Sanderson Elimination: Questions & Answers and Game Meta Discussion

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Fura is right that there is (or briefly was) some hostility in the current LG about this topic, and I agree that playstyles have been a significant point of contention in our community historically.

I would say that if you find yourself mentioning a playstyle negatively in a post in-game, you should consider first whether you find that behavior to be annoying versus harmful. In the former case, just don’t mention it.

We should also be flexible with people trying out new things. If I try becoming a PM spider like Burnt, I don’t want to immediately get lynched for it. Just because someone is trying out something new doesn’t mean we should lynch them.

[Gears]

For context, I told Illwei in thread that I disliked their playstyle. I phrased this poorly, and Fura is correct in saying that I tried to tell Illwei how to play. To Illwei, I would like to apologise for this. I did not intend my words to be discouraging to you as a player, and you are under no obligation to change your playstyle based on my opinion. 

[Alvron]

While I'm no longer a SE Mod, I love SE and the community we have here so I'll just say:

Firstly, thank you Fura for bringing this up.  Bringing attention to an issue you see is always welcome and a good idea.

Secondly, If anyone sees it happening in a game, please call them out on it.  Use blue to make it stand out if you want.  It's a colour used for OOG talk so it's perfect for this.  It is only together that we can make SE a welcoming place for all.  While it is true that some ignore it, others might not see it or if they do, might not think much of it.  The only way to stop a potential bully or someone crossing a line, is to speak up.
If you would rather not do it publicly, talk to the GM or IM.  They are there for such things.  They can set up a PM for the parties involved to talk things out.  Sometimes it's a simple misunderstanding, other times someone might not realize just how their post sounds.  Talking helps.  If you still feel like nothing is being done, you can contact other IMs that aren't playing or go to Rubix or firstRainbowRose if you feel you need to as they have the ultimate say.

 

[Kasimir he/him]

Three points, and I'll hold my peace, as I've been long enough the person who keeps ranting about how 'y'all need a community conversation' everytime something keeps coming up.

1. Ethos: You all need - as a community - to have a conversation about the kind of norms you want, the kind of behaviours you expect from everyone. I cannot emphasise this enough. If there is any takeaway from my points at all, please, please, please let it be this. I cannot decide how the community works. No one voice can. No two, three voices of old players remembering times past or new players talking about how things are Elsewhere can. This conversation must, of necessity, include most, if not all of the community. You can enforce norms by fiat but the only way to sustainably shape your community culture is by having actual stakeholder buy-in. The process of discourse is the process of negotiation and discovering what the norms are, or: what do we want, how are we going to get what we want, what should everybody do to get what we want. This is the point I feel strongest about.
    
2. Mythos: The storylines came under fire for being exclusive but I wonder if there's a more localised way to do it, as it gave people something to latch on to as well, or to get involved/invested in. Perhaps less of the original elaborate mythos that included El's serpents, but it seems to me something was lost with the mythos as well. People shouldn't feel intimidated to get on board but being part of building that huge mythos could be a good thing. Here, I'm biased, as I'm a RPer at heart.
    
3. Commitment: Everyone needs to commit. Everyone. It takes two hands to clap. And a whole huge pile of bricks to build a home. Every single member is part of building the community space. Communities are mutable and shift over time. Demand the same of everyone. And look to the structures of your community first and foremost when asking yourself how to build a better gamespace.

-Kas out.

Edit: Someone asked, so - I say you because I don't really feel a part of the SE community and haven't in a very long time. I don't say this as something to be pitied or begging for acceptance; I say it as a matter of fact about how I feel. It just so happens that my time has come and gone, and most of the people anchoring me to this community have left. I wander in and wander out like tumbleweed but my exasperation is that of an observer - one day, my last anchor will leave, and I'll stop playing. It will be a loss to neither of us.

Edited January 11, 2021 by Kasimir

[Mist she/her]

1. I'm not sure how to start a conversation like this. We probably want to have it in this topic. I guess just start it.

2. I'm barely aware of it, but would love to learn more. 

3. Yes.

Some issues exist and should be discussed. As seen in the AG, group action can prove a point. 

Playstyle pressure: I know I've felt pressured to do analysis. Is that just me, is that meta, is that the way the game often works? What if you go more by gut reads? If your playstyle is chaotic, are you more likely to get exed? What happens when you try to change your playstyle? Do you get sus-ed? 

I know I have been at fault for some of these, and I need to do better. I have also felt less serious at times, but that can't really go in thread because I'm usually serious and that's sus.

What is not okay to do to win? How do we prioritize fun over pressure? What do we do about backstabbing? How can we practice thinking from others' perspectives? 

If we're imposing on other people, breaking the game, or harming them/not letting them have fun, I think that's a problem. (It's a little tricky sometimes because competition, voting literally is pressure, etc.) I think the last is largely a matter of just starting and trying to continue. 

