Ravan's mastermind rant, mainly in regards to multiple hosts
Sept 4, 2015 16:09:41 GMT -8
Post by Ravan on Sept 4, 2015 16:09:41 GMT -8
I said I'd write this ages ago, I seem to have some spare time now, so I may as well write this now.
In my experience with dual hosting in Crown for a short period of time, I learned quite a bit about this mechanic that people have constantly been contemplating using. You know the one, multiple masterminds/hosts/whatever. Please don't. I don't intend on offending anybody with this, I'm just warning you all about it.
I wanted to get this off of my chest back then or else I would've literally erupted into a mountain of salt shakers, so that's why I'm doing this now so my past self can totally be happier, or something equally bull****.
I don't mean to be a party pooper or anything, but there are some serious things to take into consideration when it comes to having multiple hosts that I don't believe anybody really considered in their musings about it. In the event that you're either extremely brave, stupid, stubborn or all of the above like myself, by all means, keep reading. Otherwise, please just keep the idea of "never multi-host unless you're super prepared" in your head, okay? Okay.
I guess to begin with, you're going to need an actual reason to have your other host. Not just because you're tired or you don't have enough time, some actual purpose for them being there is a great way to keep them invested. The reason for this would be because your partner (god forbid partners) may not be as invested in everything created for you by another person. Allow me to explain. I will now explain. Proceeding to explain. Yes.
To use Crown as an example, I had a lot of fun hosting the pregame because I had created everything there on my own and knew exactly what I wanted to have where. Everything had been set up and I could just ad lib anything that I didn't take into account that the players may have inquired about. That was totally fun and easy enough, and I was invested in it because I made that. Now I'm not saying hosting Crown wasn't fun, quite the contrary in fact. However, it was difficult for me to maintain motivation at times due to not knowing the exact limits of things, things not existing as far as I knew yet somehow existing regardless, and so on and so forth. I wasn't capable of proceeding with anything plot related because I wasn't 100% certain as to what my main host had envisioned doing for the plot, so I figured it would be best to leave that in his capable hands. Instead, I just managed other things such as a fight that went so poorly it was retconned out of existence, general investigations and editing for the first couple of days. I often times had to ask what was and wasn't possible because I felt things were still open to interpretation almost every time, and I felt that it was relatively insulting to the players to make them wait to understand just what their abilities could or couldn't do. It was also not a pleasant experience to have people ragequit on me, nor was it pleasant to have to edit essentially every room on the first two floors multiple times for shenanigans. But I did it anyway because otherwise it meant disrupting the game. I apologise once again to those who were impacted the most, and I really can't make it up to you. All I can do is share my complaints now, I guess.
So the tl;dr from that is that if you're going to have more than one host, please do one or more of the following, if not all of this:
- Create the game from the ground up with that person
- Inform them of every single thing you created if you decide to go at it alone initially (literally everything, leave nothing open to interpretation)
- Create powers together and balance them together, perhaps even have some mock murders or fights with them to test their limits.
- Agree on what systems you will be using throughout the game and do not change them randomly (ex: changing battles from phases to single action at one point)
- Agree on who is responsible for what rather than shoving everything onto your partner or taking on everything yourself or what have you
- Don't **** up your sleep schedule like I did and then proceed to host at relatively poor times that would often overlap with my main host's.
- Create a document, if not multiple documents detailing absolutely everything and allow them to be edited by the both of you, for example, what we did for Crown was have one for the backstory/ one for the rooms and one for the player abilities and inventories. Be sure to edit this religiously and notify your partner if you've been making changes.
- Notify your partner of any major things that may or may not have occurred.
- Do not act behind your other hosts' backs.
- Keep on top of things and don't slack off, make everything ASAP and then polish it up from there until you feel it's ready.
- Be sure to get necessary permission for editing prior to hosting. I learned this one the hard way.
This mostly sounds obvious, right? Yeah, unfortunately it isn't. In my case, I had to get used to changing styles, editing rooms, replying to investigations whilst inquiring about things with my main host whenever they were around as well as managing fights and then discovering something was capable of breaking the balance after the consequences roundhouse kicked me in the face a la Chuck Norris. I could've definitely done much better too, I have no excuses for being gone for the latter end of the game, nor can I excuse myself for allowing some very obvious balance oversights go through. I'm bad, there's no other way around it, so feel free to hate on me for this if you'd like, but I'd rather you folks don't suffer the downsides to this like I did.
I suppose I should try and end this on a positive note, right? Having a partner can be really reassuring in the sense that they'll pretty much handle things for you when you're low on energy, and their presence can accelerate the pace of a game drastically. That may also be considered a con, but if implemented correctly, it should allow players of all time zones to participate, though some folks like Satori will never sleep and just make the most of both hosts, hue. The rest of this is just me exuding salt, feel free to ignore it. In fact, I recommend ignoring it.
