Admins Messing With Rounds - Please Vote

[Noah Buttes]

Before that was a prison gimmick where all jobs were replaced with "guards" and "crimers" (wearing, untastefully in my opinion, Cosby sweaters) that was pretty directionless.

Yikes on the Cosby sweaters.

In general, it feels like someone needs to step in and enforce some subtlety or at least some PLANNING.

Most of the admin gimmicks I've seen over the past week have been either half-baked or embarrassingly over the top yet somehow vapid.

If you're going to run a gimmick, keep it as unobtrusive as possible for those who don't wish to get involved. At the same time, keep it as engaging as possible for those who DO want to get involved.

Above all else, stay dedicated to the gimmick, don't enter it half-heartedly, otherwise everyone will be disappointed.


Some examples:

Game shows:
Unless the whole theme of the talent contest or quiz show or what have you is centered around how untrustworthy or shitty or underhanded it is, DON'T FUCK OVER YOUR PARTICIPANTS UNANNOUNCED. Don't spawn a wendigo king on top of your contestant as a "prize" for correctly answering a question, it just discourages people from participating. Let your participants become victims of their own hubris. Take a page from Bob Barker's book: give the participant a choice between a safe, smaller prize and an enigmatic yet tantalizing mystery prize. If they decide to go for the big prize and get screwed over because of it, they'll more than likely laugh it off rather than throw a hissy fit.

Spooky stuff:
If it's meant to be an actually spooky gimmick rather than just a horror-themed gimmick, then don't fall prey to a very common mistake: OVERTNESS. Don't do that dumb shit where you make announcements about "the void taking over" and then just creepify the station and spawn zombies or some shit. No, you have to personally commit to the gimmick. Take control of a mob, noclip through walls, blink in and out of existence, emote stuff, etc. Whatever you do, don't call attention to yourself directly. Let your actions and behavior speak for you. In short, be The Shining not Saw 3D.

Prayers, religions, cults, gods, etc:
Respond to all prayers. I can't stress this enough. RESPOND TO ALL PRAYERS! Hell, you don't have to actually GRANT them. Just acknowledge their reception. If you've set yourself up as a space deity, then you knew what was coming to you. It's even better if you grant them all, but not necessarily as the wishers intended. Obviously, that isn't always practical ("KILL EVERYONE BUT ME" comes to mind), but for those exceptions you can just tell the wishseeker to fuck right off. If they persist, smite them in a hilarious manner in divine rage. Whatever you do, don't just ignore their requests.

THE BUS:
If you're going to use THE BUS, then don't just drive it around willy-nilly. Give it some direction, some goal, some purpose. A field trip isn't fun if it's a mindless drive through the country. Drive it into a portal to the ice moon, drive it into a raging engine inferno, drive it into the brig and dump everyone out. Do something PURPOSEFUL. Make BUS STOP announcements, offer to take people on tours, engage pods in space combat, DO ANYTHING SO LONG AS IT ISN'T AIMLESS.

ANYTHING AT ALL:
CATER TO THE PLAYERS
What I mean by this is that you should always be ready to change up your act at a moment's notice in order to keep your players invested. If a gimmick isn't working out, don't force people to keep slogging through it. Inject some spontaneity into it. Nobody willing to join your wrestling tournament for the title belt? Offer some better or unique prizes. Nobody smoking your omega weed? Triple the size of the icon and call it alpha weed. Did a bunch of people bite the dust thanks to your swarm of geese? Respawn some people as a syndicate strike team with the objective of capturing some of the destructive birds for future use.

Don't let your gimmick stagnate or feel forced, it should flow freely and should be adaptable to the situation at hand.

However, the most important thing to remember when running a gimmick is to have fun and try to let other people have fun too.

P.S.
Oh jeez, I didn't mean for this to turn into an essay. I guess I'm just really passionate about this sort of thing.