Quick questions...  How is having two or three people looking over backgrounds supposed to speed up the system?  And if you just look at length and the fact that it's english, you are for allowing Damien Knight and other characters lifted directly from other pages.  Or those that have nothing to do with the theme, but will allow the cries of 'Yes I can be the head of the Yakuza! My BG says so!'

But that sort of argument is more in place in the other threads.  As for getting rid of PHStaff... I'll stay out of the debate.  Although it's nice to know there are at least a couple people who don't think I'm completely useless.

This idea came up in the Senate, and wasn't received there as well. The reason is different from what people are posting here, however.

Standards.

I'm not talking about the big brass doors that people seem to think are manned (womanned) by armed PH Staffers. I'm talking about ensuring that bgs are themely and will work in the atmosphere we're creating for this specific game. It's called people looking for the same things. Yes, this sheet may be da bomb, but Joe Schmoe may feel that it's absolutely imperative that all new players should have at least a 2 in Perception. So he denies it. Sally Schmoe, on the other hand, has a real weakness for face characters and dubs it a win automatically.

Add in the fact that different players have different levels of knowledge when it comes to mechanics, friends let friends know when they've apped etc., and you see where that goes. PHers are trained to look for specific things that mark an application as one that will work, or one that will not. It has little to do with whether they 'like' it or not. It has to do with whether it has all the components staff has determined through experience will make a potentially successful PC.

Besides, if you think the only thing PH'ers do is review apps, you're sadly mistaken. The Senate said no to this. I tend to agree with them.

Dreamer,

I hope I didn't step on any toes in my zealous attempts to streamline chargen. If you took it personally, don't, and I'm sorry.

Now with the questions and answers.

Damien Knight, yakuza oyabun, other VIPs - things like that can be posted in chargen under the "People you should never impersonate" sign, with ICA=ICC clearing up the confusion and body bags. Have an NPC throw two credsticks to some badass PCs and they'll take care of oyabun's little problem the next day, tossing the noob back in chargen where he belongs.

Standards: oh, it's a big one with me. In the age of third generation mmorpgs (or whatever they call themselves these days), I think the issue of keeping the athmosphere of our mush intact behind the big brass doors of chargen has quietly died. Let's look at the average Shadowrun MUSH player. Hell, look at average TEXT-based game player. The twitchy fingers and zits have gone over to Warcrack, "GIEF EPIX PLEASE!!@11". What's left are the few "oldies" who remember the good old days, rock in their armchairs and have noone to play Shadowrun with because all their friends live far away, because there is a time and place for everything, and it's called college... and it is over. Do we really need to impose a novel-writing assignment on these people in order to let them play again?

Alright... so let's pretend, that, theoretically, a 13 year old (who knows how to read and type, mind you) picks up a book of Shadowrun 4th edition in a hobby store, and then somehow finds his way into our MUSH, because he's got noone else to play with. For the arguement's sake, let's say that the background writing weeds him out 100% of the time.  And if there's no background in the way, what could stop him from playing?

1. Rules knowledge - he must navigate the chargen all by himself. That means that a) he has played table-top and knows the rules b) he's going to make a harmless character, because he has no clue what he's doing.
2. Patience - typing in the world of clicking and key jamming takes a lot of effort. I dare say, maturity.

So, what kind of person, as the lowest common denominator, can we expect out of chargen with no background requirement?

It's either a noob who knows nothing and is harmless (other than to himself), likely to get killed on his first day on the grid, due to lack of OOC etiquette (that is to say, the player doesn't know how to conduct himself in certain situations or areas). Let's call this noob "Curious George".

Or a noob who has a couple clues about the rules and can make a menacing character, but is still socially inept. Let's call him the "Malicious George".

And then we have the True Evil, the player who knows exactly what he's doing, and who is planning on pkilling and griefing the world one player at a time. Perhaps they are returning, to wreak vengeance on someone who wouldn't TS with them back in 1998... whatever. Unfortunately, background writing won't stop the True Evil from hitting the grid, so that case is discarded. Like it or not, True Evil will be around.

Now, about the George brothers.

Curious George is going to roleplay a tourist lost in Redmond (even if he doesn't want to). I don't mind. Do you? I thought so. I get kidneys and eyes, you take whatever's in the pockets.

Malicious George is going to roleplay a punk with ADD and a chip on his shoulder. Well guess what, there are people like that in Redmond too. BTLs, drugs, abusive parents... hell, he could be still tripping when he walks over, all dazed like, to call you out in all caps. Yes, Virginia, that can happen to you in real life, too.

