RP Team's Structure and Role

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RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby jamescfm » Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:26 am

Hi everyone! Moderation (meaning FPC and I) have been considering making some changes to the structure and role of the RP Team. Since it has existed, the RP Team has had mixed success and it has taken several different forms. Clearly, tinkering with the team is unlikely to have a major impact on how effective the team is at supporting role-play however it can be important. At present, the team is composed of several members each with specific responsibilities and prior to this the team was a small group of players who took on a role in guiding role-play, advising Moderation etc. There are strengths and weaknesses to both systems but we are interested to hear the views of the rest of the community.

As such, we're inviting all players (particularly those who have interacted with the RP Team or who have served on it) to express their views and suggestions about how the structure and role of the RP Team could be improved. Once we have received sufficient feedback, we'll make any changes that we feel are necessary. Please be honest and frank but refrain from being malicious or rude. If you do not feel comfortable making comments on this thread, you're welcome to contact one of us privately. Thanks in advance!
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby Corvo Attano » Fri Sep 15, 2017 12:00 pm

My two bits are:

1. Make every nation create a military and cultural protocol with the help of the rp team (quite a few nations lack both)
2. The RP team be given authority to rectify huge ass RP wow moments like Deltaria requesting 20 destoyers and cruisers to be delivered in a indiscriminate amount of time from the Malivian Hyperion corporation (I pointed the RP wow moment myself and they at least took out the ships off the deal).
3. The RP team hush out figurative numbers on how long certain vehicles need to be made. For example I need to make 300 planes to replace 300 old ones if the industrial capacity of my country allows it is a 50 year time span enough or too much.

For example in Malivia I needed to replace a lot of old trigunian equipment so I enlisted Malivias strong economy plus Istalias strong economy plus a realistic figure of 81+ Billion MCR to make a big wide spanning military order for different types of vehicles with a delivery date of 80+ years is that good enough? Am I being stupid and adding way to many years?

Your opinions gentlemen on what I said?
Last edited by Corvo Attano on Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby CCP » Fri Sep 15, 2017 1:32 pm

James and FPC, I think it would help if you two would tell us what problems you believe need fixing with the RP Team if any. That way we can address our comments to those issues.

Speaking generally though, the RP Team has always suffered from Committee-itis in my view. Committee-itis is when everyone is in charge so no one is in charge. The lack of individual authority leads to a lack of individual responsibility and so no one takes initiative because everyone thinks it's someone else's job.

This issue seemed to get better when individual RP Team members were given specific responsibilities (one for colonies, one for military rankings, one for world congress, etc.). But the problem still exists. For instance, when I joined the RP Team, the first thing I did was post some ideas for world congress RP on the RP Team forum. I thought that since the RP Team explanation post on this site says the RP makes decisions collectively and has collective responsibility for RP Team actions, that we would and should decide together what to do in-game, and then divide up the work based on our individual areas of focus. Well, I think I received two responses, maybe three, and they amounted to, 'that sounds cool.' Little feedback, little elaboration, and most importantly, no conclusion or final collective decision. I don't think this is the fault of the RP Team members. I think it's a problem with the structure of the RP Team -- hence the Committee-itis diagnosis.

As far as how to fix this, first I think we need to get some clarity about what the RP Team is for and what it's supposed to do for the game. I think it's supposed to increase the volume of RP? And maybe the quality too? But that's clearly not all it's supposed to do since my current role in the RP Team is to oversee and lead the World Congress, which is actually more an OOC role than an IC one. The posts around this forum describing the RP Team don't effectively answer this question as far as I remember from the last time I read them. So that's number one: figure out what the RP Team is supposed to do and be.

Now, assuming my assumption is correct, that the RP Team is supposed increase the volume and quality of RP in the game, my knee jerk answer is that we probably don't need a RP Team (committee) for that. What we probably need to do instead is incentivize the players in the game who are already producing high volume and high quality RP in the RP areas we want to see more and better RP. For instance, if we want military rankings, maybe instead of recruiting one player to study and labor over it, maybe we could just put up a discussion thread somewhere and invite interested players to weigh in. Obviously most of the contributions would come from players with the strong views on military RP. At the end, the mods or the whole forum or something could approve the consensus reached by the handful of military RPers. And maybe we could add some kind of award to incentivize and reward participation in the rankings discussion thread. Like, maybe the players who take part in the rankings thread get 10% faster nuclear arms development in their country -- recognized game-wide and enforced by the moderators.

