GM Events

[Rayken]

heh that's a good idea.  We have run events designed for 'Evil' characters before.  And I was pleasantly surprised when many players with 'Good' characters opted out, because it was not IC for them.

[Under the moon]

I designed and helped run all of the Crystal Eclipse events (the ones for the last client update). Weeks of planning went into those events, and days of pre-setup and plot building. Hours went into final setup, prep, positioning, and rehearsal. Yellow labels were used as well a Green, depending on the need and situation. Shouts, worldshouts, tells, groups, and system messages were all used as well. The event feature was used in some cases, not in others, also dependant on the need. Pretty much every trick in the GM handbag was used to its maximum potential; porting, morphing, renaming, sliding, giving and taking items from players, and even the worlddeath command (followed by the death command).

I can not tell you how proud I am of the GMs, players, Devs, and prospects who took part. Everyone did excellent!

Why do I bring this up? For the simple fact that if any ONE of those GM tools were not there to use, those events would have been far harder to pull off. I shudder to think of how they would have gone without the non-green labels. I even use them in small events when needed. Sometimes they ARE needed.

Those of you that are saying not to use some of these tools simply do not understand what it takes to make events. I have run events as a player as well (the Un-Common Cold and several smaller ones) and it is incredibly hard to do without the aid of the GM tools.

Yes, mistakes have been made. Yes, tools have been misused on occasion. You know what I have to say to that? SUCK IT UP! Quit whining about it. Non of us are professionals. No one gets paid to do these things full time and become experts. Mistakes WILL happen. I have made them, you have made them. And frankly, until you have helped design and run a few GM events, YOU do NOT have the insight to "Know what the problem is." and know how to fix it.

[Velh Krome]

Everyone who ever set up any event involving other players, thus some factor x, knows that always minor issue will occur. Nothing worth to be mentioned.
UtM, that Eclipse event with also Jardet in his garden? In my eyes it was rather obvious that this whole thing, many different simultaneous spots of action, everything interwoven, was very well figured out.
But in the Magic Garden there was also Xiosia sort of publically introduced. Actually thats what I meant with using GM events to make people know about the setting, or at least make proper use of it.

[Dajoji]

I'm not sure what you mean by "make proper use of it [the settings]". All events are reviewed by Talad and discussed among the GMs that are going to throw it so it's very difficult to let something outside settings slip.

[Velh Krome]

Hm.. perhaps its not a complete setting thing but a mix of also sense.
I think of meant to be very poor miners who have plenties of platinum stocks to give away without knowing what are they good for (okay, that rewards were mostly ooc was already mentioned), or that clacker spellcaster evildoing in Hydlaa unnoticed by any guards.

Of course I have to say explicitly that I partook some other events as well that left me quite satisfied in terms of sense and stuff!

[Orgonwukh]

I always try to stay IC, GM event or not. I took part in some GM events, never got a reward. The following example shows my (evil) char's behaviour during one event.

(21:11:42) >Cleaning Kran raises an arm and points towards Orgonwukh.
(21:11:47) Cleaning says: I clean armor?
(21:12:13) Orgonwukh frowns "Don't touch my armor, mate. I can handle that myself."
(21:12:22) Cleaning says: Yes ser
(21:12:32) Cleaning looks at Orgonwukh, as if waiting for a tip
(21:12:53) Orgonwukh chuckles "What now?"
(21:12:56) Izzabella smirks
(21:13:05) Cleaning stares at Orgonwukh
(21:13:38) Orgonwukh looks at Cleaning "Not very bright, eh?"
[...]
(21:17:15) Anonymous says: I have a battle hammer to be cleaned. How many tria do you take for that?
(21:17:32) Cleaning turns to Zwenze "2 coins only!"
(21:18:01) Anonymous nods and gives cleaning a Battlle hammer and two circles
(21:18:33) Cleaning looks at the circles and frowns "No give me bad money"
(21:19:24) Cleaning says: I only green coins
(21:19:29) Cleaning says: Gold coins not want
(21:19:38) Orgonwukh bursts out laughing
(21:19:57) Orgonwukh says: You can give those gold coins to me, kran. I give you two green for one gold coin, eh?

I left this event when the cleaning kran said he was hungry and about 30 guys were running and brining him various meals, crystals and ores to eat.
As I said, I never got any reward from any GM event I took part. So I have two choices:
1. Stay IC and get frustrated because of the OOC behaviour of other players. And in the end I get no reward for my RP, but they get some for whatever they did.
2. Avoid GM events as some of you have already proposed.

I tried 1. for a long time, but in the end I ended up with 2.
I know it requires a lot of work and patience to set those events up and I do not want to complain only here. So my only proposal is to not reward players anymore with items or money. Maybe there could be something like a 'roleplay fraction'. You could reward participants for their roleplay efforts. Maybe this fraction could be visible to everyone, so if I look at someone's description, I could easily recognise people who have proved that they know how to roleplay nicely. People maybe would try to improve that fraction to get respect from other players and by giving negative points for OOC behaviour, we could also identify 'black sheep'.