[Alvron]

21 hours ago, Mist said:

Playstyle pressure: I know I've felt pressured to do analysis. Is that just me, is that meta, is that the way the game often works? What if you go more by gut reads? If your playstyle is chaotic, are you more likely to get exed? What happens when you try to change your playstyle? Do you get sus-ed? 

I know I have been at fault for some of these, and I need to do better. I have also felt less serious at times, but that can't really go in thread because I'm usually serious and that's sus.

What is not okay to do to win? How do we prioritize fun over pressure? What do we do about backstabbing? How can we practice thinking from others' perspectives? 

Whether or not you are an analysis player shouldn't matter.  If you don't want to do analysis, then don't.  Post your gut reads if you want and the others will just have to be happy with that.  If you're chaotic, yes you are more likely to get exe'd but that is part of the price you have to accept.  Same goes if you want to change your playstyle.  People are creatures of habit, you do something different, it will stick in their minds and make you stand out.  That will naturally cause them to focus on you more resulting in you being killed or voted on more often.  But that doesn't mean you should stop doing it.  If you are having fun, then keep it up.

If you want to be less serious, that's great.  Do it.  These games could do with more fun/quirky players.  

It is not okay to hurt others to win.  There is a reason we have a rule about using someones real life as a reason for trust.  If you know someone outside in the real world and you use information from that to betray them, that is very much not okay!  If playing this game destroys a friendship then perhaps you shouldn't be playing.  Having said that, in game knowledge is fair game.  These games are about killing and betraying each other.  There will be hurt feelings and a sense of betrayal but remember, it is just a game.  The people on the other side of that screen don't mean to truly hurt you even if at times it does feel that way.
Prioritizing fun over pressure is very difficult.  What is fun for you might not be fun for others.  Best chance is for everyone to play the games their way but listen to others.  If you want to RP this game, great but perhaps RP your suspicions as well.  If you want to focus on analysis, go for it but remember that not everyone plays the same as you and forcing them to give their suspicions is not something you should do.  Asking if someone is willing to share is good but if they choose not to, respect their decision.  If you don't bend over backwards to accommodate the RPs or the quirky players then they shouldn't have to bend over backwards for you.  You can always ask for more but accept what you are given.
Backstabbing is part of the game.  You trust someone and they betray that trust.  Don't take it personally for it was not personal.  At some stage you will be the one in position to betray them.  Will you do it?
Thinking from another's perspective is very difficult.  The best I can come up with is to think about that post you just made and how you would feel if someone said that to you.

Take what I said with a grain of salt though.  I've spent years building up my playstyle to the point that I can get away with almost anything.  For example I spent the entire game of QF27 spouting quotes from Shadow of Mordor as Zunn the Mad.  Even the end post closing up the game was in Zunn's style.  At no stage did I try and solve the game.  Sure near the end I was very suspicions of Orlok but I didn't break character to say so because I didn't want to.  I was having too much fun as Zunn.  No one expects analysis or gut reads from me because I spent a lot of time/games setting up my playstyle that way.
It can and will take each player years to truly find their own style.  You will be killed for trying different things.  You will be voted on for being wrong in your gut/analysis posts. This is part of the game.  Stick with it, push through and you will emerge with a playstyle unique to you.  Trust me, it'll be worth it.

[Kasimir he/him]

On 1/18/2021 at 7:32 AM, Mist said:

Playstyle pressure: I know I've felt pressured to do analysis. Is that just me, is that meta, is that the way the game often works? What if you go more by gut reads? If your playstyle is chaotic, are you more likely to get exed? What happens when you try to change your playstyle? Do you get sus-ed? 

I know I have been at fault for some of these, and I need to do better. I have also felt less serious at times, but that can't really go in thread because I'm usually serious and that's sus.

One response to this is @Alvron's, which I'd say is worth reading because he used to get some flak for being a quiet watcher. Another comment I'd credit to @Araris Valerian is that a number of us have moved away from our previous playstyles before. We usually comment in sign-ups or pre-game, to give people an idea of our activity level or how we intend to play. It's an imperfect system - players do still get suspicion for it, as far as I can see, but historically-speaking, we've fought hard for players to have the right to play the game with their own playstyle, or at least to be able to shift their playstyle to something they prefer without getting immediately killed for it. And players should get the benefit of the doubt - I'd hate to get ganked myself just because people wonder why I suddenly do more PMing and stop screaming at people who send PMs to me, or just because I've stopped being as aggressive and obsessively-focused as I used to be. Everyone wants to change or try something new at some point and people should get to do that. (To a point: there's a very interesting comment from @little wilson in a LG12 debate here which discusses what happens when one particular chaotic player had a history of turning on his own faction. There's a third incident that's not mentioned in that comment, I believe. Note that blue text used to be used for OOC rather than RL stuff so the mountains of blue there are just sticklers not RPing. I don't fully agree with past!Wilson, but I do want to highlight that this issue keeps cropping up again and again, about permissiveness for playstyles.)

It also gives an opportunity to discuss and deconflict certain aspects of what you're doing that you think might be controversial before a game. Deconflicting is always good.

