I've met people from MU*ing but like...

At neutral places everyone I was meeting was going to anyway. Like cons. Cons are great places to meet people, so long as you don't do risky things like share rooms or the like.

As someone who has only ever TS'd because other people pressured them into it...

I'm sure there's such a thing as safe TS, it likely involves respecting people's boundaries. Respecting people's boundaries is a good thing.

@Tinuviel said in Punishments in MU*:

@DareDaemon said in Punishments in MU*:

don't hand out exceptions for any PC

Why not?

To be clear. I'm not saying your rules have to be equal opportunity, if you reserve some stats for specific things that a lot of players won't qualify for? Might be thematically appropriate, I don't know your game, you decide.

But your rules should be consistently enforced, and unless you have a very good reason not to; transparent.

Once you start breaking rules like that, it will undermine player trust in the systems you have in place.

@Ghost said in Potent Potables:

Because I was dared.

And because we also need a place to talk about and share intel on quality booze like Pepsi and bourbon.

Well, if you're going to waste soda and booze on some unholy mixture; good on you for going with Pepsi and bourbon instead of anything worth drinking.

@Packrat said in Whatever Happened To Star Wars MU*s?:

@Tinuviel I do not remember any sexy shirtless werewolves in Star Wars.

Chewbacca.

@Tinuviel said in TS - Danger zone:

@DareDaemon said in TS - Danger zone:

And, presumably, the game doesn't explicitly prohibit TS. (I've encountered people who wouldn't let such a rule stop them.)

I absolutely don't let such a rule stop me.

If you don't like that a game prohibits TS, don't fucking play there. It's fucking gross to violate such a clear boundary.

Also in some cases a player is a perfectly good player in 90% of circumstances and can simply be made not to do the remaining 10% anymore.

Like that guy who was a great roleplayer but whenever he ran a PrP it was awful and created staff headaches.So eventually he got told in no uncertain terms that we appreciate him as a player but he wasn't allowed to run PrPs anymore.

That fixed the problem. Sure we had no code to back this restriction up, but we didn't need any.

@Lemon-Fox said in Punishments in MU*:

@Arkandel said in Punishments in MU*:

Punishment isn't about control. No one controls everything; hell, most people (especially trouble players) barely control themselves.
To me it's a primarily a message: "This is what we will not tolerate. This is how much we're prepared to do to stop it."

That may be the message conveyed, but the goal of punishment is always correction, all the way up to permanent removal of that problem. It's always about control, but trying to control something isn't inherently a bad thing.

In fact. Staff trying to create a cohesive, welcoming community that creates a healthy RP environment for their game and pruning those who are consistently making that more difficult is pretty much one of the most important roles of staff.

That said, the goal of punishment isn't always correction. In the hands of a good staffer it is, but we all know that some staffers are shits who cannot be trusted where the goal of punishment frequently isn't correction, it's coercion. (Once you realize that such staffers are on your game, make a judgment call; either try to get that staffer removed or if you don't think that's plausible, bail. Don't play on games that let abusive staff run rampant.)

So here's the three important things about staffing.

1. Clear communications between headstaff and new staff as to what the job entails; whether that's admin work, player management, code, building, plotrunning, etc.
2. Clear communications to the playerbase as to what the job of a specific staffmember is. If you have Smithson the Coder, Bookend the Admin and Dramateuse the plotstaffer; the players should be able to quickly figure out whether or not that quick question they have about some plot related stuff will be something that Smithson can answer.
3. Don't pile jobs on staff that aren't about what they signed on to do without good reason and the communication about it. Sure, maybe Bookend the admin is a tax accountant and it's tax season and they don't have time to do admin work until that's over; and ,maybe that means you'll need to ask Dramateuse to help with admin for that time. But ask and explain, don't just dump it on them.

I've met people from MU*ing but like...

At neutral places everyone I was meeting was going to anyway. Like cons. Cons are great places to meet people, so long as you don't do risky things like share rooms or the like.

@Auspice said in Potent Potables:

@DareDaemon said in Potent Potables:

and bourbon instead of anything worth drinking.

Look, you're allowed to be wrong.

