Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

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Avanos
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Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by Avanos »

Hello BGTSCC,

I'm starting this thread in hope that we could streamline player/staff communication and events by creating a calendar with staff availability timeslots that players can book.

I was looking into Microsoft Bookings, and I am sure that there are plenty of other free resources online that can be used in its place.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microso ... ooking-app
Microsoft Bookings makes scheduling and managing appointments a breeze. Bookings includes a web-based booking calendar and integrates with Outlook to optimize your staff’s calendar and give your customers flexibility to book a time that works best for them. Email and SMS text notifications reduce no-shows and enhances customer satisfaction. Your organization saves time with a reduction in repetitive scheduling tasks. With built-in flexibility and ability to customize, Bookings can be designed to fit the situation and needs of many different parts of an organization.
Here is a short video on how MS Bookings works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=647C4gZt9Fo

I came up with this idea in response to this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=77027
Response times to requests:
The current response time is absolutely atrocious. I made a joke on my discord that it takes 4d4 weeks to get a formal response to have something done - This in my opinion is unacceptable. A simple message within 12 hours should at least be given to the player making the request that is has been noted and up for discussion. The DM replying should also post the request under the DM subforums for discussion. Requests should NEVER go unanswered.
I believe it is up to the team to actively try to close open requests - not up to the player. Some requests are so simple that it should not take even a day of discussion and should be automatically approved - such as a scouting mission.

It is VERY demoralizing for the player to try and negotiate an event for weeks when they know that his or her character would have already completed the task if not for OOC politics. It should not be the players responsibility to constantly send reminders on a weekly basis and get a few sentences in response, while they see DM approved rumors on the IC rumors feed of opposition players actively working against them.

Most players and DMs use discord. Hit them up there and have a live chat about what they wish to do and calendar it.

Split your focus equally on both sides. If you hold one event for TG, make sure you hold a second for TE.
Impromptu events are great for this. Spawn a boss monster (example) with some nice loot on drop and place it in some map somewhere. Let the players know and have them deal with it. There are many events that you can generate that don't need your direct supervision.

People come here to try and make a change in the world - help them with that. If it is not something that can be done to the players liking - compromise!

Get the events rolled out for both sides - you will have a happier player base in return. This is the responsibility that you accepted when applying for the DM position after all.
Avanos wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 5:58 pm What I do criticize the team on is communication.
REPLY in a timely manner! That's all I ask for!

Rhifox - you have a ton on your plate and you have set a GOLD standard. If I pm you with an issue I already know that I am guaranteed a reply within 12-24 hours. You even follow up yourself on issues without players needing to remind you (from what I've seen so far). This is my expectation from the rest of the team.
If one or two messages were to be missed - I'm sure people will not cause a fuss. But do the back-end research. Go through PMs and check to see how long it takes for most events to get processed.

As far as criticism, this will come with the territory - in any job really! You need to steel yourself against all forms of personalities and need to know how to accept criticism whether it be right or wrong. Its the only way to learn and move forward. I've been chewed out by my higher ups on more than one occasion. There are times when I knew I was wrong, and other times where I knew I was right - but I accepted the criticism and learned from it.

We are here to help the DM team as a player-base too - its not fun to log in as a DM and see only one or two people playing. It is a relationship that needs to be maintained.

Being a staff member on BG is just like having any other job. I know that it is unpaid - but at the end of the day, you signed up for it! You accepted the responsibilities of an unpaid position.

As for the DM Request tool:
viewtopic.php?f=444&p=937422#p937422
We need more transparency. We have no idea if something is being worked on or not and I'm sure that players do not want to keep reminding the team.

COMMUNICATION IS KEY!
I've already made my position clear on the above - and I will concede that this is not a job, but a hobby. I am not trying to make this feel like a job, but I would like to see a level of organization and consistency so that both the staff and player base will be happy.

A system like this will accomplish the following:
Transparency
DMs Set their own schedule
Players book timeslots based on DM schedule
Improve Communication
Expedite Events
Expedite Plots
Maintain Consistency


I think that a system like this is at least WORTH testing - no harm will come from a trial period of a month. There is nothing to lose and we can only gain from it.