I personally feel the analysis pressure often, and to some extent, you kind of have to do some: it's a social deduction game at heart. But @Burnt Spaghetti has infamously played by rolling dice or using a player as her spotter before. It's just how she rolls. I've RNGesused for players I vote on as well on occasion. I used to, in my early days, be very negative on gut. And I really think I was way too harsh - gut isn't necessarily inferior. Some players have very good gut reads. (IIRC Joe was one of them.) But the issue in the game is you have to remember you're playing with a community, which always brings a pro-social dimension - in other words, if there's selection pressure against gut reads, it's because other players generally want you to help them read you. And gut reads makes that job harder. Ultimately as Alv said, I think that's partly a matter of balance. Don't feel obligated to play a certain way just because players are on you for it. Play it your way. But also remember you are playing in a community, and be mindful of that in your interactions. 

As a player who doesn't often play, I don't know how bad it is for players who can't go in thread with not being serious. I haven't experienced problems on that front, but...I don't play often, and it's an established part of my playstyle that I have a troll/banter/mischievous side. Then again, most of the players in recent games haven't played with me, so I don't know either if this tolerance for sudden unseriousness is baked into our meta, or if they're just giving me the benefit of the doubt because they've never played with me before. 

Backstabbing talk...needs more room that this post can give. I'll come to it some other time, but I wanted to address the immediate playstyle talk first.

Edited January 21, 2021 by Kasimir

[Kasimir he/him]

On 1/18/2021 at 7:32 AM, Mist said:

What is not okay to do to win? How do we prioritize fun over pressure? What do we do about backstabbing? How can we practice thinking from others' perspectives? 

If we're imposing on other people, breaking the game, or harming them/not letting them have fun, I think that's a problem. (It's a little tricky sometimes because competition, voting literally is pressure, etc.) I think the last is largely a matter of just starting and trying to continue. 

So I promised that I'd offer at least some of my thoughts, from my perspective, on this discussion. It's been over a week and I don't feel so bad about double-posting now. I think you've raised a number of questions/issues that are important to think about. 

• What is not okay to do to win?

Spoiler

Obviously, I don't think I'm the person to be able to draw a red line for the community. And there's the question of what we mean by okay: morally not okay? Pragmatically not okay? It might not be morally wrong to exploit the rules to the point of failure but it might pragmatically mess the game up or drastically unbalance it.

I guess I'd say one of my clearest red lines is using people. The thing with SE is after becoming friends and playing together for a while, you know their psychology. You know their levers, and what would get them to do things, or to look away. Applying a known, public playstyle tendency of a player is one thing. As an Evil player, I've used Meta's known tendency to read as Village players who don't want PM knowledge against him. But applying knowledge of their psychological weaknesses against them is another, and to me, that's below the belt because friends shouldn't be the means to an end. Like, if you're telling the person that killing you would end your friendship with them, that's pretty much someplace I don't feel comfortable going, as much as I did get initially mad at Wilson for shanking me early in LG15b. In general, I guess I would say - people and community before winning. On the one hand, I do think it's pretty petty to end a friendship over a game. It's just a game. (See: LG15b - I don't think it would've been right of me to have gone 'friendship over' just over that early kill.) On the other hand, absolutely, on the side of the player - trampling over your friends or disregarding other players and just regarding people as tools to achieve victory isn't kosher either, in my eyes. (So, for instance, there's been some games where players essentially throw everyone else under the train to go for a personal victory.) Doesn't seem worth the cost to me. You can always win another game. You can't so easily undo damage to your trust and friendship, or in the cases of wrecking ball playstyles, damage to the community goodwill.

Maybe here's another case: when Len basically went after me and personally attacked me in LG29 for calling him on getting an execution accidentally correct. As an Evil player, it was a good move - it shut me down when I was on his case consistently for the lack of logic (he was an Evil player with extra knowledge.) Is essentially locking a player out of the game or beating on them to the point they quit playing a good way to win? I don't think so. It might be a good psychological lever to push, but I'm not a victory-at-all-costs guy and that's back to my red line on using people. I can break your arguments or your credibility without having to get up into your face about it.

I wouldn't make things painful for the GM either. If there was a path to victory that involved stalemating for a few cycles in a 'who blinks first' case, I don't really think it's worth taking it. It just inflicts pain on the GM, and kinda turns the whole game into 'who got screwed over by RL/internet connection', which is kind of pointless.

I do think it's inevitable there will be conflict. Because we're all only human after all. But if a player clearly is in a bad headspace, at least drop them a PM to check if they're okay instead of pushing through them for the win. Or ask the IM to check in on them, if you're on opposite sides and worried about this kind of approach. 

• How do we prioritise fun over pressure?

