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An Arx Peeve Thread
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RE: Last Ban
In my experience, Eddard/Michael/Phelan is a manipulative player. We’ve been on multiple games over time.
He can come across friendly and outgoing and generally knows who to push and not. He hides his RP and other RP partners through a variety of shady practices. At the same time telling people alternative stories OOC. He’s even careful how he emits in public, so he can deny what he’s doing and control the situation.
Where it gets more serious, is how he tries to shift the IC relationship to the OOC realm. Relationships are not the problem, but his actions are. He leverages RP to form a relationship under false pretenses and bombards with contact to build a rapport. He then asks for deeply sensitive stuff. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he starts to change and:
- Causes repeated distress
- Makes leading promises
- Uses intimate knowledge to shift blame
- Retreats and returns
- Pushes and breaks boundaries
When confronted about his behavior, he lies to cover it up and makes more promises. When he’s caught; he denies, guilts, deflects, and makes excuses. This pattern of behavior is harmful and can make it harder to report.
The player does this repeatedly, he’s unsafe.
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@anonymouse jesus that’s all fucking GROSS
I can absolutely see how his attempted OOC overtures with me a few years back would have lead down that road; it must have been me shutting him down so firmly that had him scampering off with his tail between his legs.
Basically my character mentioned something in a scene referencing a prior interaction from a good time prior. The player tried to intimate that I was remembering this detail because I must have been rereading prior logs. I’m not an idiot, so grasped the pretty obvious connotation that he was saying I was rereading his TS logs to get off on. I told him that OOCly sexual comments were absolutely not okay to make to me. He backed off and emphasized his good boundaries!! A few days later, he asked if he could send me a light-hearted “build a sub” meme. I said sure because I didn’t realize what type of sub he meant and I literally didn’t stop to realize this was gonna be about subs in the sexual sense of things. He sent me this meme (sexual joke, but no NSFW imagery or anything, for clarity for anyone who clicks) which, tbh, if one of my actual good friends sent it to me about my character or a TS scene or something, would have been funny. From a guy I barely knew that I had just told days before not to make OOCly sexual comments? Nope. I shut it down, he tried to apologize a bit later, and I said I didn’t want any contact with him.
Anyways here’s the full convo: https://pastebin.com/CwSr99Pj (This was with Michael; I censored the name at the time because I just wanted to show it to a friend to roll my eyes at the behavior, and at the time I didn’t feel like I needed anyone rallying to my defense in regards to an individual.)
I’m gonna say this as a general offer to everyone: if someone is getting iffy like this, starting to fish for OOC intimacy like this, and you want someone to be a sounding board or help you shut shit down? If you want someone to look at something and be like “no, you are RIGHT to find that weird, it is VALID to be uncomfortable, this person is trying to pull shit,” I will be that person. If they’re trying to hold some kinky TS over you or make you feel weird about boundaries because you RPed some weird sex shit? I absolutely don’t care. I TS! I RP weird sex shit! It’s okay to do this. If you feel weird or shamed because you feel like you were dumb for already getting involved or lowering your boundaries some? You’re not dumb!! You’re not dumb for connecting a little with another human being just because they abused the fact.
I am a pro at stating boundaries clearly and effectively, and if anyone EVER needs help doing this, I will help. Creepers deserve to be kicked to the curb. Fuck that shit, life is too short.
she/her | playlist
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they | them
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@moth Appreciated, but I can at least say that I wasn’t torn up about it when it happened. It felt like a really sad attempt to be smooth/clever, like he thought I wouldn’t notice what he was doing. I feel much worse for whoever he got his hooks into by acting like a friend, preying on their vulnerabilities, or taking advantage of their boundaries.
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Have it on good authority that dude is August@TheNetwork [Ares Handle: JetSetBest] if anyone wants to avoid him over there. Dunno why he untagged, but you know.
