@bored Well, I don't have an issue with someone telling people not to fuck with a game. Whether that comes from someone speaking as a regular poster or as a mod, it doesn't matter to me.
I maintain that there are more important things to get one's panties in a bunch over.
Seems we all guest wrong about the reason behind this one.
What I'm getting out of some of this is that moderation is fine as long as it's done the way a particular person wants it to be done. Otherwise, moderation is not fine.
Personally, if I was a moderator I'd crack down on blatant trolling, but that's one of my hot button things. If someone is only out for a reaction by being a jerk toward others, I don't have a lot of patience for that.
And yet, while I know the Hog Pit is more of a free-for-all part of the site where insults, sharp criticism, and pretty much anything else goes, that area has value when it comes to trying to address misbehavior by players/admin/staff/whoever. These are the kinds of things that, especially using an Elsa game or UH as examples, can't be discussed in-game without people being punished for it when people in power abuse that power. The Hog Pit is one of the few places things like that can be brought out into the open and, depending on what evidence is out there or what people believe, general conclusions can be reached about what seems to be going on.
I don't know most posters here well enough to have too strong an opinion of who they are as people, what their morals and ethics are, or any of that, but I will say it's a mistake to assume people in general will understand what you mean when you say something and do it in a vague way. You may think what you're saying is clear - God knows I've been there more than once - and someone is stupid for not getting it, but the only one who can make sure what you say is understood is you. Don't make things worse by acting like everyone else just doesn't get it when you say something that gets misinterpreted, and don't give a half-assed apology when you're called on it.
As far as posters having separate moderator accounts or not, I don't think it matters as much as how it's handled. If @Arkandel creates a second account only to use when MOD VOICE is needed, people should know that's his account from the start. It won't fully eliminate the possibility of MOD VOICE being misused in some way, but it's one more step of separation from asking him to pick and choose when he uses MOD VOICE on his personal account. Either way, I could see the potential for suspicion based on when and how MOD VOICE is used, no matter the setup for it.
What's important to remember is we're all MU*ers as well. We're not above conflict, controversy, arguments, in-fighting, and so on just because we have a place here to call it out when we see others do it. An outsider could look at the debate going on here and say "See? These holier-than-thou fucks are no better than the ones they're whining about over and over!" At times, that would be accurate to say. That's not automatically bad, either. It just proves that nobody is perfect, nobody is going to agree about everything, and we all have different personalities and beliefs that sometimes clash.
If we can be better about staying civil and sensible about it, that's the most important thing to me.
What I'm getting out of this latest blow-up is Auspice used MOD VOICE to tell people not to go troll a place, Tempest pitched a fit about it, and now here we are with another back-and-forth.
Is that about the long and short of it?
@bored Except this isn't really even an offense at all. She did nothing objectionable. She said "Don't harass games." She didn't say "Don't harass games or else." If you think that's what she said, that's what you're reading into it.
If you seriously consider this some sort of moderator offense, you need to re-evaluate a few things.
@mietze Yes, but the message a couple people are trying to send here is that Auspice fucked up and got another strike because someone simply dislikes moderation of any form beyond moving a few posts around to another sub-board in the background as needed.
People are used to zero moderation whatsoever and there's a bit of a push against it now that things are changing a little bit, perhaps as if they fear it's going to lead to further moderation and tighter rules when Arkandel himself has already made it pretty clear that's of no interest to him here. This sort of nitpicking over what Auspice did also shows little faith in Arkandel's ability to handle things himself, whether the people pointing the finger of blame here realize that or not.
I get that people want the freedom to say and do just about whatever they want here. The thing is, I don't see that suddenly being denied them. There are still some general standards of decency we should agree to in or out of the Hog Pit itself. "Don't go fuck with a game because you have a problem with someone, and don't use this place to try to set it up if you're not going to be deterred" is one most, if not all of us, seem to be in agreement on.
So why is reminding people of that such a problem, even if it's pro-active and based on something apparently said in private as a heads-up? It's like it's less about the reminder itself and more about the voice Auspice used to deliver it. Are we going to be THAT sensitive about it any time "MOD VOICE" comes up? Really?
The story would be completely different if Auspice went off on her own and openly threatened people with this or that if they didn't do as she demanded. That...did not happen. It didn't even come close to happening.
@enoch I think if you, as a game, wish to have prior RP matter, it's a slippery slope in the context of IC relationships. We all know a draw for a lot of people in these things is playing out various relationships.
