I've sat back on this topic a good long while, so of course, my opinion is worth more (I say, I say, that's a joke, son).

I tend to think that the difference between an NPC and a Staff PC (or GMPC or whatever you want to call it) is that an NPC serves a purpose that is not simply engaging in RP. That purpose may be dispensing plot info, it may be guiding PC leadership/PCs away from unthemely decisions, it may be generally reinforcing theme, it may be... well, there's a lot that it may be, but it should, in my opinion, always be something more than simply engaging in RP. That doesn't mean that they can't be involved in BarRP or come to a PC party, but they should always have a purpose in doing so that goes beyond their character. And while it might be fine to introduce an NPC in an awesome way to prove their bonafides as a source of info or an authority figure or whatever, besides maybe that one exception, they should never be the spotlight of a scene.

A Staff PC, on the other hand, is there to engage in RP, often focused on their own story. They may be used to dispense info, they may be used to give nudges into more profitable courses of action, and they may be used to reinforce theme, but their focus will be on engaging in RP, rather than serving any other particular purpose.

I fully believe that Staff should be allowed to -- nay, encouraged to -- have PCs on their game; I don't believe there's a better way to keep your finger on the pulse of the game than playing it. I've learned that Staff PCs should never hold the spotlight even as much as the average "engaged" player, and certainly well less than the most-engaged non-Staff PCs. I believe they should never hold any position more important or rare than any other PC (and usually nothing that several other PCs don't already hold). I believe they should never save the day, except in the company of others. I believe they should be within the bounds of an "average" PC in every way. Is playing a Staff PC less fun than playing a non-Staff PC? Probably a little, because you have to be careful that there's no perception of unfair advantage. But that's part of the price you play for having a game that is (or should be) exactly what you want to play.

An NPC, on the other hand, can be the One True King (to keep all the PC nobles from instituting direct democracy in what is supposed to be a feudal game or to keep the peace between squabbling PC nobles in what's supposed to be a PvE game), an ancient sorcerer, a computer superfreak who knows just about everything committed to electrons ever, or whatever awesomeness the plot/setting needs. They can have skills, powers, or rank that no PC can have, because they're a mechanism to enrich the story of the PCs. In my opinion it's fine to have scenes where an NPC is just there to be social -- it can help show who they are, and give context to their other, more plot-driven actions, but I think that the majority of their scenes should be driving plot or reinforcing setting.

Focusing on 1-2 PCs with a single "important" NPC is a good way to get the rest of the playerbase thinking that they're being spotlighted to the exclusion of others, whether the NPC is teaching those PCs, TSing them, or shooting craps with them, it's just bad optics.

Fly the unfriendly skies in airplanes that never were, casting spells, dodging dragons, and fighting fascism in the late 1930s. Characters will be members of a "free" militia, The Sky Guard, secretly serving the interests of the French and British governments from an airship base. They will crisscross the Continent finding high adventure.

The Savage Skies MUSH is a game of dieselpunk adventure and modern fantasy. Players might be flying against air pirates one week, gathering information on Nationalist Spanish movements the next, trading spells with minions of the Drachenordnung another, and then treating with a great dragon to convince it to join the cause at the end of the month.

All characters will be explicitly tied to the militia group at the heart of the game, either as a fighting member or one of the smugglers, informants, and hangers-on that work directly with them. From there, you'll work together with other players to create your own adventures within the setting and metaplot provided by Staff.

https://savageskies.aresmush.com
savageskies.aresmush.com:1616

@faraday has been an excellent RP partner, someone I've had a great deal of fun discussing game design with, someone I've butted heads with on game design philosophy and details, someone I've argued with and gotten frustrated with over scene details, someone I've gone right back to having a good time RPing with and discussing game design with, someone who has revolutionized (along with the Evennia team on similar paths) MU*ing, someone who has helped me set up and bug-check games using her code that ran contrary to what she thought was best for the code, someone who has donated what I expect is literal tens of thousands of hours to the community via her coding and Staffing, and someone I consider one of my better friends in the MU*ing community.

Thank you, @faraday.