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@Roz lol that convo is a lot. Trying not to cringe as I read
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Also, learn from my mistakes: even if an interaction just makes you roll your eyes at some person being an absolutely limp noodle thinking they can creep on you, report it anyways! I should have tossed this to staff as a heads up, even if it didn’t get under my skin. Like, in summarizing it today, I am kind of “wtf” at myself.
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I’m at a loss for words.
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I couldn’t help but notice this thread on the ban list https://play.arxgame.org/comms/boards/19511/view/1504369
A player trying to throw everything/everyone under the bus because things didn’t go well for them? A former staffer(s) abusing their power?
What happened here?
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@catzilla lol.
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My assumption is bad player, but I’m genuinely curious. Who is it to be on the lookout for in future games?
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@catzilla There was no abuse of power. Many warnings were given and IC actions have IC consequences, especially when dealing with an evil NPC, or in this case, several. Someone fucked around and found out, and rather than have a conversation OOC or otherwise about it (the condition was temporary), they stomped off. That message was the first time we had heard anything from them since.
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Yeah, at a meeting where it was kinda clear someone had already been killed for crossing a certain NPC faction too many times, she kept mouthing off (and iirc vaguely threatening?) several of said NPCs to their faces, ignoring every flashing red warning sign and road closed notice on her merry ride off the proverbial predictable consequences cliff.
Genuinely the hardest thing about playing evil NPCs is balancing responses to this stuff, because on the one hand players want to have their characters be cool and fearless and often snarky toward NPCs, which is just fine to a point because they’re the main characters, but on the other hand the NPCs are characters with their own thoughts and agendas, and while Team Good NPCs will (usually) put up with it to a certain long-suffering degree, there are a lot less excuses you can make for a Team Evil NPC not squashing an underling for continuously jabbing at them. If you want to have Team Evil NPCs around (and players really do want to be able to interact with them), then there’s a balance that has to be found between toothless doormat and doing the daily Darth Vader.
Usually that’s some sort of non-fatal, typically temporary (or undoable) thing that the PC can RP about it. It wasn’t at all meant to be an OOC punishment, but clearly she took it that way.
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@kalakh Heh. I absolutely get why people want to flirt with the obvious baddies. Ari was pretty much set up to do so, as some baddies were SHOWERING him with gifts and affection.
But, since Ari wasn’t a complete crazy person, I had him unnerved by it all, and turning to heavy drinking instead of just endangering everything and everyone he cared about to go play with the shiny NPCs.
Gotta temper the Cool Stuff factor with giving your PC at least a shred of common sense.
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@kalakh My favorite part was when she broke out in Quebec French with insults. IC.
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I actually like NPCs that react with consequential actions because it makes the world that is being built feel more alive. If you have NPCs that are constant doormats, then, to me, the world feels very dull because NPCs are as important as the clouds in the sky or blades of grass in the background, just a dull color in the background. Now, on the flip side, if the NPCs are too strong, then it could become too challenge and players will feel a lack of fun, progression, or just suffocated on what they can do. That’s where the skill of the GMs come into play, which it sounds like plenty of IC warnings were given and that is all you can do. The players have to pick up on those signs or suffer the consequences. If they don’t like the consequences after ignoring the warnings, then the game is not for them. Not all games are for everyone and that is fine.
It comes down to what a particular player wants out of a game. Some want to feel like they are Gods of the game where they are in control of everything and steer the story their way. I personally want to just be part of the story, sometimes being a spectator watching what is being woven together by others move forward, sometimes throwing my hat into a plot to have an effect on not just the story but also my character, maybe sometimes throw in a wrench for a taste of the bad consequences. Bad consequences are not a bad thing (of course unless it’s death), because it can also lead to a chance of further character development or character’s internal shift. Which is interesting in of itself (Jamie with his hand lopped off) because it can spice up the story and character.
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I’ll also say, Arx staff always discusses these actions before NPCs do them. I can think of a couple of times someone caught IC consequences they didn’t like and quit the game because their chars were ‘unplayable’ because STAFFERS WANT TO THROW THEIR WEIGHT AROUND.
