@bear_necessities That’s fair to disagree on, and it may just be a question of word use.

In my opinion, when a Staffer has the power to remove someone from the game, or the power to inflict IC consequences on that player’s character, they are in a position of power over that player.

The player can remove the Staffer from that position of power over them by leaving the game, but unless they do that, they are in an asymmetric power relationship.

@Pacha Definitely every Staffer has the right to decide what they’re willing to put up with. To go back to my other point, that’s actually one of the reasons that they have power in the situation, because they’re the one who can decide that.

And I would definitely look in askance of a Staffer who had a quick trigger on what made a player more trouble than they’re worth. Of course, my own definition of a quick trigger is likely to be different than someone else’s, just like my definition of “more trouble than they’re worth.”

@Yam Staff groups that I’ve been a part of have banned a whole bunch of problematic players.

In some cases, it was because we (I’m always part of a Staff team, and we always discuss bannings) had credible reports (usually from multiple folks, but not always) of creepy or harassing behavior. In those cases we do not give warnings, we notify, ban, and put up a post with the broad outlines of the reasoning (we never out victims in those posts or in the notifications).

In other cases, we’ve had less pointed reports (a general bad feeling, behavior that we felt was borderline, etc) and we have given warnings. Again, those warnings discuss the behaviors, not people, and we always do our best not to out victims. We also try to give steps to improve behavior and avoid another incident.

And in a few cases, we have banned people because they were causing more difficulty for Staff than their efforts were giving to the game. This is generally people who demonstrate a poor attitude or an inability to stay within the realm of the theme and setting. In this case, we do give a warning.

We have lost other players because of players we’ve banned, but in almost every situation, we have at least one other player who comes up to us afterwards and thanks us for removing the troublesome player. Sometimes it’s one of the reporters, sometimes it’s someone else entirely. I have yet to regret a single ban that I’ve been a part of, even if I may be sad that some people choose not to see the problematic behavior of their friend and take their time elsewhere.

@Pacha said in Empire Discussion Thread:

My assumption (perhaps false!) is that when opening a game one wants to develop a large and diverse base of players. So for me, banning people who don’t necessarily need to be is kind of a negative thing, because it is then a player (and perhaps their friends) that I don’t have.

I fully believe that you can ban people who are more trouble than they are worth (cue Prue Leith’s “Not worth the calories”), and still maintain a large and diverse base of players. While there aren’t a ridiculous number of people in this hobby, there are plenty to have a nice, large, healthy database while removing the people who make staffing not fun.

@bear_necessities said in Empire Discussion Thread:

@Ominous said in Empire Discussion Thread:

one clearly has power over the other

No they don’t. Let’s not be super ridiculous here. That’d be like saying Pyre has power over us because they are mods of the forum

Anyone in a position of power (and staffing a game, or a forum, is that) has some measure of power over those who partake of whatever gives them that power. Can a player always just quit to take themselves out of the staffer’s power? Absolutely. But while they are on that game, the staffer has some power over them. This is just an integral part of positions of power.

@KarmaBum If you like FS3, I do happen to have the stats I put together from The Network’s Western series that y’all could use as a starting point.

@DrQuinn said in Historical Games Round 75:

Like a social contract is great, but also is going to probably ensure that your player base is mostly white.

I think that that depends on what’s in the social contract. Like, if the social contract says that no racism will be allowed onscreen, that’s going to be different than if it says you can only inflict it upon your own character, and that’s going to be different than if it says that racism is baked into the setting but that all characters will strive against it, and that’s going to be different than if the contract doesn’t mention racism at all.

The social contract can be used to set expectations for level of engagement with various pain points – at any level of engagement.

@Tez said in Historical Games Round 75:

Throw them out. Throw them the fuck out.

Agreed 100%. You don’t let the nice Nazis in your bar, or they’ll drive off the non-Nazis and bring your friends, and then you have a Nazi bar.

@Trashcan Thank you for articulating this so nicely. It’s a very blurry line that I have issues with myself. Do you disallow IC discrimination at all (as has been neatly pointed out by others, this has its own problems with telling stories of resistance)? Do you only allow it based on non-real-world reasons (“hedge mages suck, werewolves rule!”)? Do you only allow players to apply it to their own characters (that doesn’t stop someone from fetishizing the struggle that another player may have to deal with in RL)?

I don’t know that there are good, “right” answers to any of those questions.

I do agree with others above that if I don’t trust the game runners to enforce the boundaries of their playerbase, the answer to most questions is “no.”

