Apologies are 'nice' but actions speak louder than words.

@downwithopp

But you still lurched her. He could have been transferred out of command. Instead you pulled a ripcord on everyone attached to that character. It's not about your motivations, it's about the effects of your decision on other people.

@scar said in An Apology to BSO and BSU.:

@auspice said in An Apology to BSO and BSU.:

I will note that the suicide of Marcus was not a single incident. He's done it on other games, too.

He did it on Unification twice and on 5th Kingdom.

So it's not like it was an accident, a mistake, or a 'one off' situation.

If abruptly tossing characters off-cam for injury counts... more than twice?

No apology necessary (especially if it is going to be filled with doublespeak) but I'm going to be real with you, you made me uncomfortable @DownWithOPP. When our paths crossed, the PMing and pressure you apply to join large scenes is irritating and eventually for me, once it became a constant that I could expect every time I signed in, bordered on aggressive.

I agree that throwing your char off-cam due to injury is not a big deal (as long as you just give people a courtesy heads up...it's not required, but it's thoughtful). Character death that can cause irrevocable emotional trauma to other characters with little to no notice on a game where that is not the status quo is...negligent of other people's feelings.

As for the aggressive-ish RP pressuring. >__< ...that sucks and is unfortunate.

@tek said in An Apology to BSO and BSU.:

@loke said in An Apology to BSO and BSU.:

@downwithopp

But you still lurched her. He could have been transferred out of command. Instead you pulled a ripcord on everyone attached to that character. It's not about your motivations, it's about the effects of your decision on other people.

And he did so within a week of me telling him I wouldn't do a Skype date with him. And he suicided the character in a scene that I was in as corpsman just to twist the knife.

I'm not sure I would call all of that intentional. Maybe careless.

@downwithopp said in An Apology to BSO and BSU.:

@auspice Uh. No. You were talking marriage and babies and shit, and I was uncomfortable with what was going on elseMU* (this was the same time as @tek for the record was doing all the weird shit with Clara/Randy, et al), so I made the move to put all my relationships to an end. I should have told you more on that, and I'm sorry. So, yes, I killed off the character, especially since it was a roster pull from a former character who informed me after I pulled the char that he wasn't supposed to be on roster, which made me feel worse. I made that decision. I'll own it.

I think the better approach would be to find a way to be direct with people. Like, "Hey, that's cool for you. I'm not into it. No hard feelings." Just, a word of advice.

@auspice said in Reasons why you quit a game...:

...I have a lot of heartbreak tied to losing spaceships.
I feel your pain. ;_; Spaceships R.I.P.

@tez
I've actually found a lot of the things you've shared here to be very true. I don't have assss much experience as a lot of people here in leading in a MU setting (some), but I have a ton of experience working on, with, etc high performing and poor performing teams (with high and low performing individuals) in a work setting.

A lot of the benefits you're describing, and interpersonal guidelines, were true there too.

We espoused and held each other accountable to:

• transparency
• direct communication and constructive criticism (there's a lot of stuff that goes into this, like agreeing on what this looks like)
• always give the benefit of the doubt, or, "default to trust" (huge)
• respect (I think the not talking about players, keeping it away from gossip, etc, falls into this territory)

We found that even if we had a great discussion about these tenets to begin with on a team, that if we didn't write them down, codify them, then they weren't really enforced as much. On the teams with well-intentions, this boiled down to them not being present in our minds. Reviewing such tenets when we did retrospectives or creating a reflex to refer to them when we felt ourselves backsliding in the moment was great to help everyone reset (sometimes it just helps when 80% of the time or more, people need to emotionally reset) to what was important and what we all wanted to strive towards. People make mistakes, forget, etc. To not account for this and think everyone is already on the same page has proven to be a naive assumption in those settings.

I think constantly revisiting is great. This is a never-ending thing. I think saying well staff just suck or people just suck is kind of a copout as a staffer (or someone interested in improving). So what if something looks like a brick wall; I'm going to smash through it!

Tez I'd really be interested in seeing what you guys have iterated on to piggyback on your progress so far.

@rook said in Reasons why you quit a game...:

This contributed to the heartache cycle, which for me is the high of character conceptualization... only to step out days later onto the grid and see tumbleweeds blowing by.

Yeah. This is hard. You're drumming along, thinking you've got something that will hook into what is or isn't going on...then it's like throwing a line in and never getting a nibble when fishing. It blows because of all the investment. I don't think I've ever seen a game that is hurting for activity change their entry requirements (I'd be interested if others have).

Like, if people are having troubles RPing, then ease up on some CG requirements so there's a low front end investment. Then if things don't work out (because they are likely outside of your control if the activity is just low), not as rough lashback for the player.

