Posts made by JaySherman

Eeeenteresting. I am willing to try something different.

I've run into people who actually think this way, sadly.

They want to be pretty and have everyone love them but TS is icky and gross.

I find that if you really don't want to be propositioned for TS, there are better PB avatar images.

Addendum: Ugly characters however are no guarantee of no TS request safety, however, as I have been propositioned out of nowhere for TS while playing this:

Drat. All that good game info, lost forever. It's like of like losing a somewhat useful historical archive of the hobby in general.

I remember WORA having a wiki with, despite the flames, a useful record of various MU*s that have come and gone. I had someone ask me about Firan MUX on my game and thought, "I wish the WORA wiki was up" so that I could point them to that. Is the Wiki salvageable? Is it even a good idea anymore?

That particular group of staffers definitely took things way too seriously, to the point of witchhunts for anyone who gave one of their own a bad staff review on the "anonymous" review boxes. They spread out to Videoland and a few other games and basically held the same cult of personality wherever they went.

I am in contact with the original Captain N and Captain X from that game. It's a valid theme if you want to run it with someone who remembers that it's a bunch of mismatched video game themes pasted together using NES logic for wacky funtime adventures.

@Bobotron - You ran into the cabal of Dr. Leo and his Doctorate in Communications so call him Doctor, didn't you.

I played there for a bit, but found it impossible to keep up with the two massive factions. When there's 100+ characters on each side and the plot is sprawling in all directions at the speed of a bullet train, it's hard to really get a foot hold.

So far the deadline situation is just sort of hanging in neutral. Player A has been asked to make some changes to their character by X date. If said player does anything that has even a whiff of manipulative behavior, they'll go out the door for that immediately. They're on their last warning.

I've seen a game die out from under me for the fact that I stuck with my ethics, but in the end, when I made another game, the fact that I had not been a spineless wimp and stuck to my guns earned me a reputation that made the second last longer. I had one queen bee on the dead game that wanted me to start firing people she didn't personally like and threatened that she'd walk and take her friends with her if I didn't. The accused player had done absolutely nothing wrong, and I wasn't about to let Queenie turn me into her personal hatchet man just because she threatened to leave and take her activity with her. I told her she'd just have to walk, and not to let the door hit her on the way out. She did indeed leave and activity died out, but I figured that if no one was biting on the theme, I'd just close it and make another. I'd rather close and game and start over than get pushed around by scumbag players for months or years.

@GentlemanJack said:

@Sponge said

I don't feel like taking away characters or IC things is productive. I feel it's more like sending a child to their room where all their video games and comic books are.

Pragmatically speaking, yes, that's true, but honestly, this one time this ... heifer, changed the house rules on me in order to lord over the sphere as the Best Most Super Powerfulest Snowflake, I really did enjoy nerfing the character and taking away their things to be compliant with the way the house rules should be. She was the reason why the sphere she staffed only had, ohhh, her, in it. Now, it's on me for letting it happen, but goddamn was enlightenment cathartic.

@JaySherman thank you vrey much, I'm glad that you found it helpful and thank you for your time in reading t, since I know I am long winded. This is my training doc if you want to read/comment it.

I sincerely wish I'd had something like this to read and learn from since the time I started doing this back in 1997 when I got hired on my first Building Staff job. I'm taking it to heart and if you don't mind, I'd like to share it with the remaining staff on my game.

Incidentally the aforementioned Player B was removed from staff as of yesterday and attempted a 2 hour, screen-scrolling 'I know this is your game but ... ' argument. I handled this in the most professional manner I could, no yelling or flames, just a flat out 'thank you for your time but you're not a good fit for this position'. Player B's response was to attempt to nit pick for even the tiniest molecule of potential unfairness in her dismissal. I let her know that this wasn't up for a debate and shut down the argument right there.

You fine folks are already helping me to buck up and get things done. Player A I have to wait on due to an agreed upon deadline (made prior to asking for advice here) but I have a feeling it's just that - a wait - before pulling the trigger on ol' yeller.

I would say 'Player X has been banned from the game for Y offense' if I ever had to long-term ban someone for something. It takes something pretty significant to earn a long-term ban, and the announcement would be made to spread sunshine on the rumor mill/smear-campaign mold that some banned players try to spread onto a game from the outside. I would also refer to the individual by their account/character name, not their real one. I have been on the receiving end of staff actually giving out my RL name to people on an announcement board to spite me.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

Are all the players that've flooded into your game early sort of terrible?

This is (kind of) a serious question, because where you do your initial recruitment is really important. The most active players inevitably build game culture as much or more than staff does. If the person who did this unsolicited recruitment binge just brought in their friends, that's likely not a particularly nurturing population to staff for and probably have goals for the game very different than your goals.

ETA: Maybe the nicer way to phrase that question is: "Is this the group of players you would have chosen yourself for the alpha phase of your game?"

After having a couple of months to get to know them? I'd say no to all but two or three. I had that one person not only invite people onto the game while I was offline, they created a wiki about the game without telling me and started advertising (again, without telling me) on other MUs. A game of a similar theme died in the process of me trying to finish mine, and suddenly we had an inordinate amount of rats fleeing from that sinking ship. I processed what seemed like very reasonable applications and am only now seeing my first crop of weeds.

@Ganymede said:

@7Wonders said:

One of the things I think staffers get snared in is being overly obsessed with the concept of fairness.

I think staffers get too caught up in appearing to be fair. Fairness is judged by others. The only way you can appear fair is by publicly demonstrating your decisions. If you haven't the spirit to be judged by others over whom you have some semblance of authority and responsibility, you ought not be staff.

I'm striving to overcome the knee-jerk reflex of appearing and being extremely above board after having survived some incredibly vindictive bad staffers on other games. I think I've fallen into the trap of mechanical fairness, as mentioned before. I'm taking this summer to get the last bits of work done the game and when I'm satisfied I'll post an advert here about it.

Gettin' the torches then.

@7Wonders This has the potential to go toxic. I'm sorry to keep milking folks for good advice, but I'm new to some of these situations (I've staffed on games off and on over the years but I usually found there were more problems with bad staff than bad players on the games I worked on). Here's the deal:

I'm going to identify said Skyper as Player A and a second problem-causer as Player B.

Player B is an outright manipulative snake that I have caught trying to blame her own RL sister (also on the game) for crap she tried to sneak under the radar. When confronted directly about her actions, Player B quit all characters but one and left a note on the bboard along the lines of "I've quit all my characters page me for details". (It doesn't appear that anyone cares to page her for details so far).

Player A is our Skyper, and I found frequently that Player B would chat with her off game to manipulate A to side with B whenever I did something, staff or otherwise, that B did not like. Player A is also the Obsessed Friend (mentioned in previous post) who likes to couch her arguments in terms like "well I know that there are other players who feel _____". She behaves as if she is the gentle, doting mother who must shield the poor little player children from my "fatherly" wrath.

Tolerate, Educate or Kill It With Fire?

@7Wonders This does bring up another salient point to ask while I have everyone's proverbial ear: Stuff that is not on game but involves the game. Does this warrant action? I've always tried to keep things like off-game chats separate from what is punishable behavior on a game, all the way back to the days of ICQ and Livejournal, but with social media far, far more present and influential, there's a potential bleed-over.

Case in point: I've had a group of players come to me and ask me if they were going to be fired, out of seemingly nowhere. They had done absolutely nothing wrong; a few questions later, it was determined that one player on Skype had worked them all into a frenzy because she thought she was going to be punished for something (she wasn't, she'd just jumped to conclusions). Is there any good way to buffer against this sort of off-game rumor-mongering, and is it worth enacting disciplinary measures on the game, especially when it directly involves the game and players on it?

Excuse me, I need a moment to roll in all of this good advice until I'm fully marinated in it.

Thank you all for the help. This is a real godsend for me, because there are things I simply cannot discuss on the game; I'm dying for outside perspective and this is just what I was looking for.

@Arkandel: I do the praise in public/chastise in private and it's actually turned one problem player completely around into a productive one. I consider it one of my real successes. That's a solid way to do things and I'm glad I'm doing at least one thing right. Thick skin and patience fortunately isn't a problem, I'm made up of elbow skin entirely. I just lean towards being afraid of coming off as an unethical staffer, or driving off players. I'm probably worried about player loss more than I should be.

@Thenomain: I've tried to involve my players in game creation from the start, but most of the time they just kind of pull a Patrick and Spongebob, "Daaaah, whadda you wanna do? I dunno, whadda YOU wanna do?" routine. I've got maybe 4 players out of the bunch that can actually come up with things to do on the game all by themselves. The rest are like baby birds waiting to have someone else's work crammed into their throats. I call it 'Salad Bar' syndrome. They just want to show up, pick out the bits of the plot or particular scenes that are beneficial to them and then ignore everything else going on around them.

In this particular theme everyone is involved in an ongoing story arc, so it doesn't benefit anyone if LeaderJim is off in the corner ham-fistedly romancing RocketBetty while the rest of this troops are milling around for weeks waiting for some kind of IC direction and orders because the Villain Squad is shelling their base. Because the game was unfinished, there wasn't much to DO at first but look for Play House Relationship RP, but as more people showed up and the game started to really move, we had a group of people that never really outgrew the Harem Anime RP they messed around with in the beginning.

@GentlemanJack: I'm going to memorize all that good advice and stick to it. Like, all of it. Thank you thank you for the Problem Player Field Guide link. I'm fairly sure I have several.

@Three-Eyed-Crow: Staffing recently feels like getting out of bed, turning on the laptop and preparing to eat a big bucket of nails and glass while using up the next case of fire extinguishers in the cupboard. Amusing exaggerations aside, it's more worry than work, and I am definitely going to have to stop doing the 2-5 hour player mediation, especially since it's one player who has fixated on me personally like the Obsessive Girlfriend meme. When you get emails with things like "you are not allowed to change the story between our characters because that is a symbol of our friendship" .... Yeah. Just yeah.

@Three-Eyed-Crow

Hilariously they fired themselves when I told them bluntly, "Stop doing this, period, and no, you cannot continue to indulge in your unthemely mind control fetish either." They just up and dropped everything but one alt. Problem solved.

@icanbeyourmuse

To be honest I'm not sure if they were aware they weren't supposed to invite people on; they knew it was incomplete because they were logging into room zero that had no building. They just wanted to continue a forum RP with their friends and drug them all on without a second thought. This same person also tried to play 'go between' for myself and a coder, telling us both entirely different stories of what code was wanted. I went out to dinner and came back to find code being installed without my knowledge or consent and my game being crashed by said code. When I removed the code, this player told me I should be begging said coder for forgiveness (but not to worry because this player will talk to the coder FOR me). Talking directly to the coder solved a lot of problems, but that's the kind of person I was dealing with. I had no idea I'd opened such a big box of crazy.

@Three-Eyed-Crow

The game has been suffering because of this ever since. I'm just afraid that if I call things to a halt and the players lose RP momentum, they wont' come back.

Thank you all for the advice, I greatly appreciate it. I'll add some further context to my situation.

The game I'm working on as an admin isn't entirely finished. The developer (me) invited 4 people on to help develop the game and become staff. During the initial building phase, one of the four people rushed ahead of everyone else, placing advertisements and inviting people on and giving out characters. This was before we had even settled on the theme! I literally woke up, logged in one day and found the game had gone from 4 to 12 players overnight and people were eager to get started. It was akin to building the car while it's going 65mph down the road.

I was faced with the choice of telling what was instantly an active, eager player base "gtfo we aren't done" and potentially killing the game in the cradle, or trying to work with what was there and bootstrap things into place. Fearing game crib death, I opted for the latter. It's been a headache of missing pieces ever since.

I'm often left without being able to tell people 'no you can't do X' because that policy file may not even exist. I'm also looking at the frankly baffling phenomenon of players who neither read boards nor check mails, but complain about never knowing what's going on.

I've probably made a huge mistake (cue image macro) but the game's alive, running and active. I'm just not sure if I should put it down before I develop an ulcer, or continue putting pieces into place and getting it fully fleshed out.