Thoughts?
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by Aspect of Sorrow »

The DM Discord attempts to accomplish this, communication directly with factions there, as well as the bot scheduler, though Ghost doesn't use it.
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by Avanos »

Aspect of Sorrow wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:54 pm The DM Discord attempts to accomplish this, communication directly with factions there, as well as the bot scheduler, though Ghost doesn't use it.
Would you say that it is working with a high level of consistency?
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by DaloLorn »

Avanos wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 11:19 pm
Aspect of Sorrow wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:54 pm The DM Discord attempts to accomplish this, communication directly with factions there, as well as the bot scheduler, though Ghost doesn't use it.
Would you say that it is working with a high level of consistency?
I would say that Discord outreach is a good chunk of why we were finally able to wrap up the rest of the Rockrun plot, and why Dreamer's hag plot was progressing at such a lovely pace before the poor fellow burned out, on account of being able to quickly schedule events and keep a casual finger on the community's pulse in between formal requests. It's probably also partly responsible for the popularity Ink and SummerBreeze seem to enjoy in the thread you've branched out of. (Another reason is probably that they're just good DMs, though I sadly have little to no personal experience to confirm this.)

Sooo, yeah. It's working, and insofar as it's being consistently used by the DMs, it's working consistently, IMO.

That being said, there's a key element that merits consideration.

Per the current roster at memberlist.php?mode=group&g=162, there are a total of 12 DMs currently on the team. Of those 12:
  • It's my understanding that Boo was supposed to have retired almost a year ago, at the conclusion of the Orcus plot; I certainly don't remember hearing from him afterwards, either way.
  • Ink is Schrödinger's DM, both retired and active until you ask him which one he is on any given day. :lol: (Not that this is entirely a bad thing! His constant breaks are possibly the only thing standing between him and burnout...)
  • Sparty, Soul and Ghost are long-known veterans, but can be a bit hands-off at times unless you explicitly engage with them on the forums. (The Rockrun plot is an unfortunate example of this: We were actively participating, we put another request in his queue, but by the time it became clear that it had gotten buried in his inbox, we were too demoralized or distracted to send a reminder. Didn't stop us from leaping right back into the fray when the plot picked up pace, and it didn't stop him from making the best of what he was given, but as we later discussed in Discord, the hiatus could probably have been considerably shortened by taking a moment to say "hey, is everything alright, are you still up for this?".)
  • I don't think I've even heard of Foresight doing anything in the past year or so? (Or Author and Inviscid, but ADMs do tend to keep a lower public profile...)
  • It's worth noting that as a single non-DM with no insight into the amount or nature of DM requests processed by the team, my information is extremely limited. That being said, my personal impression is that Gixustrat, Glundrothi, and Winter have slowed down somewhat, which can either indicate a lot of low-key personal requests being processed, or a decline in their activity.
  • As the newest ADM on the team, I was a bit surprised to hear that Honk was taking such an active role in supporting Darkhold's participation in the LA-DH war. However, he's obviously doing a good job of it, given Rhi's callout the other day!
The bottom line is: On paper, we have 12 DMs for a population of at least 60 regular players. This is a sort-of vaguely manageable ratio by PnP standards, but BG's DMs have to deal with more work than PnP DMs do (rule enforcement, occasional technical support, battling the DM client, etc.), and to make matters worse, the playerbase doesn't helpfully divide itself into groups of 5 for the DMs' benefit. It's usually either 1-3 people per event, or (possibly more than) a dozen at once.

If you take my activity assessments at face value (you shouldn't, but you probably shouldn't assume we really have 12 DMs' worth of DM time, either!), then we don't even have 12 DMs. At the more pessimistic estimates, we have four and a half (Sorry, Ink, I'm cutting you in half! :lol:), and it seems entirely realistic to assume that we have 6-10 consistently active DMs. For a server that can't really make do with 12. :|
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Rhifox
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by Rhifox »

Our concern with external apps (which we did consider and look into) is that getting DMs to keep up with forums is already a task, and requiring them to learn and use another program could cause additional hardship. Hence why we went with a new forum-based request system.

That being said, we can look into this and see what people think.
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by Ghost »

I will not force my team to use any such tools. It's a game, and I'm not going to expect my DMs to treat it like a work schedule.

None of this is helping. You can call it "constructive criticism" all you like, but the function is destructive. This constant barrage of negativity directed at the DM team is only damaging the DMs' morale, draining our energy. Yes, we know we need to get better at responding. These kinds of suggestions only serve to burn us out.
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by Planehopper »

Sure, understandable. It should remain constructive (and this thread appears to be an attempt toward that).

But never addressing it, or stifling conversation about it, and having it never improve is also a cause of burnout, it is also destructive. I could give you a list of at least a dozen people that don't play here anymore over the last two years because of the lack of DM response and/or a perception of the same toward them as individuals or as a guild.

If these suggestions don't help, what does? Not addressing it isn't helping, either.
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

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DM Discord was created by DMs for purposes that assisted them, the scheduling bots are tools that were added by...