Spoiler

It's interesting to me that fun and pressure are juxtaposed in this question, because some players clearly find the pressure fun. I'm not saying that fun and pressure can't be at odds, but I'm saying the framing of this question pre-supposes that the pressure isn't fun, and I'm not sure this is something universally agreed on. At some level, too, the game needs us to do our jobs. I don't think this excuses bad behaviour in a game, but I do think the fact this is forum mafia means that certain basic levels of behaviour are required: this means that Villager me does need to place pressure on players to vote, or argue with them rather than chilling, and Evil me needs to get Villagers killed, simpliciter.

Anyway, let's go with the framing. After all, all of us have spent some point or other trying to pry another player off us with a hammer and a powerful laxative. So, I think the answer to this is really on the individual and community level in several ways. My friendships with other SE players helped, because I'd go into games with people I enjoyed talking to/bantering with and figuring out. I'd also know what they could take from me, and what they couldn't. One of the things I love most in SE games is when the players would just go on tangents/digressions for no other reason than the fact they were having fun. These tangents served as a kind of release valve for the pressure. Some things that come to mind: my first game, LG5, where Wyrm and Awes basically ended up turning the thread into a custody battle over the Thief, both asking the Thief to side with them. This, mind, was right after my entire Evil team got rumbled and we were on the back foot! LG12, where pre-game banter was all about who to pair Wilson up with as Lovers, everyone getting creative, and Wilson threatening to murder us all  Or when Wyrm and I swapped identities and started trolling everyone who voted for us/had a PM with us. Even AG7 comes to mind, when the Night thread derailed into a discussion of whether Illwei's graph was a kangaroo or dinosaur and therefore if Burnt was dinobutt or kangabutt. Or Hael's multiple parodies, and the games in the docs (hangman and anagrams.)

So that's two things: the ability to befriend/see other players as your friends, rather than just competition. And the ability to just know when to cut loose and chill, and when the thread needs to not be derailed. Also, I would add a third: the ability to take a step back from the game rather than being hyper-focused on it. It's easy for tunnel vision to set in midgame and for people to not be able to recognise when a player was struggling or unhappy, which led sometimes to callousness. In the heyday of the threat rankings (for those unfamiliar, threat rankings started as a joke but soon became deadly serious), players on higher tiers - probably Holy Batman/Kill-on-Sight/Lord Ruler all got cut less slack. Players with a known talent for manipulation got hit the hardest, where players would tunnel on Wilson and Wyrm or ignore that they weren't having a good time because they were too hyper-focused on the game, and thinking that even talking to either of them would somehow automagically get you manipulated. Or deem any talk of RL difficulties and the need for a break to be emotional manipulation. Those aren't good, in my view, and that's a separate discussion - I'll just say that when we can't distance from the game and treat the need for blue text as manipulation, we're down a very dark road indeed.

On a community level, we need to be welcoming of new players (a fight we long had, when new players who weren't familiar with the meta tended to get voted on and executed early), and to encourage/accept a range of playstyles. Specifically, we need to keep the ability as a community to be okay with non-optimal (I don't want to say 'sub-optimal' as it's a bit too presumptuous) playstyles. As I said, I guess people have different reads on the Jain issue, but when we did, through disapproval and praise, get Jain to change his playstyle to something more standard, I felt we lost something. Is it okay to exert this sort of carrot-and-stick social pressure? What happens when a playstyle being disfavoured isn't the sole reason for an execution/vote but it contributes? Is that okay then? I don't know. So for instance, a quiet or random player places a suspicious vote. They would not have seemed so suspicious if they had more reasoning, more interaction, or whatever. In other words, they likely would not have been executed if they had a different playstyle even though their voting behaviour was the causal reason for the execution. Is that okay or are we penalising for playstyle? I don't know. But can you imagine a SE game if everyone played that way, e.g. quiet? Could such a game even get off the ground?

I think one conflation we make a lot is that whatever a player does is a playstyle and deserves prima facie respect for being a playstyle. I don't really want to go down that route, because then players start feeling attacked when people complain, like with Hellscythe's über-aggression.

One thing I'll say is that Meta was capable of juggling both. Same for Gamma. In MR4, Meta was stacking a lot of pressure on me, but he also made sure to check in and see if I was doing okay after some of my responses came back terse and snappish. In retrospect, though I didn't appreciate it then, he also really reached out to my generation of then-new players to get us to keep coming back. A number of the spec docs has him encouraging me and Wyrm to sign up/play more. I think that was a good move.

 

• What do we do about backstabbing?

Spoiler

 

I don't know if we need to do something. Backstabbing and betrayal is part of the game. That is to say, the nature of a social deduction / hidden minority game seems to require it. I prefer it when we don't go there, and I'm not one to do it at another player's expense, but that doesn't change that part of the basic forum mafia format is treachery, deception, and betrayal. This gets ramped up to eleven in faction games as factions or people with different wincons strive to fulfill their wincons at the expense of other players. In fact, I'll just say that many faction games are designed to work with politicking in mind, and the one disastrous faction game I ran (MR7, a MR1 rerun) broke because people weren't interested in any betrayal or backstabbing at all. (Not to mention Free-For-All games.)