Both times, there was a plan in place to make sure the effect was temporary, and/or the pc had a chance to make a cool comeback. But the players flounced before it was possible to show that.
fr fr
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@hellfrog Right. It’s never ‘welp lets just do THIS to the PC’.
It’s ‘Alright, so this has happened before, we’ve warned them, they aren’t getting the message. Lets do XYZ, I think it would be a great challenge for them but also drive home what they’re doing is unacceptable. I think if they do these other things and work around the XYZ, they’ll get through it and solve the problem with some acts of contrition and RP. I don’t know, what do you guys think?’
Cue general approval, some suggestions to tailor the consequences, and some ideas about the acts of contrition.
‘Okay I think that’ll work! Here we go!’
We never make these decisions in a bubble, as long as I’ve been staff we’ve pretty consistently brought these things up with each other and hashed out the details, it’s never just one person going ‘I’m gonna do a thing’, it’s nearly always ‘I’m gonna do a thing, what do you guys think about it?’ Even in the heat of Herja’s insane amazing 50+ people battle scenes, we’re sitting in Voice going ‘okay this person rolled, I wanna do something, what do you guys think?’
Unless staff says, ‘Hey, PCPlayer, this is probably going to result in character death’, there’s been a way through whatever obstacle that’s set before a character. It might be hard, life-changing for the character, but those lead to the best growth and IMO the best stories.
Okay, crustacean off the soapbox.
I draw things! http://www.mahaldoodles.com
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@crawfish said in An Arx Peeve Thread:
Unless staff says, ‘Hey, PCPlayer, this is probably going to result in character death’,
I think for some players, there are huge lists of things that can happen to their characters that mentally equate to PC death simply because they violate how the player views the character on such a complete level that they can’t see continuing the story in any case.
Staff may have carefully plotted out how the return arc should go, but the player doesn’t jibe with that vision and cuts the story there. It’s unfortunate when it happens, but writing off the player because they don’t want to continue the story can sometimes be a bit much.
That said, it’s completely a case by case basis, because some players operate on an incorrect understanding of the game, and lash out at anyone that tries to constructively guide them back to a better understanding in the future. Some people are just doorknobs.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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So of course over the past 8 years or whatever I’ve had scenes not work out, offended people I definitely didn’t mean to, had jokes land badly, or GMing annoy people. That’s almost inevitable. Even trying to be as careful as possible, as well intentioned as possible, in trying to just create an RP scene where everyone has a good time, it can be really, really hard to predict what is going to land very firmly in a player’s ‘Absolutely Not’ zone.
Some players are ones I would never, ever GM a conflict scene with, or a tense scene where they are subordinate to someone. I would exclude them from any scene where that would happen. That’s not because I think they are a terrible player or anything, but it would obviously just really piss them off oocly and they would absolutely destroy the mood of the scene for everyone else. Some players think they are okay with it and just aren’t, and some players really enjoy it if it’s with other people they have trust and rapport with, and some really enjoy dynamics other people despise.
The worst, hardest to deal with examples are vanishingly rare. The person that actively seeks out conflict relentlessly and freaks out about any degree of pushback- I can legitimately only think of 1 out of the several thousand players Arx had, and it wasn’t this latest banning. And the ‘I want to run scenes just to bully people’ is also that level of rare. Sure I’ve heard of it from MU forums. But I just have not seen it on Arx, even from the people I’ve banned and definitely not from staff. The trouble is with like, 20+ years of most players having baggage, there’s way, way too many people that see the absolute worst of intentions where it just plain doesn’t exist. And that makes them incredibly hard to deal with.
At any rate, the options usually are just be incredibly insular and keep RP and storytelling to a small circle of people that someone trusts, or take a risk by being more inclusive without knowing how people will react. Imma keep grabbing the hot stove and doing the latter, which probably says some unflattering things about how smart I am but I just prefer it, and would rather err on the side of being inclusive even if it means the odd blowup now and then.
