Question for Anaiah

A few times a month overall, with Rahmi and Rathustra being bigger on it with gith, Rahneyvahn making the white carru that was around in I think 2011.

Sometimes more than others, sometimes less. I tended to do echoes and stuff more than animating unless someone else was already roleplaying with an npc and I caught it, like wtf was his name... the fierce belshun eyed (or haired) man... ah, Arj/Arjaan. I animated a male shopkeeper to hit on him while he was trying to talk the guy down on a price once.

Peoples reactions vary wildly.

yeah I would slam wizzes pretty hard if they implemented some bs like that

I've been thinking along those lines for a while now. A lot of muxes are run like that. Players can run plots and staff can run them too. If staff would jump into lady foofydrawls and say hey whatever clan Minions I need this rare item from the eastern edge of the red. Just a small relatively simple plot, I'd be into that.

I naively thought staff already did stuff like that, but apparently they don't. Frankly I'm a little surprised there's a staff title called "storyteller", but they can't really tell stories. It raises all kinds off questions to me. One being do clan leaders have to send a request to staff for certain things to happen during RPTs?

Not sure about people being OOC until there's something to do. I staffed on a Mux that did that and all people did was stay OOC and wait for someone to run something, then go IC.

lyse: Sometimes. It really depends on the RPT and if it is something players can do without staff. If it is something that requires staff, having it all set up in advance before the RPT begins makes everything run more smoothly, by the staff member on hand being prepared and eliminating wait times to browse through 80k items or keeping miscommunication from becoming a possible issue.

@lizzie: LOL a lot of people start emoting more after an echo like that. Frankly, I chalk it up less to staff animation and more to the fact that the world around your character is reacting in a way that you, as a player, might not have been looking at it as acting, or with more notable details, etc. Because I certainly do the same. In fact, that's part of WHY I prefer echoes. With an npc if you are in some clans, you will only be a pc's superior and thus carry weight that you may not want to in the eyes of the pc as having said one thing, or because it is an avatar npc walking, people will react differently, as opposed to putting out some badass echoes and people just feeling the world around them more deeply and having more to react to.

I think you're misinterpreting what I'm saying here. Of course the game world would still be completely IC. I'm talking about planned RPTs being more organized. I'm talking about staff not being invisible 24/7. Instead of players milling about in taverns there would be OOC Announcements of things that are going on so they can join in instead of having to sit around idling or simply not knowing.

If breaking immersion is the problem you easily code in an option where you opt-out of the messages. I personally never felt that my immersion was broken by seeing a reboot message. Hell half the time I'm not even around players with my indies I am out in the desert alone or walking around the city alone.

To break it down even farther the messages could be clan-only. So for example lets say the staffer of the Byn just randomly decides one day he has 4 hours to kill and wants to do a mini-RPT. He can announce it to the clan in game and it makes things a lot easier, streamlined, and it doesn't completely remove the dungeon master aspect from the game. I could even foresee briefing the players on what they are getting into. Information that can be completely explained as IC just coming from scouts, eavesdropping or w/e the case may be. The same way we do it in D&D.

Delerak, while I personally dig what you're on about, I think it goes against the IC all the time/physics engine world idea of an RPI.

It's a game with the Way. Messages can hop instantly. Have town crier-types or clan-crier types in places where people gather, the Gaj, the Sanctuary, Storm's End, whatever. Have them able to make announcements from either staff, or higher-up PCs (Templars, Sergeants, etc.) to announce stuff. It'd be a cool addition, it'd add in the ability to pass a message along quickly, and it'd make a lot of sense IC.