@egg I would think of it less as 'dangling something enticing on RP Requests channel' and more as 'doing the work to set up the idea of the scene when you're the one who wants to RP.'

While it can be a pain in the butt to come up with a scene idea when you have no guarantee that anyone will join it, there's very little more annoying than someone coming on RP Requests to say "Hey, anyone want to RP" and then when you say "Sure, what did you have in mind," they say "Oh, I don't know. You want to go to a bar?"

1. When you're in a scene and someone does something that catches you totally off-guard.
2. When 1. happens, and you don't even have to think about how your character would react, it just flows naturally.

The Eighth Sea is a game of piracy and the supernatural, of wooden ships, iron men, and the dark myths that slipped through the cracks of civilization. It will explore the edges of reason and the tensions between civilization, outlaws, and the unknown.

While individual conflicts continue to brew across Tortuga, the crews will have to set aside their larger differences to find the cause of The Storm and, together, work to return to the world of the real. The focus will be on CvE conflicts, although there is no prohibition on individual CvC action (piracy and the supernatural are dangerous). We are playing a Hollywood version of history, with similarly Hollywood interpretations of real-world religions and myths. There will be darkness, but there will also be swashbuckling and derring-do.

And now how about some details:

• We're a game focused on supernatural horror and piracy around the island of Tortuga in 1660.
• We use FS3.3, the new Ares system by Faraday.
• We've integrated a magic system for Hollywood versions of Voodoo, Shamanism, Paganism, and Abrahamic faith.
• The people of Tortuga and the surrounding area are just starting to encounter creatures of myth and legend.
• We're just ramping up out of testing here in November, and it's a great time to get started.

Check out the wiki at www.the8thsea.wikidot.com or come aboard at 8thsea.noderunner.net:4005

EDIT: Changed the connection address, thanks @Sparks.

Players who are happy to share the plot hooks they've been given, spreading them far and wide throughout the playerbase so that everyone can get involved. Nicely done, folks.

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I wouldn't want to see any of these as posts.

I absolutely do want to hear about the person creating multiple characters to avoid a do-not-contact request. I don't really care if the unwanted contact is for the purposes of sexual RP, but if someone wants to add that detail to the story, I don't mind. I absolutely think that they should go to the staff on the game too (first, actually), but I think the community should want to hear about it. That's the only way that we repair the missing stairs in our community -- shining a light on them so that we can see that they're missing.

And if it's a false report? Then if it's made to the community as a whole, it can be addressed. The person being accused of these actions can defend themselves, other people can speak up for or against and people can make up their own mind.

One of the first things said about me on WORA was that I was only made a staffer on a game because I was TSing another staffer. Is that the kind of bullshit accusation that used to be thrown around in order to slut-shame people? Yup. Was I TSing that player's character? Yup. Was that why I got the position? Nope. Folks could speak up and describe what I was doing as a staffer, and people could see that even if it was why I got the position, I was being active and good for the game. Done. Was it annoying to deal with? Yup. Do I still remember it a decade later? Yup.

But unless we as a community out the assholes among us, so that we can remove them from the community, I don't believe that we can ever repair the community.

@Auspice said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

But the [person] who seems to be collecting a harem of [people] meant to be latched onto [them] and [them] alone while [they're] juggling six of them? That's fucked up.

I just wanted to step back into this one for a moment and point out where I see the problem in this scenario. It's not in one character juggling six other characters, it's in one player juggling six other players, while telling each of them both ICly and OOCly that they're The One. It's showing no indication at all that there might be something wrong when they say "Oh no, baby, you're the only one for me" ICly. That turns it from IC gaslighting to OOC gaslighting, and I'm not cool with that. The moment it turns from IC gaslighting to OOC gaslighting is the moment I think it's appropriate for Staff to step in.

@faraday said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:
Unless you've got some grand scheme to sustain non-combat RP plots across your playerbase, just tell them up front that combat/adventure is going to be the main focus and make sure your chargen/approval process is structured accordingly. If someone REALLY wants to play a chef despite all that, make sure they understand that they'll be sandboxing their own fun.

It's all about expectations.

