Best posts made by Seraphim73

@Kestrel That's a definite hard place to be in. I think that if I were in your shoes, I would probably try to get a feel for Staff in general, and if I felt that they were responsive to complaints from others, approach them directly, letting them know that the person in their friend-group had made you uncomfortable and refused to stop when I asked them to. I don't know that this is the best approach -- I don't even know if there is a best approach -- but it's probably the one I would take. My thinking is that if they take my complaint seriously, then I've got a great Staff group, and they're willing to take input, and if they don't take my complaint seriously, they're more concerned with the fun of their friends than that of other players, so I probably don't want to play there.

Sometimes friend-groups can forget that one of their members can be a Missing Stair, or can even not know that it's happening at all. The reminder, if the rest of the group is good, can be very useful.

It definitely would be good to be clear that there are intermediate steps between 'no action' and 'banning.' As a Staffer, I believe that there are always steps that can be taken -- sometimes an immediate ban is necessary, sometimes just a request to stop contacting another player OOCly, sometimes a short cool-down period off the game... a good Staffer can usually find the appropriate punishment for a player's actions.

On another topic, I'm definitely with @Ganymede in that I think Staff should be playing their own game. It's the rare duck that enjoys Staffing more than playing (rare and valuable, let me be clear), usually Staff opens a game because they want to play in that setting. I also agree with Gany that Staff should avoid taking positions of power on their game, it's something that I've struggled with myself. I think that the value of having Staff involved in what's going on between players is very, very valuable (as is having Staff invested in what's going on in the game).

Also, everything @Roz said about investigations and what should have happened as a result of them.

I also really, really, really agree with (and try semi-successfully to live) @Kestrel's point about not reading everything in the most negative way possible.

Also (yeesh, this is what happens when I respond to things from a day ago), I agree that Staff should dissuade players they are friends with from making comments about how tight they are with Staff. And that they should reach out to new players. I don't think this means that Staff can't be buddy-buddy with players (we're all players in the end), but there can't be other players claiming special privilege due to being friends with Staff -- and there can't be special privilege actually given due to someone being friends with Staff.

@faraday said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

"Please don't do anything; I just wanted you to know." OMG this one drives me nuts. Why tell me if you're just going to tie my hands? Now you've put me in a position where either I let a potential creeper continue creeping, or I violate your confidence by taking action against your wishes. IT SUCKS. Please stop doing this, people.

Truth.

Ares is doable for Star Wars, but not ideal. Blaster deflection/lightsaber block would probably need to be coded in (or additional stances added for lightsaber users).

Most of the Saga games that there have been (KotOR, Dark Times, GoD, DoD (I think), FoH, and others) have been using Dahan's codebase, which he seems quite happy to pass around and install for folks. I know that GoD had a bunch of pretty unbalanced homebrew additions, I assume that DoD followed up on this. Something you might want to look out for.

I agree with @Roz and @Too-Old-For-This that Staff will want to know, even if you've blocked a harasser successfully. And yes, as @TiredEwok mentions, one of the first things Staff will likely ask if 'did you try blocking them or asking them to stop.' I know that I always ask that first, but I don't ask it because I wish the player had done something themselves before coming to me, I ask it because if the player has done this already, and the harasser has persisted, I'm going to take a lot harder and faster action than if the victim "just" went silent on the harasser, because it makes the case a lot more clear-cut, and removes any doubt that the harasser knew they were doing something they shouldn't have.

@Tinuviel said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

@faraday On the flip side to that, if we the general player base know about the complaint (and if it's complaint worthy, gossip has already started about the behaviour) and then see staff do... nothing about it. Why would we complain if it happens to us?

I would always inform the person who registered the complaint of the action that I took, whether it was providing an unofficial warning to the person, adding a note to their 'file,' giving them some time off from the game, banning them, or whatever.

Not only is this polite and professional (and lets them gauge your actions and see if they think it's enough), but it also means that if they're talking with their friends about the situation, and their friends complain about nothing being done, they can go, "Oh, actually Staff told them that they're being watched and that if they get another serious report, they're gone." (Yes, this might encourage fraudulent reports, but that's why Staff needs to be investigators as well as judges -- thank you @Ganymede).

@Cupcake said in Sexuality: IC and OOC:

So my notion is, if you are self-assessing your capacity to portray another gender or sexual orientation, if you decide that you don't think you can do so because you genuinely don't feel you can grasp the nature of that gender/orientation and you would come off as a caricature (which for obvious reasons you wouldn't want to do), does that make you mindful of your own limitations, or limiting yourself in an unnecessary fashion?

