Best posts made by Apocalycious

There are probably a handful that I've forgotten about, but:

Tales of the River Provence: Ivory Storm, Tough Cookie/Dreaming Sunrise, V'neef Kisana, Mnemon Caras Alaya, Cathak Min Li, Mizali, Joyous Axiom of Ruin, Shalrina (staff)

Haunted Memories: Annikah, Sonja, Lumi, Yllka, Sianna, Josephine, Yelena, Ousia (Staff)

St. Petersburg: Izabella, Yelena, Sofia

NYC: Abigail, Jacqueline

Reach: Abigail, Elsie, Babs, Yumi, Nineveh (Staff, before the game initially opened)

Fallcoast: Safiyah, Hannah

Reno: Tahmina

Dark Spires: Ailbhe, Hana, Kanuka

Darkwater: Lillian, Jan

Blood and Citrus: Molly, the Liti-gator

Firan: Karna (initial player), Srenni & Paulina (random player at some point in their history)

Kingsdale: Aislinn

Red Tide: Lin, Piper, Calowyn, Shalrina (staff)

Shadowrun - Denver: Serafine

@WTFE said in Dealing with Staff:

While you have that "I must WIN" attitude there is no hope at all for you to coexist peacefully

I have to agree with this. This statement, to me, says very clearly that while you might not be the whole problem, you are least part of the problem. The fact that "winning" comes to your mind in the situation at all strongly suggest it, and it's likely that the first thing you need to do is stop being part of the problem.

Your original question was this:

How do you, as a player, deal with a member of staff that you have a very negative interaction with.

To be a bit blunt, the answer to this question is to be a mature adult. You do that by either removing yourself from the situation (by leaving the game), or put your feelings aside and deal with them in a straightforward, polite, professional manner that leaves no room for anyone to criticize your behavior. At that point the ball is in their court, and if that doesn't work then your choices are to bring the evidence of their misconduct to someone who can do something about it (if that person exists), to leave, or accept that whatever they're doing is something you'll have to deal with if you choose to stay.

@RDC said:

You're a fucking saint, and one of the best people in this hobby. I will mourn the day you finally decide to set your whole house and everything in it on fire and retreat from the internet in disgust with us all.

Hey! That's MY house! With my stuff in it. And ME in it!

@Ashen-Shugar said in Dealing with Staff:

When you go off to 'teach a lesson' you wind up learning more then the person who you're trying to instruct.

I definitely agree with this. It comes back to my statement about acting like a mature adult.

Be aware of what you really want out of your interactions with the person. If it's for them to do their job as a staffer, then that's great. Actually being courteous, concise, and professional is almost always the best way to get that, and if it doesn't work it's likely that nothing will.

If what you really want is to get them in trouble, or to beat them, or honestly just about anything else than simply getting the +job/etc. done, then chances are very good that the problem is at least partly you. There's even a good chance the problem is mostly or entirely you. So the first step is to fix yourself, because you're ultimately the only person whose actions you'll ever have full control over.

@Catsmeow said:

I feel like people here know more of the story on the jump on the person-ness going on. However, I would like to remind people that sometimes staffers are DICKS.

This is true, I agree with you completely, but everything I said applies no matter who is at fault, and how big a dick the staffer is. The absolutely best way to deal with it still to: (1) make sure you're not being a dick yourself and deal with them in a calm, reasonable, polite manner that covers what needs to be done for your play to continue and nothing else, or (2) leave the game. There's possibly (3) try to have a calm conversation about it with them and work things out, but in general if someone needs this advice in the first place, there's a good chance they're not suited to doing that without it spiraling out of control.

The first option can include taking the evidence of the problems to someone who can actually take action on it, sometimes. It depends on the situation. If there's really nothing that can be done, like if they're the HeadWiz and not beholden to anyone, then you either just live with it or you leave.

Haunted Memories had a bunch of Reality Level stuff configured to allow for things like going in Twlight (using the same grid), the Shadow (with its own grid), and the Hedge (its own grid). In general we didn't really run into trouble, but if I recall correctly the Twilight functionality still allowed people to see you as far as look and stuff, it just showed you differently on 'look' and so on.