This is why I really appreciate the distinction between Action Skills and Background Skills in FS3. Not because physical skills should cost more to purchase out of Chargen, but because the distinction between the two types of skills can and should let you know what type of game you're playing. Sadly, it doesn't always, because Staff either want to run an adventure game or think that they have to have Athletics, Melee, and Ranged as Action Skills because they're active, and involve action. But they can!

Imagine, for example, a theoretical FS3 MUSH about Ministers of Parliament or Congresspeople -- Athletics, Melee, and Ranged would all be Background Skills, while the Attributes and Action Skills might be Composure, Hometown Support, Pontificating, Deception, Willful Obliviousness, Investigation, Connections, War Chest, Soundbites, etc. I don't know if that would be awesome, horrifying, or both, but the Attributes and Action Skills would certainly tell you what the game was about.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

This is just meant to browbeat and shame a person based on personal dislike for no other reason than to vent your spleen in an argument.

Actually, it was done to point out the hypocrisy, gaslighting, and rewriting of history on display. When someone calls for repair, suggesting that people act a certain way when they've acted in direct opposition to it, it's disingenuous at best and actively harmful to the efforts at worst.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

And frankly, you're intelligent enough to already know this. I know you are, I've seen it firsthand when we've talked.
Don't do this. You're better than that.

Is this a personal attack? It's certainly a personal appeal intended to shame me for an action that I've taken. Shame me for the action, through a personal description of me.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Let's stay on topic.

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

So what do I think it would take to repair the community? In my opinion, fix the missing stairs. People you have to warn your friends about? Remove them from your circles instead of just warning the people around you. Tell staffers, share information, cut them out of the community. When they come back under a new name, find them (perhaps find out about them on a board like this) and remove them again. If you find yourself on a place that doesn't do that, or elevates their voices? Remove yourself from that circle. Vote with your feet....

Goodbye.

@Ghost Your hypothetical isn't applicable, because if I knew that Spider was on my game, they wouldn't be on my game anymore.

Now if, after I showed Spider off my game for being Spider, I had reason to believe that my friend had actually falsely accused them? I'd do my due diligence and check out. I'd talk to anyone else involved and then it seemed likely that my friend had falsely accused them, I would talk to my friend, give them a warning, and take any further accusations from them with a grain of salt.

As for a Hog Pit thread, I would likely respond something like, "From what I can see, this accusation is not accurate. However, this player has been banned from my game because they are Spider, and they have shown themselves to be repeatedly toxic to their community." Because yeah... I don't want false reports out there, but there are people in this community who are toxic and should be removed from it.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I think what they want is a place where they can shame people for being crypto-fascists

If there's a place where you can't shame actual crypto-fascists for being crypto-fascists, I don't want to be a member of that community. And your continued use of "some of these personalities" and "they" is complete bullshit, you were one of those most vitriolic members of the Hog Pit, you just couched things in terms you thought were nice (sometimes). @Kestrel previously called you out with receipts for some of the many times you've done this. You were/are part of the problem, and you were/are part of normalizing it, and now you're trying to shove that all on people who have been split (some by their own choice, some not) from this community and are in no position to correct your gaslighting.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I think you underestimate how much support that can bring with it.

1. Thank you for calling those games wildly popular and the compliment.
2. Definitely not a coder, just someone who can play with numbers and hit locations to tell a story.
3. I certainly wouldn't call myself a core of either of the current two boards, nor of the MSB that came before the split.
4. Community members rallying to my defense came before any of this.

@Arkandel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Seraphim73 is a goddamn (*) Whitecloak, is what he is.

Some of the most fun I've had on a MU*. And that's Child of the Light, thank you.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I assume this is the general 'you'? Because I didn't actually ban a single person. I voted, with a group, on who should stay and who should come back and who should remain banned, and lest someone think we are a hivemind, the ban votes were not unanimous.

First "you" was definitely general, as in "the admin of this board at the time." The second "you" is... also general, I suppose. The folks who are being called bullies by folks on this board are gone, either because they've been banned or have chosen to leave.

