The elusive yes-first game.

[ThatGuyThere]

Yes because in hippy land everything is wonderful.
the more you post on this topic the more I wonder if you actually deal with humanity. Once there is a pint of conflict people will take sides if staff does not at least put out the information it wants out there folks will side with the only voice talking.
Yes staff should be concerned with winning, not the game really but the continued trust of the player base.

[Nein]

@Apos said:

The most problematic players that want to assign blame for their own faults to others are probably the most likely to go, 'Finally a game without ridiculous staff where I can do what I want, about time' and gravitate towards it, so unfortunately the game type most dependent on players to create their own constructive environment are likely the ones to be the most toxic.

So much this. I ran into this a lot. I love the idea of providing an open playground for people to come and enjoy themselves in an harassment-free environment, but every time I opened my doors with good intention, the crazy moved in. Cue the downward spiral.

@Arkandel So far your methods are all the methods I'd embrace barring XP/sheets, but I don't know what theme you're trying to set up, so I assume it's going to be something based off an existing RPG that requires them.

[faraday]

@Arkandel said:

The idea there is simple. The vast majority plots are fine, staff should only intervene if someone fucked up big time... how would you ensure things which are quite out-there or unwanted don't become part of canon?

I think that the idea of retconning insane f-ed up stuff is kind of tacitly assumed on all MUSHes; you don't need a special policy for it. Putting in an explicit threat of "auditing" just makes me feel like there's some plot staffer reading logs with their finger on the retcon button. And yes, I've seen stuff like that. It makes me uncomfortable.

My plot policy kind of boils down to what you said: "Don't burn down the city, and don't do anything too insane." Occasionally I get people complaining that it's too vague, but for the most part it seems to work okay.

As noted in the initial pitch, trust should go both ways; players are trusted, but so are staff. In a way that's the only way any game can truly function well.

A fine idea, but the key point missing IMHO is that trust has to be earned. You may be a totally awesome staffer, but I don't know you, and I don't know your other staffers. If I stumbled across your game and saw policies like that, I would be on my guard. As @Apos said, many of us have had really horrible experiences. It's not to say they can never under any circumstances work, but there's a healthy degree of not-unwarranted skepticism.

Ammunition is only important if you're in a fight, and you'd only care about it if your intention is to win.

Or you worry about it if you've frequently been on the receiving end of player-initiated gunfire and don't wish to give them any more bullets than you have to.

[Arkandel]

@ThatGuyThere said:

the more you post on this topic the more I wonder if you actually deal with humanity.

As anyone can tell you I live in the vat I was originally grown in, carefully kept separated from mankind. I still somehow managed to spend several years of that time staffing on games and running plot as player. I was lucky enough though in that time to not have to interact with human players, only pose-bots powered by thousands of monkeys pounding on their keyboards to produce random sequences of words at me (which in retrospect explains a lot).

Yes staff should be concerned with winning, not the game really but the continued trust of the player base.

I have found the best way to earn someone's trust is to make it into a mutual investment. Perhaps our mileage differs, but that's the reason this debate exists.

[ThatGuyThere]

We have irreconcilable views on humanity so leaving that aside. How would you deal with this hypothetical.
You refuse Player A's request for something that needed to be refused. You have the stated yes first policy. So Player A then starts a campaign of Staff is unfair. Said player points out how staff said yes to Thing B C D who were all near the line you have but not quite over it. Up until this point Player A has not shown to be a problem.
Note this is less hypothetical and more a generic look at something that I have seen many times.
You are not the first to champion yes first in fact there have been many in the past DM was and I played there in 1994 and it didn't even have BGs required or more of a bar then to get IC then code checking the math. The Reach certainly started out that way, and I made a PC there the first day it was officially open.
I make these posts not to discourage a yes first mentality but to show where the pitfalls are and hopefully let you plan a way to deal with them. Assuming they will not happen is not the answer.

[Bobotron]

@ThatGuyThere
I think you're splitting hairs here a little too closely at this point. Your hypothetical seems to assume that no specifics of 'these are things we are banning/limiting/have problems with' has been detailed. And there's no realistic way to document every clause of every thing you might ban or restrict. If the overall speciffics are defined, which is a logical thing staff should do up front, then the player has no recourse other than to be pointed to the file/policy and explained why their funky concept went over the lines there.