@skew

@skew said in How to use Potato MU Client:

@Ruggles is reporting the above simply does not work on PennMUSH. Is anyone out there playing a PennMUSH game that could check?

The [/get 0] is what seems to be failing. If you set up the above to just send say [/get 0] it should work. Though now that I type I do hope ol' Ruggles was using a zero and not a letter!

This is happening in windows 64bit. It doesn't matter what the server type is. That is the part that is purely handled by the client before it sends it to the MUSH. Basically there is some kind of bug. I ran my client as administrator and it still won't do this. Course I'm trying to log to a drive that is not the main OS drive (potato isn't on the OS drive either) so that might have something to do with it if this isn't a widespread bug. Who knows.

@rook said in Reasons why you quit a game...:

This contributed to the heartache cycle, which for me is the high of character conceptualization... only to step out days later onto the grid and see tumbleweeds blowing by.

Yeah. This is hard. You're drumming along, thinking you've got something that will hook into what is or isn't going on...then it's like throwing a line in and never getting a nibble when fishing. It blows because of all the investment. I don't think I've ever seen a game that is hurting for activity change their entry requirements (I'd be interested if others have).

Like, if people are having troubles RPing, then ease up on some CG requirements so there's a low front end investment. Then if things don't work out (because they are likely outside of your control if the activity is just low), not as rough lashback for the player.

@apu
When you say you get disinterested with theme is it like a total, man I'm just not into HP or WOD anymore, or is it something like I got bored with the theme because we were harping on the same stuff over and over (theme is worn out for whatever reason).

I can think of situations myself where if the theme was more malleable (not like AU malleable, but extensible), and I had a chance to engage with that, I might be more interested in staying around.

You're right. I clearly was focusing on the narrow interpretation. I like your breakdown/re-integration. Thank you!

@lithium Yep. I think this is the biggest thing. If you're going to have anything, have this imho.

@ixokai I agree. I think professionalism is a level of commitment by an individual. Another 'professional' attitude is, "I'm going to do a good job no matter what other people around me are doing." Some might say that's just a form of integrity. I would say yes! It is! Work ethic, a commitment to strive to be better (because I think we all backslide so this is necessary to fight that), and to just be fair.

However, I think it's okay to not be overly timely on jobs (especially in a small game with less staff) as long as you set this expectation with the players and prioritize things that help unblock players RPing (apps for one). I think prioritizing your own jobs or your own interests is not one of my values. (this is not to say that I believe people shouldn't work on what they are excited or motivated by)

Some staffers hold two conflicting beliefs, "This is my game,"/I get to do what I want when I want, and "I'm in it for the players." I think if you're in it for the players, you find a balance between taking care of yourself and serving your player base without sacrificing on fairness.

@goldfish I have a personality that is more vocal, but I am shy when it comes to instigating RP and such. I am sadly one of those people who probably make a lot of shy people feel alienated because of that. It's not intentional; it's just how my own shyness manifests. Unfortunately, it causes a lot of perception problems that I have to combat with some of my shyer friends.

@tez I like the transparency and that this is available to players. I wouldn't expect players to read it all, but the message it sends is...you /can/ hold us accountable. This is what we stand for. This is what you can expect from us, so if you're not seeing this, something is wrong.

@thenomain said in Reasons why you quit a game...:

What good starting guidelines do is establish intent

yesyesyes all kinds of yes

@tez
I've actually found a lot of the things you've shared here to be very true. I don't have assss much experience as a lot of people here in leading in a MU setting (some), but I have a ton of experience working on, with, etc high performing and poor performing teams (with high and low performing individuals) in a work setting.

A lot of the benefits you're describing, and interpersonal guidelines, were true there too.

We espoused and held each other accountable to:

• transparency
• direct communication and constructive criticism (there's a lot of stuff that goes into this, like agreeing on what this looks like)
• always give the benefit of the doubt, or, "default to trust" (huge)
• respect (I think the not talking about players, keeping it away from gossip, etc, falls into this territory)

We found that even if we had a great discussion about these tenets to begin with on a team, that if we didn't write them down, codify them, then they weren't really enforced as much. On the teams with well-intentions, this boiled down to them not being present in our minds. Reviewing such tenets when we did retrospectives or creating a reflex to refer to them when we felt ourselves backsliding in the moment was great to help everyone reset (sometimes it just helps when 80% of the time or more, people need to emotionally reset) to what was important and what we all wanted to strive towards. People make mistakes, forget, etc. To not account for this and think everyone is already on the same page has proven to be a naive assumption in those settings.

I think constantly revisiting is great. This is a never-ending thing. I think saying well staff just suck or people just suck is kind of a copout as a staffer (or someone interested in improving). So what if something looks like a brick wall; I'm going to smash through it!

Tez I'd really be interested in seeing what you guys have iterated on to piggyback on your progress so far.