criticisms of the game. By all means, please do. And let the GMs know this in a constructive way, through the proper channels. Because spamming the Facebook group with message after message does not help in any way at all, nor is it the proper channel to go through.

So please, support the GMs. Thank them for the incredible job they are doing. Stop complaining all the time. And remember, please, that the reason so many of you are so upset is because you love the game so much.

#2

Absolutely agreed, man. It’s bad, and getting worse.

The biggest problem that feeds into this is the players drastically outnumber the GMs, and so I worry that this is something that can never be fully alleviated. Every time we run a game, there is the sheer chance that something will prove unpopular. And if it does, everyone will comment on it, because everyone provides their own viewpoint on the situation, on why they’re so disappointed, on how they perceive it could be improved. In a six-person tabletop, it’s bearable, because you stand a better chance of getting only one or two people disappointed. In a twenty-person parlour LARP, it’s a challenge, because then you’ve got eight negative emails. In Crucible, the problem is exponentially worse, exponentially more flammable, exponentially more… dangerous, I think. Every announcement will piss someone off. If you’re unlucky, it’ll piss fifty or sixty people off.

It’s bad because as a GM, you can’t respond to that many people. Your lack of response can (and does) get read as a refusal to engage with the issues. This is an issue that has seemed to dog Crucible since the start: players feel like they’re not getting the information they need, GMs lack the manpower and time to actually provide information to everyone. People complain that they took an action without potential consequences being made clear; GMs and writers and crew can’t possibly make all this information clear. Before you know it, the masses are revolting, the creators are in a funk, and the official website still has a rulebook that’s three months out-of-date.

How we support the GMs more is a difficult thing to decide. We attend their games, we enthuse about them, we pay promptly, we thank them at the end of events, we tell our friends, we accept that their decisions, while sometimes frustrating, are made with the aim to enhance the game experience. We already do this: in Crucible, the Wellington players are trying to decide how to take our previous experience of downtime actions into account when doing this for the second time. We’re calculating and strategising, and maybe it’ll come back to bite us again, maybe it won’t. We’ve burned out most of that original uproar, and are trying to be productive.

It sucks to be in a GM’s shoes on a day like today, when the complaints are boiling over. The thing is, though: ninety per cent of the people complaining now won’t be complaining tomorrow. Today it’s sound and fury, signifying nothing but an incoherent rage. The people complaining tomorrow will be the people worth listening to, because they’re the ones who will have ideas about what to do. Speaking as a GM, that day-long surge of complaints means that people actually care about what happens. I can choose to ignore that surge, make a blanket statement about how if people are still upset in a week, I will address concerns then. As a GM I can turn off notifications, go home and drink, or watch people freak out with a bucket of popcorn in my hand. All you can do as a GM is wait for the people who actually have valid things to say to direct themselves to the appropriate channels, and let everyone else make their own peace.

Sorry, that was more bleak than I’d planned. Sorry to the Crucible GMs for what you’re undergoing - I love the world of your game. I’m sorry this is such a difficult problem to fix.

#3

Russ has eloquently covered above pretty much everything I had to say. :smiley:

Supportive constructiveness is a hundred times better than just venting, for the GM/s and for the players. Constructive communication is, in my experience, the quickest and most hassle-free way of ironing out the kinks that inevitably happen when plans and systems meet reality.

Very GMs! Many hard work! Wow!

#4

Please remember that the proper channel for questions and feedback is through your faction representatives.

#5

I’m all for not being a dick about things. I get that being criticized and having floods of angry people complaining or asking questions would be horribly upsetting. We are all passionate about our hobby and you’re not going to please everyone all of the time, that’s impossible, which means there will, unfortunately, always be someone complaining. I believe there’s a difference between that situation and the one where there is an “avalanche of rage”.

Yes, the GMs of Crucible and all other larps put in a truly monster amount of effort for a few hours game play. You will never hear me deny or belittle that. It’s a massive undertaking. Yes they are trying new things and some of them are going to fail. But here is my question.

What is the point of making a larp? At the end of the day, who are you making this inhuman amount of effort FOR?

Did you say the players? The people who are paying to be there? Who also invest large amounts of time, creative energy and money in their characters?

In this particular instance, the GMs were aware this would upset a massive proportion of their player base. They decided to go ahead anyway. Why? Well, I don’t really know, you’d have to ask them, but apparently they were fully cognizant that this would happen and willing to bear the consequences. So I’m really not sure why we are now being told by other players to shut up and be nice about it.

I’d like to have more options than “Shut up and deal with it” or “Not playing”. I want to play Crucible. I want to feel like my character makes a difference, gets to be the hero occasionally, and has some kind of success in life, whatever that might mean for her. And yes, bad shit happens to characters. Fair enough, endless sunshine and roses would make a very dull larp and a lot of “bad things” are awesome.

