Extra Beat Incentives: An Inquiry

I think that all of that sounds fair.  I like the active approach to keeping favoritism out of the equation as much as possible as that is often a big problem in any large RP group.

No one received 'free beats' except wherein staff handed out staff beats which allowed a person to exceed their beat cap for the week. If you want to curtail free beats - don't hand out staff beats.


This was done as a courtesy because not everyone knew or was aware of the various things that a scene might provide a beat for. Since staff at the time had to review and read the beatsheets anyways to make sure what the beat was posted for was relevant - adding another beat that was still within cap was a nice thing to do, if it was warranted. 


This wasn't 'extra beats.' This was part of the beats system that anyone could take advantage of. Double digit squees still only earned 7 total beats. If someone on staff was giving out more than that - they were violating the rules. If you don't want people earning a high amount of beats per week remove some of the possible beat options.

The scaling on xp costs for things the higher a player's beat total goes balances out low beat earners vs high beat earners. This system is working as intended. 


This is not relevant to beats and their incentives.


Pure clan was the only beat incentive given in character creation. Unless you're counting the 2 free status dots a player could put anywhere - that was technically free beats.


This would be better done as a monthly thing - assign 2 or 3 people as matches, don't let scenes like scheduled events and court count towards the match reward. They claim an Event beat for it each week they manage to play with their match. This gives people who don't RP often time to meet up with their match and encourages multiple instances of RP instead of just one-shot scenes that some people were doing to get the beat.


Scene, Theme, Aspiration, Event, and sometimes Breaking Point and Condition could be beats earned from the Crisis scenes. There's no reason to add another category when a single Crisis scene could be worth potentially 6 beats.


You said you wanted to cut down on 'free beats' and staff beats was the biggest source.


The best idea here is making players more responsible for their own beats. There are people who don't know what they can claim beats for regarding a scene or just might forget. A BBpost to review +beats and make sure +aspirations is up to date might not go amiss.

As for handholding. Staff is supposed to be reviewing the beatsheets anyways and not just processing what was claimed, this is why they took so long to do. If staff is doing that - seeing someone might have forgot a beat and adding it remains just that, a courtesy. And if staff doesn't completely review the beatsheets. as they need to be. I recommend removing beats for Conditions, Aspirations, Rumors, Recruitment, and Breaking Points. Beats claimed for these requires additional fact checking and follow-up - and without that follow-up staff is just giving out free beats.