Staff and ethics

[Arkandel]

@faceless Although you are correct in that "don't be an asshole" is generic enough to mean different things to different people, I hardly think anyone believes harassing players (for example) doesn't fall into that category. In fact in several threads we've seen perpetrators are usually either unaware what they were doing was unwelcome or they admit doing so right away.

There are three things I don't like about more concise sets of rules:

1. They tend to be very TL;DR-y. Like they'll span two pages of thickly written text, trying to include all kinds of clauses and exceptions... and no one is gonna read this stuff. Actual assholes don't need to go over several paragraphs to check if "spamming every female player pushing for TS" is against the rules, they already know, and the average player already barely reads room descriptions or even poses as it is, so expecting them to read a contract-like wall of text... it won't happen. So who is it for?

2. They tend (in my experience) to invite rules lawyering trying to wiggle through the cracks. "Hey, I know that policy says our characters can't engage in rape but it wasn't my character, he was possessed see?". In these cases staff will resort to tell them to cut the bullshit anyway, so... why not go to that to begin with? We can't possibly pre-emptively think of every scenario someone will try to be a jerk.

3. Unlike RL laws, policies protect no one. Staff has complete authority in every case whether they exercise it or not. Essentially every case comes down to staff using their judgment. I can't think of a single scenario where staff should do nothing to correct someone they believe did something bad because 'technically' he didn't according to the current policy.

The advantage of having rules though - for me - is that it lets me see what staff's vision for their game is. That's the main one. "Don't be an asshole" tells me nothing.

[surreality]

I am a wall of text gal, but endeavor to manage that reasonably: basics in a short blurb, expanded rationale behind an expansion/cut for people that need details if a situation requires details or rationale.

[Faceless]

@arkandel, I don't disagree. You're right! For me it's a matter of consistency and transparency. An unwritten rule, that is then enforced? Is going to cause some turbulence and controversy, if it's off-the-wall enough.

Faceless gets banned because he keeps paging female players like...

...despite being told not to? No one is going to bat an eye at that. No one reasonable, anyway.

Now someone gets banned because their character was being a creep? I mean, some people play creep characters. Do you think Ramsay Bolton would have been as interesting a character if he wasn't so terrible? People play characters in MUing all the time that use their genitals to get what they want; male and female alike. These are fictional characters. Sometimes they aren't the best of people. Sometimes they're simply flawed people. How about on The Reach when a character was made that was an obese female and the whole basis of that character was basically "lol she's so fat"? Which soon after saw the character frozen. I later recall seeing someone mention that character either on WORA or MSB, the player of it even chimed in to say 'hey, I wasn't trying to be offensive, but that's how it was taken', which I can totally see as reasonable. Because what offends Player A doesn't offend Player B. Point being that apparently it was some unwritten rule that a character couldn't be that thing or made a player or group of players feel bad. Intentionally? Not by the account of the player of the character. By the offended parties? Oh, yes, it was most definitely a deliberate attack! Maybe instead of the players playing controversial characters? We start banning players who can't separate IC from OOC, make believe from reality?

Mind you, I'm not defending that character or the player of it. I'm using it as an example of unwritten rules that can be sprung up from out of the blue that... frankly are so hyper-specific that, yeah, it'd be nice to know that shit before you get slapped down for it. Because most people wouldn't get slapped down for it, because they won't toe that line - so long as they know it exists.

Yes, staff must use their judgment in a lot of cases. A lot of those cases can be largely streamlined by having even a very basic set of rules. Most games do, for that very reason. It's then up to that game's staff to determine whether they want to go into more detail and depth than the basic outline of the Big Ones.

One of the fastest ways to piss off a large group of people is to have ever-changing expectations and/or lack of consistency. As much as staff and players don't like a player that is unpredictable in their expectations or behavior, we tend to collectively not like it even more from staff because to paraphrase Stallone: "THEY ARE THE LAW!!!"

When someone has power over you, even if that's just some nerdling behind a monitor on the internet on a MU, you expect a degree of consistency and I'd dare say there's an expectation of some basic fairness. You also want their expectations to be very clear and concise. Otherwise you end up with places like WORA, MSB, and the like, calling out those staffers and those games for their inconsistencies. "If you're going to be Robocop every day? Be Robocop every day. If you're going to be a wet noodle? Be a wet noodle every day. Whatever type of officer you decide to be, be it every day. Otherwise you're going to be shanked some day because you're playing games with people".