@Ghost said in Potent Potables:

Because I was dared.

And because we also need a place to talk about and share intel on quality booze like Pepsi and bourbon.

Well, if you're going to waste soda and booze on some unholy mixture; good on you for going with Pepsi and bourbon instead of anything worth drinking.

Ehn. Part of being friends is also knowing and respecting lines. Stuff doesn't stop being creepy just because you're now friends. For example, the fellatio alarm clock thing is creepy unless you know the person you're saying it to is on board with that kind of joke.

Now if you're good friends you do likely have a better instinctual sense of other people's lines. And people frequently have different lines when it comes to people they trust and know when compared to the ones they have for people they only slightly know; but that doesn't mean it magically becomes OK to go full-on dudebro once you're friends.

@faraday said in Punishments in MU*:

@Ganymede said in Punishments in MU*:

Faraday is from Venus; Thenomain is from Columbus.

C’mon, I made ARES. At least give me Mars.

No.

@Tinuviel said in Punishments in MU*:

@DareDaemon said in Punishments in MU*:

don't hand out exceptions for any PC

Why not?

To be clear. I'm not saying your rules have to be equal opportunity, if you reserve some stats for specific things that a lot of players won't qualify for? Might be thematically appropriate, I don't know your game, you decide.

But your rules should be consistently enforced, and unless you have a very good reason not to; transparent.

Once you start breaking rules like that, it will undermine player trust in the systems you have in place.

@Derp said in Punishments in MU*:

Sure, Status is one thing. But then we talk about things like Renown. There is no way I'm letting your slobbering spirit-eating locus-destroying werewolf have Wisdom 5 just because you have the xp for it. Sorry, no. Also fuck you.

So long as the policy for getting a stat such as that is applied consistently and transparently. Cool.

That's the important thing with hoops and stats, consistency and transparency. Tell people what the hoops are and don't hand out exceptions for any PC. (NPCs, of course, can have whichever stats their role demands. So long as the NPCs are actually NPCs and not just staff alts with an excuse.)

(Also people who hold positions of power should have them for thematic reasons, and in general that isn't 'because they have better stats than you' unless the theme is explicitly one where the strongest leads or something like that. Even then, stats should never be replacing RP, only supplement it.)

So here's the three important things about staffing.

1. Clear communications between headstaff and new staff as to what the job entails; whether that's admin work, player management, code, building, plotrunning, etc.
2. Clear communications to the playerbase as to what the job of a specific staffmember is. If you have Smithson the Coder, Bookend the Admin and Dramateuse the plotstaffer; the players should be able to quickly figure out whether or not that quick question they have about some plot related stuff will be something that Smithson can answer.
3. Don't pile jobs on staff that aren't about what they signed on to do without good reason and the communication about it. Sure, maybe Bookend the admin is a tax accountant and it's tax season and they don't have time to do admin work until that's over; and ,maybe that means you'll need to ask Dramateuse to help with admin for that time. But ask and explain, don't just dump it on them.

@Lemon-Fox said in Punishments in MU*:

@Arkandel said in Punishments in MU*:

Punishment isn't about control. No one controls everything; hell, most people (especially trouble players) barely control themselves.
To me it's a primarily a message: "This is what we will not tolerate. This is how much we're prepared to do to stop it."

That may be the message conveyed, but the goal of punishment is always correction, all the way up to permanent removal of that problem. It's always about control, but trying to control something isn't inherently a bad thing.

In fact. Staff trying to create a cohesive, welcoming community that creates a healthy RP environment for their game and pruning those who are consistently making that more difficult is pretty much one of the most important roles of staff.

That said, the goal of punishment isn't always correction. In the hands of a good staffer it is, but we all know that some staffers are shits who cannot be trusted where the goal of punishment frequently isn't correction, it's coercion. (Once you realize that such staffers are on your game, make a judgment call; either try to get that staffer removed or if you don't think that's plausible, bail. Don't play on games that let abusive staff run rampant.)

@Packrat said in Whatever Happened To Star Wars MU*s?:

@Tinuviel I do not remember any sexy shirtless werewolves in Star Wars.

Chewbacca.