How Do I Headwiz?
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@Thenomain Oh, feel free. I support that entirely.
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@Thenomain said in How Do I Headwiz?:
- People are helping you run the game, from staffers to players. Respect their time and effort.
Yeah. Part of why I stressed the importance of getting jobs done in a timely manner is this.
When I had just a few months to live, and currently live in three-month increments (when I get scanned for a recurrence of a cancer that came back already), I'm not waiting over a month and a half to not even get a response on a yes or no question, when friends of staff, or staff, get theirs done in a day. That's part of why I only play on my game now; I can make sure stuff is done and fix things when it stalls. There's nothing I can do (edit: elsemush) when staff has no respect for others' time. I feel helpless enough in RL.
I'm not going to do that to others if I can help it, even if they don't have as much urgency, either. It's still wasting time.
It's why players don't need staff to approve most of their xp spends. It's why we give players extra xp if their apps get held up, which so far has been pretty infrequent.
It's why staff get to play in their own spheres, but other staff will do their jobs. It's also why staff's jobs don't have priority over players'
I know I'm harping on it, but this does affect RP. When becomings, entitlements, plots, etc, stall, RP stalls, time gets wasted. It disrespects people and their investment in the game.
A headwiz should intervene. So what if it's just a game? People's lives are tough enough and they are entrusting you with their time, effort and happiness. Saying it's just a game devalues them.
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I'll add to the list!
No surprises.
That is to say, very few of us handle change with nearly the amount of grace we ought. If you're going to change something on your game that has been established in the past, give warning and explain why. You're going to get grumbles, that's a given. But the grumbles about warning are significantly less of a heartburn than the explosions of HATE and FEAR that happen when the sky is suddenly orange instead of blue.
Leave yourself room to change your mind.
You aren't going to be perfect. If you make a decision that turns out wrong, then for fuck's sake, reverse the damn thing. Acknowledge you made the mistake, figure out how to avoid it in the future (if possible), and follow through on explaining the situation to the game as a whole. A mistake is only a Problem if you make it a second time out of carelessness and lack of attention to fixing it the first.
Be the change you want to see in the world (tm).
You're the only one you can control, natch. The atmosphere, levels of adaptability, agreeableness, and general tone of your game start with you. It doesn't end there, of course. There are a bunch of people involved. But if the core doesn't hold, the rest of it will falter in due time. Be the player that you want other players to be; expect it of yourself and of everyone around you, even and especially the friends you'd normally give a pass. Even if you're upset, even if someone else is treating you shabbily, you're the center. Own it and it'll ripple outwards from you.
Recognize that you're not on the game to be or make friends.
That's not to say you shouldn't be friendly, or that you have to give up the relationships that you've built over the years. On a scale of -1 (hatred and loathing) to +10 (besties 4 eva), it means you need to treat the players on your game at a +3 minimum (courteous distance). You don't get to have extremely negative scale interactions, and the moment you do, you need to consider asking them to leave. You also don't get to have extremely positive scale interactions with a select few, because the moment you do, you're playing favorites and the other players will feel it and react with resentment. Headwizzing requires a certain level of detachment. I don't personally think that's a bad thing. If your friends can't handle the fact that talking to you as Headwiz is potentially different than talking to you as their buddy, then that friendship isn't nearly as true as one hopes.
Find your peers.
We are none of us great in a void. We are none of us great without feedback. Find the people who aren't afraid to tell you when you're screwing up. Find the people who aren't invested to a creepy degree in their character, who are willing to look at the game from a proverbially global perspective and give you opinions you can consider. You might go your own route anyway, but you do need to listen and consider first. Yours may be the final say, but that doesn't mean making decisions in a vacuum is a good idea.
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While I agree with the general sentiments here, I'm not sure if I generally agree with the emotional distance, even the little bit of emotional distance. In general, my experience (which as most people know is, like, a lot of games), staff, especially headwizzes, that presented themselves as this vaguely distant figure, or elevated above or away from the playerbase, were generally difficult to approach and gave the games a significantly different feel than games where staff and the headwiz just seemed like a regular part of the community who were just there to enhance the experience.
Obviously the normal battle scarred player who sees corruption and treachery at every turn is going to think that literally everything is favoritism, but I feel like there's a limit to what you can do about that without just being an unfun robot who is taking their position seriously on a level that I've never found particularly tasteful. Which isn't to say that being a headwiz isn't something to take seriously, but I believe there is a line that changes the tone of the game's atmosphere in a way that I genuinely don't like.
I don't think everyone is going to like you, but like, I think it's important to be your genuine self and not artificially distance yourself from the game or connections. If people genuinely can't do that while simultaneously not walling themselves off into a corner of favoritism and only doing things for certain people, they shouldn't be worrying about artificial distance, they should just straight up not be running a MU, in my opinion.
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OK.
