Echoes of the Past: Problem Players
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I guess I can count myself lucky in that I know I’ve been on games that VASpider and Seanan McGuire were on, but as far as I can remember, I never interacted with them, or never in any significant capacity.
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@Juniper said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:
I interpreted this thread as a warning about two specific players residing in a specific game.
It kind of is - but it’s also a call for people to take a step back and think in general about what’s going on around them.
I have learned of two more sets of people on that first oWoD game who are, by more than one report, employing the same fucking tactics. And there are other games that I’m not on, and shit that I’m not seeing, and things that I don’t know. That call for people to stay safe and look after each other? That was heartfelt. By looking after each other, we reduce the harms of all sorts of things, but this stuff in particular.
Respect your own boundaries, and the boundaries of others. And above all, care.
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@Pavel Looks at the Star Wars Aoa thread Ayup it happens.
Take care of yourself out there folks.
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@Juniper said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:
I interpreted this thread as a warning about two specific players residing in a specific game.
idk that something really be a warning about a specific game or specific players when it doesn’t name the game or players
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ok
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@Roz said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:
@Juniper said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:
I interpreted this thread as a warning about two specific players residing in a specific game.
idk that something really be a warning about a specific game or specific players when it doesn’t name the game or players
I don’t know how to double quote but they said this
“Having watched them kill a game in that fashion and gain more friends and more enablers in so doing, I joined a freshly-opened game and created a Garou there in a brand new sphere. A week or two ago a new pack joined - the only pack - with characters that were rewrites of the werewolf and vampire player’s oWoD wolves in it. I battened down the hatches and waited for the attacks to start, because my character was an obvious target and I expected they knew he was my character. Two nights ago, the attacks began, and over the course of the day after I realised what the whole pattern was and where I’d seen it before.”
So I think it’s a warning of two people specifically AND of problem players in general?
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@Evilgrayson Role players are bonkers. RPG players are bonkers. WoD fans are bonkers. Add the anonymity of nick names and you wind up with an abusers paradise.
Staff are simply blind to too much (the nature of MU*), and can only react, because nobody wants them proactively violating privacy. When there’s a proper shadow society being maintained OOC, more organized and longstanding than a game, good luck.
It took me about 15 years to figure out this mix is bad for me. I’m sorry for your experience, truly. I was gutted my last time MUSHing, and called it quits. The circumstances bore comical similarities to your tale. Hugs for y’all.
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Sorry to hear that someone found your fun bug and stepped on it. That really sucks. Hopefully you find a game that’s chill. Thanks for the heads up.
In the meantime I was just about to app a werewolf into a game… but even if it isnt them I want to stay far the fuck away from that shit. Could you dm me the owod game for peace of mind?
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@MisterBoring said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:
… I’ve run into players finding out that certain plots are restricted to certain IC groups that their PC isn’t part of, then immediately using every social engineering thing they can think of both IC and OOC to ingratiate their way into the plot,
I’ve certainly been accused of this. By you, even. But from my point of view, it’s been that there’s plot going on over there, and I would like to play too. So I try to get involved, and later discover that people think I’m trying to gatecrash even before I find out that the opening to participation I think I saw isn’t viable. And presumably it’s taken as malicious social engineering when I react to that by directly OOCly asking for plot-runners to open things up such that I can play. It’s not that I want to be in every plot, or that I’m perversely drawn to try to be involved in things designed for Not Me. I want to be in some plot. And not some bullshit PBEM deal where I get one message every two weeks while spending the rest of the time unable to RP because everybody else is either RPing the plot that’s for Not Me or talking about the secrets thereof.
The toxic in-crowd behavior that @Evilgrayson is talking about almost invariably includes accusing people of trying to worm their way into everything when they’ve been excluded from anything.
"This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
– A. Bertram Chandler -
Which brings us to the horror of problem players – they’re trusted before they make problems, and, in a sense, earn their flying monkeys by being good friends (at least for part of the association, and possibly even long term) to some people even as they’re screwing over others and manipulating their friends to help.
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@Gashlycrumb The worst part of some of the more… famous problem players, especially those with whom I have been the most acquainted, is just how vital they make themselves to be. They provide story like nobody’s business, take over all those little jobs that nobody wants to do but need to get done. It’s like waking up one day to find out the janitor is actually Stalin.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
@Gashlycrumb said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:
So I try to get involved, and later discover that people think I’m trying to gatecrash even before I find out that the opening to participation I think I saw isn’t viable. And presumably it’s taken as malicious social engineering when I react to that by directly OOCly asking for plot-runners to open things up such that I can play.