... the DMs.
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by Sharrans »

Aspect of Sorrow wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 10:41 pm DM Discord was created by DMs for purposes that assisted them, the scheduling bots are tools that were added by...


... the DMs.
Maybe I don't want to be categorized as Team Evil, Whitewood Vanguard, Northern Barony, Zhentarim, Lords Alliance. Maybe I'd like to retain some level of anonymity? I don't want my organization to be public knowledge whether it be IC or OOC.

This is a suggestion to create an open calendar that everyone can view, and can reserve timeslots.
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by DM Winter »

Sharrans wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 10:50 pm Maybe I don't want to be categorized as Team Evil, Whitewood Vanguard, Northern Barony, Zhentarim, Lords Alliance. Maybe I'd like to retain some level of anonymity? I don't want my organization to be public knowledge whether it be IC or OOC.

This is a suggestion to create an open calendar that everyone can view, and can reserve timeslots.
you can have a private channel in the discord for only your guild
Winter is coming... Or something like that, idk, you get the joke

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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by DM Winter »

DaloLorn wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 3:49 am [*]It's worth noting that as a single non-DM with no insight into the amount or nature of DM requests processed by the team, my information is extremely limited. That being said, my personal impression is that Gixustrat, Glundrothi, and Winter have slowed down somewhat, which can either indicate a lot of low-key personal requests being processed, or a decline in their activity.
And just to address being mentioned here, its a bit of both! Personal requests that have me not doing as much impromptu-stuff as I used to, and school being a b*tch. Also slightly less active on discord convos overall because, honestly, some of them are very demoralizing, to the point I understand why some DMs simply arent in the public discords at all x-x
Winter is coming... Or something like that, idk, you get the joke

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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by DaloLorn »

Planehopper wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 9:38 pm Sure, understandable. It should remain constructive (and this thread appears to be an attempt toward that).

But never addressing it, or stifling conversation about it, and having it never improve is also a cause of burnout, it is also destructive. I could give you a list of at least a dozen people that don't play here anymore over the last two years because of the lack of DM response and/or a perception of the same toward them as individuals or as a guild.

If these suggestions don't help, what does? Not addressing it isn't helping, either.
It's also possible that actively combatting attempts at addressing it is what leads to burnout among what I'd generally consider some of our better DMs.

TBH, Ghost's post makes a certain amount of sense taken at face value. The DM team is already understaffed given all the responsibilities on their plate, and it's better to have a low performance minimum than to run out of people willing to meet that minimum. However, having low expectations as a concession to the voluntary nature of DMing doesn't mean that individual DMs shouldn't be allowed to find ways to exceed those expectations (as SB, Dreamer, and IMO, our whole crop of "Discord DMs" have been doing all along), or that people should be prohibited from looking for ways to make it easier to meet/exceed them.

Put another way: DMs, devs, even the admins are volunteers. Modders in any game are volunteers. But the trick about volunteering is that you aren't (or at least shouldn't be) magically prohibited from doing work a professional would be proud to call their own. Dae does it devside. I like to think I did, too. (I don't have quite as high an opinion of my DMing as some of the people I've DMed for, though, so I mostly think it about my devving. :P) Rhi, amazingly, keeps putting out one colossal project after another, despite having had to learn basically everything from scratch and hack up weirdly convoluted workarounds for NWN's limitations on top of that, and she still comes away with results on par with what I've come to expect of professional game developers. (Which admittedly isn't flawless, but it holds up beautifully after a few rounds of fixing! :lol:)

It's okay that you don't want to hold yourself to the amazing standards they set for themselves. (I'm not sure I do, either!) And given your position as HDM, it speaks volumes of mostly good things that you don't want to force your subordinates to hold themselves to those standards. But I don't see the harm in us finding ways to make it easier for you to meet and possibly exceed your standards, or in individual DMs experimenting with ways to get better results for the same amount of effort invested.

In the context of Avanos' proposal: Think about how many back-and-forth PMs you could avoid having to write if you said "I think I'll be open for some DMing on X, Y, and Z" and offloaded the subsequent scheduling to your players. (It doesn't even have to be a binding agreement, IMO, just an estimate.) Think about how many you've already eliminated by deciding to schedule Rockrun via the UD Discord! Depending on whether you prefer to measure your desired performance in time spent or work done, that's time saved you can use to either get more work done in the time you allotted for DM-related work, or to relax after doing all the work you were planning on doing.

The bottom line is, there's nothing inherently wrong about brainstorming, and plenty of good to be had from doing it in this context. A case could be made that Avanos' word choice occasionally departed the territory of brainstorming and entered into the realm of requesting, but at the end of the day, I think he still understands that the final decision is up to the DMs, not him.
DM Winter wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 10:59 pm
Sharrans wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 10:50 pm Maybe I don't want to be categorized as Team Evil, Whitewood Vanguard, Northern Barony, Zhentarim, Lords Alliance. Maybe I'd like to retain some level of anonymity? I don't want my organization to be public knowledge whether it be IC or OOC.

