GMs and Players

[Misadventure]

@three-eyed-crow Yeah what T said.

@mietze "strong" would be fairly clear AND in moderately common usage. To your point, maybe instead of "fast" or whatever, people could say 15m max pose wait, may be dropped from scene after 3+ missed poses

@derp you can do whatever you want on your games. I'm trying to not be limiting to whomever is reading it. Of course you aren't "responsible" for things that happen off your server, but do you also forbid asynchronous play, +mail play, paged RP, temp room rp - whatever it is where the characters aren't open official grid, in some form of real time? I don't think so.

I get the impression that people find trying to short hand your needs in a way players can better link up with each other and staff is a hostile thought.

[Tinuviel]

@misadventure said in GMs and Players:

I get the impression that people find trying to short hand your needs in a way players can better link up with each other and staff is a hostile thought.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make, here. You specifically mentioned email and forum RP, and @Derp specifically said "off-game RP" is "all kinds of a bad idea." Something I agree with.

Not every game is designed with async play in mind, but if you manage to get it to work in your group on a game, that's... probably fine? Personally having an actual 'scene' via @mail or pages sounds like a pain in the ass, but if you make it work then whatever.

That's all happening on the game, though. That's all stuff we can adjudicate and otherwise deal with. But I'm of the view that if it's happening on discord or a forum, or via email, carrier pigeon, smoke signal, or anything that is not on the game then it's not 'canon' and not 'my problem.'

[Misadventure]

@tinuviel The point was some form of terms giving info about GM and player preferences could be helpful.

I gave an example. Obviously, the example is worth more than the idea, so there's not much more to discuss.

[faraday]

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

But I'm of the view that if it's happening on discord or a forum, or via email, carrier pigeon, smoke signal, or anything that is not on the game then it's not 'canon' and not 'my problem.'

Not your problem (as a game runner), sure. As everyone has said, you're on your own if something happens, just as you would be if you were just chit-chatting with someone off-game.

Not canon though? That's ridiculous. Async and off-grid RP happens. It's happened for as long as there have been MUSHes. If the game doesn't provide a convenient WAY for it to happen in-game, like Ares' scene system does, then it's going to happen off the game.

And so? What difference does it make to canon if Joe and I are exchanging paragraphs at each other via +emit, pages, discord, Google doc, a private wikidot that we both edit, a private MU server we're both on, or carrier pigeon? On BSP we used to draft scenes on livejournal then post them to the wiki when we were done. Whatever tool you're using to throw the words at each other, you're still RPing and it should be given the same weight as any other scene.

[Tinuviel]

@faraday said in GMs and Players:

Not canon though? That's ridiculous.

No it isn't, you simply disagree with it.

[faraday]

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

No it isn't, you simply disagree with it.

So I share a log to the game wiki. Where did it come from? Was it RPed in a grid room? A private room pretending to be the town square? Discord? Google doc? What about vignettes and backscenes?

There is objectively, measurably, no difference in the output AND and no way to verify that it did not originate off-game in part or whole. (I mean, short of spying on all RP and cross-checking against wiki logs, I guess, but that seems insane.)

And that's saying nothing about the game canon established when two players just agree what happened without playing it out, which people do every day.

So yeah... ridiculous.

[Tinuviel]

@faraday You and I seem to have a different view on what I mean by canon. I don't care what other players do or decide between themselves. But what happens on the game trumps what happens outside of it.

You can have your google doc talking about an epic battle in the town square all you want. If it didn't happen on the game itself, it didn't happen. I'm not beholden to whatever nonsense people decide to say happened in their other-spaces RP.

[faraday]

@tinuviel OK so I'm legit trying to understand your different view on canon.

How would you know if it happened on the game itself?

I mean, if Bob and I post a log of space monkeys attacking the town square, it's probably equally stupid whether the RP took place in discord, on the game via pages or TP room, or on the game in the actual town square at 3am when nobody else happened to be online.

You shouldn't be beholden to nonsense regardless of where it originated.

And if it's not nonsense and is actual good story development... why do you care where it originated?

