Posts made by Hund

@faraday Yeah, the anecdote there was largely to illustrate how bugfuck nasty it can get, in those circumstances. It's less about trusting staff to do their jobs and be fair, generally, it's about trusting them with coming forward about a person that's causing more than just the usual, run-of-the-mill problems. Especially if they're being a sex pest. That already takes a level of trust and comfortability that's easily squashed by a number of things, not the least of which is perceptions of how staff (or just others outside of an MU* environment) have behaved in the past. Again, not really something that I know how to navigate.

There's a decent number of places that do foster a good environment for reporting bad actors, at least in terms of 'so and so is being unfair/stupid/an asshole,' especially when logs are offered. It's a different story when it gets that personal. Staff could be fucking amazing, and there'd probably still be some hesitations. Moreso, if the sex pest is buddies with the people you're reporting to.

@faraday said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

I think that if you have someone like that being unreasonable, you just have to tell them so as gently as possible and hope for the best. You can't expect everybody to bend over backwards just to avoid upsetting Bob if Bob has a ridiculously low tolerance for what upsets them.

It isn't easy though. I had someone I thought was a close MU friend quit a game once because I tried, as politely as possible, to tell them that their claims of "OMG Jane broke the rules and wronged me terribly!" were unreasonable and I wasn't going to take action against Jane. (Ironically, they also claimed it was because I was only defending Jane because she was my friend. You may notice a common theme here when decisions don't go someone's way, even when they're supposedly your friend. Staffing sucks.)

This cuts both ways, unfortunately. (hi, I'm a little new to this place, not the least bit new to MUing, just hit my 20 year mark)

I'd been dealing with an incredibly gross situation, roughly a year ago. It had to do with a decidedly personal set of scenes I'd done with someone being misinterpreted as something that I'd explicitly said was off the table (a long story in and of itself), after which it was reported to staff for XP gains without consulting me about whether or not I wanted staff to know about it (I wish this was a joke). I'd be more specific, but for my own reasons, I'm going to keep this vague.

Well, anyway, as it turns out, the person in question was rather close with staff. The same went for other serial offenders, not so much in the 'sex pest' category as they were in the general bullying/cliquish behaviour category. Most of the serial offenders were either close with staff, or were staff, and avenues to reporting can often feel closed off on account of things like this. In this specific case, there was no little amount of rationalizing in respects to certain behaviours/antagonistic scenes/antagonistic OOC conversations. They'd bend over backwards to make absolutely sure the clique had the best possible outcome, with no punitive measures taken, whereas the complainant was shouted down and, more often than not, their job shared with the offenders (one of the staffmembers retains a pastebin of jobs they find 'funny' to this day, and shares them regularly).

So, that's another layer to that point of the discussion. Obviously, what you're talking about is a bit more emotionally fraught, but there are definitely circumstances out there in which players feel stifled by the prospect of staff being buddies with the bad actors, and thus being unwilling to punish them for it.

Don't get me wrong: I staffed for a bit, myself, and I'm aware that this happens to the best of us. There's that One Guy you don't particularly like, for whatever reason, and you tend to take what he says with a grain of salt. Then there's your Best Friend that suddenly has a complaint lodged against them by That Guy. Well, you say, this doesn't sound like Best Friend, because I know Best Friend, and they don't behave like that. Also, you're That Guy, what the hell do you have to complain about?

It's incredibly easy, I feel, to fall into the trap of believing people in your friends group/not wanting to make waves/etc. The place I was on took this to an extreme, ie: is not the norm, where they weren't even pretending to be even remotely fair, and I found myself in a situation where I had what I thought was a string of private scenes hanging over my head. To make matters worse, they were used as a means of shutting down one of my job requests, pretty much out of the blue. It was a shitty situation to be in, and I'm certain at least somewhat singular to the place in question, but it's worth keeping in mind that some players do come from similar circumstances-- and may have even had a bad run of being in several that perpetuate that kind of nonsense. Once (or twice) bitten, etc.

I'm not sure how to skirt around that problem entirely, though, since even if you're not showing favoritism, there will occasionally(/always) be the perception of it (such is the case when Best Friend attempts to integrate That Guy 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc, and the string of That Guys legitimately turned out to be duds). And this, admittedly, is one of the reasons I don't staff anymore. MUing can be enough of a headache on its own, even when you're in any position of IC leadership. OOC is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.