Emotional separation from fictional content

kitteh · May 12, 2017, 12:44 AM

@Ghost Yeah. I mean I totally understand the temptation, especially for people who love the hobby and may not have a ton of options for a particular style of RP, genre, whatever. Or they feel they can play under the radar because staff only handle the big stuff, etc.

But it's definitely a losing proposition in the long term. Sooner or later you'll need their help and it won't be there, or you'll accidentally run afoul of their clique or some other unknown but sacred line that shouldn't be crossed, and by then your investment will be all the more.

SparklesTheClown · May 12, 2017, 2:08 AM

I should state that I absolutely hate downvotes in a social context, because they're easily abused and in my opinion create a sort of emotional and cultural toxicity. Just look at old WORA.

That said, Multiverse Crisis MUSH (pretend that you didn't play during one of the super shitty eras for a moment) had a +gripes system, and from the staffers I knew who dealt with it, I know that they largely used it to catalogue patterns of behavior to see if someone was actually a problem or not. It was an anonymous system, and in my experience the people who mostly complained about it were problem players who didn't think they were problem players and thought there was a vast conspiracy against them or some bullshit.

The major downside of such a thing is when you actually -do- have toxic players who will abuse such a thing, though in that case I feel like you should honestly have some handle on the culture of your own game and know what's happening in it (which is incidentally something that a +gripes system helps with). The other downside is that such a system doesn't work with horribly corrupt and shitty staff, but then I'd repeat what someone else here has said: Why would you be playing a game with shitty staff anyway?

I get that putting up with shit-tier staffing is a WoD norm, but like, it's not something that you are under any obligation to do. I personally refuse to play a game where I can't trust staff, I don't give a shit how many of my friends are on it.

Thenomain · May 12, 2017, 2:40 AM

I will absolutely play on a game where I don't trust the staff when I don't need the staff to have meaningful gameplay, which is 90% of everywhere. I know how to do this, have gone through this hobby with people who know how to do this, and am happy to be with people I enjoy regardless of staff.

What people like @Paris usually mean is that they won't play on a game where staff cannot be trusted to be adults, to handle a complicated situation fairly or honestly. Not saying you don't mean exactly what you said, Paris, but there are plenty of people who aren't so rigid in where they will play if they get a chance to play in relative peace.

Hell, I played on Haunted Memories for six years being a person either disliked by staff or in a group specifically targeted by staff via rumors, if not action. Hell, I had the headstaffer and his wife put a "do not contact" order on me partially because I wouldn't let a shitty situation lie but, and here's the fun part, neither could they. I don't know about today, but at the time I wouldn't have trusted them any more than I could throw them, and since I didn't even know where they lived I couldn't throw them an inch.

And yet, I wouldn't have given up the experience of that game, of the character I played and almost everyone I played with, no matter how much I complained about it. I made some tight bonds that were that tight from the crucible, and there were other fantastic players playing fantastic themes.

I don't need to trust staff to do anything more than approve my character and keep the play-space open and free for exploration.

SparklesTheClown · May 12, 2017, 3:58 AM

@Thenomain I guess these are all good points. I did play Reach for an extended period of time even after I'd gotten dicked over multiple times.

I guess I ultimately feel similarly to how you described what Paris was saying.

Paris · May 12, 2017, 7:16 AM

@Thenomain said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

I will absolutely play on a game where I don't trust the staff when I don't need the staff to have meaningful gameplay, which is 90% of everywhere. I know how to do this, have gone through this hobby with people who know how to do this, and am happy to be with people I enjoy regardless of staff.

What people like @Paris usually mean is that they won't play on a game where staff cannot be trusted to be adults, to handle a complicated situation fairly or honestly. Not saying you don't mean exactly what you said, Paris, but there are plenty of people who aren't so rigid in where they will play if they get a chance to play in relative peace.

You're correct. If you're a player who's fine with that hanging over you, obviously do as you like.

I find that I eventually get burned. I went against my own policy of avoiding games where I had strong reservations about staff, figuring that enough time had passed, let byegones be byegones, but no, same shit, different game. When I realised that a staffer's homophobic threats against me would be defended or justified (despite logs), because other abusive behavior from them towards others was being defended (despite logs), I bailed. Nothing had changed, I was wrong to assume that it had.

So, I will never again play on a game where I can't trust staff, edit shame on me for flouting my own rule. I'm glad that you've made it work, though.

But as a staffer, I also get frustrated when players refuse to come forward when they have been abused, because they have been burned elsewhere, because they don't want to be labeled a problem, because staff elsewhere would rather cover for other staff, whatever, etc. All not coming forward does is leave these folks free to keep targeting others. That is part of why I say, 'don't play somewhere if you don't trust staff.' It makes our jobs harder.

Paris · May 12, 2017, 7:18 AM

@Ghost said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

And if you feel that all of the games eventually turn out this way?

They don't, but sticking to games run and played by the same toxic folks will make it seem so.

SparklesTheClown · May 12, 2017, 8:15 AM

I'm kind of fascinated by the fact that in recent years, a lot of WoD games have become quite sane now that people have started doing things like not putting literally every sphere into one game, and like, have general mission statements about building a healthy community with good conduct and player relations and such.