Oh, there might be another solution for me:
3. Create a 'goodie goodie' alt and log him when I regognise an event is running

... reconsidering... No, because:
It's good to be bad

[Under the moon]

How many player events do you skip out on because there is not a reward for baddies, or goodies for that matter? I like to design events where entertainment is the reward... And sometimes the reward is beating the GM in whatever plot they have planned, good or bad.

I don't like to pull punches when it comes to bad effects that come from a series of actions, and am not afraid to skip rewards entirely. Only a few people knew this at the time, but at the time of my Un-Common Cold RP a few years back, I was privately talking to a few Devs. Why? *evil grin* To wipe the system if the plague was not cured. Luckily, it did not come to that. The 'Reward' for that one was what few belongings the evildoer had on him at the time of capture.

Frankly, players are spoiled. Most think they have nothing really to gain or lose by skipping out on GM events besides a magic staff. Honestly, they are right. I would very much like to see dire consequences for failure... And /tell and /guild muting for anyone near the GMs or in the event.

[Rayken]

/tell and /guild mute are a great idea, for these sorts of occasions.  That would be very useful.  Don't forget /group mute.

[Duraza]

In my opinion, The solution is adding 'evil' events. Where players might lose money/items/stats.
People would think twice before entering an event, And will double check the character that starts the event.

To tell the truth I would love this. As I mentioned before most of the times I run into GM events with some evil plot in mind but I'm never looking for an actual reward. I gave up on caring about rewards and rare items a long time ago though my characters are still greedy. All I ever expect oocly is to get killed or something. I'd love it if there were gm events in which the players got tricked. I think that would solve just about every problem. Have a gm asking for cash from players to use in some "great plan" and tell them they will get a reward just to blast them all to DR with some spell and log out laughing. Tell players you are looking for ingredients for a potion that would make them super powerful only for them to take a sip and have their stats cut for hours. It would make events so much more of an IC choice.

Another thing is something that I believe has been mentioned before in another thread (That whole Risk and Reward thread by UTM). If your giving out rare items make there be an actual risk. Something that would make someone think twice about going through an event. I think doing these things would totally quiet anyone's negative opinions of gm events. I know I've held a few player events and I always try and prepare a reward. However I love making there be a big risk. I love making sure that my characters put themselves at risk to get what they want. It makes rping so much more realistic to me.

I'm sure there are probably plans for things like this already but guess it doesn't hurt to mention it  

[Zan]

In my opinion, The solution is adding 'evil' events. Where players might lose money/items/stats.
People would think twice before entering an event, And will double check the character that starts the event.

Excellent suggestion, me likey.

Yes, mistakes have been made. Yes, tools have been misused on occasion. You know what I have to say to that? SUCK IT UP! Quit whining about it. Non of us are professionals. No one gets paid to do these things full time and become experts. Mistakes WILL happen. I have made them, you have made them. And frankly, until you have helped design and run a few GM events, YOU do NOT have the insight to "Know what the problem is." and know how to fix it.

I've never had any trouble helping to create player run events and only once really needed GM help. I also know how difficult it is to run a good GM event and that mistakes are indeed easily made, even by the best people. But I do think we have reason to whine about it. This thread might not have started out so well because of some people taking things personal but I like where it is going now .. a healthy discussion. I started out on one side and rignt now I'm in the middle because of good arguments from the other side. If only one person from that other side thinks the same then I'm happy already.

If people stop whining, you guys can stop improving and nobody wants that.

[Dajoji]

GMs can certainly tell when an event works and when it doesn't and we take note so those mistakes can be corrected. Whining is not the only way to point out the flaws. There is a difference between being critical about something and having arguments to support their position and another one to just whine because they didn't get what they want. The latter tends to come wrapped in misinformation. I believe this thread started out with a mix of both (criticism based on an honest but misinformed opinion) and as it evolved it put on the table enough information so that players can make the most out of their event experiences, and we needed that.

[Under the moon]

Er... ya. Sorry about the whining comment. For the record, I did not see your posts as 'whining', Zan. They were well thought out. It is the little short ones with hardly any thought put into them at all besides not liking how a few events were done that put me in a bad mood.

[Orgonwukh]

How many player events do you skip out on because there is not a reward for baddies, or goodies for that matter?

None. You can see that from the my proposal to never give any item or money reward.
It is just frustrating to see other players who go OOC and are rewarded, while you stay IC and get nothing.

*edit*

/tell and /guild mute are a great idea, for these sorts of occasions.  That would be very useful.  Don't forget /group mute.

I fear in this case there will pop up a lot of IRC channels which will do the same job

[Dajoji]

If other players annoy you with their lack of consistency, then it's not a problem GMs can solve. And let me point again that if you stay in character, you have to make sure that your actions are slow enough so that not only can they be picked up by the GM but also by the group. You are not roleplaying one on one with the event character so you have to set your action speed to affect not one, but all the characters. It's a fair compromise that allows everyone to have a chance to react. If you got tired and left the event before your actions could make an impact, then no, you're probably not even going to get registered in the event, much less get a reward.

[Orgonwukh]

This was just an example. I took part in many events as I said, and completed most of them.