Scott/Jean, Logan/Jean, Rogue/Gambit, Emma/Scott, Shatterstar/Rictor, Kitty/Piotr, Kitty/Pete Wisdom, Logan/Scott/Jean/Emma (okay, maybe that last one's going a bit off the rails) - these are all canonical, expected and accepted character relationships depending on the cutoff. But yes, if Scott and Jean are playing one in-game, one of them drops, and a new player comes along and doesn't want to continue it, that's one thing. The new player has every right to go in another direction.
However, I don't think it's fair to the other player to just say "Well, none of that stuff happened now." It essentially invalidates and throws out things that did happen in-game, and it can be a big problem.
If something is logged and posted, it typically counts. If you have a tool in-game (+canon, was it?) that establishes something in a simple one-line explanation, it sounds like it counts as well. If people are doing this and that "off-screen" that becomes more difficult to enforce without proof of it, and we know that happens. In addition, some people don't want to share the mushy stuff with everyone even when it's purely vanilla. I understand if someone wants to keep it private. Using +canon could be a great alternative to posting a log.
But, if it's established and is part of the continuity in any way, my suggestion would be that at least in the general sense, it sticks. If a new player wants to go in a different direction, fine. If the new player and the old player agree to just say "They saw each other for a while and now they aren't" without focusing on any more than that, fair enough.
When someone comes in to play a character that's already been played before, there should come with it an expectation that the former player(s) may have done some things the new one wouldn't have, but it's not an automatic reason to retcon a bunch of stuff immediately. If there are a lot of logs, it's tough to expect someone to account for every little detail so some summarizing may be needed, some info from other players of characters that did things with someone, whether it's a relationship or not. It can make taking on a played character more daunting, but in general it's good for the game if "What Has Gone Before" is maintained as still there somehow.
Most things can be worked around, acknowledged, etc. If there IS a good reason to retcon, figure out a sensible justification and excuse with staff. It's a comic book genre. Strange shit happens. New writers put different spins on characters and change things we've seen in the past. "I was mind-controlled by blah," "Sinister cloned me," "I was stuck in an alternate reality and replaced by a different version of me," "It was a Skrull," or "It was just a phase I was exploring" may be cheesy, but it's not necessarily wrong to go with any of those. Create an RP hook out of it that an existing, affected player can at least do something with, even if it's not perfect. Don't simply toss out the time and effort they put in. Honor it.
Just take it on a case-by-case basis as needed. Be prepared to spend a little time helping hash something out and hope both sides can come away satisfied with the result. Also make sure players who take on a new character that hasn't been played before understand that anything they do that's available for all to see can normally be expected to stand.
I wouldn't have a problem with a no-alt policy for the first month or two of the game. That's more than enough time for interested people to app who they want as a primary character, then if they really want a second one they can see who's left. It should be open season by then.
As for activity, don't do some thing where you need to have a logged scene or whatever once every so many weeks. Figure out tiers, come up with reasonable activity levels for each, and have it go by the calendar month.
When it comes to proof of activity, leave out player voting. If someone's in a log beyond just a cameo (this might have to be checked, though), it counts.
Also, on a personal note I'd love an in-game logging system that automatically goes into a real-time log somewhere online, and I'd love some sort of pose code that separates each player's pose with something. These two things did make UH very convenient, and having a separator of some kind (along with, even, an identifier for whose pose it was) felt so much easier to follow a scene as it was going on.
@thatguythere This place is certainly not the equivalent of newspaper classifieds.
@thenomain To be honest, what I'm ultimately getting out of this latest thing is @Tempest seeing a chance to go running to @Arkandel in particular, in a public way rather than a private (PMs), trying to get @Auspice in hot water over some perceived misuse of MOD VOICE when the reasoning behind it is really not controversial at all.
What does it attempt to accomplish? Perhaps getting more people to distrust Auspice being fit to have moderator privileges here. I don't know if she belongs as one or not, so I'm not touching that side of things.
But again, the basis for the question stems from there being a concern about people using MSB as a way to organize going over to a place to do...something. People have already generally agreed that fucking with a game is not okay, and neither is using MSB as a way to try organizing such things, so raising any kind of complaint or question over that as the catalyst under the guise of "misuse of MOD VOICE" is questionable at best to me. At worst, it comes off like an attempt to stir the anti-Auspice pot.
@Admiral This...was very strongly written:
https://satyrosphilbrucato.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/good-riddance-you-brutalizing-hag/
They're not taken, I'd say, so much as reserved. People still have to go through their process to secure the character bit.
It could be interesting to have a WoT game again, especially if it developed into having a solid playerbase and a variety of things to do.
I had a good time with Cuendillar back in the day, but it just kind of fizzled out and even if the game is still up, it's been dead for years.
