The elusive yes-first game.

[Apos]

@Nein Your post is good since honestly almost all of those can be solved with just an extremely good, positive staff and aren't necessarily core problems to the hobby. While I might disagree on some fundamental aspects with Ark's design, frankly I think any game Arkandel is likely to run would probably avoid any of the pitfalls except the Queen Bee issue since that would be expected to be addressed by players. A constructive and reasonable staff focused on internal consistency and story goes a hell of a long way, and I almost feel like I could say, 'Yeah do everything you said and just ban trolls immediately and you're fine'.

[Arkandel]

@Apos said:

@Arkandel If someone puts in a CG background that's incredibly creepy and a gigantic red flag, with a standard game someone might question them on it and veto it. With a yes-only MU, they won't be questioned, but assume that if they act in a way against OOC rules they will be punished. This is has a core problem:

But they don't. That's not a theory, it's a fact - looking back at some of the people commonly accepted after the fact as the worst, they weren't in trouble too often at all. Sometimes they weren't in trouble at all until the very end. Routinely they were highly esteemed and respected for the vast majority of their time there.

What I'm saying is, your heart is certainly in the right place but you won't catch anyone you want to catch at CGen. You'd find they've written a great description, a very reasonable background (or with just hints of legitimate darkness in them - PTSD for example, stuff you wouldn't stop anyway) and when they pose they're pretty good at it.

On the other hand when your hammer does fall, it'll be on that silly fool who made the wrong poorly worded joke someone was offended by and got him banned. You won't really solve the intended problem, you'll only be creating a new one. IMHO, of course.

[Apos]

@Arkandel I was actually speaking from personal experience of repeatedly catching people at chargen.

"Thank you for your interest, but you are not a good fit for this game, sorry" kind of way. Obviously you won't catch anyone that makes a good effort at hiding how damaged they are, but absolutely I've had to restrict or turn away people that just screamed problems in big blazing letters on the screen.

As for severity, in my experience everyone worries about banning people that don't deserve it but that doesn't really happen so much as, 'Gosh, this person has been sending lewd pages to women. Let's warn him and oh good he says he understands and promises to stop' and a month later he is still there and 5 or 6 women have stopped logging in for mysterious reasons.

[Alzie]

RFK stopped many players at CG. So not sure where you're getting that you can't ever catch a bad player at CG.

[Groth]

Well, the people caught at CG are usually the people who are either just completely unable to play to theme or unable to read and write the English language (We had to tell two people with learning disabilities that our game was not for them). The creeps are usually caught later.

[Arkandel]

@Apos said:

As for severity, in my experience everyone worries about banning people that don't deserve it but that doesn't really happen so much as, 'Gosh, this person has been sending lewd pages to women. Let's warn him and oh good he says he understands and promises to stop' and a month later he is still there and 5 or 6 women have stopped logging in for mysterious reasons.

Absolutely, and I agree... I just don't know we'd catch this person by looking at their BG, that's all.

[Groth]

@Apos said:

As for severity, in my experience everyone worries about banning people that don't deserve it but that doesn't really happen so much as, 'Gosh, this person has been sending lewd pages to women. Let's warn him and oh good he says he understands and promises to stop' and a month later he is still there and 5 or 6 women have stopped logging in for mysterious reasons.

One of the problems is that people are very reluctant to tell staff they're being harassed, even when the harassment is very explicit. On RFK there were a number of problem players we dealt with that had apparently been harassing almost every female player in the game but noone had made any formal complaint, the only reason we found out was because we started asking players specifically about it.

[Ghost]

I knew of a guy once who had RL issues with a cheating wife. So, IC, he would SHOWER PCs with gifts and praise, and want them to dress all sexy, and then ICly/OOCly get mad at them and call them whores for RPing with other men.

A lot of this stuff goes on for a while before staff is even brought in, because people don't want to spoil the roleplay or cause some huge ruckus. Mushers have a way of shaking victims, just like in real life, and the OOC rumor game is often used against the complaining player, so the abused player tries to placate the aggressor by giving them what they want, making an alt, and trying to get around the issue that way. It's...kind of depressing.