@Ghost said in Sexuality: IC and OOC:

I dig this philosophical approach. I dig the questions.

My own 2 cents on this is that anytime you are writing a character whose perspective is different from your own real-life perspective you're going to get a few things wrong. In good faith is a useful term, here. Is it an attempt in good faith or meant to be a caricature? The only way to know for sure is to ask the player, because assumptions can be (and often are) assumed to be negative until proven otherwise. Plenty of stories in this thread show that.

I agree with @Ghost. I think these are very interesting questions. I also agree that in good faith is incredibly important here. Do I get things wrong when I play a female character or a person of color or a homosexual male character or a veteran or any of the other things that I am not? Probably. Hell, I'll even say certainly.

But I can assure you that it's a good faith effort on my part, and I think that there's no reason that someone shouldn't be able to make a good faith effort to play a character type that they aren't. On the other side of that, if you want to play what you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that (unless you're playing a self-insert -- I might have a little shade to throw on those who play direct self-inserts).

I don't think that those who play characters whose gender/sexuality/political beliefs/etc are the same as their own are lesser roleplayers -- in my own case I might even suggest that I probably play a cis het white male character better than another type of character simply because I understand how society views them and have a baseline to connect with. I think this latter point is an incredibly important one, and why I always try to have something in common with my characters. Maybe they like a different gender than I do, have different color skin than I do, and have wildly different life experience than I do, but maybe they like Star Wars and hate coffee, like me. It's those little touches that connect me to the characters I play and allow me to explore differences I might have with them (be they gender, sexuality, politics, etc).

For the record, most of my characters are cis/het men, although I've played homosexual men, demi-sexual women, asexual men, heterosexual women, bisexual women, and a variety of other combinations, and I tend to play a lot of POC.

@peasoupling said in Recycling characters:

@A-Meowley said in Recycling characters:

@peasoupling said in Recycling characters:

Of course, the first time around, that character became unplayable during her very first scene, so I feel like I'm entitled to actually trying to play her.

I feel like there's a story here...

Monster ate her legs.

A pretty short story, as it turns out.

I don't know how widely this has been shared, but Monte Cook gaming just put out a very nice free-to-download PDF about Consent in Gaming (https://www.montecookgames.com/consent-in-gaming/). It's aimed at tabletop RPGs, but I think there's a lot of crossover with MUs. I haven't gotten in-depth yet, but there's discussion of tactics that many people here have decided don't really work in MUs (the X-Card), tactics that have been on some MUs for years (preferences cards), and others. There are also thoughts about how to recover from consent slip-ups, aftercare & check-ups, dealing with character-player bleed, and other interesting topics.

What else from the doc do people think would or would not work well on a MU?

@Arkandel said in TS - Danger zone:

How long does a scene need to be before it gets to TS (feel free to include foreplay as part of TS)? What's ideal for you?

For example do most of your TS scenes get right to it once the scene begins? Are they the logical followup of a separate scene leading directly to it? Do you ever just start TS at the end of a completely chaste RP?

I don't know that there's an ideal for me, depends on if the scene is plot-related or TS for TS's sake. In the former case, it's usually the logical followup of a scene, two characters going from one thing (sparring, talking about plot, etc) to another (sexy times). In the latter case, the foreplay usually starts within the first couple of poses.

Also bonus question! Do you ever pause in the middle of TS then pick it up at a later time?

Yes, although I usually prefer to pause between foreplay and intercourse, or between bouts, rather than in the midst of intercourse. It's not particularly easy (for me) to pick up a scene again in the midst of bumping uglies and get right back down to bumping them together.

I think that @Pyrephox has a good point that each member of Staff can have a different role and a different purpose. I think that Staff as a coherent whole has a couple of jobs:

1. Stay enthused about the game. If Staff isn't enthusiastic, it shows, and that'll kill player enthusiasm too. Usually, this comes down to actually playing the game you run, but different people get enthused by different things--maybe someone really likes completing jobs and that keeps their enthusiasm up.
2. Make the game fun for the majority of players. Note, not every player (that's impossible), not just their friends (that's exclusionary), but the majority of players. This includes making it as safe a place as possible by getting rid of creepers, but it also includes keeping control of theme so it doesn't drift wildly away from the game's mission statement--from the game that the majority of players (should have) come to play.
3. Ensure that the world reacts to the actions of the PCs. This touches on points 1 (hopefully) and 2 (definitely) as well, but if the world only acts on PCs, never reacts to them, a lot of players (myself included) are going to get bored.
4. Respond to player issues. This might be disputes between players, this might be rules questions, this might be theme inquiries... it's all the OOC stuff that goes on behind the scenes.
5. Keep the lights on. Do server maintenance, pay for space, add/tweak code/stats as needed.