@mietze said in Historical Games Round 75:

I’ve always told people I understand how exploring certain themes from the relative safety of RP is very appealing but that’s probably something better done in a private game or one that the playerbase is heavily vetted because on a public one, one with randos, or one with many “friends” of friends, you are increasing the likelihood of someone who has no business exploring those themes with others being able to come in. Maybe sometimes there’s staff willing to police it, and if there is and you like that avenue of play rather than whining you better treat them well, because most people don’t have time or patience for that.

I think this is a great take, but I also think that some of this can be covered with the use of a Social Contract as described by James Mendez Hodes in one of his several very good blog posts on historical (tabletop) roleplaying:

https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2018/11/10/best-practices-for-historical-gaming

If Staff lays out from the start what is acceptable to see on-screen and what is not, what will be argued about on-screen and what will be accepted, then anyone who violates that Social Contract can pre-emptively be shown the door, allowing those who remain to explore the setting to the extent that they feel comfortable within the protections of that Contract.

@Raistlin said in Missed Settings:

5. Buffy. The setting is so great that I’m shocked there weren’t more of these games, and there aren’t any around today.

I think this has the same problem that Firefly does: the characters are more of a draw than the setting is. For instance, I don’t want to play in the Browncoat-a-verse as much as I want to play with Jayne and Kaylie and the rest of the crew – and no, FCs aren’t enough. Likewise, I would want to play with Spike and Angel and Faith and Willow and Oz… more than in a generic-ish vampire-slaying modern (or '90s period piece) world.

I started on a DIKU MUD called Dark Castle – no RP, just mob-killing.

After a little bit, I wandered over to The Weave, and then to A Moment in Tyme. That was the first game that really got me hooked on MU*ing as I know it now. It was an RP MUD that provided XP (eventually) for both killing mobs and for posing, and then even more eventually the mobs were removed and it was only XP for posing (but the stat system was still otherwise all MUD-style).

That was way back in 1994.

While I’m a big proponent of character-death-when-it’s-appropriate-to-the-story, one thing that I think needs to be talked about a little bit is how that death will impact other characters. Do the players of your character’s loved ones (family, significant others, packmates, etc) want to play out grief?

While I think that character death should pretty much always be done with player consent (except in the case of Aim for the Bushes, but I consider that consent-by-continuation-after-warnings), there’s also the non-death effects on everyone around the character to consider, and a lot of folks (myself included) who have gone for death-for-drama’s-sake haven’t always considered the knock-on effects.

I haven’t seen a non-consent permadeath in more than a decade. Again, back on KotOR, there was a crewman of the Sith Empire who mouthed off to both superior officers and Sith, and when threatened with the brig, attacked a superior officer and Sith. They were OOCly told by a Staffer that it would likely result in character death, and that led to OOC yelling about how it wasn’t fair and they weren’t going to the brig and they would leave the game. The character chose to attack the other PCs, was killed, and left the game. Everyone was happier (save perhaps the player of the dead character).

On another note, one thing that I really appreciated from The Network was that the short seasons (4-6 months usually) meant that character death was less painful. You could have a complete arc for your character within a season, and end it with riding off into the sunset, death, a cliffhanger, or whatever else you liked, without worrying about being “behind” people who kept their character in the midst of their story. The only downside was that if there was a second season in the same world, you might have problems bringing your character back for another go-around (except during the Soap Opera season, that one would have been easy).

I have seen factions done. I have seen it done in an… okay manner. It was baked into the theme. But there were always players who took things too hard, and went too hard, and made it less fun for those around them.

I do think that it’s possible to do CvC (but not PvP) antagonism, so long as it’s managed very carefully.

As others on this thread have pointed out, I think it starts with transparency, includes making outcomes not involve character death, and then I think that it moves on to making it clear that the conflict is Characters vs Character, and that the players are all there to work together to make a fun story. Even then, all it takes is one sore loser or sore winner and things can spiral out of hand.

As far as transparency is concerned, I think that it’s important for players to know what they’re getting into, how the conflict will be adjudicated, and what the possible outcomes will be. The example that @Aria gave is a great one – up until the one Staffer changed things up.

When character death is on the line, players get twitchy. I think that if you can make sure that death isn’t on the line, people are more likely to engage in CvC conflict in good faith. Starting a new character from scratch when you liked the deceased one, or they had some cool gear/stats, or they had great connections – it can be incredibly frustrating, and people will act in bad faith to avoid that frustration.