[Arkandel]

In my opinion the only way we can sort of get rid of this is to make consent requirements more universal.

In other words, I'd go with @Misadventure's addendum from earlier in the thread; if you want to really address this issue, make player to player collaboration mandatory. I didn't want to bundle this in though because if people object to open CGen they'll like a weighed/tiered consent-based system even less.

It'd stand a chance to get the job done though. At a cost, as with everything else.

[Ghost]

@Arkandel well, I agree that open-cgen won't catch the bad players. Like my above-mentioned example, players like that tend to make fairly normal seeming characters.

I'm banging my head here trying to think of an easy way to get around this. Maybe I'm just so used to long app processes and consent policies that have existed for decades.

Another shoutout to @faraday (who I'm a big fan of), but I think she had the right of it. She had an app process that was based off of her FS3 system. You see, if you want to have a fast/quick app process, you have to have sheets/game/cgen system that isn't bulky. A lot of WoD is horrible for this, but FS3 was great for it.

You will want to automate what you want to see on the sheets, or have a system that is rules-light enough so that you know what's on the sheets won't be something game-breaking. All you would need to do is give the sheets a once-over to look for obvious red flags, and then move on. OR if the CGen was so automated that you could trust in it, then BAM, you don't need to worry about sheets.

The "I agree" section could be a good place to automate consent rules and whatnot, too. Just like an EULA, whether or not you read the "I Agree" section doesn't negate your requirement to follow those rules, so you could throw up a minor "be adult, get consent, speak up if you're uncomfortable" as well as an "I am 18+ years of age" into it. That could make your app process all a bit more agile.

Though, logically, I don't think I can stress enough that the complexity of the expected character sheet really does determine the complexity of your all process.

On the BSG games, I saw some days where 20-40 characters were approved because the sheets were might lifting and the staff was on point.

[Arkandel]

What if we cheat? And include the BG checks as an audit instead of up-front?

That way most players simply go through CGen on the spot and it's never an issue. They start, finish in 10-15 minutes, hit the grid and start posing - the portion where there's nothing between them and having fun is there. And the fewer who created ancient vampires who are now Mages for your WoD game are eventually found out, spoken to and tweaked ('it was all a dreeeeam').

I mean I don't like it as much since it negates taking all that work from staff but at least it seems to achieve one of the other goals.

[Ghost]

Could work. You'll want the sheet-portion automated and QA'd for checks to make sure point expenditure and certain requirements for pieces are met (X merit requires Y in skill). If you get that down, then you effectively negate the need to worry about the points being off and can focus on the BGs.

[Apos]

@Arkandel said:

What if we cheat? And include the BG checks as an audit instead of up-front?

I actually thought that's what you were proposing from the start and misunderstood, that CG would be essentially entirely automatic and you'd just retroactively tweak or remove problems that are thematically impossible/ooc problem children, since I figured that was much closer to your philosophy of a yes-first game. Imo I think you either do that, and go after problems hard after the fact which leaves most players totally alone, or you have a stringent version of CG that tries to catch problems before they arise but comes at the cost of being slow for the majority of players. I think the mushy (har) middle of most games with a pretty permissive approach that still doesn't catch/prevent problems isn't very helpful, so I'd just go to one of the two extremes.

[Lithium]

@faraday said:

@Lithium said:

My current idea re-chargen is to allow pretty much instant approval for 'side kick' level characters... It'll be interesting to see how it works out.

All I can say is I hope it works out better for you than it did for me

It wasn't skill points/powers that were the problem, it was people whose backgrounds were flat-out CRAZY, or who had a seriously deficient understanding of the theme. I don't see how those sorts of problems would be any better for sidekicks vs main chars.

Yes, you can let them hit the grid and expect players to sort the mess out, but my experience is that it seriously irritates the existing players. They didn't sign on for that nonsense and it can be really disruptive to RP. I see it as my job to insulate them from craziness as much as practical, and apps are an important step.

It might, but, it's a sidekick character. If someone is greatly breaking the theme ICly then I expect the PC's to react as if that individual were psychotic and see that they got the 'help' they needed at the local Vault (The Vault is my 'super prison', it is set up in cells all over the city because the city is flippin huge) and thus the problem is solved.

