MU Peeves Thread
-
The truth of MU*s that we’re always going around about on what behavior is expected and what behavior is not okay and who is owed what and what sort of obligation anyone has (player or staff) is that this is all free and no one owes anyone anything. The only obligations are social ones, and you only have as much right to be offended by the perceived deficit as compared to what the other party has explicitly committed to providing.
If staff has a policy of handling all requests within a two-week timeframe and yours is not, then it’s fair to be upset. If there is no policy, then whether you like the way that things are being handled or not is your personal preference and not any reflection on whether staff is good or bad. You’re certainly free to decide this doesn’t match your preference, but it’s not really fair to decry it as a miscarriage of justice.
This is why it is so important for games to have explicit policies for staff and players to follow. The only thing you have to pin down a game on whether the people there are being fair or not is how they measure up to what they have committed to. If they have not committed to anything, you have no ground to stand on, and I would not personally play on a game that did not have any clear policies on subjects I feel strongly about.
-
@Trashcan said in MU Peeves Thread:
You’re certainly free to decide this doesn’t match your preference, but it’s not really fair to decry it as a miscarriage of justice.
A miscarriage of justice? Haha.
But really, the expectation that everybody gets a turn and the GM doesn’t skip yours because they kinda feel like it is not something that needs to be explicitly stated in a policy. It’s how gaming works. It is fair to decry it as rude fuckery, which is what we talk about here.
"This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!"
– A. Bertram Chandler -
@Gashlycrumb Different requests take different amounts of time and energy and skipping one for awhile because you aren’t feeling it is an extremely reasonable thing to do.
It is definitely possible to go to the other extreme and it is extremely draining of player enthusiasm to set and wait forever for a response. I have waited forever for responses. I am not going to go into the specifics, but I get it. I just don’t think it’s fair to assume X staffer hates me or that there’s some other player favoritism reason why this one request is a pain in the ass while others are not.
And if you really feel like you can’t trust the staff in a game, stop playing there.
-
My MU peeve is that I write a big post then remember it’s the peeve thread where you’re allowed to have unproductive, non-constructive complaints about the system that innately discourage all would-be game creators who may now believe that someone is always going to be watching them on the +where to decide whether or not they are stretched thin enough.
-
@Yam don’t let the assholes win, honey. Learn to thrive on spite
-
@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:
But really, the expectation that everybody gets a turn and the GM doesn’t skip yours because they kinda feel like it is not something that needs to be explicitly stated in a policy. It’s how gaming works. It is fair to decry it as rude fuckery, which is what we talk about here.
There’s a lot of stuff to consider on staff side too:
- Some players will rub staff in a bad way, but not go so far as to do something bannable. The staff in question isn’t trying to generate unnecessary confrontation, so they just sit on those jobs until they have nothing else to do to limit their interaction with the player, when they should honestly just sit down with the player and say something like, “We believe that our staffing style and your playing style are not compatible, and for the sanity of both ourselves and you, we need you to exit the game.” This can even extend between games (as a lot of staff are forever-staff and may know a given player from previous encounters).
- Some larger games generate hilariously large amounts of jobs in very short time, even with a good number of staff working on them and set policies regarding job response times. If your job is #293 out of 480, it’s gonna be a while before you see a response, even if they’re using buckets and queues and notifications and stuff. I have totally seen players get irate because they don’t enjoy the speed at which the 200 jobs in front of theirs get resolved.
- Staff might be having a bad month, week, day, or year. This can result in players feeling unnoticed by staff. Staff R People 2.
- Staff have their own availability schedules, and getting mad that no staffer showed up to ST and provide Staff NPCs for the scene you scheduled for 4 PM on Christmas Day is just a waste of everybody’s time.
-
@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:
Hell, there is such a taboo (and likely a justified one) against +where stalking that if a player is waiting for a five minute reply to a +request and happens to see the staffer online 15 out of 16 days and they appears to be spending 5+ hours each day actively RPing their alt with Abelard and Bridget or GMing scenes for Abelard and Bridget, the player still won’t say anything.
This sounds like something you’ve done yourself. Are you a +where stalker?
-
I’m vaguely reminded of some L&L that drew ire for taking a break for Christmas. I do kinda’ think it’s just… the nature of a free medium. People are ultimately, eventually, going to do whatever they want, even if it might result in bad things later. It’s like being mad at the rain for personally raining on your picnic. I see solutions here like “just fix it
just do the thing :)” and if it were that easy we probably wouldn’t be having this convo. Ask any staffer who was DEDICATED to prompt, “fast”, consistent responses how long they stuck around. How long the game existed.I try to tell this to folk all the time, you will be a far happier person if you do not put all your eggs in one basket. Do not put all your happiness in one game, because then you will internalize everything as a personal slight. It may mean that you pull back on your engagement, but I’m sure we’ve all seen a particular player that goes SUPER hard into something, creates a TON of activity, and eventually either peters out or crashes out.
-
@Yam said in MU Peeves Thread:
I’m vaguely reminded of some L&L that drew ire for taking a break for Christmas.
Oh, it’s not just that L&L game (iirc it was Concordia but I didn’t play there so this is just the haze of forum memory). It is shocking how this comes up, every single year, across the spectrum of games. People complained on the last place I staffed when a major plot arc concluded in late October/early November and staff said they weren’t starting new ones until after the holidays. IDK, my friends.
-
@Yam said in MU Peeves Thread:
Ask any staffer who was DEDICATED to prompt, “fast”, consistent responses how long they stuck around. How long the game existed.
I can count the number of staffers that were dedicated to that stuff that also stayed through the end of the game and did not contribute to the game’s ending on one finger. It probably didn’t hurt that the person in question was on full disability with a lower back injury and so didn’t actually have a day job.
-
@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Trashcan said in MU Peeves Thread:
You’re certainly free to decide this doesn’t match your preference, but it’s not really fair to decry it as a miscarriage of justice.
A miscarriage of justice? Haha.
But really, the expectation that everybody gets a turn and the GM doesn’t skip yours because they kinda feel like it is not something that needs to be explicitly stated in a policy. It’s how gaming works. It is fair to decry it as rude fuckery, which is what we talk about here.
disagree. if you are odious or rude to a staffer, or you no-sell when they try to include you, or you just are high maintenance and take up too much gm time? These are all perfectly valid and fair reasons to skip players, leave them out of things, or refuse to GM for them.
-
@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
Yes, they are volunteers, but if they were volunteering at the dog shelter, I would still expect them to at least show up, keep the lights on and at least put some food down, even if they can’t manage to take them all on a walk.
The different is, the dogs can’t leave at a dog shelter. That’s an accepted responsibility that you agree to when you agree to volunteer at a dog shelter.
The players can leave my game if they’re unhappy or if they don’t feel they’re receiving the attention they deserve. I think everyone should go and play on games that give them joy and relief from the absolute horrors of everyday life.
But you can’t convince me that running plots on a game is the same responsibility as caring for living, breathing beings in a real caretaking sense.