Like I said this is my knee jerk impression so I haven't thought it through, especially about how to effectively align incentives to RP needs so that the critical RP actually gets done. But I think you get the gist of the idea. Bottom line is I'm not at all sure we actually need a RP Team and I think we need to critically explore whether we do and, if so, why.
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby Elf » Fri Sep 15, 2017 1:41 pm

Pretty much agree with what was written above. About that 'committee-ness' of the team, I've had a little idea for some time now... how about turning all of the Nationmasters' into an RP-team of sorts? If we decide we still want a RP-team, that is.. (someone's still gotta do the job with the ex-colonies, military/economic stats etc) Might guarantee some form of continued activity on their behalf. :)
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby jamescfm » Sun Sep 17, 2017 4:28 pm

Okay, thanks for the initial feedback. Firstly Corvo, we won't be forcing players to create cultural and military protocols at this time- it's simply too much to ask and would limit the opportunity for new players. Regarding your second and third suggestion, those are certainly things which we would expect the RP Team to assist on, especially the military member. At the moment, we lack a military member but we're holding off on appointing a new one while we take a decision on the future of the team.

CCP and Elf, I kinda kept my first post vague because I wanted to see what players thought the problems were about the team. I think the issues you've identified are similar to what we had come up with. Personally, my thoughts are as follows. I think one of the major flaws with the team's current organisation is that the roles are simultaneously too rigid to allow individuals to achieve and too vague to ensure that team members are an active presence in the community. In response, I have considered creating a looser team (similar to what we had previously) while assigning specific responsibilities to certain members.

For example, we may have a six-person team; two people are in charge of the WC, one is managing the colonies, one each are oversee the military and economic rankings and a final member is in charge of the Kamphon Affair. In this scenario, the team is much more fluid and appointments, changes, resignations can be more common. Frankly, members might change every week or so if it ensures the team remains a constant presence. Right now, this is just brainstorming and I'd like to see what others think of this proposal and what its impacts might be?
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby Corvo Attano » Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:22 am

It sounds good but I can't have an opinion until i see it in action.
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby CCP » Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:39 am

jamescfm wrote:two people are in charge of the WC, one is managing the colonies, one each are oversee the military and economic rankings and a final member is in charge of the Kamphon Affair.


Why two? I don't think the WC needs even one RP Team Member/quasi-moderator. I personally prefer the arrangement we had in WC Session II where we (players) asked moderators if we could elect an SC member as GS. Were there any problems with that system?

jamescfm wrote:In this scenario, the team is much more fluid and appointments, changes, resignations can be more common. Frankly, members might change every week or so if it ensures the team remains a constant presence.


I don't understand how this setup achieves greater fluidity, but it does sound appealing, especially changing RP Team members more frequently.
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby jamescfm » Mon Sep 18, 2017 3:22 pm

CCP wrote:Why two? I don't think the WC needs even one RP Team Member/quasi-moderator. I personally prefer the arrangement we had in WC Session II where we (players) asked moderators if we could elect an SC member as GS. Were there any problems with that system?

[...]

I don't understand how this setup achieves greater fluidity, but it does sound appealing, especially changing RP Team members more frequently.

It was just an example, we don't need two if that's not felt necessary. If possible, I'd like to combine the systems so that the Security Council could say "we want this player as Gen-Sec" and we appoint that person to the RP Team. In this scenario, the RP Team because much more player-driven rather than Moderation appointing people to positions unadvised though obviously we would retain the right not to appoint someone. Regarding the fluidity, my thinking is that we wouldn't be so focused on "this person is for military, this person is for economic" because that's somewhat ignorant of the fact that some players have interests which cut across the various briefs and that some don't have an area of expertise at all, they're just good at managing player relations and role-play. Once again, I could be talking nonsense so I'm very much open to criticism, suggestions etc.
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby CCP » Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:39 pm

jamescfm wrote:Once again, I could be talking nonsense so I'm very much open to criticism, suggestions etc.


No, it all came across very clearly and personally I think it's in the right direction.

jamescfm wrote:Regarding the fluidity, my thinking is that we wouldn't be so focused on "this person is for military, this person is for economic" because that's somewhat ignorant of the fact that some players have interests which cut across the various briefs and that some don't have an area of expertise at all, they're just good at managing player relations and role-play.


I think this is a very accurate reading of players and I agree that we should be moving in this direction with RP Team-related matters.

jamescfm wrote:If possible, I'd like to combine the systems so that the Security Council could say "we want this player as Gen-Sec" and we appoint that person to the RP Team. In this scenario, the RP Team because much more player-driven rather than Moderation appointing people to positions unadvised though obviously we would retain the right not to appoint someone.


I think this combination of the two systems is a perfect solution because it aligns interest and activity with game-world needs. Personally I fully support this for the WC RP Team position and for all other RP Team positions as much as practicable.
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Re: RP Team's Structure and Role

Postby jamescfm » Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:47 pm

Does anyone else have feedback on this matter?
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