It has been a while, so I don't remember for sure, but I do recall that there was a heavy use of Reality Levels, and it was nice for a lot of stuff.

@Arkandel said in Shadows Over Reno:

But they are very understaffed in general so expectations have to be managed.

Definitely true.

At the same time, there are also a number of things that could be streamlined much better to eliminate a lot of the back and forths, which would save time for both staff and players. Understaffing can be partly compensated for with consistency and efficiency. There are also some things that I've seen people ask questions about repeatedly that take time away from staff to answer, but which could be fixed in a way that would eliminate most future questions in about the same time as it would take the answer the next person who asks.

One example is the last page of chargen, which says (or did when I was in there, anyway) to put your XP spends into the job when you submit, which isn't what you're supposed to do. There is a bbpost that says what you're supposed to do, but fixing the @desc in the room would take about the same amount of time as a bbpost, and would mean less confusion for people and less time having to answer questions about what to do. People are more likely to notice the directions in the chargen room than a bbpost mixed in with a hundred others.

Plus, the room @desc will have to be fixed at some point anyway, so not fixing it triply compounds the issue; you have to write a bbpost, you have to clarify what the right process is when people ask (which just takes up more time the longer the @desc is unfixed as more people ask), and you have to update the @desc anyway. Just fixing the @desc first saves the extra work of those other things.

As for the example you gave (the back and forth conversation), in my experience it ends up making things faster for everyone if instead of saying "anything else missing?" you approve the job and say "if anything else is missing, just put in a request and we'll be happy to take care of it." The job is then closed, the staffer doesn't have to spend any time coming back to it to check if there was something else , and the player knows that the situation is finalized and they're okayed (or denied) for whatever the job was about without wondering if they're set to go or not, which can happen if the job isn't actually approved yet. If there's an issue they can just put in another job, which is really just as easy as adding a comment to the previous job is.

There have been some other things that have generated extra, unnecessary work for staff that could have been negated by taking a brief extra action earlier as well. For example, a post by the Prince got pulled down, but that was after people had seen it and started RPing about it. I understand (and agree with) the reason it was pulled, but a quick note saying 'ignore that post, pretend it didn't happen, sorry. nothing has changed except that the post never happened' would have meant people knew what was going on. Instead, multiple people ended up putting in jobs asking what was going on and needing clarification. Did it still happen, and it's just not there for new people to find out about? Did it get retconned? Nobody knew.

I'm sure that a lot of this is growing pains, and that things will get sorted out and squared away and all of that. I've been having fun, and none of this is really meant to be complaints, just my observations of ways that the staff has been making their own lives needlessly harder (and sometimes their players, but more often their own).

Leave the house? Never!

@Hexagon
I logged in to check, and HM has rlevels:

Level: real         Value: 0x00000001   Desc: desc-interpreter
Level: shadow       Value: 0x00000002   Desc: shadow-desc
Level: invis        Value: 0x00000004   Desc: desc-interpreter
Level: twilight     Value: 0x00000008   Desc: desc-interpreter
Level: all          Value: 0x0000000f   Desc: desc-interpreter

The Hedge was not actually an rlevel, just a different grid. The Shadow one was useful because the rooms were all the same in the Shadow, but it allowed for different descs in shadow/real. Extensive use was made of it, and most of the main grid rooms and many builds had shadow-descs set.

If I recall correctly, early on the Twilight one did make people invisible except to other people in Twilight. I never made much use of it (and it didn't get used very much in general), so I don't remember if those policies changed with time, or what they changed to. I don't remember the invis one getting used at all.

@Arkandel said in Roleplaying writing styles:

This reminds me. How do you feel about revealing things about the character through narration and not in any visible ways? For example: "Bob sits down and grows silent. Ever since he returned from the war he's been reserved in social settings with people he doesn't know well. He lifts his glass and...".

I do this mainly when I'm filling in details that the other character would likely know, but the player might not. As an example, if my character and theirs have known each other for 20 years, and something my character does is likely to be familiar to them, or carry some significant meaning.