Also, any host dies inside when somebody takes an item, drops it, picks it back up, then drops it, and then proceeds to pick up another item ad infinitum. Again, it's also bothersome to just have to edit room descriptions constantly, or say something extremely odd in chat because somebody feels like trolling. I know they're fun to do, and I don't mind, but when you folks are like "ARE YOU DOING IT YET" when I'm handling what I consider to be infinitely more important requests, it really gets on my nerves. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Don't be overly offended though, I was just salty. In fact, going to go on a salty rant now. Y'know what else grinded my gears? When I spent hours on a single fight that would've ended in the first phase, but instead, I was told to switch things to an action by action basis just to specifically slow down one player's chances, thus causing the fight to go on for hours if I recall correctly. This was a random exception and the reasoning behind it was unfair. There was also direct assistance coming from one of the masterminds towards one of the players, and I found this to be unacceptable when I discovered it, but I had no power to do anything. This one player constantly and consistently got the short end of the stick throughout the entire game in fights and in powers, which was honestly really depressing to see. It was also bothersome to have to learn about players' powers from the players themselves rather than directly figure out specifics from the document I was given. It was even more bothersome when I was the only one editing the aforementioned document with players' items, where those items came from and then notifying my partner of those changes. I literally got wall upon wall of text thrown at me that I had to sift through to look for the relevant bits in order to figure out just who did what and what the actual state of the game was, and even then, I just couldn't host from that point onward as I had no clue as to who had what anymore. Room descriptions in the document often times were not even edited from last year and I learned this the hard way when players started examining things that shouldn't have even existed. Some of you players really should know that it's not as easy as just stabbing somebody and then watching them die horribly. Old women can go for like 50 stab wounds and still live, so you better get your **** together when it comes to murder. I was relatively lenient by just throwing Felicia or Joker at people in the pregame if somebody tried something overwhelmingly obvious, though perhaps I interfered too much with the game in that sense.
That was a thing. If you managed to read through that, kudos to you I guess. Sorry for *****ing, sorry for ranting, sorry for being incompetent, you get the picture. If you people want me out I'd completely understand because I felt inept and incompetent throughout the entirety of the game outside of the pregame, and I allowed things that should never have been allowed before. If you somehow don't mind that though, I do intend on improving and being more of a hypocrite in the nearby future, perhaps when my workload with university lightens up a bit, so look forward to that if you somehow didn't mind my hosting, I guess. I'd like to hear what you all thought of it as well if you actually read this far. Thanks again, sorry again, and try not to die from the wall of text.
A lot of this was inspired by Eclipse's rant, and I highly recommend for you folks to read it if you want more insight into how to make a mastermind salty if this rant wasn't enough. I tried not to repeat anything he went into detail on over there, but I'm pretty sure there's some overlap anyway. If I posted this in the wrong place, there's another thing I failed at.
In my experience with dual hosting in Crown for a short period of time, I learned quite a bit about this mechanic that people have constantly been contemplating using. You know the one, multiple masterminds/hosts/whatever. Please don't. I don't intend on offending anybody with this, I'm just warning you all about it.
I wanted to get this off of my chest back then or else I would've literally erupted into a mountain of salt shakers, so that's why I'm doing this now so my past self can totally be happier, or something equally bull****.
I don't mean to be a party pooper or anything, but there are some serious things to take into consideration when it comes to having multiple hosts that I don't believe anybody really considered in their musings about it. In the event that you're either extremely brave, stupid, stubborn or all of the above like myself, by all means, keep reading. Otherwise, please just keep the idea of "never multi-host unless you're super prepared" in your head, okay? Okay.
I guess to begin with, you're going to need an actual reason to have your other host. Not just because you're tired or you don't have enough time, some actual purpose for them being there is a great way to keep them invested. The reason for this would be because your partner (god forbid partners) may not be as invested in everything created for you by another person. Allow me to explain. I will now explain. Proceeding to explain. Yes.
To use Crown as an example, I had a lot of fun hosting the pregame because I had created everything there on my own and knew exactly what I wanted to have where. Everything had been set up and I could just ad lib anything that I didn't take into account that the players may have inquired about. That was totally fun and easy enough, and I was invested in it because I made that. Now I'm not saying hosting Crown wasn't fun, quite the contrary in fact. However, it was difficult for me to maintain motivation at times due to not knowing the exact limits of things, things not existing as far as I knew yet somehow existing regardless, and so on and so forth. I wasn't capable of proceeding with anything plot related because I wasn't 100% certain as to what my main host had envisioned doing for the plot, so I figured it would be best to leave that in his capable hands. Instead, I just managed other things such as a fight that went so poorly it was retconned out of existence, general investigations and editing for the first couple of days. I often times had to ask what was and wasn't possible because I felt things were still open to interpretation almost every time, and I felt that it was relatively insulting to the players to make them wait to understand just what their abilities could or couldn't do. It was also not a pleasant experience to have people ragequit on me, nor was it pleasant to have to edit essentially every room on the first two floors multiple times for shenanigans. But I did it anyway because otherwise it meant disrupting the game. I apologise once again to those who were impacted the most, and I really can't make it up to you. All I can do is share my complaints now, I guess.