Gatecrashing can be unintentional if a certain level of transparency isn’t maintained between all players and staff. Dropping in unannounced when a big scene is going on can be unintentional gatecrashing if a player isn’t aware of a planned plot event or whatever going on for a specific faction. It happens, and it’s on both the player doing the dropping in and the staff running that scene to civilly, and transparently, work out that the scene is not open for the PC in question, and why. If a player has a concern regarding a plot not being open to their PC, they should approach staff with a good level of transparency, so that the players of the faction or skill group or whatever that the plot is meant for doesn’t assume someone is trying to grab their turn in the spotlight.
At the same time, intentional toxic gatecrashers do exist, and I’ve seen them in most of the genres of games I’ve played in (be it fantasy, sci-fi, WoD, other horror, post apocalyptic, or whatever). I’ve witnessed players use OOC methodology to circumvent both coded restrictions in the game (such as times I’ve seen players use coded meeting commands to circumvent faction locks on rooms and exits) as well as IC restrictions to accessing plot (in one fantasy game I was part of, some players were allowed to help run the central plots of the game without staff level access, and a player straight up lied about having the ability to fly when it came time to attack a pirate airship in the middle of a wilderness area. The player running the plot didn’t have the ability to confirm that, and when they turned the logs in to staff, there was a whole mess of drama about it that resulted in retcons and the player in question being banned).
I did accuse you of that. If it was inaccurate, I do apologize, but I was basing those accusations on the information available to me to formulate what I believed was the most accurate chain of events. The transparency of the situation, or lack thereof, is the culprit in that specific accusation.
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@Pavel I think it’s part and parcel. The overinvestment is both one of time and emotional connection. You see it in LARP as well – when people choose the imaginary life and identity over their real one, you get the recipe for Chernobyl-caliber meltdowns.
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@InkGolem I think it’s subtly different. You’ve got people who invest so much time and effort and therefore they meltdown horribly, but then you have those people who invest so much time and effort in order to engage in toxic behaviour.
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@Pavel This times 1,000!
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@Pavel Funny thing, but my experience of Spider was characterised by them being nice and quite pleasant to chat with and a lot of fun for casual RP, but sharply warning me off for this very gatecrashing of which we speak when I tried to be involved in the story they provided. Happened over at least three games.
@MisterBoring One of the peculiar things about that very peculiar incident was that some of my crimes were easily disprovable using MU-features. I imagine you didn’t investigate. And why would you? You believed someone you liked and trusted. Which is the same reason I was there at all, and why I failed to leave when the shit started.
I think most of us are familiar with that situation. Right now I’ve got two RP-buddies I consider friends whom other friends have described as manipulative and toxic hurtful fun-crushers. One by a friend I trust more, but I don’t see it myself so, well, that’s a puzzler and an unhappy situation. The other by people whom I am quite sure were flying-monkey-ing/bandwagoning/dogpiling over a mildly annoying behaviour that others on that game have turned up to eyeball-searingly infuriating without consequences.
@Pavel said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:
@InkGolem I think it’s subtly different. You’ve got people who invest so much time and effort and therefore they meltdown horribly, but then you have those people who invest so much time and effort in order to engage in toxic behaviour.
There’s also that trip where a manipulative abuser type purposefully propels somebody into a meltdown in order to make that somebody appear unstable and toxic thus proving that the somebody deserves the harsh treatment that prompted them to, uh. Meltdown and prove that they deserve harsh treatment.
"This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
– A. Bertram Chandler -
@Evilgrayson Wait, wait. Are you saying that the player(s) on this game in question are VASpider and crew? I thought you were just using VASpider as an example of what this player and crew are doing.
If you are saying it is Spider, please report it to the staff of the game. I already had one game I loved ruined by her, I don’t want another.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:
One of the peculiar things about that very peculiar incident was that some of my crimes were easily disprovable using MU-features. I imagine you didn’t investigate.
What game in specific was this, and what feature access do you think I possessed?
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@MisterBoring MN. So far as I know, you haven’t accused me of that twice. And the features all the players there had, the channels-to-discord and the activity-logger thing. Though maybe you weren’t even playing there, I dunno. It’s not significant anyway.
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@Gashlycrumb The only person I know of getting removed from MN was Polk, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a case of toxic intentional gatecrashing.