In a conversion game, backstabbing is also inevitable when you get converted and your wincon changes. Basically, maybe I'm missing something, or you have something else in mind, but it's not clear to me backstabbing should in fact be perceived as wrong. And the prevalence of backstabbing in mafia and even SE is why I felt it was rare that we achieved the agreement we did in AG7. But I would have understood, despite being disappointed, if it had gone back down the backstabbing chaos ladder.

 

• How can we practice thinking from others' perspectives?

Spoiler

 

Okay, this one I'm very much not good at. Philosophy will probably say something about the principle of charity and imaginative empathy, but I also feel that if you (general you) have an empathy gap, then telling you to practice imaginative empathy is not gonna work. 

I think for me, the most important thing is to cool down, distance yourself, and come back. Wilson isn't the only one here with a hot temper. I burn very hot and fast, and cool down just as fast, though I try not to snap in a game because I know it's not fair to the other players. I regret losing my temper at Bard in MR38b, though to be fair, Bard was tunnelling on me and the novelty was wearing thin very fast. With distance, it's easier to hear/understand what other players are saying.

 

• If we're imposing on other people, breaking the game, or harming them/not letting them have fun, I think that's a problem.

Spoiler

 

I think this ties in to my question about whether pressure is at odds or not. Due to the fact this is a social deduction game, players have a number of levers they can push on to get other players to cooperate, whether in terms of voting on a player until they offer their thoughts, or even the community level - again, see Jain. I repeat that I don't think just about anything goes in a game, but I also think the nature of a forum mafia game does entail that a Villager or Evil player will be placed in situations where they have to apply pressure on another player. What's the line between saying, "Use your roleblock ability on X or I will get you killed and voted on tomorrow?" and asking the player to use their roleblock ability when everyone knows refusal/hesitation  will be regarded as a sign of being Evil in the next day's voting? I think we are correct to condemn mayoring and compulsion. At the same time, I also think that - and I guess that's what you're alluding to - these games tend to generate significant pressure, and I'd argue players need the ability to apply pressure/levers, both Evil or Village, in order for the two-team aspect to successfully work.

Perhaps you're referring to compulsion. If that's so, then I'd agree with that - with the caveat that the lines between acceptable pressure and compulsion are not always that clear-cut (see: the roleblock case.) What I'm saying is that we all agree mayoring and blackmail is wrong. But is it really much ethically better if the Village collectively makes a request of a player, and everyone knows refusal will be taken in a negative way, possibly leading to getting voted on and killed the next day? I don't know. I don't think there's an absolute answer and that fact makes sense to me.

Gamebreaking - I see this more as a GM issue than a player issue. We try to iron out as many potential breaks as possible but we can't catch everything. Meanwhile, players are supposed to use the rules to their own advantage as much as possible. See: Alvron and the regenerating Shardplate in LG5, or me and the free Forger charges in AG7. Some breaks are fine, because of circumstance. Others, like double Valour protections, are more problematic. And when a game is obviously broken in a problematic way, I would say that while it's nice if a player desists from exploiting it, I don't hold it against them for doing so either. As a GM, with the best knowledge of the game-state, I see it as my job, in consultation with the IM, to ensure balance, and I don't always think players are in the best position to do so - sometimes, they just make it worse. Consulting the GM is a must. (See: the rebalancing Wilson and El planned to offer, and Odium's unchaining in AG7, or the removal of room target locks in QF6, or my forcibly rebalancing the game to serve as a straight-up Elim game in MR7, though I'm not proud of that one.) 

What are we defining as harming players here? Do we consider pressure or compulsion to be a harm? Or Maili's giving Wyrm the ultimatum - heal the Village protect (killing himself in the process), or getting voted on and killed the next day - to be harm? Blackmail? Harassment of players inside and outside of the game? (I should note the last is already against code of conduct.) I'm a bit harder on this one as I believe words have meanings and keeping a clear grasp of what they mean is necessary if we want to avoid meaning creep. 

Yes and no for not letting players have fun. If your fun comes at the severe expense of other players, that's an issue. I agree with Wilson - playstyles that are 'annoying' don't count here. So, I know there are tonnes of edge cases, but I'm just going to go back to Hellscythe. Being an aggressive player might be his playstyle, but he had a way of doing it that actively antagonised a whole bunch of players. (And again - if Hellscythe just had antagonised me, rather than a lot of players, does this count? When does annoying shift to being actively antagonistic?) I think this is a clear-cut case of when your fun starts to become distinctly unfun for other players. 

It comes back I think to the thought on being prosocial. That as much as you're making your own fun, you need to ask yourself if you're seriously undermining it for everyone else, or a lot of other people. If your only consideration is how you want to play this game without a thought for how it might impact others, then that's not ideal.

I deleted this section a few times as it sounds very egotistical. But the historian in me says context is important - ideas and perspectives don't emerge, as it were, fully-formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. Our thoughts and ideas are often conditioned by our experiences, and who we are. So here we go I guess. You can skip this otherwise, it's a short 'about me/these are the SE things that stood out to me' thing.

Spoiler

So this is who I am. I'm Kasimir - most players obviously call me Kas, and I've been playing since LG5 in 2014, though intermittently. I've stopped playing at points due to RL pressures, and disliking having to go in a game and deal with some über-competitive players who made games unpleasant. And then there was the inactivity blight in SE, which was also not very fun to play in and a pain to GM. My formative experiences run from LG5 to around LG20: some of my closest SE friends include Wyrmhero ("Wyrm") of the Wyrm Inquisition, and Gamma F(r)iend ("Gamma") and Renegade ("Ren") of House Urbain. (And I guess Wilson? Maybe? El? Maybe?  IDK guys, if you wanna unfriend me, this is a good time!)

I say this because my experiences with my friends highlighted several issues for me: Wyrm fell afoul of Aonar's mayor trust in LG4, and this shaped his attitude towards coordinating the Village in LG5. We've had several long conversations over the years about the ethical way to coordinate the Village; similar with Wilson and Ren, who got overlooked in LG6. Gamma, too, has developed a dislike of trusts, or at least an understanding of where they can begin to throttle fun for players. Wyrm, Gamma, and Ren have all pulled off their own share of backstabbing shenanigans, with Gamma's being the most prominent, due to it being in LG4. More about that later. Wyrm's and Ren's backstabbing have generally been in pursuit of their win cons. I don't personally like backstabbing play, and have never pulled it off, which makes me the odd duck in the Wyrm Inquisition and House Urbain, and I try to avoid it. I think I will always feel guilty for how Jain, a fellow member of the Wyrm Inquisition, was in a way pressured into abandoning his erratic playstyle for something more standard to avoid continuously dying. And Wilson's long struggle away from the shadow of her reputation and glory infamy has made me sympathetic to players being placed under intense pressure for the desire to just have fun or to change their playstyles.

Finally, and most importantly, I'm a trained philosopher. I did my bachelors and my masters in philosophy, and if things align for me, might return to do my PhD one day. This matters because this means I think about these issues seriously a great deal. Ethics is very important to me. I don't think there are necessarily easy answers to these questions. But having said maybe a bit too much about the context with which I am approaching these issues....

 

Edited February 5, 2021 by Kasimir

[StrikerEZ he/him]

So, this is something I've been thinking about for awhile. I just feel like it's finally time for me to at least say something about this. I feel like someone has to.

I feel like we need a better rules system. We need to more clearly define what constitutes breaking the rules, and I think adding a rule about what is okay to add into RP in terms of content (no gruesome violence, nothing with mature undertones, etc). In addition, I feel like, when the rules we do have are broken, there's not often much done about them. At least from what I can see. I've heard of players being warned, but I've not once seen or heard of a player being removed from any games they're in, nonetheless blacklisted. I've seen players banned for things outside of the game, but that came down from the big mods, the mods of the whole site itself.

Which brings me to another point. I think the mods need to be more proactive about fixing problems. Yes, often no one can know when a player is feeling hurt unless they go to someone and let them know. But at the same time, there are often times where something can seem fishy or off or things get heated and the mods never step in. One thing that I think could help improve the mods' ability to do this is by having less mods join the games. I know, I know, mods want to play games too, but as a mod, they have a responsibility to the community, to make sure everyone has fun. And by having more mods not in the games, there can be more people who are impartial to the game itself that can step in when things need to be handled. I personally feel like having a single person have to deal with any and all problems that may arise during a game is a lot of pressure to put on one person.

If the problem is that there are too many mods that want to play games, then maybe increase the amount of mods for the community. Having a larger mod team (and perhaps one spread out across more timezones) would help with getting issues fixed faster. Having 2-4 people watching a game from the sidelines to make sure everything is going okay and no one's getting hurt is a lot more effective than just 1 person, in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm sorry if a lot of this seems really ramble-y, I've just been thinking about this for a bit and wanted to say something, at least get a conversation going. And this doesn't even mention other things I'm worried about, like the competitiveness that seems to be creeping into the games a bit more lately, and the tendency for something to go wrong and someone get hurt nearly every game. But I feel like those are issues that are a lot harder to fix, and I don't know if I have the ideas to work on them. But for the issues I brought up in the main body of this post, I feel like I've got some good ideas for how to help. 

[Straw he/him]

7 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

I feel like we need a better rules system. We need to more clearly define what constitutes breaking the rules, and I think adding a rule about what is okay to add into RP in terms of content (no gruesome violence, nothing with mature undertones, etc).

I think that gruesome violence and mature undertones are both allowed under the 17th Shard RPG rules:

To clarify, are you saying that these ratings are too limited for SE, or are you saying that existing stuff is violating these ratings? Also, I'm a bit unsure about the gruesome violence bit specifically. SE is a game that is focused around gruesomely murdering people, so I think gruesome violence is to be expected.  I can kind of see your point about mature undertones though.

7 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

In addition, I feel like, when the rules we do have are broken, there's not often much done about them. At least from what I can see. I've heard of players being warned, but I've not once seen or heard of a player being removed from any games they're in, nonetheless blacklisted. I've seen players banned for things outside of the game, but that came down from the big mods, the mods of the whole site itself.

Mm, I think that's probably a question for the mods. I'm pretty sure that most warning moderation is done privately, so that makes it hard to tell. I think it's valuable to note that being pulled from games only happens on the third instance of a rule being broken, and that blacklisting only happens if the player keeps breaking rules after that. The reason why those aren't seen very often is because most players are going to stop after they've gotten two direct warnings. Also, players who are blatantly violating the rules after two warnings are far more likely to get hit by the site mods. I think you're also assuming more of a distinction between the SE mods and site mods than actually exists.

8 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Which brings me to another point. I think the mods need to be more proactive about fixing problems. Yes, often no one can know when a player is feeling hurt unless they go to someone and let them know. But at the same time, there are often times where something can seem fishy or off or things get heated and the mods never step in.

To what degree do you think heated discussions should be moderated, considering that arguments and debates are a pretty big part of SE? Also, are you saying that the current rules aren't being enforced, or are you saying that new rules need to be added?

[Kasimir he/him]

Tagging @Fifth Scholar and any other players who, like me, have experienced the recent devastation of the post editor eating up your posts:

This appears to be (I could be wrong!) a result of leaving the session too long. Those posts of mine that got eaten, the window stayed upon on the computer for hours as I had other stuff to do in between, and then when I recovered it, maybe a third of the post had been auto-saved.

The one thing that works (when I do remember to do it) is to ctrl+A / select all (if on mobile) and copy/cut. Reload the window, clear the editor, paste, and reformat (if you have justification issues), and post again. It should go through without fail. Making a habit of copying a longpost prior to posting saves you much suffering and why as well.

Cheers,
-The Guy Who Recently Got Screwed Over Repeatedly By The Hungry Post Editor

[Illwei]

I was waiting for a game to end before bringing this up, but i feel like the game is probably over because idr how long ago it was

blue text

we have a cool feature that lets us talk about things happening in our life in a way that is allowed to be referenced in the game, as well as in a way where people will believe us

Recently I've seen some people saying things like "can you bluetext that?" and I think that's....I don't know how to say it besides gross and dirty tbh. It, imo, encourages a game where people can be solved like connie claims to be- no lies. you bluetext it for me? nice, you're a villager. you don't? you're a wolf, cool.

I understand that people can obviously choose not to answer, but i don't think asking should be happening anyways, even when it references things going on in real life. There's a rule against using bluetext to verify in game things and i know that. I still think that people shouldn't be asking it at all.

I know that I've played a lot offsite and maybe you think that affects how well i should be able to say what i don't think should be in SE (in terms of i shouldn't) but i think that things like that aren't healthy to the game. I don't want to waste my games policy voting people who do this. There was discussion around the AG about this method of enforcing the meta we want and I don't like wasting a game like that. I'd rather have a conversation around it and come to a conclusion like that. and of course /I/ think the conclusion should be that we make sure we individually don't put pressure on people like this. it starts getting dangerously close to trust telling and being able to lock the game without even playing it.

[Elandera she/her]

10 hours ago, Ooklil' the Wei said:

I was waiting for a game to end before bringing this up, but i feel like the game is probably over because idr how long ago it was

blue text

we have a cool feature that lets us talk about things happening in our life in a way that is allowed to be referenced in the game, as well as in a way where people will believe us

Recently I've seen some people saying things like "can you bluetext that?" and I think that's....I don't know how to say it besides gross and dirty tbh. It, imo, encourages a game where people can be solved like connie claims to be- no lies. you bluetext it for me? nice, you're a villager. you don't? you're a wolf, cool.

I understand that people can obviously choose not to answer, but i don't think asking should be happening anyways, even when it references things going on in real life. There's a rule against using bluetext to verify in game things and i know that. I still think that people shouldn't be asking it at all.

I know that I've played a lot offsite and maybe you think that affects how well i should be able to say what i don't think should be in SE (in terms of i shouldn't) but i think that things like that aren't healthy to the game. I don't want to waste my games policy voting people who do this. There was discussion around the AG about this method of enforcing the meta we want and I don't like wasting a game like that. I'd rather have a conversation around it and come to a conclusion like that. and of course /I/ think the conclusion should be that we make sure we individually don't put pressure on people like this. it starts getting dangerously close to trust telling and being able to lock the game without even playing it.

I agree that it should not be pressured to put things into blue text.

From my standpoint, blue text is supposed to be used for things like saying you'll be inactive for a turn or two because you're going to be away from a computer and mobile is unreliable. It shouldn't really be used for day-to-day issues like forgetting about the game or being short on time, because we all have time constraints. If we all did blue text whenever we have to explain away why we were gone, the whole thread would be blue and it would no longer be the resource it should be. 