Again, we get into the concepts of clarity, documentation and reasonability. And I'm not of the mindset that you can only have two of them. All three need to be there.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Bobotron
That is my point though people are not inherently reasonable at least not all of them You should have a plan if action ready for the situation to show to your players that you are the reasonable one.
the thought of the plan being well I am the reasonable one so people will trust me just makes me LOL.
Note I think Arkandel is perfectly reasonable and likely to be in the right on most issues regarding theme, but most players will not know who is is from Adam.

[Bobotron]

@ThatGuyThere
I'm not saying 'people will trust me because I'm reasonable,' but as a staffer, you should strive to be reasonable, because it makes the actual dealing with unreasonable people who scream PERSECUTION when you say 'Okay, look, I'm sorry, but the policy clearly says <this thing does not fly>.' If they scream, and then you scream, that's exacerbating the situation and nothing constructive or useful comes from that.

It's why I also keep harping on at least having defaults defined and set up, so that people can be pointed TO a file, with the baselines and expectations, and then go from there. If a staffer acts reasonable and like a normal person, then it sets a precedent for how interactions should go and what staff expects from the playerbase when the actual problems come up. You can't enforce reasonability but you can make it known that, being reasonable gets you more than being a screaming manchild.

And unreasonable, irrational people can be de-escalated if they are so inclined; and if not, then they need to be pointed to the policy and shut down with as much decorum as you can for the situation.

ETA: I try to treat a staff position a lot like a service management and customer service position rolled together. It is a weird outlook, but it's served me well in MU* staffing in the past on themed games.

[Arkandel]

@ThatGuyThere said:

How would you deal with this hypothetical.
You refuse Player A's request for something that needed to be refused. You have the stated yes first policy. So Player A then starts a campaign of Staff is unfair. Said player points out how staff said yes to Thing B C D who were all near the line you have but not quite over it. Up until this point Player A has not shown to be a problem.

Someone in this thread made a point for clarity which was agreeable. To it I'd also add transparency is important.

"Guys, we made the ruling to refuse <X> in this case because $reasons, and when B C and D had a similar-looking we allowed it because $otherreasons. It is our believe $reasons and $otherreasons are sufficiently different to warrant a different approach." Then try to work with Player A to see if you can reach a compromise.

Look, eventually you'll run into players who are unreasonable. Just be sure you're not the kind of staff players run into who is rude and authoritative. So be polite and patient but firm and clear, then if it doesn't work even to the best of your ability and they refuse to take 'no' for an answer it's on them, not you.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Arkandel
Cool that is actually how I would handle it as well.
While I don't think such a post in needed every time, it is good to have the plan in place for when it is needed.

[Groth]

@Arkandel said:

@ThatGuyThere said:

How would you deal with this hypothetical.
You refuse Player A's request for something that needed to be refused. You have the stated yes first policy. So Player A then starts a campaign of Staff is unfair. Said player points out how staff said yes to Thing B C D who were all near the line you have but not quite over it. Up until this point Player A has not shown to be a problem.

Someone in this thread made a point for clarity which was agreeable. To it I'd also add transparency is important.

"Guys, we made the ruling to refuse <X> in this case because $reasons, and when B C and D had a similar-looking we allowed it because $otherreasons. It is our believe $reasons and $otherreasons are sufficiently different to warrant a different approach." Then try to work with Player A to see if you can reach a compromise.

Look, eventually you'll run into players who are unreasonable. Just be sure you're not the kind of staff players run into who is rude and authoritative. So be polite and patient but firm and clear, then if it doesn't work even to the best of your ability and they refuse to take 'no' for an answer it's on them, not you.

Sometimes the reason for denying something is not something you want to air in public. When it comes to theme especially the reason for denying a player a particularly arcane concept is often that you don't trust that player to be able to play it, which is why another player can get the same concept approved by virtue of your confidence in that player to pull it off.

Trying to direct people away from concepts they are unable to convincingly play and direct them to things that suit them better is a subtle art. In Vampire for instance, there are very few players who can play an Elder that actually feels like an Elder.

[Sovereign]

It's amazing that some people are so burned when it comes to simple human interactions that "how would you deal with someone being unhappy" is a serious question.

It's like, "But Sovereign! What do you do when a player is a total asshole? There are literally no countermeasures in place for this, we're all doomed!" and I'm just staring going "can't you just tell them to quit being an asshole and then ban them later?"