[saosmash]

I mean ... I'm not approving anybody to play Ramsay Bolton on a game I run, because that character exists to be an edgelord rapist.

[Kanye Qwest]

@saosmash Amen. People will take characters with totally reasonable sheets and dial them up to 13, or sometimes to a nice and steady 8. They need no encouragement to be edgy or confrontational, in my experience.

[Arkandel]

@faceless said in Staff and ethics:

Now someone gets banned because their character was being a creep? I mean, some people play creep characters. Do you think Ramsay Bolton would have been as interesting a character if he wasn't so terrible? People play characters in MUing all the time that use their genitals to get what they want; male and female alike. These are fictional characters. Sometimes they aren't the best of people. Sometimes they're simply flawed people.

Just as a clarification on my end... you'll get different opinions on this (and already have ) but as far as I'm concerned as long as every player involved in a RP is a fully consenting adult and it's all done behind closed doors I don't give a shit what happens to/with their characters.

When I'm referring to creeps I specifically mean creepy players. That means no springing stuff on people, guilt-tripping them into it, pushing and nagging until they give in or... well, anything of that sort. If both people are into it, go for it.

[Roz]

@saosmash said in Staff and ethics:

I mean ... I'm not approving anybody to play Ramsay Bolton on a game I run, because that character exists to be an edgelord rapist.

Double amen. Characters that work in a book -- and, I mean, Ramsay's value as a character is already debatable, but whatever, putting that aside -- don't necessarily equal characters that work on a MU*. Writing a book is not a collaborative*; RPing on a MU* is.

(*Yes, I mean, it is collaborative when it comes to working with an editor, critique groups, etc., all of that, but it's not the same type of collaboration. YOU ALL KNOW WHAT I MEAN.)

[Cupcake]

@ixokai Not speaking for anyone else, but I as a player would want to avoid someone who was interested in playing that kind of trope on a game I participate on. That's creepy as fuck, and distinctly unfunny to those of us who have suffered sexual assault.

[Faceless]

@arkandel said in Staff and ethics:

When I'm referring to creeps I specifically mean creepy players. That means no springing stuff on people, guilt-tripping them into it, pushing and nagging until they give in or... well, anything of that sort. If both people are into it, go for it.

Right! What I'm saying is that sometimes there are staffers and players who blur that line. Clearly since the character is a creep, creepy, or creepalicious? Then so must be the player. I've seen it a lot the last few months. Maybe not creepy, but any negative behaviors.

You play an ambitious character that exerts the authority that they have at their fingertips? Well, the player must clearly be a domineering jerk who is clearly toxic. No joke. This is a legit thing that I've encountered. A character exerts their authority(up to and including knowingly overstepping their authority, IC, because they suspect they can get away with it) and it's taken as the player being the above mentioned. It happens in that scenario. You don't think it can happen in an even more controversial topic?

So yes. Staff and players alike will blur the absolute shit out of the IC and OOC line, to the point that they'll attribute character behaviors, personalities, and the like to the players of them.

[surreality]

The 'character types that might not work well on a M*' stuff -- could we maybe split that to another thread?

Not because it's inappropriate at all but because that strikes me as a worthy discussion topic in its own right, and I've admittedly been looking at some of those things lately and was sorta thinking of starting one anyway. <coughs into a hand>

[Roz]

@surreality If you want to start a thread on it, by all means! But I feel like the best course of action -- when there's only been like two posts on the topic -- is to start a new thread and maybe quote those posts. Instead of just moving our posts that are part of the conversation here. I'd rather not feel like every brief digression is going to be up for immediate split, because I do think the points were relevant in response to the points other people were bringing up on this thread.

[surreality]

@roz This is kinda what I was thinking, actually. 'Let's move this cool tangent over here' == and can be done without breaking existing thread.

[surreality]

This post is deleted!

[Thenomain]

@arkandel said in Staff and ethics:

So while we're on the subject of rules... do you think it's better for staff to create a detailed set of policies, or keep it to generic "don't be an asshole" guidelines?

Yes.