(for example, Bob and I working towards a legit game-related storyline, but we're in different timezones so literally can only RP piecemeal through google docs)

[Tinuviel]

@faraday said in GMs and Players:

And if it's not nonsense and is actual good story development... why do you care where it originated?

It goes back to the lack of administrative ability in the likely event of issues. I honestly don't care if it happens elsewhere, I just don't want to approve of it happening elsewhere. So if I'm seen to allow it, that can be taken as "official permission" or what-have-you and will lead to arguments and problems.

[Derp]

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

I honestly don't care if it happens elsewhere, I just don't want to approve of it happening elsewhere.

This is a good point. But it wasn't quite my original point. Which is that there are a certain subset of players that expect staff to adjudicate the behavior/content/whatever of player interactions that happen in other media. Like Discord.

So you and Bob do a naughty little TS on Discord. Whatever, I don't care. But then a week later you send me a screenshot presumably of Bob calling you a dirty <swear word of some kind> (because we are in mildly constructive).

What am I supposed to do with this?

I can't verify it. It didn't even happen anywhere I have any control over.

But you want me to take actions against Bob because, presumably, he was mean to you or whatever. Even though for all I know you just straight up doctored that conversation which, in an earlier conversation, we saw was remarkably easy to do.

What then? Because I tacitly gave a nod of approval to 'yeah I am not going to explicitly ban you from doing a thing I cannot prevent you from doing anyway' I am now supposed to play the judge of the thing I couldn't stop you from doing had I wanted to?

There has to be reasonable lines beyond which -- there be dragons, yo, and if you go get eaten by one, then. I don't know what to do for you.

[mietze]

So intellectually and pragmatically I understand this concern. "I don't want to police Discord and ban someone over their behavior there when it's not on my game."

But I'll be honest. When I think on how many times I've had to take disciplinary action against someone either as a staff or in filing something against them as a player--while indeed sometimes there has been stuff outside of the game (not discord yet, but all the other crap we used in the dark ages), it NEVER, EVER didn't have an on game component either.

So I'm not sure that's actually a worry. If someone is an abusive shitbag on discord, they're not NOT going to be an abusive shitbag on the game, eventually.

[Sunny]

This post is deleted!

[Derp]

@sunny said in GMs and Players:

@derp

If I were a player on your game, and my ex husband that beat me showed up on your game, and I brought it to you and asked you for help, what would you do? It happened outside of the game and has no bearing whatsoever on your site or RP there.

Tell you the same thing I'd tell everyone else: Tell him not to contact you, and if he continues to contact you, I'll boot his ass. Same as I would anyone else.

I feel that's a reasonable response.

I have no evidence of what transpired outside the game, and I'm not comfortable trying to sort out what happened in a location that I do not control. I'm not comfortable taking action without evidence, because it is too easy for people to manufacture stories about one another. I accept that when I create an online space I have the responsibility to make sure the interactions in that space are safe, but I'm not comfortable taking it beyond that.

I would urge you to contact the police, especially if he's violating a restraining order, and to go to a judge to get one if you don't have one. Presumably, these two actions would get him off the game soon enough. And since guys like that basically do not take no for an answer, we'd certainly have evidence for a ban quickly enough. But to do anything else? Is beyond the scope of running an RPG.

Change your question up a bit.

I'm the manager of a McDonalds, and there are two customers in line. One of them turns and then points and yells "that is my ex husband who used to beat me, please help!" The other dude, meanwhile, looks reasonably chill, and hasn't interacted with the first customer in any way that I can see.

For all I know, customer #1 is having a bad mental health day. But even beyond that -- I'm the manager of a McDonalds. I'm not a marriage counselor, or a therapist, or anything else. I provide a specific service, and control the space wherein that service is provided, under specific terms, to call comers.

It is way outside of my job description to try to police the outside social interaction of two adults like that. I make the rules for the space we are in, and enforce them. There are other powers and institutions better suited to making other calls like that.

If he breaks one of my rules? Sure, I'll boot his ass out the door. Until then? That's outside the scope of my expertise, and I'm not going to get involved in it other than to point you to resources that might be better suited for your needs.