[Ganymede]

@Sovereign said:

It's like, "But Sovereign! What do you do when a player is a total asshole? There are literally no countermeasures in place for this, we're all doomed!" and I'm just staring going "can't you just tell them to quit being an asshole and then ban them later?"

The easy, Ganymede answer is: find complaint; ask questions; determine most likely explanation for behavior; and determine if action is necessary.

If someone's an asshole to me as staff, though, the ban comes out a lot faster.

[Sovereign]

@Ganymede

Oh, yes, it really is trivial. A lot of the horror stories in MU*ing I hear talk of leave me flabbergasted, as they could have been solved in a handful of minutes with minimum fuss by someone with authority showing a willingness to be the hard ass. It's why, earlier in this thread, I said one of the hobby's greatest issues is that it's filled with socially maladjusted people. Assertive, straightforward behaviors are anathema, and people, even the ones nominally in charge, so often resort to passive-aggressive snipes and being bitchy in their shadowy gossip.

I am convinced 99% of the problems people face could be solved if every game had one reasonable authority figure who was willing and able to get involved when bullshit reared its ugly head. Just one! The remaining 1% of problems need a capable coder.

[Apos]

@Sovereign I agree to a point. The very few hardasses are typically self-interested people that really get off on it, which are also the worst kind of people to have that kind of authoritarian control and destroy things pretty quickly. So the ideal is someone completely unafraid to make difficult choices that has no emotional investment in it at all, but also recognizes the importance of moderation and restraint when it's called for.

Someone that can siteban a creeper 2 seconds after realizing what they are doing rather than taking weeks of compiling unnecessary evidence, but also is friendly and outgoing to every new player, is approachable, and is genuinely interested in hearing out player concerns. Doesn't really help to have the first without the second imo, which is why you have all those threads about petty dictator types.

In my experience most of the blunt, hard nosed types are even more socially retarded than the most passive aggressive ones and just confuse a lack of tact or inability to understand other people with being honest and direct.

[Thenomain]

@Sovereign, I like @Ganymede's answer better as it isn't just "be a hard-ass" which believe me, many PHBs are hard-asses. He (she, I still have no idea) also explains what "reasonable" means, which is otherwise a problem because "reasonable" is not a universal standard. Hell, "adult" is far more a universal standard than "reasonable". So by cutting down the uncertainty, Ganymede makes a far more understandable solution. If people can understand a procedure, they are less likely to object or find ways to object to it.

You also don't have to be a hard-ass to implement them. In the brief time being under Ganymede's staffdom, she (he?) never had to be a hard-ass. I thought some of his ideas were silly and she couldn't get them implemented on the game because of player push-back, but none of them were crime-and-punishment issues; they were game design issues.

[Sovereign]

I'm using hard-ass not to indicate a petty dictator but, instead, someone who does not demonstrate the behaviors I've found exemplified in MU* circles: a reluctance to punish, a fear of appearing heavy-handed or "mean", giving away chance after chance, overlooking misbehavior to not rock the boat, etc., etc.

Now, those people are very often called petty dictators, but I mentally tune out a vast majority of criticisms people sling in this hobby. Too many times I've heard stories of monsters and found normal people. At this point, I treat it a lot like folks who say "I hate drama" - baby, you make more drama than a playwright.

All that in mind, give me the petty tyrant over the teddy bear. When the former's hurting the game, it does so explosively, explicitly, and there's no confusion or lingering sentiment. The latter is a slow rot.

[Thenomain]

I will concede this is what you mean, but they aren't the same thing. Not by a long-shot. A hard-ass is a kind of willful person, a petty tyrant is a kind of willful person, but even then it doesn't answer the kind of personality that runs games well.

I think this is because there isn't one. Being willing to make hard calls is critical, is about as far as I'm willing to agree.

@Sovereign said:

At this point, I treat it a lot like folks who say "I hate drama" - baby, you make more drama than a playwright.

You're being a little dramatic, yourself. I understand; I also use hyperbole for drama's sake, and I probably should stop.

[Sovereign]

@Thenomain

You are free to interpret both my use of hard ass and drama however you like! I've been clear enough for my purposes and am content.

[Thenomain]

@Sovereign

Have you? Have you really? Well okay, if you insist.