@Pavel I guess at least I can be happy that I’m self aware.

@Pavel Eh I’m all talk. I make sad eyes at fellow staffers to do the dirty work, and if they don’t I just scowl about the injustices of everything. This is my attempt to vent to the forum instead of a friend discord where I thrash my pals mercilessly.

@Faraday You earnestly think it’s okay for people to address others this way? To be snarky? To be dickish? To accuse someone of maliciously ignoring jobs? It’s okay for them to expect some kind of service, and when they don’t get it, deride someone’s hard work, something a game runner poured their heart into? Do you think these people can be coached into acting like a model MUSHer with a gentle warning? A second chance? A strike system? Do you think they won’t cause problems down the line?

I know you, personally, have a very long fuse. I’ve seen you tolerate a lot of bullshit. I’ve seen people be real assholes towards you and your work. It sucks. I probably lack an objective view of this, as all I have are battle scars from people that were given second, third, fourth chances.

Game runners! You don’t have to tolerate this crap. It’s 2025. It is exceptionally easy to be respectful of other people, not some insurmountable task. We’re a dwindling community. There aren’t a ton of games left where this attitude will fly anymore. These tough calls suck to make, but you either curate your playerbase, or you end up with a very specific type of game.

Do we ever learn anything? Ever?

@catzilla Possibly. I have vague memories of folk coming out of the woodwork.

@Faraday Do you recall ol’ OnceWas?

Minus one Michelin star for “unclear help file” work.

If a system is supposed to work a specific way, say it is supposed to work that way. If it isn’t, update a file or something, maybe?

This was basically enough to get OnceWas banned. This person was freshly new. This is the most hair trigger case I can think of. He was immediately shown the door, although he was sure to kinda’ buckle down on his stance. Mild, probably, but no one wanted to deal with it.

I’m unclear of what your threshold is, as I recall you were not very approving of this behavior.

We do actually have data on how people say that want to be directly told things but then no one actually wants to do that apparently.

I have no idea what to make of it.

@Meg That’s valid. I don’t think anyone is actually all that hair trigger. Someone mentioned that there’s a lot the playerbase doesn’t actually see, as staff gets clues from the first login of the potential player, the application, the response to the application, etc. They build up a profile.

I’m not sure anyone is like… immediately banning people for brusquely asking questions. I can think of one player that began with a VERY bad impression on a game I helped run and I wanted them to be shown the door immediately. My fellow staffers told me to chill. This person stuck around for a bit and were more or less fine. Not a huge problem, not a huge asset. Just there. I don’t really think I would’ve missed them if they were nudged off. <<;

I do kinda’ feel like… as a hobby, we need a masterclass on how to take a hint through text.

For me, I look for enthusiasm and actual action. I give someone time to reach out to me. All it takes is a few instances of someone reaching out for me to understand that this person does indeed want to hang.

If I reach out and get a response, but it’s very lukewarm and they don’t actually follow up, or offer very little assistance in the way of actually planning a scene, I take the hint. Saves us both the trouble. I’ll ask twice, generally, and see if there’s any connection there, but no more.

If NO ONE engages with me after I put in some moderate effort to be fun and friendly on channels and offer to run scenes or Do A Thing, then I tend to write off the crowd as not a good fit for me and move on.

People offer public games because sometimes you get some really cool randos that turn out to be awesome. The tradeoff is that you may have to be firm with some of the bad randos.

I’ve seen folk get kindly shown the door during the CG process, so that is indeed a thing that can work, if the process is long enough for them to display their overall… vibes in public, I guess.

Like that whole PVP thing… I think people are fresh off of many years of “well they’re just being a little rude, no need to slam them into oblivion-- oh no. Oh no, they’ve spun out. They’re unpleasant to staff for, and now my players wont ask on the LFRP channel for fear of dealing with this person, but I cannot ban them now, we’re kind of friends :/”

@helvetica Lmfao ahahaha

ETA: TO BE CLEAR to everyone Tez abuses me with love, don’t worry. She’s not a forum despot.

HAVE WE GONE TOO FAR WITH BANNING??

@Tez I need you to split this convo off into a topic called Is Banning Bad, Actually?

This is implying we lack all ability to exercise grace and understanding when it’s clear someone is having an off day. Do you think most people can’t recognize when someone is someone is just in a shitty situation and truly, deeply confused? And I say this as someone that initially asked their friends, baffled, why they were on Ada’s “side” when it looked like Ada went for the nuclear option.

Guys we’re talking about someone that was banned from a game for using chatGPT to RP his girlfriend in event scenes to also get extra equipment to share between accounts.

To Third Eye’s point, how often is this the “first offense”?

@MisterBoring Yeah. I think it’s… in everyone’s best interest that the staffer makes the decision to nip this shit in the bud early on.

The staffer might be a doofus (look at AoA) but at least there’s a clean break instead of what happened on Tk5 where our stupid ass council had to vote to agree on everything and that involved giving strikes to a problem player that, over the course of a few months, wore ALL of the staff down and eventually dissolved the game.

Man IDK guys is it really that hard to avoid bans? Are people just tripping into bans these days?

I know this is gonna’ be hard to believe for some folk, but you can actually have a game of relatively decent people that, even on their off days, won’t be particularly rude or pushy directly to the game runners. It might not be a BIG game, but from what I gather, it doesn’t look like most staffers want to staff big games anyway.

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?

This is a good measure. How FEW quiet sighs of relief would happen if you got banned from a game.