Did we make mistakes? Misread the rules? Do something wrong? Maybe we did. It’s certainly possible in a game this size with rules this complex. But it is the first downtime, and a HUGE learning curve for all of us, and the level of the consequences for some people was rather like opening a Christmas present and getting nerve gas inside. “But you can ignore it”, I hear you say. But it’s too late, the emotional response has already happened. In which case, what was the point of doing it? Why not reroll or add a “first level difficulty modifier” and avoid the entire backlash they knew was coming? Just don’t tell us not to be upset when the GMs already knew we would be.

At the end of the day, with any game, you can put in all the time and effort in the world, but if you’re putting that effort into things that are causing “avalanches of rage” from your customers then maybe you might want to change what you’re doing. And I don’t think telling upset customers to shut up and show their appreciation for all the hard work is in any way useful. Because if we’re not allowed to discuss our concerns even amongst ourselves, then voting with our wallets is the only option left and I know the GMs don’t want that!

So if I had any advice to give it would be this. Players, vent all you like in your private chats and faction forums, NOT in messages to the GMs, until you hear all the player stories and come up with a coherent list of suggestions/complaints/questions or ideas to send through via your faction rep.

GMs, if you have access to our faction forums, try not to read them until it all dies down! Easier said than done, I’m sure, but we have to discuss things somewhere. Respond to PMs and facebook threads and face to face hijacking with “please write it down and send it to your faction rep, that way it won’t get forgotten”… or something like that.

#6

I like the game, I like that we all got beat.
Am I the only one who has played a video game/seen a movie/read a book where the main character gets beaten AT THE BEGINNING.
Its classic story telling, tear your heroes down so they can regroup and win the next one making the win that much more exciting.

Imagine a story where the main character just won every single challenge they face with little to no losses. Personally thats why im sick of 99% of the current stories out there you know that the main character will never die, you know they will beat the bad guy, you know they will live happily ever after. (except game of thrones where anyone could die at any time)

Yeah, we got hurt this first round but hopefully that reminds us that we dont have plot armour. We have actual armour points and death could be around each corner. We just have to be more careful

#7

One of the problems I have had with the downtime is simply the amount of time I spend thinking about it. This is a personal thing - I like my LARP’s to involve minimal downtime activity, and in my case I am helping the head of a faction who is, quite reasonably, responsible for above the normal level of downtime things. I also know many people do enjoy protracted downtime activity.

Perhaps, in order to minimize communication issues between people players and GM’s, there could be two or three ‘Q+A’ events between games. These events might be over a weekend or a period of two or three days, and any and all questions need to be put to the GM’s before hand via a form. The length of the Q+A event is so that people can then send a follow up question in response to the first feedback. Thereon after, all questions will be ignored until the next Q+A event. Facebook and diatribe forums can continue to be used as a venting platform and a place for players to work out their questions, but as suggested above the GM’s actively ignore these (for their own wellbeing and to encourage use of the Q+A sessions). This would give people time to come up with helpful and constructive questions and comments rather than knee jerk reactions to events, and give a date where people can expect a reply.

#8

Our GM’s are doing a great job and I agree with what others have said;
If you have issues with anything, write it down, wait a week, and then send it to your faction rep.

You character is not dead, they will make it past any unfortunate circumstances. It is better that bad things happen now when they are potentially less life threatening, than later in the chronicle when simple mistakes could cost you everything.

#9

[quote=“theotherphoenix”]So if I had any advice to give it would be this. Players, vent all you like in your private chats and faction forums, NOT in messages to the GMs, until you hear all the player stories and come up with a coherent list of suggestions/complaints/questions or ideas to send through via your faction rep.

GMs, if you have access to our faction forums, try not to read them until it all dies down! Easier said than done, I’m sure, but we have to discuss things somewhere. Respond to PMs and facebook threads and face to face hijacking with “please write it down and send it to your faction rep, that way it won’t get forgotten”… or something like that.[/quote]

This, exactly. GMs can’t stop players from venting or being angry, and players can’t not respond to what they perceive in the short-term as unfairness. Players can, however, maintain decorum about where and how they vent, and GMs can choose to delay their responses until such a time as everything has calmed down. Facebook has already gone quiet: it took less than 24 hours for the vast majority of this to go away in this instance.

I don’t think we can simply tell the players to be nicer - at the point of announcement, a GM introducing a new rule can feel to a player like they’ve just been struck around the back of the head with a hockey stick. Telling them to ‘be nicer’ in response to what they perceive as an unprovoked or unnecessary attack on a character (who, let’s face it, is part of our own psyche) can feel a bit dismissive. All we can really do is what’s suggested above: declare a 24-hour truce, then come in and see what we can do. As bad as it sounds, short of a seachange in the way information is being provided in Crucible, this is likely to be what happens every time an announcement is made. We can help to reduce how invasive the complaints are, and try and confine them to appropriate or personal channels, but that merely eases the problem, rather than curing it.