So the tl;dr from that is that if you're going to have more than one host, please do one or more of the following, if not all of this:
- Create the game from the ground up with that person
- Inform them of every single thing you created if you decide to go at it alone initially (literally everything, leave nothing open to interpretation)
- Create powers together and balance them together, perhaps even have some mock murders or fights with them to test their limits.
- Agree on what systems you will be using throughout the game and do not change them randomly (ex: changing battles from phases to single action at one point)
- Agree on who is responsible for what rather than shoving everything onto your partner or taking on everything yourself or what have you
- Don't **** up your sleep schedule like I did and then proceed to host at relatively poor times that would often overlap with my main host's.
- Create a document, if not multiple documents detailing absolutely everything and allow them to be edited by the both of you, for example, what we did for Crown was have one for the backstory/ one for the rooms and one for the player abilities and inventories. Be sure to edit this religiously and notify your partner if you've been making changes.
- Notify your partner of any major things that may or may not have occurred.
- Do not act behind your other hosts' backs.
- Keep on top of things and don't slack off, make everything ASAP and then polish it up from there until you feel it's ready.
- Be sure to get necessary permission for editing prior to hosting. I learned this one the hard way.
This mostly sounds obvious, right? Yeah, unfortunately it isn't. In my case, I had to get used to changing styles, editing rooms, replying to investigations whilst inquiring about things with my main host whenever they were around as well as managing fights and then discovering something was capable of breaking the balance after the consequences roundhouse kicked me in the face a la Chuck Norris. I could've definitely done much better too, I have no excuses for being gone for the latter end of the game, nor can I excuse myself for allowing some very obvious balance oversights go through. I'm bad, there's no other way around it, so feel free to hate on me for this if you'd like, but I'd rather you folks don't suffer the downsides to this like I did.
I suppose I should try and end this on a positive note, right? Having a partner can be really reassuring in the sense that they'll pretty much handle things for you when you're low on energy, and their presence can accelerate the pace of a game drastically. That may also be considered a con, but if implemented correctly, it should allow players of all time zones to participate, though some folks like Satori will never sleep and just make the most of both hosts, hue. The rest of this is just me exuding salt, feel free to ignore it. In fact, I recommend ignoring it.
Also, any host dies inside when somebody takes an item, drops it, picks it back up, then drops it, and then proceeds to pick up another item ad infinitum. Again, it's also bothersome to just have to edit room descriptions constantly, or say something extremely odd in chat because somebody feels like trolling. I know they're fun to do, and I don't mind, but when you folks are like "ARE YOU DOING IT YET" when I'm handling what I consider to be infinitely more important requests, it really gets on my nerves. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Don't be overly offended though, I was just salty. In fact, going to go on a salty rant now. Y'know what else grinded my gears? When I spent hours on a single fight that would've ended in the first phase, but instead, I was told to switch things to an action by action basis just to specifically slow down one player's chances, thus causing the fight to go on for hours if I recall correctly. This was a random exception and the reasoning behind it was unfair. There was also direct assistance coming from one of the masterminds towards one of the players, and I found this to be unacceptable when I discovered it, but I had no power to do anything. This one player constantly and consistently got the short end of the stick throughout the entire game in fights and in powers, which was honestly really depressing to see. It was also bothersome to have to learn about players' powers from the players themselves rather than directly figure out specifics from the document I was given. It was even more bothersome when I was the only one editing the aforementioned document with players' items, where those items came from and then notifying my partner of those changes. I literally got wall upon wall of text thrown at me that I had to sift through to look for the relevant bits in order to figure out just who did what and what the actual state of the game was, and even then, I just couldn't host from that point onward as I had no clue as to who had what anymore. Room descriptions in the document often times were not even edited from last year and I learned this the hard way when players started examining things that shouldn't have even existed. Some of you players really should know that it's not as easy as just stabbing somebody and then watching them die horribly. Old women can go for like 50 stab wounds and still live, so you better get your **** together when it comes to murder. I was relatively lenient by just throwing Felicia or Joker at people in the pregame if somebody tried something overwhelmingly obvious, though perhaps I interfered too much with the game in that sense.
That was a thing. If you managed to read through that, kudos to you I guess. Sorry for *****ing, sorry for ranting, sorry for being incompetent, you get the picture. If you people want me out I'd completely understand because I felt inept and incompetent throughout the entirety of the game outside of the pregame, and I allowed things that should never have been allowed before. If you somehow don't mind that though, I do intend on improving and being more of a hypocrite in the nearby future, perhaps when my workload with university lightens up a bit, so look forward to that if you somehow didn't mind my hosting, I guess. I'd like to hear what you all thought of it as well if you actually read this far. Thanks again, sorry again, and try not to die from the wall of text.
A lot of this was inspired by Eclipse's rant, and I highly recommend for you folks to read it if you want more insight into how to make a mastermind salty if this rant wasn't enough. I tried not to repeat anything he went into detail on over there, but I'm pretty sure there's some overlap anyway. If I posted this in the wrong place, there's another thing I failed at.