@Ghost said in Staff’s Job?:

Head staff states what they're looking for from staff, then posts what staff IS and ISNT to the players. Everyone is on the same page. Boom.

This is actually something that we came up with too. I think it's a good idea to define what Staff believes Staff's responsibilities are, because then players know what to expect. They can define how much metaplot they'll be providing, how much theme-custodianship they'll be enforcing, etc. Players can see how PrP-dependent the game will be, how theme-strict it will be, and whether they want to play there.

Below are the policies we're using for the game we're prepping. There are a couple that are specific to the setting, but I think that most of them are relevant to most games. We've split the difference between just "don't be a jerk" and listing specifics.

Rule One
Our first and most important rule is "Don't be an asshole." Don't harass your fellow players, don't be a creep, don't metagame, don't share IC info/resources between alts, don't power pose... it all comes under the heading of Rule One.

Non-Consent
[Game Name] is a non-consent game. While we encourage players to work together to arrange for a mutually-agreeable solution, in-character actions have consequences, which cannot be avoided. If the player would like to avoid roleplaying out the consequences, they can always request a Fade to Black, and that request will be granted without question or delay, but the character will not avoid the IC consequences.

Alts
All players may have up to three PCs. They should generally not have the same role and should never interact ICly.

Player-Run Plots
We encourage them. All we ask is that you run the general idea past a Staffer before scheduling it. If it's a combat event and you need help setting up combat, just ask. If you want to run something off the cuff? Do it. We just ask that you don't destroy the Guinevere, kill a great dragon, or shatter a nation. Bar brawls, shady info exchanges, spy extractions, and dogfights with air pirates or wyverns/wyvernettes are all totally fair game.

Magical Artifacts
We're great with players coming up with magical McGuffins, and even doing it on the fly. They can even be potent and powerful within the plot itself. But all major artifacts will end up in some giant government warehouse ala Indiana Jones or Warehouse 13 (but might come back up later). Minor artifacts may be approved as plot rewards on a case-by-case basis, but they will never be something that provides a direct game bonus, they will only ever be things that provide flavor to RP. Things that provide bonuses count as major artifacts and will end up in a warehouse somewhere (stupid governments).

Language
We're an R-rated game (although we aim for PG-13 on channels), and we use the Translation Convention: 1930s curse words don't have the same impact on modern readers, so feel free to use the curse words that come naturally to you (although we do ask that you avoid modern cultural references ICly, of course).

OOC Discrimination & Harassment
We won't stand for it. Period. If someone harasses you, please let us know immediately -- there's a good chance they're doing it to someone else too, and we absolutely want to know. Depending on the circumstances, we will usually give one warning, but that's it. Ares has wonderful reporting tools so we don't have to worry about he-said/she-said issues (check out the channel/report and page/report commands and the ability to forward any harassing mails).

IC Discrimination
We've specifically designed our setting with the Great Upheaval to remove issues of discrimination against women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people. We've also bumped off Hitler and replaced the Nazis with the Drachenordnung to shift the focus of fascism in Germany away from Jewish people. So just don't do it. We're great with characters who just plain don't like one another, but this is not the game to live out your dreams of "historical" misogyny, racism, homophobia, or other -isms.

Privacy
Staff will never read pages, mails, or anything like that unless they are sent to us via the built-in reporting systems as part of a complaint about inappropriate behavior. Staff will never watch private scenes unless we are explicitly invited to do so (and all participants approve). Please be aware that things said on channels are retained in the backscroll for some time and may be visible to people not logged in when the comment is made.

@Derp said in Model Policies?:

This is why I actually tend to have two documents: a pure policy document, and then an FAQ about the policies that I hope clarifies the vision and reasoning.

Something that I've found helpful on games is to have a series of Staff Notes that can work like an FAQ, but can also be used to provide information that isn't worthy of its own huge wiki page, but could still be helpful. On an original theme game, this could be the mechanics of how boarding starships work -- it's not going to interest all the players, but it's still good to have available so that players who are interested can all be on the same page. It could also include Staff's philosophy on game running, or how to balance combat for GMs, or FAQ on a particular policy.

@bear_necessities It's not about being anxious or worried about missing something, it's about being surprised when you're playing along day to day and then you realize that the game is in September when the real world is in May, and you were just starting to think 'hey, it's almost June, that's when my character's birthday is.' It's one more step of remove from the real world.

I definitely agree that there are benefits to increased time ratios (marriages, pregnancies, learning, promotions, research, etc), but I just like it when things synch up. When it's hot out, I often want to RP by character either reveling in the heat or avoiding it -- I don't want to have to think about whether it's actually January ICly and my characters should be worrying about snowshoes.