Policies are there to create a direction, and that direction should absolutely be "don't be an asshole". When you work for a company, you can't easily claim that something wasn't explicitly written down as a reason why they can't fire you. And yet companies still have a detailed set of policies known as The Employee Handbook.

In fact, companies start with a general statement, often called a Mission Statement, and break it down by degrees from there. It works. You know that if you take a Tier Four character then you're expected to submit two scene logs a week in order to encourage scenes and RP on the game. You shouldn't need to be explicitly told that you also shouldn't use those scenes as a way to hilite your other character.

There are things you shouldn't need explicit rules about, because the implicit rules already touch on it. But there should also be explicit rules so that people can have a reference.

There are things that shouldn't even need implicit rules. "Don't be a jerk" is one, though as quickly mentioned that's an opinion as much as anything else. Every game should have a section called "What We Expect", or "What We Don't Do Here".

So yes. "Don't Be a Jerk" means ... what? Also, what else should I know?

--

And for fuck's sake, people, make sure the staff are seen following the rules or someone knows they're being talked to when they're not.

I've seen this as staff and player too many times to count:

Staff: You were a jerk.
Player: I was being goaded by this other staffer.
Staff: This isn't about them.

Yes, yes it is about them. This is about staff not upholding the values that staff is talking down to a player about. Not talking to this other staffer makes this staffer complicit and undermines their ability to effectively dole out ethics-based punishments. All that the staffer would need to say is:

Staff: I'll be talking to them shortly.

Or even:

Staff: We can talk about them in a minute. For now, you were being a jerk.

That's it. Cronyism is bad enough in our daily lives; we don't need to continue it in our funtimes.

[ixokai]

@kanye-qwest said in Staff and ethics:

@ixokai Yeah I probably would have banned the "i raped myself" player, if their proposal was a bunch of innocuous shit.

@cupcake said in Staff and ethics:

@ixokai Not speaking for anyone else, but I as a player would want to avoid someone who was interested in playing that kind of trope on a game I participate on. That's creepy as fuck, and distinctly unfunny to those of us who have suffered sexual assault.

I totally understand both of these POV's, but: I do think the player got carried away and didn't think things through or see it as I-rape-myself, quite, until the moment, when she was just reacting as her character. I don't think she planned it.

That said, we wanted to take the boyfriend's wishes into account. He didn't want it swept under the rug and retconned; he felt both hurt, and shocked, and wanted to be able to say like: Yo. I'm breaking up with you for cause and to not invalidate the RP he had done around the false accusation.

A ban would have just nulled the situation.

As for other players, if this was something we felt at all was a sort of pattern we woulda banned her anyways. She wasn't a new player, had been with us since the beginning, and didn't have a pattern of this type of thing. But I seriously think it was an not-thinking thing. She didn't really think, "hey you realize you just accused someone of rape for actions you did without their consent?" until we bluntly pointed it out to her.

Aaaaaaand went and made the rape rule explicit Which we should have done to begin with.

[Kanye Qwest]

@ixokai said in Staff and ethics:

I don't think she planned it.

But....they did plan it. They asked specifically to use the possession NPC. The RP does not choose you.

[ixokai]

@kanye-qwest said in Staff and ethics:

@ixokai said in Staff and ethics:

I don't think she planned it.

But....they did plan it. They asked specifically to use the possession NPC. The RP does not choose you.

Its not quite so simple or black and white as that. At the time of asking to run the plot, I don't think, "oh I shall self-rape!" even entered her mind. It came up during RP that some mild sexytimes happened. I don't think it was planned that way, or that she was cognizant of her own reaction or what it would mean until the boyfriend flipped his shit out and didn't react like she thought he would-- stupidly thought, at that.

There's a lot of context here I can't fully get into.

This player's pattern of behavior wasn't one of being the regular creeper, it WAS of thoughtlessness and a lack of self-awareness.

[Thenomain]

@ixokai

I think that it's interesting and indeed very important that the other person involved, really the person who was the victim of her passion play, said they didn't want it retconned. While I go on about how "The Game" is more important than a single player, players do make up The Game, and it must have been a hellish situation to find yourself administrating.

Finding the importance in balancing respect toward multiple people is when you can't just say "Don't Be a Dick" and when you can't go with strict policy. A mix of both can inform without demanding, and I appreciate it when people try.