This is a suggestion to create an open calendar that everyone can view, and can reserve timeslots.
you can have a private channel in the discord for only your guild
Technically doesn't really work, because he'd still need to have the role...

... No, wait. Per-user permissions are a thing. It'd be a pain in the neck compared to the current, "public" categorization system, but you could technically set things up so that only specific users were allowed into the Sharran guild channel, and those users had to PM a dev/admin directly instead of using #tell-us-your-faction.
DM Winter wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 11:05 pm
DaloLorn wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 3:49 am [*]It's worth noting that as a single non-DM with no insight into the amount or nature of DM requests processed by the team, my information is extremely limited. That being said, my personal impression is that Gixustrat, Glundrothi, and Winter have slowed down somewhat, which can either indicate a lot of low-key personal requests being processed, or a decline in their activity.
And just to address being mentioned here, its a bit of both! Personal requests that have me not doing as much impromptu-stuff as I used to, and school being a b*tch. Also slightly less active on discord convos overall because, honestly, some of them are very demoralizing, to the point I understand why some DMs simply arent in the public discords at all x-x
God, I remember the mess college made of my schedule... :lol: It'll pass, though! Take your time.

It's a shame about the Discord bit, though. For my part, I've felt that the increased DM presence since the SB era has been pretty good for the community, but alas, some people do take things too far sometimes. (I just hope I haven't been one of them!)
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by Ashenie »

Hello there,

It is not my favorite part to communicate for anything except roleplay here. However, I wished to offer a tiny contribution that I hope meaningful.


Avanos wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:25 pm A system like this will accomplish the following:
Transparency
DMs Set their own schedule
Players book timeslots based on DM schedule
Improve Communication
Expedite Events
Expedite Plots
Maintain Consistency


I think that a system like this is at least WORTH testing - no harm will come from a trial period of a month. There is nothing to lose and we can only gain from it.

Thoughts?


While I understand the good intention and the wish to help behind this all, and this is really kind of you to try to think of solutions, the way your suggestion appears might look like an attempt to satisfy many demands. -Even if it is not your intention at all and that you made it clear -. So to say, after much negativity thrown their ways, Dungeon Masters can perceive this as "You are lacking in all those domains. We need to find a way to fix it -whatever you would say and attempt to say." (Even if that's not what you are trying to say) The concept of a burn-out being that people feel already overburdened, any proposition (right or wrong) appears as a new burden, a new thing to do on top of the mountain that already lies before them. And if this proposition is a new way to work and a complete new tool to use, it might soon become "Too much".

Many of you have ideas and things they would wish to see done, perhaps the best - first way - before offering the team to change around demands and various tools you think appropriate - is to join them. To help them from inside and get too see what could work and what would not. Dungeon Masters seem to need more concrete help than endless crticizm, even as constructive as it can be. You also may need think that they are always under the fire of all kind of criticizm, good, bad, justified, constructive, hateful... It would not be easy, for anyone.

Any player that feels a burn-out due to various reasons, any player having much negativity trown their ways is allowed to take a break. I have not seen thus far - but I can be mistaken - that it was ever held against them. The least we could do, collectively, is to offer the same to Dungeon Masters as any player would have the right to have. And also, give them some time.

So when you say there is no harm, in fact, I believe they might need some time and some help before considering new systems that would come on top of previous one and force the team to find a new way to function. Or they could take it as a new slap in the face, even if is not your intention at all.

Planehopper wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 9:38 pm Sure, understandable. It should remain constructive (and this thread appears to be an attempt toward that).

But never addressing it, or stifling conversation about it, and having it never improve is also a cause of burnout, it is also destructive. I could give you a list of at least a dozen people that don't play here anymore over the last two years because of the lack of DM response and/or a perception of the same toward them as individuals or as a guild.

If these suggestions don't help, what does? Not addressing it isn't helping, either.


I believe that they allowed a lot to be said, did not lock threads even when they were accursed of this and that, they allow people to speak their mind as often as possible from what I have seen so far. - But I can be mistaken.

The solution does not seem so easy. If it was as easy as just implementing a program, talking or have any kind of magic wand to fix this, I believe it would have already been done. After reading many things, it is clear to me that everyone suffers from the situation, on various levels. Not just players, not just evil players, not just dungeon masters. We can all take a step back and breath.

As player, we have the responsability of our character, of our organisations in limited ways. What we invest, what we make out of events is our work. Dungeon Masters propose 'events', meaning they are passing in the life of our characters, but it is our job to be the linking part between all this. I don't try to say here that no answer doesn't hurt, that sometimes you wait for answers that don't come. I have had my share of those, and it's sometimes very hard. But there is always something else to do, to invest, to take care of. It is your responsability to stay or leave, given the situation. But I like to think that if I stay, or if I leave, it is my decision, taken with measured thoughts, and not the result of anyone's pressure. Because, in a virtual game, I do not wish to give anyone power to delete my efforts and character. It remains mine.

On an end note, I really hope we can give some time and care to both, players and dungeons masters alike, and attempt to mend a bit our relationships. Dungeon Masters or players, I consider you all as game partners. Nothing like this would happen around a table, hopefully. I would wish to thank you all for contributing to provide life to this world and for sharing wonderful scenes with me. I hope we can continue this serenely and for long, and cheer creativity, initiative and continue to tell each other stories whenever we can.

Last, I wish to apologize if my words or attitude ever contibuted, here or elsewhere, to tensions. It is not my intention at all.

With my best wishes,

Ashenie
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by DaloLorn »

Ashenie wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 6:39 amMany of you have ideas and things they would wish to see done, perhaps the best - first way - before offering the team to change around demands and various tools you think appropriate - is to join them. To help them from inside and get too see what could work and what would not. Dungeon Masters seem to need more concrete help than endless crticizm, even as constructive as it can be. You also may need think that they are always under the fire of all kind of criticizm, good, bad, justified, constructive, hateful... It would not be easy, for anyone.
I generally agree with what you said, but I just wanted to take a quick moment to address this part of your post:

I can't. I tried to rejoin the DM team in December, to no avail. I subsequently took a break from the server as a whole, because I didn't have anything else to do on BG at the time. (Obviously, that's mercifully changed since then. :)) In my bafflement at suddenly no longer being considered an acceptable DM, I'm pretty sure I also torpedoed any chance I may have had of returning to the team for the next few years, if at all. (Suffice to say I admitted to being partly motivated by certain conspiracy theories I'd been hearing at the time, and started arguing that my unexpected rejection had to be a sign that the theories were true. Would you like some gasoline to go with that burning bridge? :|) Even if I hadn't, though, my return to BG feels far too recent to seriously entertain the notion of my becoming a DM, regardless of any other factors that might be in play.

If you can't help them by becoming one of them, I think the next best thing is to help them by advising them on how to get the most out of the time and energy they put into their work, or on how to outsource some of their work to other staff groups and the playerbase. The alternative is to convince them to lower their recruitment standards, but they have good reason to be afraid of doing that. (They may still, IMO, be too afraid, but that's another story!)
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Re: Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

Unread post by zhazz »

DM Ghost wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 2:41 pm I will not force my team to use any such tools. It's a game, and I'm not going to expect my DMs to treat it like a work schedule.

None of this is helping. You can call it "constructive criticism" all you like, but the function is destructive. This constant barrage of negativity directed at the DM team is only damaging the DMs' morale, draining our energy. Yes, we know we need to get better at responding. These kinds of suggestions only serve to burn us out.
The constant barrage of negativity, as you call it, is a symptom of a greater issue. Players (some or many) are unhappy about the state of affairs, and want something to change. They might not necessarily know themselves how to fix the issue(s), but they know the situation could be better. As long as nothing changes, or the solution doesn't actually fix the problem, they are going to continue raising awareness.

Some players attempt to offer/suggest solutions. Sometimes those solutions have already been considered by staff, but we as non-staffers do not know this. We do so because we love the server, and we want to help it thrive. We want to help staff by providing as many options as possible, in the hopes that one of them actually works and is feasible.


Time management is a skill, and tools exist to provide oversight and ease-of-understanding, as well as help shore up deficiencies in that skill. It is not about treating the game as work, nor introducing a work schedule. It's about getting the most out of the few hours that each staffer has available during a week, rather than be bogged down by inefficient communication channels and decision making.


On another note:
Please remember that the DMs are not your DMs. Nor are they your team. DMs and all of staff are here for the players and server first and foremost. Your statement smells of absolutism, and is exactly the kind of thing that also cause burnout among both players and staff. If staff collectively decides they want to make use of time management tools, then that is their decision. You don't get to, as you put it, force staff to go with one option or another or none at all.



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Adrian Baker - An innocent virtuoso (bio | journal)
Relyth Ravan'Thala - Bear of an Elf
Timothy Daleson - Paladin Wand Maker
Duncan Matsirani - A wanderer
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