Speaking only on the subject of grid size, you don't need an actual large grid for a city to feel bigger. You can have a handful of central "hub" rooms - say, main sections of the city - with a variety of sub-areas that branch off it no more than one or two "levels," which keeps people from having to wander around 15-20 rooms just to find that coffee shop they want.
Just use a '+dir' setup, have it list all the rooms available off the main one, and you're good to go. One of the games I'm on these days does it like this and I find it much better to navigate than going through room after room after room. It's not a place that needs a hundred spots, either.
@shaggy Mainly, show that you have a grasp on what makes the character tick. Can you nail the body language? The way the character sounds? The personality? I'll take that any day over all the rest. Get into the head of the character and now we're talking.
I see some OCs that aren't even good at portraying little details like that, things that actually breathe life into a character, and they created it. They should know the ins and outs of that person.
It feels to me like the vision of a perfectly-run place that's fair to all, no drama or strife, and so on is just that: a vision.
The places that have great RP, competent staff, mature players, and little drama are few and far between. I think it's a reason the vast majority of MU*s out there have a relatively short shelf life.
I once staffed on a couple places years ago, and I vowed to never do it again. As important as good staffers are to a place, it's way too easy to fall into the usual traps of human nature when it comes to who you associate with, who you like, who you don't like, and so on. At times all the stuff behind the scenes made it harder to just have fun in general RP, and if there's not an inherent wariness of staffers in general from some people, there are others who can and will try to abuse your time when they figure out who you play and who your staffbit is. That can be solved with making a clear distinction between your staffbit and your characters, but it doesn't always work.
There was once someone I knew who wanted to open his or her own place and this person asked me to staff. S/he (because I have no idea) said a lot of the same stuff: "I don't want to repeat the mistakes the other places make. I want us to be fair. I don't want us to play any favoritism, no special perks just because we're staff, etc." Who was the first person to use the "Well, I'll play so-and-so because I'm staff. I just need you to give the approved stamp to it so it looks legit" excuse? One guess, and I chose not to stay there long after that.
I've come around to the idea that staffers are probably entitled to certain perks, such as certain characters if they want them, but with that comes a responsibility to actually play those characters more than once or twice a month. If squatting is bad from general players, staffers doing it is much worse because it sends a bad message to everyone else. Staffers need to set the right example, not the wrong one, and for the time and effort they presumably put into a place, they do deserve a benefit or two as long as it's not being abused. From my experience, however, that's rarely the case.
A place that's run kind of like a dictatorship by one or two people can work and have longevity, but like I said above that seems to be the exception to the norm. These days I'm just on a place to have fun and hopefully make some friends within the context of the game, IC and OOC. I don't need the drama, and if and when a place reaches the point that it's no longer fun or worth it to stick around, I'm ready to try another one.
I just think someone who wants to start a game should be honest about the pros and cons of it, the tendencies of basic human nature when it comes to cliques, favorites, personal perks and so on, and simply do their best to work with that instead of trying to prevent it from happening at all.
@collective said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:
Usually slowly, badly and with an 'oh, well' attitude towards being bad.
"Sory for al teh typos im on my phon"
Meh. People are free to design and run any type of game they want. There are no rules when it comes to theme, setting, what you want to allow and what you don't want to allow, etc.
This particular place isn't for me, but for those it does appeal to? More power to 'em. Whether it's creepy, exclusionary toward certain types of characters, too focused on the D, veers way off into unrealistic territory with characters we're used to seeing written certain ways...I don't really care. I don't think they're hurting anybody. It's easy to not pay attention to it.
Everyone is free to play or not play there based on their own preferences. Though, if you're into superhero sausage fests, this might just be your place. Bring the buns and condiments.
@arkandel To part of that, I think there needs to be less demanding that people do this or move that or kick so-and-so off or else, complete with "If you don't do what I want, I'm out!" (At least, not without reasonable cause)
That's just petulant. Be better than that.
I don't know what the solution to all of that is, though. There's no one thing that will be perfect for everyone. Even a completely hands-off approach of no modding whatsoever (except, I guess, for dealing with spambots and that sort of thing) that leads to a total free-for-all has its drawbacks, but people shouldn't need someone stepping in with the mod hat on to tell them to grow up when they're acting like spoiled brats in the middle of a temper tantrum with someone else.
Be adults. Deal with shit in a mature, responsible way. Try to understand the other side when possible, when there's a reason to. Be apologetic when it's warranted, even if you (the general 'you') don't think it is. Admitting "Hey, maybe I messed up there" doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you weak. It means you're willing to own up to something. It's easy for us to get up in arms and grab the pitchforks and torches when we see a wrong committed, but going straight to that isn't always the best course of action.
It doesn't have to be much more complicated than that.
Or, as it was once suggested:
