Tough Calls
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Only banned once or twice. That said, always had a very clear policy following Wheaton’s Law (“Don’t be a dick”). People know when they’re being assholes. If they’re being assholes, they need to be somewhere else. This is a private party and if you piss on the carpet, you will be escorted off the premises. The clearer that is, the fewer people seem to feel a need to test limits.
There are a few people whom I’d ban on sight. Those are the known predators who have a history of causing game meltdowns or driving away vulnerable players. I wouldn’t invite a known predator into my house in real life, either.
On the other hand, a few people who have been problematic elsewhere, have turned new leaves on Keys and never caused trouble. Sometimes, people do learn from their mistakes and just need a fresh start.
The most arguments I’ve watched around banning and behaviour were on games where game policy was three pages long and waffling. The shorter and more concise it is, the less attempts to rules lawyer out of trouble. Because people do indeed know when they’re being assholes.
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@L-B-Heuschkel said in Tough Calls:
The shorter and more concise it is, the less attempts to rules lawyer out of trouble.
Totally agree that the more specific situations you try to address, the more problem players will argue that they didn’t break the specific rules to try to argue that they should remain.
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@Yam said in Tough Calls:
I’d like to hear some experiences from staffers that have had to make the tough call to ban what they’d consider problematic players, or players that were simply not a good fit.
Hi.
I used to be a very evidence-based staffer. When I was on Firan’s player management staff, we would create logs, records, have observers that would follow people around and stalk them, and all of this shit was normalized. You had to create a legal case for banning someone.
That informed my approach for years. Then I saw on Arx that you don’t HAVE to do this, and it was like the heavens opened and I saw the light.
What factored into your decision?
I’m pretty unashamedly vibe-based now. If someone gives me bad vibes, then I don’t fucking have the time for this. My ass is tired. It’s 2025.
How did you approach it? Did you consult with other staffers?
I tend to staff in groups. When someone gives me bad vibes, I flag it immediately to the group. I’m usually one of the first people in the group to flag someone, so often I get told to wait – but I don’t think there has been a case on recent games where I flagged someone that we didn’t end up later banning, or else they distanced after a warning.
Once someone gives me bad vibes, I tend to watch them a bit more critically. However, it’s not a case where I’m building a case against them with documented evidence. I’m often the person who actually confronts the person and bans them, bc my anxiety is so medicated, or else I just feel more confident in the fact that I do have the power in that situation.
I mean, that’s real. I can’t lie. I have the power to decide where I want to spend my energy, and I don’t want to spend it on them. So I ask them to leave.
Did you receive any backlash? Did you set aside time to discuss the ban with them or did you simply notify and ban?
I don’t recall receiving much backlash from other players about any bans. I am somewhat sensitive to the fact that I might not receive public backlash on this forum, either, because I am a mod here. I plan to resign as a mod the next time I run the game, because it does feel a little squidgy to me.
I have received backlash for some policies I pushed for: particularly policies around avoiding oversharing on public channels. I’ve been called ableist, etc. But not for a ban.
I don’t tend to discuss bans with players being banned. It’s very much a ‘you have 15 minutes to grab anything you need, goodbye.’ I don’t feel it’s a good use of my time and energy to engage in prolonged discussion.
I do sometimes receive backlash in that time from the player being banned, where they get on public channels to protest rather than speaking with me privately. That’s their choice.
Did you issue warnings?
I have cautioned people on behavior that could, if not corrected, eventually lead to a ban, so I GUESS I issue warnings, but not in the manner I used to. We used to have this idea that someone had to have three strikes of warnings before they would be banned. Thank god I don’t do that anymore.
Did it result in a healthier atmosphere, a worse atmosphere, or something else?
I’m reluctant to answer this question. I think we are somewhat blind to the results of our actions. I’d be more interested to hear how players would answer this.
It resulted in less stress for me, though.
she/they
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@Tez said in Tough Calls:
I have cautioned people on behavior that could, if not corrected, eventually lead to a ban, so I GUESS I issue warnings, but not in the manner I used to
Not that I want to accuse you of impropriety or anything, but do you find that you’re more willing to caution/counsel people with whom you’ve already established a rapport or relationship vs a relative unknown?
I ask only because I very much do feel that way; I’d be much more inclined to tell you, for instance, to knock it off vs someone I don’t know who’d just get a boot. I know it’s a bias that some would object to but I also tend to avoid staffing these days, precisely because I know my own biases enough to know I can’t be bothered.
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@Pavel said in Tough Calls:
@Tez said in Tough Calls:
I have cautioned people on behavior that could, if not corrected, eventually lead to a ban, so I GUESS I issue warnings, but not in the manner I used to
Not that I want to accuse you of impropriety or anything, but do you find that you’re more willing to caution/counsel people with whom you’ve already established a rapport or relationship vs a relative unknown?
I ask only because I very much do feel that way; I’d be much more inclined to tell you, for instance, to knock it off vs someone I don’t know who’d just get a boot. I know it’s a bias that some would object to but I also tend to avoid staffing these days, precisely because I know my own biases enough to know I can’t be bothered.
That’s actually a really interesting point. You’re totally right. I would tell my friends to knock shit off in a way where it doesn’t register as a warning as such to my brain – which probably makes me more likely to do so.
I just don’t have the same sense of needing to be cautious or delicate with them, because I know that they will take what I say in the spirit in which it is intended, and change behavior. I can think of instances where I’ve definitely told friends offhand to knock shit off in a way where I’d stop and have to have a staff conversation to see if others feel it’s appropriate to warn a stranger.
But.
In my head, I don’t necessarily think of it as warning my friend.
Damn, you right.
she/they
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@Tez Guess who just got through writing a paper on practitioner ethics, boundary setting, and bias acknowledgement. >_>
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@Tez said in Tough Calls:
I used to be a very evidence-based staffer.
I think evidence is still worthwhile, as sometimes, people can pass the vibe check, but still end up doing some horrible stuff, and evidence will get past the “oh, they’re good people, they pass my vibe check”, and can also indicate that maybe a review of the vibe one is looking for might be needed.
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@MisterBoring Quite agree. Trust, but verify the good vibes, while maintaining a readiness to just react to the bad vibes.
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@Tez can confirm you have had to tell my dumb ass to knock shit off and I never thought of it as a warning. Just oh god I’ve embarrassed my friend by behaving badly on her game in a perceivable way.
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@Yam bans are cancel culture and i like to think i have healed and evolved beyond such p e t t i n e s s
PS the calls I remember struggling with the most were
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a complaint about an interpersonal player relationship where one party was going against the rules/spirit of the rules of the game, but it all occurred in private off game conversations and there was a lot of ‘evidence’ to look at
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it was custodius, and he was honestly not doing anything i would ban another player for, but he wasn’t doing GREAT and we were just using a lot of staff time and energy like, watching him, corralling, investigating, etc.
But also, man, lots of them are hard. A lot of times you are looking at situations where neither side is being very cash money, and you’re trying to sort out which party is in the wrong this time and if there was some provoking incident that slipped by you and just aaaaaah. This is how I got burned out beyond belief. Telling a racist or a creep or a weird liar to buzz off is easy. I find that’s maybe 30% of player management
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Sadly, I think bans are sometimes necessary. A few years ag,o I had to ban someone I’ve gamed with and known for around 20 years. We’d run games together, we’d RPed together, we’d known each other for a long time, and I considered them a friend. They crossed more than a few lines, however, and refused to back down or take a break. So, in the end, I had to do what was best, not just for the game but also for my sanity.
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@Yam said in Tough Calls:
I’d like to hear some experiences from staffers that have had to make the tough call to ban what they’d consider problematic players, or players that were simply not a good fit. What factored into your decision? How did you approach it? Did you consult with other staffers? Did you receive any backlash? Did you set aside time to discuss the ban with them or did you simply notify and ban? Did you issue warnings? Did it result in a healthier atmosphere, a worse atmosphere, or something else?
I know this is like five days ago, which is apparently a long time but…
Back on Haunted Memories, when I was TL of the vampire sphere, I eventually removed a player from the sphere because they were too much. I would come home from work, log in to the game, and have at least five requests from them. Often PVP requests, requests for rulings, requests for more plot, etc. Just constant stream of me, me, me, me, me.
I was constantly handling their requests, their problems, their fights with other players, their urgent needs. It got to the point where I could not get anything else done. I sat them down and said: You are taking up too much of our time, you are not a good fit for the sphere, your character is being frozen, you are free to app into any other sphere but vampire.
It didn’t go over well and I was both lauded and flamed for doing it. I still breathed a sigh of relief when I washed my hands of them.
Most of my other ‘please leave my game’ decisions were cut and try harassment or sexpest issues.
Though I do wish I had asked Spider to just the fuck off my game, when she decided to lead a player riot against me on Darkwater b/c I didn’t make Shaft the summer king.
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I think in the realms of tough calls, it’s important to keep in mind that anything a player is throwing YOUR way, as a staffer, they are doing that and probably worse to their fellow players.