[Lithium]

@Arkandel said:

@Apos said:

As for severity, in my experience everyone worries about banning people that don't deserve it but that doesn't really happen so much as, 'Gosh, this person has been sending lewd pages to women. Let's warn him and oh good he says he understands and promises to stop' and a month later he is still there and 5 or 6 women have stopped logging in for mysterious reasons.

Absolutely, and I agree... I just don't know we'd catch this person by looking at their BG, that's all.

Just because you can't catch them /all/ doesn't mean you shouldn't /try/ to filter anyone.

This is why my 'no approval' characters are so much weaker than a regular character that requires approval. Practically anyone should be able to thump a side kick except perhaps another side kick so if they break theme to much they can either get help, or be disposed of ICly. All else fails, I have /zero/ qualms with removing theme breaking crazy from my game because they agreed to it by skipping past my AUP and just typing the requisite command to get them out of the start room.

People should really read what they are agreeing to before Apple turns them into human centipedes.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Arkandel said:

Absolutely, and I agree... I just don't know we'd catch this person by looking at their BG, that's all.

You aren't going to catch every one but you will catch more then zero which is how many you catch with a hands off policy.
A yes game could work maybe if staff were diligent at getting out the ooc bad apples. Every person says they will do this, very few actually do.
the personality traits that lead people to want to make a yes game are a lot of the same traits that result in giving people way too many chances to shape up. Maybe your hypothetical game would not follow the pattern. But I am pragmatic enough not to believe it til i see it.

[Sunny]

@Apos said:

@Arkandel said:

What if we cheat? And include the BG checks as an audit instead of up-front?

I actually thought that's what you were proposing from the start and misunderstood, that CG would be essentially entirely automatic and you'd just retroactively tweak or remove problems that are thematically impossible/ooc problem children, since I figured that was much closer to your philosophy of a yes-first game. Imo I think you either do that, and go after problems hard after the fact which leaves most players totally alone, or you have a stringent version of CG that tries to catch problems before they arise but comes at the cost of being slow for the majority of players. I think the mushy (har) middle of most games with a pretty permissive approach that still doesn't catch/prevent problems isn't very helpful, so I'd just go to one of the two extremes.

I know I've chosen to go the no-approval system myself; we're doing a review thing, and then retroactively fixing as needed. The game's IC situation allows for this to be done without any worldbreaking, though.

[surreality]

Actually, the guy in question from HM wasn't exactly subtle -- at least when I ran into him on TR.

He was quite direct about his intentions and ideas, they were just so impressively over the top it's really easy to dismiss them as a joke. As in, "This guy cannot possibly be serious," levels of 'over the top'.

You don't find out it's anything but a joke until you laugh along, and he explodes.

So it is actually -- or at least potentially -- a lot more possible to catch these people than might be expected.

I'm not suggesting that people take everything ridiculous seriously, because that would be equally ridiculous. It isn't hard, however, to see a pattern of things that could be problematic that make you think, "This guy must be kidding... " and check in on that front.

Spider posted her example exchange with him back on WORA. If someone had bothered to ask, "Dude, is your actual notion of what you want to do on this game coercing female players to RP drinking horse semen for your amusement or preventing them from advancing in their faction?" I suspect the problem would have become rapidly apparent in his particular case, as the problem, in part, was the player's absolute faith in the rightness and acceptability and reasonability of these objectives, and that those uninterested or unwilling to gleefully participate in them were a problem that should be punished. (Really.)

This kinda thing really is overdue for it's own thread, though, since a lot of points have come up about these kinds of issues that are worthy of discussion on their own, IMO.

[Cirno]

@surreality

Well, that escalated quickly.

I wonder if anyone told that guy that he could have just gone to Shang or Taps or FS if he was desirous of that.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

It strikes me as much easier just to tell someone they can't do something than to see the stupid thing they're doing and try to stop it.

I think if you want open CG, you have to accept that the game will have a certain amount of crack, and it can't be helped. Which is a valid trade-off to make, it's just a trade-off that's inevitable. I don't see a hybrid of open cg/approval really pleasing anyone.