Just different strokes for different folks.

@pyrephox said in A healthy game culture:

More MUs really need an equivalent of tabletop Session Zero, where staff can talk freely and bluntly about the type of game they want to run.

I find this sort of thing incredibly valuable as a player (to know if I want to play on a game) and a game runner (to refer back to the stated purpose of the game). I always start a game with a mission statement these days, post it prominently, and refer back to it regularly to make sure that we're staying true to our mission.

I agree with a whole lot of what’s being said here. One more thing that I think is incredibly important is that Staff PCs be inclusive. Sure, they can ICly be prickly or grumpy or whatever, but having them explicitly invite people “in” on IC happenings and throwing their IC weight (and they’ll have some if only for OOC reasons) being the suggestions of folks outside their usual circle can be incredibly useful to combating FOMO. I think that this not only counters the impression of Staff exclusivity, but also engages “outsiders,” helping them get natural hooks into what’s going on.

John Carter of Mars/Barsoom -- everyone plays Red or Green Martians while John Carter is missing. Make the societies more egalitarian (like, egalitarian at all) when it comes to gender, and let everyone go adventuring around the world. Allow riposte mechanics with whatever system you're using so that even if you attack, you can get hit to demonstrate the dangers of an incredibly skilled fighter. Create an adventure Madlibs sytem: A (mad noble) is trying to (take over) (a lost an ancient city) of (Red Martians) by means of (mind control drugs in the food). Go!

@l-b-heuschkel Totally agree on the desire to have a purpose for a "purely social scene," as well as having something that explicitly links the scene to the setting. I do think it's nice to sometimes just have social scenes purely for the purpose of resetting the status quo. Sure, you can talk about all the big stuff that happened since the last time you got a chance to sit down, but to me, the purpose of these scenes is just to establish the new normal -- how has the relationship between these characters changed because of what's happened to them, and how can they find a good balance (even if it's a tenuous one) that can be upset again by the next big events (and "upset" can mean "put right" if the last big events left the characters on the outs).

Without these quiet beats between the big things that happen to characters, I feel like the big things lose their impact and they become the status quo, which isn't desirable (unless you're playing something like the 33 episode of BSG, you don't want -- come to think of it, even that episode had some moments of resetting status quo in the midst of it).

@arkandel said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

It's harder to shadow someone running a plot, or to coordinate them so they can run NPCs within the scope of what you're looking to accomplish, than to do it yourself.

I think this strongly depends on the system and the GM. I have a lot of fun following behind the poses of GMs and setting FS3 NPCs to do what the GM just said they did. It takes some of the burden off GMs who aren't comfortable with the combat system, and I enjoy playing with it. I think for someone who isn't familiar with the system/syntax, having someone do the "code stuff" can take a major burden off them, and for something as straight-forward as FS3, it's very easy to set appropriate actions for NPCs.

With a non-coded system? Yeah, it would be a lot harder.

@Thenomain "I want it to be a system, tho."

Here's the problem. FS3 isn't what you want it to be. So far as I know (and please, @faraday, correct me if I'm wrong), Faraday designed FS3 for use on a game that Faraday was running. The fact that other games use the code is because Faraday is nice enough to put it out there for free and run installs for other games (and because they like +combat, or the simple chargen).

You want a professionally-released, purchased game system balanced for all genres and for all people. But that's not what Faraday put together. Faraday put together a codeset that--when run by Faraday--promotes the type of game that Faraday wants to play on.

The fact that other people use it (the way Faraday intended or not) is a testament to 1) the quality of FS3 and 2) the lack of quality coders out there with time to design custom code.

Now, does FS3 (without strong Approval Staff oversight) encourage min-maxing at chargen? Absolutely. Does it mean that someone who creates a more rounded, less specialized character at chargen will never catch up to a more specialized, less rounded character in play? Absolutely.

Does that mean that it's bad game design? Only if the Approvals Staff allows it to go bad, and if the Game Staff intends for all characters to come out of chargen on an even footing with one another. But since the design of FS3 pre-supposes Approvals Staff that will be watching for min-maxed characters whose backgrounds don't match their sheets, that's a failure on the part of the Approvals Staff for letting the imbalance get through, or on the Game Staff for choosing the wrong codebase for the game they want to run.

If you don't like FS3, don't use it. It's not about what you want it to be, it's about what the creator, Faraday, wants it to be.

@Kanye-Qwest said:

@Ghost
I would upvote this twice, if I could.

I upvoted this post too, as a way to upvote the post @Ghost made twice.