I feel like we're at a point where if you choose a game that's just an overall toxic environment, when there are other options now, it's pretty much masochism if you stay somewhere you don't wanna be. But if you enjoy that, sure, go ahead.

edit: I'll play in a toxic environment if I can play Beast, because I just learned what it is, and the crashing and burning will be a hilarious trade off.

Arkandel · May 12, 2017, 1:19 PM

@Thenomain said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

Hell, I played on Haunted Memories for six years being a person either disliked by staff or in a group specifically targeted by staff via rumors, if not action. Hell, I had the headstaffer and his wife put a "do not contact" order on me partially because I wouldn't let a shitty situation lie but, and here's the fun part, neither could they. I don't know about today, but at the time I wouldn't have trusted them any more than I could throw them, and since I didn't even know where they lived I couldn't throw them an inch.

You touched on something here I hadn't thought of, but which might count for the purposes of this thread... well, maybe.

I used to but I can no longer abide - emotionally, if you will - with knowing people are being screwed over by staff in a game I play, even if that doesn't impact me directly in any way. It just bugs me a lot, and even though a couple of times I made some nominal effort to stick around since I had RP going I didn't want to just abandon it's invariably led to me leaving the MU* not long after. That even included games had a long tenure as a staff and player; after the regime changed on TR and I was made aware of Troy's mishandling of that MGMT person it didn't take longer than a month to walk away, for example.

It's not the content per se that triggers me but it does, and when it happens it's over. To mis-quote Wonder Woman (and @Cupcake) injustice is a turn-off for me.

Thenomain · May 12, 2017, 1:37 PM

I will add to my note that I've always considered the most adult people to be the least tolerant of staff or player fuckery. That is, the people you're most likely to want to keep are the first people to recognize when things are not worth the effort. I do not frown upon anyone who walks away from a game no longer being fun, and I often feel bad or guilty when I'm in charge of something and that happens.

Arkandel · May 12, 2017, 2:43 PM

@Thenomain You've mentioned in the past feeling bad when you didn't have enough evidence to kick people you knew were bad out of the game. Do you regret that decision now? Would you have done the same thing today?

I think that's a discussion worth having in the context of this thread because that word - 'evidence' - divides us somewhat. There is the camp who basically says "it's my game, and if I feel someone is detrimental to it I'm going to remove them" and folks who prefer a more rule of law no one is above, so there needs to be a concrete reason before action is taken against against a player, in some cases even especially if in the name of fairness they don't like them to begin with.

So in the context of our debate (everyone, not just Theno) let's say you believe a player is purposefully trying to emotionally provoke players to get something from them - validation, sexual gratification, it doesn't really matter - how much of a benefit of the doubt are you willing to extent before you do something about it other than have a talk? What's the best way to handle these cases?

Rook · May 12, 2017, 2:38 PM

I used to feel very strongly about staffing and how things were done, until I found myself on the dirty end of the WORA stick. I thought that I handled the situation the best I could, with the information I had at the time, and I got smeared hard.

But this event led me to mature in the thinking of how I dealt with other staff. I realized that communication is a huge deal, and in hindsight, with better communication, I found myself thinking that yeah, I could have handled things better. I was young, didn't know how to communicate well enough, but (I said to myself) at least my downfall wasn't prejudiced decision. That constitutes a large portion of what I have found wrong with "crap staff" in my MU time. Staffers who made decisions based on personal gain, friend favoritism, and so on. Being denied a PC slot, only to watch someone with a worse app than mine get it, and find out later that said applicant was a friend of the staffer in question. That type of shit.

I find now that I give the benefit of the doubt, having seen behind that staffing curtain once or ten times. But patterns, patterns are what make it an easy decision for me. Seeing a staff make repeatedly similar decisions over a period of time is a killer, something I cannot look past.

Then again, I rarely have to interact with staff anyway. The second edge of this sword is that I used to run a LOT of plots on games. I'd plan and include all sorts of people, do all sorts of drop-in scenes and so forth... now I don't. I found that bad staffers absolutely killed my drive to contribute for them, make content for them, only to have them stomp on it for their own personal reasons.

Thenomain · May 12, 2017, 7:07 PM

@Arkandel said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

@Thenomain You've mentioned in the past feeling bad when you didn't have enough evidence to kick people you knew were bad out of the game. Do you regret that decision now? Would you have done the same thing today?

It was not my decision alone, but I would have made the same decision. Had Troy or Lemuria had said that they wanted our multi game abuser removed from the game, I probably would have caved and done so. Had someone even under complete anonymity told me exactly what happened, I would have done so. It came down to punishing someone and being able to tell them why, being comfortable that I understood why, and nobody would give me that.

This is very much a "because I said so" situation, but I expect good staff to be benevolent dictators. I didn't have any sort of rule of law that I was going with; I was going with a rule of conscience.

Hell, I don't care if I don't believe that staff does THE right thing. We are human beings, we have a million personal belief systems. I want to know that they do A right thing.