I do also think that one thing that can help is making sure that the opposing factions are fighting past each other, not fighting against each other. As an example, way back on KotOR MUSH, we had the Sith and the Republic fighting over a neutral system. Except they couldn’t attack each other, because if they did, then the neutral system would support whichever side was attacked. So each side had to work to make the other side look bad, and themselves look good, without ever actually fighting one another.

It’s been long enough that I don’t honestly remember how it turned out – it may have collapsed into complete crap – but I like the general idea of it as an opportunity for CvC antagonism. It means that no PC is directly beating up another PC, so there’s no chance of death (or even maiming).

I don’t see anything at all wrong with players only RPing with other players that they explicitly like – unless they’re hoarding plot in doing so. I think it’s an entirely healthy reaction to want to prioritize RP with those whose RP you explicitly enjoy.

However, I do agree with those who have said that it’s better for the health of the game (and usually the character too) if you expand that pool to at least try RPing with folks you don’t know, or have neutral feelings toward sometimes. Sure, you might find some people you have absolutely zero interest in RPing with again, but you might also find some people that you’d like to add to the list of folks you’re interested in RPing with regularly. Beyond that, it allows stories and plot to spread from group to group across the MU*, connecting play groups in organic ways so that it’s not a setting with a half dozen scattered and separate plots going on, but a world with interconnected stories taking place in it.

@MisterBoring Peanut Butter-filled Pretzels from Coscto.

Sometimes also one of the kid’s string cheeses. But mostly the PB Pretzels.

@Pavel First w in the English manner, second w in the German manner, at least for me, when I steal it shamelessly.

@sao I was trying to come up with a situation too, but I couldn’t. I did want to leave the door open, because there are very few things I want to be an absolutist about.

I could imagine something like the delirium situation @MisterBoring mentioned, or it being a month or two in between creating a character you never played and creating a new character because you forgot about the first one, or getting so excited about the concept that you forgot that there were no alts allowed and submitted a new character.

But the response to Staff going, “Um… hold on a sec” would be very telling, and would decide if I went scorched earth or just nuked all but one character and gave them a warning.

@Roz Agreed. If there is some particular reason that you think they accidentally made an alt (I can’t even think of a reason that might happen, but who knows…), wipe all but one character and tell them that they just got their one and only warning. Otherwise, it’s a flagrant violation of a clear-cut rule: ban, explain, and move on.

@Gashlycrumb I think that there’s a place for that, certainly, but I also don’t want to take away the ability of players to create something truly unique – so long as it fits well within the setting and themes of the game. If everyone on a Clone Wars game played Clone Troopers and no one played the Jedi or the Mandalorian trainers or the stuck-up-soon-to-be-Imperials, it would be a much less exciting game.

But I would love it if there was some way to teach people to use their unique ingredients to make something tasty, rather than inedible glop, as @labsunlimited put it.

@Gashlycrumb said in Numetal/Retromux:

It might be more clear to say don’t be a bore. It’s okay to be boring sometimes. Or even to play a character who is largely static and stock.

I feel like this is a very important point. I love to play “stock” characters like Stormtroopers, Clone Troopers, Children of the Light, Academy-fresh pilots, and other “boring” characters, and then not playing them as bores.

On the other hand, I’ve met players who can take an absolute special snowflake of a character, but the way that they play them is utterly boring and uninteresting.

@Warma-Sheen said in AI PBs:

At this point, I think there’s value in being able to use GenAI to enhance what you do for as long as you can do it. If you’re a technical writer, use AI to make you a better technical writer so that you can stay working longer than other technical writers who ignore it and do not increase in quality or production.

If you’re a good technical writer, GenAI isn’t going to help you become a better one, it’s only going to help you become a faster one. Of course, in doing so, it’s going to introduce errors into your work that you won’t notice if you’re going fast enough.

Same thing goes for those using GenAI to get the tone right in emails, or to fill in the background of an image, or prototype code, or summarize law briefs, or all of the other relatively reasonable uses of GenAI that I’ve heard of. It doesn’t make you better, it makes you faster.

And when GenAI makes a professional faster, it allows the company to reduce staffing, like you mentioned, but it also introduces errors that slipped through because the now-overstretched staff has to go fast with GenAI to keep up with demand.

So maybe we can’t put the GenAI genie back in the bottle, but we can, and I posit, we should still mock the crap out of companies that can afford it when they use it, and chastise them for taking shortcuts that hurt their workers and are unethical and environmentally unsustainable. At the same time, our higher education and businesses should be working to find out what GenAI is actually good at, and what it can be trained to do (relatively) ethical and environmentally-sustainable methods.