Will we see a lot of these Georges? No. Because there's Warcrack and Evercrack. And for the really bad cases, there's Unreal Tournament. Because of this natural selection, the only tourists we'll see, are the ones who are "trainable" to become a roleplayer (rules knowledge, patience, see above). They are a long-term investment. By letting them in, we give the mush an off-chance that one of them will stick around, and the 13th character he makes will not be a liability on the team. By then he'll have a better grasp of English language and his typing speed will improve too. And before you know it, he'll be posting freaking novels on the forums to validate a point. 

And short term? Short term, tourists can be fun, too. No change? No problem. Eyes or kidneys?

To sum it up, if the MUSH had the same background writing requirement back in 1994 as it does now, I would not be here today. I'd have flunk the chargen, being a freshman exchange student with a language barrier. I shudder when I try to remember the half-page (no, not even - half screen!) background I wrote for my first character. The only thing those two paragraphs proved was that English was not my native language.

But hey, if you don't need people like me on Seattle MUSH, I can take a hint, alright?

hmm..

Players that review backgrounds.. players.. that review backgrounds.. hrm..  players.. backgrounds..

<< looks around >>

But... those.. PHstaffers.. they're.. players. Should there be.. more of them?

I'm confused.

I'm not confused about backgrounds. I play wow, I RP in wow.. it hurts my brain. I don't want to ... well.. I kinda DO want to alienate people. WoW might be a good stepping stone.. into the paaaaasssssssst, for the transition into Mu*'s. It's a dying art, roleplay without a /dance command. It's not so much the writing of the novel, it's the desire to play, I do believe they can make it! Amen.

I think we do understand that in the lives of some characters writing the background is the hardest challenge they'll have to face, which is why they have gotten easier, but not too easy. I would hope that people with a burgening interest in shadowrun go get familier with the genre, and I know our PH staff give hints and guidance on all kinds of topics when someone is making a BG. (even if it is, they don't have dodge F-150s in 2066)

Plus, if this isn't making any sense, I'm not suprised. But you people ask the oddest things of RP Staff. Without a background we can't even get the basics of what may or may not happened in your life without paging you. How strange is:

Melkir pages: So, about your knee caps, are they real? or replacements?
Melkir pages: Did you have any cats when you were young?
Melkir pages: Are you alergic to vats of acid?
Melkir pages: In the event of a water landing will your breasts act as a floatation device?
Melkir pages: Do you think it's likely that you'd be ducking at this very moment...

etc, etc.. (some pages are real)

Mmyeah.  I agree with the one thing that made sense there...  If there's a backlog in chargen, we should encourage more PHSers to apply.  PHS is player help staff, we're talking about staffers whose only job is to assist players.  It's not the great and terrible Staff whose goal is to (according to the paranoid among us) ruin everything the players try to do, it's other players who have a staffbit for our benefit, and they deserve to be thanked for their work, not replaced. 

Edit: Post yanked.  New text.

Enh.  I think our local communist elf hit the nail pretty much square on the head.  I'll maintain civility and just add a resounding echo of what he's said.

-CM

In theory, I like Melkir's pages.  They ask some important questions.  Although, there's some problems that any of these questions actually require a background.

Replacement knees, do they have cyber?  No, then not replacements.  Good call.
Did you have any cats when you were younger?  Does the person have any cat paraphenalia in their inventory?  Have they been begging for a cat item that meows when you pet it?  If not, there's no real reason to have this question answered.  Otherwise, for the cat fanatics, the description should prove worthwhile to look at.
Are you allergic to vats of acid?  Dear god, I hope so!  If not, that's gonna be some sorta positive quality that I don't even seeeee anywhere!  But for other allergies, there's a negative quality called ALLERGY.  So +sheet's got you covered.
Would your breasts act as a floatation device?  Description, charisma, both of these are gonna tell you.  If the desc mentions large breasts, well, then of course they would!  If the person has a high charisma, then they'll want them to, and if the person is a big angry ork who's also flabby, then yes too.  Men can have floatation devices too!
Do you think its likely that you'd be ducking at this moment?  You should just read their poses.  If they aren't ducking already, then prolly not.  Then there's the surprise rules.  If they manage to succeed, then they can feel free to duck if they think so.

There's a lot you can ascertain about a character without a background.  As far as I'm concerned, because of the complete ignorance of my backgrounds from RPStaff throughout the 12+ years of MU*ing that I've done, across various MU*s and in addition the previous Seattle, as well as every Shadowrun place that's started up (including MUDs), I'd say that any question they may have that relates to my background really is never asked.  In reality, you'd be lost if you had to read through 8-10 pages of prose to figure out if the person had a childhood enemy who could maybe of become some J and be sitting across the table RIGHT NOW.  It'd be much easier to look up question #12 "Do you have any enemies from your past, especially those who may have gone off to do more criminal actions later in life?"  (Creativity here could get you custom designed plots).  That sort of thing would be so much easier, time efficient, and even allow for prose to be a response.  But that's still for the player who wants to contribute a lot to the MUX, for plot ideas and whatnot.

Most players do not really think about the MUX when writing up backgrounds, in fact I'd argue that very few players in general are really thinking about what's good for the MUX when they are building their character.  I know personally I'm usually wrapped up in how much fun I think my character is going to be to play, not how well my background is going to help RPstaff do what they may want to do once in a blue moon.  If backgrounds were optional, I could very easily get in and start playing, and contributing to the MUX that way much more quickly than I could if I wrote a background that'll serve no use to RPstaff (but still get me approved).  One way delays my presence on the grid, which means more RP for others, more freshness of characters, and new plot availabilty for them as I'll assuredly have a different +sheet than any of them.

My big point is not that backgrounds are just worthless in gauging noobishness (if we should even be concerned with that in the first place?), but more importantly that BGs delay people who have been playing for a long time and could benefit the RP on the grid.  You can never know whether or not a noob or an experienced MU*er is going to be a benefit to the MUX until they hit the grid.  Until you see what their schedule is, what they are willing to do, whether or not they just like to TS all the time, whether or not they just sit OOC and wait for plots.  You don't know them until that happens, and everything before that is following a script. I can write a big long BG if a MUX wants big, I can write small if they want small, and I can do it really fast and then go to get approved.  They may approve me or may not, if they don't, I just change it to fulfill whatever requirements they wanted.  I try to make my backgrounds as innocous as possible, so from them you can not hurt my character nor derive much beyond their personality and history (but only history directly related to the +sheet).  At the end of the day my character is my character, and any approval requirements are just approval requirements.  Its a test, and all I have to do is get the right answers.  When that's done, I hit the grid, and my fun begins and my real character shows through.

You can't stop people like me, other than just by ignoring me, so you'd stop one of the hundreds.  I've played too many MU*s to believe that any staffer is anything but a person, with standards that alter as quickly as their moods.  At one moment my BG might be considered golden and then another moment the BG is considered so crappy as to not be approvable by even a monkey.  I don't care, either way, I respond the same way.  If I don't get on the grid yet, I attempt again, and again, until I'm there.  Its tiresome, and worthless.  It wastes my time, your time, and the potential for RP time that other players could have already had with me.

Get the important questions, and be done with it.  If you want to say that RPstaff is going to pull information from backgrounds, make that aspect the optional part and get rid of BGs as a requirement.  The first thing, make a list of stuff you'll ACTUALLY look at in a BG.  Get every staffer to do that, and then compare notes.  If any subject/question appears on more than one staffer's list, then make that a question you'd appreciate to be answered.  Make it important to put this information down, if a character from your BG is ever used, or a plot is ran about something your BG questions inspired, then you get karma/+vote/+whateverwaywearegonnagivekarma.  With just the option I guarentee you lots of people would fill out the questions, as indepthly and creatively as possible.  Plus, it HELPS the noob learn Shadowrun.  Because they'll be getting questions that are actually direct, important, and may prove useful later on.  What kind of enemies do you imagine for your character (present, past and future)?  They get to sit down and think about the enemies, and that helps them think about their characters.

I think the +sheet is a good litmus test for whether or not someone is going to be a noob (which I still don't think of as a bad thing, especially as I've been doing this for so long, and noobs tend to be better in creativity than most of us fogies).  If they don't know the system well enough to doublecheck their own work, than you have to sit down with them and go, "Hey, you know, you spent like 300 poiints on attributes, you can't do that, you can only spend 200.  So, work that out and I'll look at it again.  Cool?"  You aren't hitting them with a baseball bat and crapping on them like when you say, "You can't write! Your ideas are crap, although your spelling and grammar are great, you must be a gerbal when it comes to creativity.  Get out! Out out out!  You vile noob!"  See, totally different.  ^_^

Anyways, check the +sheet, see if they've got their numbers right.  You have a log of their IP.  If they turn out to be an ass, talk to them, see what's wrong or why they are doing it.  Sometimes they've got good reasons to be the antagonist, and you might find yourself helping them instead of hindering them.  If they've got lots of OOC troubles going on, that's a whole other story, you want to talk to them more in a way of fixing the problem.  But still ask, cause it might just be other people are picking on them for not know the rules as backwards and forwards as they do, an that's something not to yell at someone about its something to HELP someone with.  New people will come, and they will pass every test you ever give them, but some might be dissuaded at trying a wonderful artistically grand game like a MUX can be, and instead be washed off to the brainless addiction of MMOs.  And every brain that atrophies because of that, will be on the conscious of everyone who votes for required BGs.  Every last one of them!  So, join up with the forces of good, and be BG free.  Help support noobs for less than the price of a cup of coffee per day, support optional questions, and get a more friendly, more inviting MUX, that won't likely suffer from population decline.

Oh, and +vote me for Dragon President of 2073.

You seem to be assuming that -I- want the answers.

*shifty eyes*

NES sips Melkir's drink.

And you seem to be assuming that -I- want responses.  Ooooooooh, buuuuUuuuuUrn.

Roll body...

Hey, if we had a dragon for a president, then nobody would be giving us any guff!  Iran would quit with the nuklear, Kim Jong Il would give us all his missiles for a christmas present, Osama Bin Ladin would turn himself in, and Hugo Chavez would have his mouth sown shut for fear of offending our president again.  If only Dubya's true form was 200 feet long with a mastery of time and space beyond anything technology could possibly offer, then we'd be cooking.

Hey why not offer Dubya a PHA job? He's a lame duck and will be unemployed shortly and have lots of free time on his hands.

GM'ing  SRIII tabletop I have found basic backgrounds to be very usefull and require them for all characters. In most cases just a paragraph that answers a few questions, I have five:

              1. When and where was the character born?
              2. Were there any significant childhood events/people?
              3. What special training/education has the character had?
              4. Why is the character running the shadows?
              5. What is the characters personality/Description?

Even when a player only writes 1 or 2 sentences it has been a great help. I have had some players just write brief answers to the quesions and some write pages of backgroung, I had to limit backgrounds to one page.

         I definitely believe a background is necessary, but to be usefull it doesn't need to be more than just answering a few questions. It is definitely important for a player to think about where the character comes from and how the character reacts to situations. Before I started requiring backgrounds I had players making rediculous claims about their characters, such as "My brother is a fixer and he'll do anything for me. Like get me an assault cannon for free." Yes, I can argue that the player is crazy and did not include/pay for the contact etc.. etc.., but requiring backgrounds has prevented many arguments and overall made the games more enjoyable. I do agree that the current system is a little extensive (32 Questions???) and at the scale of a MUSH can be pretty crazy. Maybe makng some of the questions mandatory, and restricting the length of the background to maybe 1 page. Allowing players to submit brief answers to the questions may help especially for those who are not good at writing, have language barriers, or just don't like writing.

              I think the goal should be to remain flexible with the requirments but keep backgrounds a required part of the game.

Let me go ahead and echo NES too, while I'm at it.

The reality is that the majority of the time a background is trash to a MUX after the approval process, and will rarely, if ever, serve as a plot hook unless a player specifically goes to the trouble of including a PLOT HOOKS section in their background.? If anything, it -might- be a personal reference point, post approval.

And if an RPStaffer really wants to, which will be a rare thing, dig into a character's past, a series of exchanged @mails will do just as nicely more often than not.? And of course, let's not forget that not requiring UberSpam Backgrounds doesn't hold back the silly monkeys that still want to attache globs of text to their characters.


That's fine Marscs.? Perhaps a compromise could be reached between what you're proposing, and the 32 questions of doom that plague the game in it's current incarnation - Why don't players select, say, three questions to answer, write up a simple paragraph for each, and blam, that's that.? Hell, I'm not even sure how necessary an 'approval' process is anymore.

Approver: "I'm a little concerned that you have high reaction, high body, and a well thought out +sheet that includes focal points in major areas that your PC would specialize in."

Aprovee: "...What?"

Approver: "Your +sheet.? It really looks like you were able to put together a solid concept, from a strictly numerical standpoint."

Aprovee: "Uh... So you're approving me?"

Approver: "No.? Absolutely not."

Aprovee:? "What!?? Why?"

Approver: "Because I want you to further develop... uh... 'things'."

Aprovee:? "Are you just reading this from a freakin' cue card, or what?"

Approver: "*sigh*? Yes.? I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, but I know that we have a standard of at least four paragraphs spent detailing every skill over four.? And then there's the matter of your cyberware."

Aprovee: "What!?? But I spent essence and resources and buildpoints on all of that!"

Approver:? "Yes.? Well.? We've been encouraging PCs to broaden their focus using their build points for things like... basketweaving."

Approvee:? "But I'm a shadowrunner!"

Approver: "Basket.? Weaving."

Aprovee:? "...Whatever."

-CM

Well, at least in the beta, powergamey sheets are gonna be wide open so long as you can make a plausible bg to support them.  I think what we'll find out is that, unlike SR3, there is not a huge gap between munchkins and regular people and that will carry into the new game.  It is a good idea for you to have an idea why you have lots of combat skills and no social or technical ones- that way when you're social RPing, and you mention fighting's the only thing you're good at, and the other person asks why, you'll have a better answer than "Duh... me no know!"