[Sunny]

@derp

Good to know.

[Tinuviel]

@mietze said in GMs and Players:

If someone is an abusive shitbag on discord, they're not NOT going to be an abusive shitbag on the game, eventually.

And that's when it becomes my problem to solve. That's when I can investigate to determine the truth. Because people lie, quite a bit.

This isn't to say that I'll never intervene ever at all no way no how. It's setting a default expectation that my authority and my concern lies with the game, that's it.

Discord has its own policing structure (whether it's effective or not I have no clue) as well as outside authorities. If @Sunny came to me with her tale I'd keep an eye on the alleged ex-husband, and if things happened on the game I'd deal with it. I don't know if Sunny's telling the truth, or if this person is who Sunny thinks they are, or anything like that, so I'd want to set the base expectation of innocence.

[Devrex]

A MUSH is like any other site.

You set your Terms of Service. And on a MUSH they're hopefully clearer, less ambiguous, and less in fine print than any other site on the Internet.

If someone violates the ToS, you get rid of them. Clear, unambiguous, a standard that is fair to all. Especially on sites that let you collect evidence as easily as pushing a button.

If someone violates the ToS on another site, then it's on the other site to deal. But no site is going to respond based on anything other than a violation of the ToS; and they will use their own tools on their own site to investigate it.

If someone does an RP on Gdocs and moves the log to my site, fine, as long as the log is in line with our theme and PRP policy that's fine. If they want to RP something else-site and don't expect any XP, story favors, or whatnot from it, and then set it up as a memory, that is also fine, it doesn't impact anything. But if something goes wrong on Discord, then they need to use Discord's reporting tools. Or Facebook. Or Gdocs. Or on that mountain with the smoke signals. When they go off-game, they are bound by that space's Terms of Service.

Why we expect more out of MU* runners than we expect off of any other site or service or app you log into is way beyond me.

[mietze]

I'm not expecting anything of anyone. Just making the observation that if someone is abusive towards another player I've never seen them contain it solely to off game things when they're targeting someone on game.

I have, however, seen many times people immediately dismiss people reporting abusive issues on the whole, if part of it did occur off game, overeager to trample them over "well if you didn't share your info that wouldn't have happened" and ignoring the on-game abuse.

[faraday]

@derp said in GMs and Players:

What then? Because I tacitly gave a nod of approval to 'yeah I am not going to explicitly ban you from doing a thing I cannot prevent you from doing anyway' I am now supposed to play the judge of the thing I couldn't stop you from doing had I wanted to?

I mean... you just say no? I don't see the big deal here.

It doesn't matter if Bob was mean to me on Facebook, Discord, MSB, ABC MU*, or whatever. If it's not your game, you have no obligation to discipline Bob for it.

It also doesn't matter WHY Bob was being mean to you off-game. Maybe it was RP about your game; maybe it was a conversation about your game; maybe it had nothing whatsoever to do with your game. It's still not your problem.

Unless of course you WANT it to be. If you feel Bob's off-game behavior crosses some intolerable line for you (hate speech, doxxing, stalking, whatever) and you want to ban him for it, that's your prerogative. But by no means is there any reasonable expectation for you to do so. Any player who demands that of you is just being unreasonable and you can tell them so.

[Tinuviel]

@faraday said in GMs and Players:

Any player who demands that of you is just being unreasonable and you can tell them so.

Drawing us full circle to the original thesis of this thread, of setting reasonable expectations.

[Derp]

@faraday

Oh, I'm with you on that one.

My thinking was more for like -- we have seen, on this forum even, people demanding that staff take action based on off-game discord conversations.

And then there are examples like @Sunny's where there are expectations based on someone just telling you something, with no evidence of it whatsoever, and expecting them to take action on it for something that has not happened / happened in some other context entirely outside of the game.

I'm telling both of those people "no, you need to figure this out, but here are our rules so. Stay within the lines."

But it seems that isn't considered a reasonable response. Which -- I mean, I disagree, and it's not gonna hurt my feelings if people think it's unreasonable, but it seems to be becoming a more widespread idea, and it's a little disturbing.