#10

Comparing larpers to customers (people who consume a for-profit product) is insanely unfair. The money spent on larp goes to venue hire and props; we as players are not paying the GMs’ wages, despite the hours they put in. Sure, the goal is for people to have fun and part of that means listening to feedback, but no, we are not entitled to all the benefits that we would be if the GM’s were getting paid for their time and we should really keep that in mind when deciding how we should voice our feedback. It’s not “shut up or don’t play” it’s “please be a bit nicer about how you criticize something that people are putting their time and energy into for no fiscal reward.”

People are upset because they are investing a lot of creative energy and effort into a character and then that character is getting hurt. It’s definitely understandable to be upset at that. But in the same vein GMs are investing massive amounts of time and effort into their campaign, they are emotionally invested, and when they get torrents of negativity, especially when it is poorly thought out in the heat of the moment, sometimes overly aggressive or passive aggressive, and comes every single time they do anything at all, then that is going to be horribly emotionally draining as well. How would you feel if it wasn’t just that your character was hurt, but a bunch of people told you that they were just a shitty character and you should have done everything differently?

So “at least one person” advised them not to do it and they did it anyway? “At least one person” has probably suggested an all manner of things, many of which wouldn’t work at all. “At least one person” (and usually many more) disagree with every single decision the GMs make.The GMs are the ones with the full picture of what’s going on and the full idea of how they want their chronicle to pan out. Individual players can make suggestions, but the GMs may have reasons for choosing not to listen to them. And even if in that situation it is a mistake on the GM’s part (and personally I am not convinced it was in this case anyway), it doesn’t mean that they suddenly deserve to cop a wave of shit from their player base. Yes, people are upset. Yes, their feelings matter. But I don’t think it is unreasonable or impossible to expect people to expect people to be halfway decent about the manner in which they address their problems.

I definitely agree with venting in private to get rid of that initial emotion, and then compiling a list of constructive feedback. Another important one is making sure that we’re voicing our opinions at least as strongly about things we find positive. Even completely aside from the fact that being nice about stuff and not acting like entitled dicks is generally a good thing, there is just the practical fact that if we want our feedback to be listened to, improvements made and the game to keep getting better, it’s best to keep the GMs feeling positive. Sapping their energy with waves of negativity is going to remove from the pool they have to you know, actually be constructive and improve the game. Each voice is just one of many and when the individual negative voices add up it can be overwhelming - a situation that helps nobody.

It’s not that people should shut up or go home. Yes players are also putting a lot of time and creative energy into their characters and it’s nice to feel like their feedback is being listened to. We all want to have fun, but that is the goal of the GMs as well. If they didn’t want people to have fun, they wouldn’t be using a significant portion of their free time working on the game. Not every decision or game mechanic is going to delight every player, maybe some won’t work out at all but at least people are being innovative. Constructive criticism is really helpful to figure out what works and what doesn’t but it is always imperative that we do keep in mind the fact that we are not customers, we are active participants in a creative project that is running because people are giving up their spare time to run it, and we should never take the time, the effort, or the feelings of those people for granted.

#11

You do know that Crucible is no longer a not-for-profit project of NZlarps right? I’m not saying it will MAKE a profit, given what I know Patrick has put into it financially, but it is actually now a self run project that can make a profit and pay it’s owner(s).

#12

If the GMs were paid minimum wage for their time, most people could no longer afford to play, it would be so expensive. So no, they will never be getting actual wages because that would make the game nonviable. If they do somehow magically find a way to turn a profit and pay themselves, then we could review whether or not we count as customers. Before then, it’s irrelevant that they could, theoretically, make money.

#13

I agree in the sense that we shouldn’t have an “the customer is always right” attitude to games. The Crucible GMs are our friends, they’re running a big game in which they have invested a huge amount of time, energy and (in some cases) money. Even though this is no longer being run through nzlarps I don’t think anyone seriously thinks they’re doing this for the money.

But larps are subject to the same Exit/Voice/Loyalty/Neglect model as employer/employee and business/ customer models. Similar problems will exist between larps/players as between employer/employees and business/customers.

Running a larp isn’t that unique: Business owners and employers also feel it when you criticise them :wink:

I saw people complaining on facebook regarding their downtime actions. But I looked at the posts and thought “this is players channelling their characters”. It didn’t feel to me like they were attacking the GMs. In some cases it looked like they were almost bragging about how bad it was as a kind of OOC suffering --> IC coolness kind of way.

Part of being in the unbalanced GM/player relationship is getting a feel for the mood of the players. The various rants people are having is a metric that GMs can use to see if what they did was good or bad. I believe that suppressing those rants does the GMs a disservice.

#14

Yeah… its a self run project now because it believes that is the best method of supporting and running the actual game financially, by cutting out the non constructive criticisms and middle manning that was happening in some aspects of the organisation with the game.

I know for a complete and utter fact they do not intend to pay themselves, and are running it purely out of passion.

#15

Shall we all have a break for a cup of tea before this gets less constructive again?

#16

Derek, proving points and drinking tea since ages ago.