Posts made by Apos

@Thenomain I'm not sure if I fully agree. I think there's sometimes blending when selfishness and protective elitism are being confused. I'd more say that I'm obligated to try to make the friendliest, most fun rp environment as I can for as many people as I can, and make a good faith effort for everyone that I meet. But past that, there's some personalities that I think I know I just don't have the ability to pull back from the brink, and trying so would have a very real cost in terms of the happiness of other people. I'm no fan of exclusivity, but if a player includes someone that's actively toxic and just wrecks the environment, that does no help to anyone- probably not even the person that was included.

@VulgarKitten It varies a bit. I think the more sandbox-y it is, the more that exists, since it falls on players to make more of their fun and it's a lot easier to see people who are simply unwilling to do that for anyone else. On something less sandbox-like I tend not to notice.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I just never say 'I'm bored' on channel. Never. Because it does, to me, come off as "Entertain me, masses!", however anyone means it.

Man, I sure read it that way every time and it pisses me off disproportionately. At best, I silently decide to never, ever have anything to do with someone that says that again because I'd just feel like I'm coddling a whiner. If anyone on this board does that (who am I kidding, I've -seen- people on this board do this in games), please fucking stop.

@Arkandel While I agree, the obvious win conditions and competitive nature of the former makes it easier for people to go, 'Well, as much as I like Bob, he really sucks at mashing buttons and if we take him we'll lose, so sorry Bob' where it feels way more personal to say, 'Jim sucks at roleplaying characters and everything he makes is trite and annoying, so please don't invite Jim'. The former is easier to justify from a, 'well sorry we have to do this' perspective while the latter has a more nebulous feel that doesn't invoke a feeling of necessity.

I'm a big believer in fostering grid roleplay and open events since I think it greatly reduces the feelings of exclusion, and time permitting it's fun to try to reach out and make RP for new people and hope it works out, but it can be pretty easy to get burned on doing it.

A lot of the people I've met who were the most vocal about it was strictly because their form of RP was extremely self-absorbed and wasn't a whole hell of a lot of fun for other people, and they weren't particularly interested in hearing the most politely worded nudges of how they might tweak their style. Worse, the really vocal and needy have a way of trying to dominate every open RP and make it about them... which reinforces cliquish behavior by other RPers to exclude them, and in turn actually does create the kind of alienation that makes the more just quiet and shy types feel really left out. So it's important for activity generators to keep being open for the latter group, while hoping staff sorts out the former, rather than letting things drift to an unfortunate logical conclusion.

@Sovereign I agree to a point. The very few hardasses are typically self-interested people that really get off on it, which are also the worst kind of people to have that kind of authoritarian control and destroy things pretty quickly. So the ideal is someone completely unafraid to make difficult choices that has no emotional investment in it at all, but also recognizes the importance of moderation and restraint when it's called for.

Someone that can siteban a creeper 2 seconds after realizing what they are doing rather than taking weeks of compiling unnecessary evidence, but also is friendly and outgoing to every new player, is approachable, and is genuinely interested in hearing out player concerns. Doesn't really help to have the first without the second imo, which is why you have all those threads about petty dictator types.

In my experience most of the blunt, hard nosed types are even more socially retarded than the most passive aggressive ones and just confuse a lack of tact or inability to understand other people with being honest and direct.

I think the reason most of us immediate approach this from an angle of, 'ways people would abuse a yes-first' game is due to our experiences. For just about anyone that's staffed, we immediately think of disruptive players that are unable to be reasonable and more importantly are unwilling to recognize that they aren't reasonable, and those players would be the ones most attracted to something advertised as a 'yes-first' game.

The most problematic players that want to assign blame for their own faults to others are probably the most likely to go, 'Finally a game without ridiculous staff where I can do what I want, about time' and gravitate towards it, so unfortunately the game type most dependent on players to create their own constructive environment are likely the ones to be the most toxic.

@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.

@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.

@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 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:

If you stop someone from entering the gateway, their toxicity never hits the player base at all. If you wait for them to fuck with people, then likely some people quit, say screw this hobby, and never come back even if the guilty party is punished. So with an auditing approach, you absolutely allow terrible things to occur rather than prevention and this costs players. This is why I think a very severe approach for OOC problems is critical, rather than just recommended.

I understand this can just be seen as a cost and trade off for permissiveness, and that can even be fine and justified. But I think it can't be amplified by a cautious approach to problem players. At the very least, I would make the equivalent of whatever report or GM call or whatever code you use require an immediate response to harassment, not something that can be investigated later.

@Arkandel Everyone agrees that OOC problem players need to be contained, so I'd move past that generality that's not particularly helpful. So let's focus on a yes-first game idea and what actually would be constructive towards it.

I think that OOC violations would have to be dealt with far greater severity than most MUs. I wouldn't even bother to give warnings. I wouldn't even talk to them. If someone is being at all disruptive, site ban and move on. That's that. And the reason is simple- the more collaborative an environment with the greater degree of interaction, the more important keeping a very non-toxic environment is. For most MUs that are not yes-first, they are gated constantly in small ways, but if you are just doing audits, the player base has to be as reinforcing as possible for positive behavior and have no tolerance at all for OOC bullshit. It would only take an extremely small percentage of players a very small amount of time to spoil that. In any of the cases @surreality gave, I would ban without conversation or warning. I think it would be incredibly dumb to drag it out at all and incredibly destructive to fail to act quickly and decisively. I'm honestly curious how many of those real world examples she had were banned in the same night they were first reported.

I belabor this because most MUs are NOT quick and decisive. They are anything but. They hate to be the bad guy and let problems linger on, and on, and on, constantly allowing a toxic environment that drives off players to linger because they are terrified of looking like a dictator/bully and have mean things written about them on boards like this. A yes-first game would have this amplified, so it would have be the far, far, far other side of it.

@Nein Log into a roleplaying server on an MMO, go to a roleplaying hub with a few hundred people, or a forum with thousands of people just for that game, ask who there plays world of darkness. Probably well under one percent. Then ask who knows what Undertale or MLP is. Probably almost everyone. 'Popularity crest' is probably inaccurate, 'generational divide' I think captures it better.

"Hey guys anyone want to play a vampire game where you need to buy or illegally download dozens of books for an antiquated text format and then deal with lunatics or a shit load of elitists that will mock you not having the game memorized?" It's not an easy fucking sell, I'll tell you that.

@ThatGuyThere I know what you're saying there, though I think a game like this would probably have fully coded combat so a GM wouldn't need to be there for it. That means you would need a GM for any complicated plot of catching someone that's never on the grid (which frankly a lot of twinky/metagaming players will do if they think they are threatened), but it is not so bad for most fights. I played on a MUSH with fully coded combat and yeah the plots of 'I want to assassinate a character that never leaves their room' never, ever went anywhere, but a lot of characters got PK'd just due to players having access to combat commands.

@Arkandel I was thinking about the same thing, since every MU I've played has had a similar blurb about it at least mentioning in passing about players should never feel the need to RP out anything that makes them uncomfortable. In terms of help files, it's awkward but might be necessary to specifically mention examples of things players can -and should- fade to black on if they personally have a problem with it. It's also awkward for flow but not a terrible idea to require any player of an antagonist to specifically ask if the victim's player is comfortable with continuing or if they'd prefer to fade to black. That kind of policy might scare off the creepier sorts that are most likely to stomp on fade-to-black rules, since all you need to know is whether they checked first, and puts the onus on players.

But most importantly I'd say just a prevalent staff culture, like any staff storytellers specifically (and very pointedly) asks if players would prefer a fade to black on any sensitive scenes rather than waiting for players to be forced to voice their dislike. While it might come across as a little awkward and disruptive of flow, I think it might save a whole hell of a lot of drama before describing something that truly offends a great player.

Just a couple ideas off my head, a little awkward but might help.