Different strokes, yo. I don't think being slightly distant or detached means you have to be above/away, or difficult to approach, or not-genuine. If I answer a page or channel-question with "What's up, how can I help?" or offer one, "Hey, I wanted to ask something if you have a moment..." those are my real, true self. They're also courteous and slightly distant, in that I'm not presuming. The distance needed is to treat everyone the same way, and LCD on social interactions is with polite friendliness so you're not making them uneasy by going too friendly, and not making them upset by going cold.
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Emotional distance is pretty much fuckin' vital.
Becoming emotionally attached to any person at all will lead one to being open to manipulation, whether intentional or otherwise.
You run the game. Your mind must be set, fully, on running the game. Not appeasing the people, or improving the lot of the people, or impressing the people. The game is ultimate. Anything else is what you have other staff for.
ETA: I'd take pretty much anything @EmmahSue has to say regarding headstaffing as gospel. She's been through the ups, the downs, the me. She has gone through more than her fair share of BS to get to where she is in our community's esteem.
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I mean, this might also boil down to differences in how we perceive friendships and emotional attachment. I pretty regularly cut friendships or kick people right the hell out of my life because I either realize they don't respect me as a person, or that they're just really shitty or boring people from what I originally perceived, who don't contribute anything to my life.
So it's like, I have trouble imagining emotional attachment suddenly making me want to appease people or impress them. If people are inconveniencing the game then they just get removed, it doesn't matter if I liked them or whatever, it's not like I'm cutting off my own arm. This is honestly something I never understood about the way people run games. The apparent fear of upsetting people or losing relationships because you're enforcing rules or running the game in the way that you think it should be run.
If someone turns into a big ass baby because you're not doing what they want, why should you care, regardless of your previous relationship? This suggests that they're trying to use your relationship to get what they want, and also that they're a shitty ass person who should have even less sympathy than you may have had for them before.
Also, being overly friendly is creepy even if you aren't the headwiz, so that's a bit different. I also think there's a difference between being yourself and friendly and everything, and putting on your staff hat. I don't think you should do one or the other all the time.
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The main thing is distancing your emotional attachment from the project. Don't let whatever you're working on define you.
He/Him
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@Tinuviel said in How Do I Headwiz?:
The main thing is distancing your emotional attachment from the project. Don't let whatever you're working on define you.
Yeah. You already define the project. You are the project.
On top of that, everyone notices. You may tell other staff or players what ethics are, what is expected of them, or how to play, but everyone will be watching you for the clues you give them. You cannot "do as I say, not as I do" in this hobby, everyone will attempt to do as you do, because if the Headstaff does it then it must be okay.
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@Tinuviel said in How Do I Headwiz?:
The main thing is distancing your emotional attachment from the project. Don't let whatever you're working on define you.
Oh yeah, definitely I mean, the art is an expression of me, I'm not an expression of the art.
@Thenomain said in How Do I Headwiz?:
@Tinuviel said in How Do I Headwiz?:
The main thing is distancing your emotional attachment from the project. Don't let whatever you're working on define you.
Yeah. You already define the project. You are the project.
On top of that, everyone notices. You may tell other staff or players what ethics are, what is expected of them, or how to play, but everyone will be watching you for the clues you give them. You cannot "do as I say, not as I do" in this hobby, everyone will attempt to do as you do, because if the Headstaff does it then it must be okay.
This is generally good life advice overall, in my opinion.
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I'm pretty friendly with everyone, but if I find drama coming up with a player I'm close to, I usually talk to other staff about it-- and clarify that I am not asking for staff action.
And I encourage the same from staff; one former player, for example, had sexually harassed me for a while and across games, but I kept quiet; when I finally mentioned it to staff, I found out that two other staff had experienced the same and a third had been subjected to long, aggro rants about their staff decisions. Then a few players came forward after the ban and expressed their own discomfort.
No one wanted to be that guy, so no one said anything. I myself am friendly enough that it sometimes attracts the wrong kind of attention, so I sometimes worry if I made things worse. (Did I not say no clearly enough? Should I have been more standoffish?)
Now, I encourage staff to speak up if someone is stirring things up or making them uncomfortable. Sometimes it's just a disagreement between people or a different style of communicating or a bad day, and sometimes it's deeper than that.
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@HelloProject: Then it's likely we're in violent agreement and speaking the same thing very loudly in totally different words to each other. It happens, text-based medium and all.
@Thenomain sez "On top of that, everyone notices. You may tell other staff or players what ethics are, what is expected of them, or how to play, but everyone will be watching you for the clues you give them. You cannot "do as I say, not as I do" in this hobby, everyone will attempt to do as you do, because if the Headstaff does it then it must be okay."
A++ would agree again. Your expectations of yourself and your own actions are what others will see and respond to. That requires a fair amount of honesty with yourself about what you're doing. This is an 'anyone in a leadership position' thing, not a 'only for Headwizzen' thing.
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I'll say this as a person that has been lead astray by players before.
DO. NOT. LET. PEOPLE. CHANGE. YOU.
It ends your legitimacy. No matter how hard you might try.
