Secret Society group

Aria

All my life, I was told my grandfather came from coal miners who were so poor that at varying points when he was small, he and his brother picked waste coal from the culm banks on the edge of their town…

And tonight I found out that all of that was true.

But what was also true was that his father served as a borough councilman for their small coal town. And that at one point as a councilman, my great-grandfather gave testimony in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins. His name is stamped in the trial records of a landmark SCOTUS case that resulted in a ruling which has been a fundamental legal principle for nearly a century.

Needless to say, it seems like my mother forgot to mention a few things.

seth meyers lol GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers

Pavel

@Gashlycrumb said:

Suggesting that the game hire a new staffer just to tend to players that the existing one doesn’t like seems ridiculous.

Why does it seem ridiculous to hire someone to cover an area you can’t? That’s one of the best reasons to hire someone. Whether they dislike a certain set or players, aren’t comfortable with them, or for whatever reason cannot interact with them, then the best thing to do is to engage someone who can and will do that.

Pavel

All staff should hire The Other Dude. Whenever a player becomes so irritating, so poorly behaved, or so… arduous to deal with, you just send their stuff to The Other Dude and they will be responsible for “gently offboarding” the player in question.

That shall be their only job.

Evilgrayson

It doesn’t really matter whether staff thinks you’re great or shit or anything in between.

A simple request solved with one command - two if you have to manually close out the job - should not take six months.

A request for a steer on a long-term project should not take six months, especially when the staffer in charge of the sphere is the only one for that sphere.

There’s accepting that people are volunteering, and there’s ye gods WTF?

catzilla

Tossing my two cents…

If the main staff dislike/hate/etc. they should just say it instead of ignoring said person in hopes they go away.

“Hi so&so, thank you for your interest but you and this game/staff/etc don’t vibe. We hope you find your game in the future. Here’s the door. Bye.”

That literally took 5 seconds to write.

I agree staffing isn’t a job. I’ve always seen it more like having an open house of sorts. If there was someone in your open house that clashed with you for whatever reason, you wouldn’t just ignore them, you’d ask them to leave and if they refused you’d show them the door (banning).

Wizz

@Gashlycrumb said:

I don’t believe it’s ‘most ideal’ for GMs to talk to players, I believe that’s a core element of the job.

other people have said this more politely but this is not a fucking job. it’s something someone is choosing to do, completely on their own time, for free, take it or leave it. they don’t OWE you anything more than they are offering, period.

I understand that’s a point of disagreement you are going to begrudge but honestly I really don’t care, players who come into someone’s game with that level of entitlement need to log off and go get some perspective or they will always find themselves on the outside looking in.

Roz

@MidnightCreature said:
But I still don’t exactly vibe with leaning so heavily on the volunteer aspect of it. It’s not as if game staff are performing a service in the way that going and working at a food bank or an animal shelter is. It’s more like going to a theater group and offering to work as part of the stage crew to help put together free community performances.

all of those things are volunteer work tho. when people bring up the “volunteer” aspect, it’s not (in my experience) to try and call to mind some specific form of volunteering that involves feeding the hungry or something. it’s literally just to say that you can’t expect performance consistency at the level of a paid job.

volunteering for a theatre is just as much volunteering as for a food bank. the point is someone not being paid and only working in a limited capacity, not making a moral point about the work being done.

So a person shouldn’t staff on a game unless they’re actually into doing the work of being a GM/Storyteller/Dungeon Master. Like, if you don’t enjoy being a storyteller and interacting with players, then you probably shouldn’t be staffing on a game.

most people do, though. most staffers IME do so because they enjoy some aspect of staffing. the problem is that no amount of enjoying helping players or running plots can survive having to do so for players who make the work miserable to do.

But I don’t think it should be used as a blanket response to criticism about someone consistently not doing the basic things attached to a role they voluntarily chose to take on or when they break their own rules with the regularity of the tides. If someone wants the authority and control that come with staffing a game, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for players to expect them to actually perform the functions of that role.

to me, i feel like the comments are often more about perspective, particularly because these issues often get brought up as big moral failings. which — no. it’s a hobby frustration. someone dragging their feet on jobs is an annoyance, not a moral calamity.

Pavel

It turns out that for some reason I can’t access the game’s website. No idea why, no real care to investigate either. But it’s like Saint Carlo Acutis himself is looking out for me.

Pavel

@voiceinthevoid I think it can be right to say that staff as a collective entity have a level of responsibility to ensure that jobs are answered and decisions are made (and announced, where necessary). I don’t believe that an individual staffer does. So if you’re annoyed by a player, pass the job to someone else. If there is nobody else, hire someone else or get rid of the problem player.

Pavel

@Gashlycrumb said:

I believe that’s a core element of the job

I believe that it’s a core part of the player’s job not to be so fucking irritating that staff would rather run WoD combat than deal with them.

@Gashlycrumb said:

Not on the simplest level. They’re excusing it, though.

Expressing that we understand why someone does something isn’t the same as excusing or agreeing with it.

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