As for needing popular friends to speak up, I'm certainly not anyone's idea of a popular figurehead among any group here, but right there in my example, folks defended me. We've seen people who dislike folks who have been accused still come out of the woodwork to defend them from false accusations. This community, before it was splintered, was pretty good about that. There will always be flying monkeys, but there will also always be those willing to defend the innocent.

And @Ghost, I'm with @reimesu -- just don't defend Spider. But yes, I would do my due diligence to see if the person was Spider... and also if they had done the thing my friend said they had done. And I would be one of the folks who spoke up to try to clear the person's name if the accusations weren't true, because people did that for me.

@Ghost Dude, Spider literally ruined someone's RL house and wouldn't accept responsibility. That's not overbearing or unfair. That's just crappy.

Beyond that one example, I have absolutely no wish to provide someone who has demonstrated themselves to be a crappy person with (usually yet) another chance. If they want to demonstrate that they can fix their behaviors through communications with me or through their actions on another game, I might give them another chance. But if I'm already staffing a game, I don't want to put in even more time and energy watching someone like a hawk who I know has demonstrated bad behaviors in the past. I want to spend my time and energy providing a fun game for the players who I know are there to have a good, safe time.

@Derp If an accusation isn't accurate, it can be challenged. History on this very board shows that it will be, often successfully. How many times have we seen someone accuse someone of crappy behavior only to have multiple people come in and provide evidence that the original poster was the crappy one?

Are accusations better with evidence? Absolutely. Are accusations better with non-corruptible evidence like Ares logs sent to staffers? Absolutely-er. Do some people not feel comfortable sharing evidence because they've been drawn into actions or RP that is banned from the server as a means to tie them to their abuser? Absolutely-est.

You've banned or driven off most of the people you claim were bullies. Shouldn't this board be able to handle being a clearing house of bad behavior now?

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I wouldn't want to see any of these as posts.

I absolutely do want to hear about the person creating multiple characters to avoid a do-not-contact request. I don't really care if the unwanted contact is for the purposes of sexual RP, but if someone wants to add that detail to the story, I don't mind. I absolutely think that they should go to the staff on the game too (first, actually), but I think the community should want to hear about it. That's the only way that we repair the missing stairs in our community -- shining a light on them so that we can see that they're missing.

And if it's a false report? Then if it's made to the community as a whole, it can be addressed. The person being accused of these actions can defend themselves, other people can speak up for or against and people can make up their own mind.

One of the first things said about me on WORA was that I was only made a staffer on a game because I was TSing another staffer. Is that the kind of bullshit accusation that used to be thrown around in order to slut-shame people? Yup. Was I TSing that player's character? Yup. Was that why I got the position? Nope. Folks could speak up and describe what I was doing as a staffer, and people could see that even if it was why I got the position, I was being active and good for the game. Done. Was it annoying to deal with? Yup. Do I still remember it a decade later? Yup.

But unless we as a community out the assholes among us, so that we can remove them from the community, I don't believe that we can ever repair the community.

@Tirit said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

While I understand and concur with most of your responses, doesn't this sounds a little bit witch hunty?

Without some due diligence on the part of staffers, yes it can become something used against "good" players. But like @Arkandel said, it's better than the alternative, of letting problem players lurk in the community, waiting to harm other players and drive them away.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

my only answer was to try to play as incognito as possible

If you can only avoid the drama as long as you can hide who you are... the problem may not be the environment around you.

1. Understand that the Hog Pit was a mistake, that the people who thrived in it are bullies, and to identify/cull bullies from the hobby

How is "excluding players they don't like" as bad as "abusive/stalker roleplayers who have rapey/disturbing/"in some cases illegal" behavior?" Excluding bad actors and players you don't like are entirely legitimate ways to staff a game -- I might even say they're good ways to staff a game, because why should you have to deal with players who are going to cause a personal problem for you while you're staffing a game? Staff doesn't owe anyone a spot on their game. And you clearly realize it too, because two paragraphs after you say that excluding players is as bad as all of that, you say that if you ran a game, you've exclude players for bad OOC behavior on other forums. Now, I've done that myself, so I can't and won't complain about the decision, but the sheer hypocrisy of the statements is ridiculous.

It's in staff's interest to keep as many players on the game as possible, because this affects whether or not people even try to make a bit at the game.

No, it's not. Because if you have asshole players on a game, even if they're popular within a group, they're undoubtedly driving other players away. It's in a game's best interest to remove problem players, no matter how popular they are. If you end up with 10 friends RPing together because other groups left? As long as you're having fun, that's awesome, and guess what, you no longer have assholes you have to worry about dealing with.

So a LOT of bad stuff just goes untouched, festers, and gets worse over time because the motivations behind DOING SOMETHING or NOT DOING SOMETHING tend to fall always in line with whether or not it'll affect the game, roleplay, or "popularity currency".

And this is exactly why you remove problem players from your community instead of letting them fester. More and more game runners seem to be realizing this, and to be willing to take the short-term playerbase hit to make a better community.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Paranoia of who is who, who they've played, stranger danger

You realize that what you're terming as paranoia is a response to people who have actually been tricked into interacting with people who have been creepers/abusers to them in the past, right? Denigrating that totally reasonable response like this is victim-blaming. It's horrible. You can do better.

@ZombieGenesis said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Stop with the "red flags" attacks on new games.

Seriously? Some games are utterly filled with red-flags, and it couldn't be clearer that they're going to be toxic dumpster fires (like the one Vampire game with all the anti-Semitic BS in its theme). Calling games with massive red flags out on their massive red flags shouldn't be a problem (and if the big red flag is a mistake, a good game runner will see it and fix it).

@Ganymede said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

In the past, most people have reported creeps and stalkers like Cullen / Azazello / Surtr / whomever through DMs to me.

In my opinion, while it's good to report creeps and stalkers to Staff in private messages, one of the biggest benefits of the previously-unified community of MSB was the ability to get the word out to lots of people at once: Hey, this person who the community has agreed is a problem is back on this game, watch out for them there, and it might be good to watch any people who are showing these general tendencies on other games too. That's how we caught DWOPP over at TSS and removed him. If it's a false identification, it can be discussed with others who might have useful information.

So what do I think it would take to repair the community? In my opinion, fix the missing stairs. People you have to warn your friends about? Remove them from your circles instead of just warning the people around you. Tell staffers, share information, cut them out of the community. When they come back under a new name, find them (perhaps find out about them on a board like this) and remove them again. If you find yourself on a place that doesn't do that, or elevates their voices? Remove yourself from that circle. Vote with your feet, and let people enjoy their 10-person game if that's what it ends up being -- at least if they're all missing stairs, they won't have the critical mass to bring in other people to hurt. Find a place that will remove the missing stairs, instead of warning people about them and leaving them there to bite unsuspecting ankles.

@lotherio As @Kalakh noted, and I agree with, a silent majority in a message board community isn't. It's the lurkers (nothing wrong with lurking, I lurk more than I post here, particularly now). Those who participate in the community are the community when the community is about participating. (Is that a tautology? I think that's a tautology, but I think it got the point across). I'm not saying that there can't be a community here that grows and even flourishes with a number of vocal participants having departed, I'm just saying that when the majority of the vocal participants leave a community, it's not the same community anymore.

I don't think that it's helpful to compare those who left to Germans in the '30s and '40s, nor to compare those who left to those pushing The Big Lie about the 2020 US Presidential election. I think that contributes to pushing people into their own echo chambers and reinforces distrust and disgust already built up by the use of strawman arguments.

Also, I believe that it's absolutely possible to want more active moderation without wanting someone who is not trusted by a significant and vocal portion of the community to moderate them. I also believe that it's absolutely possible to want more active moderation without wanting discussion to be shut down and directed to DMs -- particularly since one of the best parts about this board (to me) is the ability to express dissatisfaction and complaints about MU*s in the open.

@lotherio Sorry, I actually did read your post a little too quickly and thought that you were saying that some of the folks who left did so because they bought into the propaganda/perception of reality. I see now that you were speaking directly about Germans in the '30s and '40s. I apologize for the misreading. I still don't think it's a great idea to use Nazis as an example for a group (or several groups) of people who have a different opinion from you.