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@hellfrog Yeah. You might want to be generous and lenient, but your playerbase still has to manage this person. Sometimes they manage to play around this person. Sometimes they just move on. Orrrr sometimes they get tangled up in this person’s nonsense and question why they even have this hobby.
Some thoughtful answers here, thanks gang. I always appreciate staff that take care in this regard. The wrong kind of player can absolutely kill your game, even if all they do is make your ass tired. Problem player burns your playerbase out, dead. Problem player burns YOU out, dead.
It’s true that it’s very easy to boot off someone that’s being inconsiderate. Like, it’s very easy to be considerate. Really! But it’s way harder to boot off someone that you KNOW is TRULY just having it rough and they probably shouldn’t really be on a game but here they are and now there’s problems and the OTHER side is being a bit shitty, perhaps understandably and it’s just… bleh. I don’t think people can really guard against it. Perhaps this is why I’m so eager to try to nip it in the bud in strangers.
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@Yam Nip what in the bud in strangers? Just the general…combo of sensitivity/insensitivity that is ‘being difficult’?
I used to get a lot of shit for telling people on arx: 'people you rp with are not your friends. treat them like friendly strangers and don’t presume getting along in rp scenes means you are building real ooc bonds"
I was just in a position where I could see so many problems were the result of ‘i thought X and i were on the same page, now they have done something off-script and I am feeling HURT so their actions were done on purpose to HURT ME’
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@hellfrog That’s a hard lesson to learn, especially for us nerds with wonky brains. “If not friend, why friend shaped” might be a meme but it definitely resonates in some of my previous interactions on MUs (and in RL as well, let’s be real).
I have thankfully had the privilege of building some OOC bonds, but 99.999999% of people are like… colleagues. We work at the same RP mine, we might have a group project together, but we’re not going to the pub after the RP is done and I’m not going to write you a Christmas card.
It’s a really hard distinction to draw, especially when young.
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I was just reminded by @Trashcan of the statue command. Also known as the toad command in other systems. Has anyone ever used these? What was the situation?
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@Yam said in Tough Calls:
I was just reminded by @Trashcan of the statue command. Also known as the toad command in other systems. Has anyone ever used these? What was the situation?
I have not by the time I started mushing people were usually just IP banned via the server settings.
However, I did witness Troy using it once on someone who was spewing obscenities on TR or FC (I can’t remember which one, they were the same game anyway).
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@Tez said in Tough Calls:
That’s actually a really interesting point. You’re totally right. I would tell my friends to knock shit off in a way where it doesn’t register as a warning as such to my brain – which probably makes me more likely to do so.
I just don’t have the same sense of needing to be cautious or delicate with them, because I know that they will take what I say in the spirit in which it is intended, and change behavior.
Yep. That’s a thing.
Really it can be a major fairness issue.
If staff is a friend and we chat, I know more about the game and they know more about my PC. They’re more likely to make story that has a place for my PC.
Also, I tend to know when it’s a good time to ask them for something and when they’re tired and pissed off.
And more closely akin to what you’re saying – they might tell me to cut it out without considering it to be a ‘warning.’ They are more likely to tell me to cut it out before they wish they’d never approved me.
AND I am more likely to be permitted to tell them to cut it out without it being taken amiss. This ‘need to be cautious or delicate’ thing is, I think, largely overblown with MU staffers. You think you need to be delicate with players? Remember how delicate players feel they must be for staffers? For example, from what I see this thread was at least somewhat in response to a player asking a staffer when it’s appropriate to poke a +request, and the staffer feeling attacked because the player said their +request had been ‘ignored’ when it had, indeed, been ignored, just not for very long. Or there was the time I requested to have a conversation with a staffer where they didn’t stop responding with no warning before the discussion got anywhere, and instead of taking my point (that this was chronic and problematic) staffer appeared to be more interested in being offended at how I phrased this. And probably I couldn’t have phrased it right, because seriously, the whole damn trip is about erasing context and flattening nuance in order to feel attacked. Or feeling attacked and finding some reason to run with that feeling rather than taking a moment to give consideration to what the other person is saying rather than the ‘tone’ that is probably a blank you’re mostly filling in yourself.
Fellow players may not be your friends, but for a game to not suck, people need to at least act as if they are friendLY. This includes putting down the scepter, taking off that shiny hat, accepting that it’s not an insult when people notice that you’re not perfect, and having an ordinary conversation.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Tough Calls:
I requested to have a conversation with a staffer where they didn’t stop responding with no warning before the discussion got anywhere, and instead of taking my point (that this was chronic and problematic) staffer appeared to be more interested in being offended at how I phrased this
Did you think that one was gonna go over well with this person
