Posts made by 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.

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.

@Sunny I wish they would stop rebooting so often though. I honestly have no idea if or which of the stories I really liked about the X-Men, Spiderman or Batman have even happened at this rate in current continuity.

@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.

@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 said:

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.

There are two reasons I disagree with this and one for which I don't.

1. I don't see why an IC liberal game would attract or tolerate more jerks than the more traditional organizational model. What about strict CGen or XP spending justification guidelines is it that has stopped them before? The Mage on HM (I forget his name naturally) who turned out to be a serial creep pushing female players into mind-controlled TS with him, he didn't put a "serial rapist" description on his +sheet, you know? It all emerged much later on.

2. People like that are very good at covering their own tracks. They won't leave a paper trail, their pages will never be too explicit or incriminating... they are careful. It comes with the territory. Other players who happen to have a bad day or phrase things badly won't be - this is likely to get legitimate folks banned more than it'll be keeping infringements down, IMHO. It's that often-seen phenomenon where trying to pre-emptively catch the bad guys fails to do so but penalizes everyone else.

However

3. Nothing about this design says you can't do that for a MU*. If you want to be extra hard on MU-crime, go for it. It's entirely up to a game-runner's discretion how far and hard they want to land on anyone found 'guilty' of being OOC fools.

@Ghost said:

@Arkandel will do. I am trying to be constructive

Thanks, I appreciate that.

I honestly don't mind disagreements - I wouldn't be on MSB if I expected a place where everyone agrees with me. Y'all are allowed to be wrong. What I mind is infertile discussions as that kind of does rub me the wrong way, and I don't consider my skin to be that thin.

When a thread like this essentially says 'hey, we've been doing things one way for a while, is there a different approach maybe that could work to improve things?' and some responses come down to 'no, we are all horrible people barely kept in check by the iron fist of empowered dictators who'll smack us back in line if we don't toe it and we'll turn on each other the moment that stops happening' it's... disheartening. Not because I think that's the case - I don't - but because that makes me wonder what their own view of the hobby is. If it's that bleak what are they doing here? If they're that burned out... why?

I've burned out before on games or even on MU*ing. I left until I felt more like it. I don't recall going around those games' forums telling people how much everything sucks - it's like WoW where some folks keep popping up to tell everyone else how horrible it is. Why are you paying a subscription then, dude?

<shrugs>

@Ghost Could you guys take this argument off the thread please? It's supposed to be constructive.

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@Nein said:

@Arkandel How about "yes-first after there's a means of determining whether or not someone is capable of playing well with others".

Of course, it's even in the original pitch - if someone is causing OOC issues staff have to get rid of him. The "yes" is to IC matters, not OOC ones.

One of the goals this has is to reduce staff in size in order to hopefully make it easier to get a tightly knit group of like-minded individuals to run the game without internal politics or conflicting gaming philosophies, reduce the burden of administrative tasks on them as much as possible, and let them focus on only two things: getting story served to players and getting bad ones out of the game.

Two things.

@Tempest said:

I'm not reading all of this. Is 'yes-first' a thing people actually want in a MU?

No one is forcing you to. And some people do. It's not for everyone, but what is?

Sounds like an awful fucking idea. Especially since most MUers are complete and utter, entitled, self-centered trash.

That's an awesome view, quite constructive. May I also remind you the one thing I asked in this thread was that we focus on the methods to achieve a goal, not the goals themselves? I said 'please' and everything.

If you think a "yes-first" game isn't for you then that's fine, I can't possibly fault you. But if you don't have something to offer this conversation than 'we're all a bunch of assholes barely able to function around each other so this is doomed' why are you even here?

@Lithium said:

Nothing lasts forever and these are games not life and death. They're really not. If something is happening you simply cannot handle, then quit is an option.

Of course leaving is the ultimate option but it's hardly a solution from a game-runner's perspective. If you were a Storyteller, you had some people at your table having fun and one of them was an asshat causing another player to leave just to not be the target of that obnoxiousness, you just lost a good person and still have a crappy one in your hands. That's a lose/lose proposition right there.

@Lithium said:

I don't agree with @Arkandel in this whole thing to begin with. I think if we all could play together nicely, we would have done it by now. People become to invested, unwilling to back down, unwilling to compromise, and /that/ is why there needs to be rules.

But we have. Just because the asshattery is so easy to notice - there are upset people, angry threads, etc - it doesn't mean it happens often. I frequently play for months before an iota of drama hits, it's not like games are packed with bad people. They are not, it's the occasional player who's either just bad at being around others or is caught under the wrong circumstances which cause the stupid to come out of them which makes things awkward.

I refuse to believe most players can't get along with each other. That we're all here barely able to function in a game and we're just waiting for a chance to ruin each other's fun. What makes things bad and compounds the issue is that when something iffy flares up staff historically try to stay away from it (it's a human response, trying to protect their own funtimes from being splattered with drama) instead of stomping on it early, to both make it stop when it's somewhat easy and to set an example before the behavior spreads and becomes a cultural issue. But this isn't by any means limited to the kind of game being discussed here - staff would have the same mandate and authority to intervene.

Do I disagree some people being abused may be worried about reporting it - for whatever reason - and we should figure out a better way to encourage them to seek assistance than a +policy entry or a wiki page? Of course not, I would love it if we could come up with a better system for it.

The only time I can remember being annoyed at potential character death was on HM, years ago. I was completely new to the sphere, like... two weeks in, and barely knew anyone so Fry (I forget his PC's name now) offered to run a PrP for a few people. Happily enough I joined in.

Well, there were 3 of us, all either non-combat or having barely had any XP spent on anything, and he threw a small army of axe-wielding people at us (no idea why to this day, they were just hanging out in tunnels waiting for someone to chop into bits?). In WoD 1.0, too, where numbers really mattered a lot, so my PC fell into torpor and the rest barely managed to kill the last opponent to survive themselves.

Like... come on man, scale the threats to your participants at least a little bit. It's not fun to die right out of CGen before your character has had a chance to roleplay or even knows what he's dying for.

@Alzie said:

My point, in my salient terms, is you're either for player's having the agency to 'amass an army of NPCs legally through the merits' or you're against it because you view it as a form of trolling. Both of those cases mean something for the stance you're trying to champion in this thread. One means you believe in the stance you're trying to sell me on, the other means you believe in it up until the point shit might go down.

I don't know what you are even talking about. Would you be kind enough to quote the specific massages you think involve a contradiction?

To clarify though:

• Staff wouldn't be involved at all in how a player amasses any IC resources. They don't 'justify' (and thus, can't deny) spends, merits, NPC acquisition within the rules, contacts.

• Any OOC means of harassing a player are within staff's purview. If you are paging a player pushing for what you want, making alts to keep track of them, not accepting the right to fade to black... staff can and should step in immediately to shut that down.

• Any conflict on the IC grid remains under the control of players. If your PC picks a fight with another you can either resolve it through mutual agreement or let it be decided by dice. If asked staff can monitor a fight to answer questions about mechanics and ensure the result is respected if needed.

I'm not sure what you are reading in any of this at all which would be 'denying people a concept that uses legal merits".

@Songtress said:

So I guess the question is what is the theme?

At this level there is no theme although what we're discussing should fit any setting. Unless of course there is an argument to be made that it could fit specific themes more or less than others.

@Alzie said:

@Arkandel So, you want a yes first game then tell someone amassing an army icly is trolling. So someone calls you on that and the response is that players should have the right to decide what they feel is appropriate. Would you care to take a single stance? Either they can or can't do what they feel is acceptable icly. Either they are or aren't self policing. Sounds like it's a bad idea and you're having trouble making it sound like a good idea.

Rape aside, there is no situation in which staff can run a yes game. Your first post even says you won't be a yes game, you'll be a yes as long as I think it's okay game. When confronted with that fact you go back to player advocacy and self empowerment. When called on something that would be unfavorable you're back to being a staffer ready to say no.

Would you care to bring up a specific, viable example of what you're asking? I'm not sure where you're saying. "Someone amassing an army ICly is trolling" - what does that mean? They have PC (or NPC?) followers and they are trolling OOC? Because those are irrelevant issues, if someone's disrupting the game OOC then it's staff's job to step in. If you explain further I'll try to address how I'd handle the matter within these confines.

This is not a "yes game" proposal. It's not even the case in the thread's title. It's a yes first game, meaning that when staff is approached with an idea for anything - a character concept, a plot, a new faction, anything - it should be their primary inclination to say yes, and work with the player to try and iron out all the parts which need tweaking or don't work. It in no way takes from them the ability to say no if something is unworkable.

There were concerns raised in the forum we're engaged in groupthink and perhaps that's the case. I am not claiming this is somehow the solution to all issues (in fact I'd be shocked if it was anywhere near ready to be used in an actual game), which is why I brought it up for debate by the community.

Having said that I do think there is something profoundly defeatist in assuming the players are incapable of handling their own shit if given the tools and ability to do so. I know @Ghost means well for example while playing the devil's advocate but one of the examples used there was that a single character would be physically, socially and legally superior to every other character in the game and rape them all. That puts me in an awkward position because it implies other players need someone to rescue them - that they are victims-in-waiting. There is near XP parity within the game by design, so is there really no one who can handle this villain on any or even all of these fronts?

Let's poke all the holes we can into this guys but please let's also keep an open mind?

@TNP said:

Caveat: I never played there. I've only heard stories. But to my knowledge, it was an open cgen, free for all where players could basically do what they wanted and might made right.

Well, I don't know, since I didn't play on Dark Metal either. I doubt though that the similarities between the two games can be encapsulated in that they both have a more or less open CGen - which is only one of the proposals for this system.

For instance I have no idea if they used employed a mandate for small staff or an XP system designed to prevent dinosaurs from taking over (but allowing room for XP incentives to be meaningful).

@Ghost I think I understand where you are coming from. You are saying you don't want rape RP to be 'legal', period. Not as something bad players try to push on each other, not as a purely IC possibility in general, not at all.

Well... to me a 'yes-first game' mandates putting the players in a position where they handle their own shit. You want staff to take an active hand in telling them what's okay to roleplay about and what isn't. That's a philosophical, fundamental difference I don't know if it can be reconciled.

What this design document can do is come up with additional ways for OOC abuse to be prevented, reported and dealt with.

@Ghost I've no idea what you're trying to say there. I'm happy to debate points about game design but "I'm making an army of NPCs to rape every character on the grid" would quite likely fall under 'ooc trolling' and be handled by staff on that front rather than an IC one. I don't see the (rather remote) possibility as something to be particularly concerned about though.

As for the rest, if disrespect shown toward players' wishes goes unreported in the first place then staff can't help it no matter what system of policing you are using, unless you're prepared to grossly violate everyone's privacy. In other words if a player is being pushed OOC in pages to not fade to black although it's perfectly within her clearly written rights and she doesn't tell anyone else how would they find out?

What kind of policing do you have in mind for any system which fixes this? Because I've seen some really gross players over the years but they didn't exactly helpfully put "rapist" on their resume in CGen for staff to catch. It emerged in game, well after the fact.

I seem to have pushed a button here concerning rape. I am sorry for that, it wasn't my intention at all with this thread. But I don't know what we're debating at this point.

@Apos said:

It's very surprising how many players feel pressured to RP out scenes they are deeply bothered by and they really, really need to feel that staff has their back. I wouldn't take it for granted at all that players would think first to fade even in scenes.

That's a fair point. How would you make it more crystal clear that if anything happened they'd be backed? I.e. other than stating the usual stuff (which exists in almost any sane game I've been on) about fade-to-black and whatnot... what else can be done?