[Archer he/him]

I also think it's bad form to ask someone to bluetext. As a followup question though, when is it good practice to lie about RL stuff? 

To use a specific example, I remember playing in a game where someone was lurking near rollover, didn't say anything, and then started the new round by saying something like the oop, I just woke up and by the time I was ready to post it was already the top of the hour. 

But based on what I read in the elim doc after the game, it was clear that they'd been lurking for a while and they'd made that story up just to avoid suspicion. I remember being a little disappointed that that was the case, but also thinking that that's not really breaking any rules. I've always just taken people at their word when they've said stuff like that, assuming that people find it bad form to lie in those situations using an RL excuse. Is that the general assumption or am I just gullible? :P. 

[Illwei]

17 minutes ago, Ookla the Paranormal said:

I also think it's bad form to ask someone to bluetext. As a followup question though, when is it good practice to lie about RL stuff? 

To use a specific example, I remember playing in a game where someone was lurking near rollover, didn't say anything, and then started the new round by saying something like the oop, I just woke up and by the time I was ready to post it was already the top of the hour. 

But based on what I read in the elim doc after the game, it was clear that they'd been lurking for a while and they'd made that story up just to avoid suspicion. I remember being a little disappointed that that was the case, but also thinking that that's not really breaking any rules. I've always just taken people at their word when they've said stuff like that, assuming that people find it bad form to lie in those situations using an RL excuse. Is that the general assumption or am I just gullible? :P. 

Lying is part of the game, thats what it is. Thats kind of the reason blue text exists is it not? Saying things like "ill be out of town for a bit and wont be able to check thread" or the like. Imo if its not in bluetext then /shrug

Theres obviously the unspoken spoken rule about emotional manipulation and where to draw the line in performing that and in reading into it (ie: saying things in the game are impacting your mental health negatively, or reading into anything like that thats said in any ways for someone's alignment) but lying about things is part of the game and will continue to be part of this game about lies imo

I think this does connect back though in a way- if someone does do something like this- obviously not bluetexted, but they shouldnt be pressured or even asked to say it again but in blue. I am of the opinion that blue text shouldnt be referenced in general if you can and if it is, it should be like "Esooa isnt here because she's out of town, as per her post earlier" and nothing more 

[Kasimir he/him]

Oh hello there! A bluetext discussion! And an ethics discussion!

Spoiler

In summation:

• Blue text is a useful tool. But I'm generally against the use of blue text and strongly against compelling people to use blue text. I am more weakly against the use of blue text  because I understand where it's helpful to be able to say beyond doubt that there are OOG reasons that prevent you from accessing the game. However, I feel that having a reified category of "utterances that must be true" implies that anything else can possibly be false. I think that this creates communal norms or expectations that players can reasonably lie about RL or their game experience (emotional stuff, for instance), which can create a lot more trouble. I don't think such expectations are very healthy.
   
• I dislike these expectations for two reasons. First, I worry that having the expectation that anything not in blue text can place utterances such as "I'm done with this. I'm not enjoying the game" and "You really make me want to punch you" and other ways players signal they're not having fun anymore firmly within the category of "Possibly a lie." I don't think that facilitates a healthy community response because players are forced to choose between tapping out, or reasonably feeling that they've been taken advantage of. (Recall that this is not and cannot be blue texted, and so cannot be assumed to be true, and indeed, the creation of a blue text category itself implies that the status of certainty is categorically denied any other class of utterances!) 
  
  Second, I feel that one potential player response to worries of lies or manipulation is to demand blue text. The very existence of blue text justifies or demands its use. This is a problem because it further entrenches the mentality that things not in blue text are untrustworthy or are lies. Even if we don't demand blue text, it's easy to create a situation where players who post about RL in blue text get the benefit of the doubt, and players who don't just get ignored. But that creates a powerful incentive to lie and use blue text even when you shouldn't. I also think that compelling players to use blue text just puts us in territory that makes everyone really angry really quickly and is distasteful. A game shouldn't hinge on whether a person can prove they were without Internet or not.
   
• On the question of emotional manipulation, I used to be more categorically against it but since then, I think I'm drawing a line between subclasses. I think that it should be a powerful communal norm that you don't lie about being really angry or upset or not enjoying the game. This issue has always been very inflammatory and I remember a huge explosion about this during AG3. Again, lying about this in order to emotionally manipulate players and gain an advantage for your team may be technically allowed, but in my view, it poisons the well of goodwill. It creates a situation where players can't take at face value that another player isn't having fun, and the last thing anyone wants to deal with as a response to being really ticked off or upset is "Well, sorry, I think you're lying", or "Prove it, bluetext it", or something else. It potentially escalates situations when it should be deescalating them, and it turns the gaming atmosphere just a bit more toxic and competitive. I've said it before but I'll say it again: this is a class of emotional manipulation I'm not okay with, and will always strongly condemn Elim teammates trying to pull that.
   
• I do think there's a lot of grey areas though. Being the last Elim standing isn't fun, and Elims can be defensive when pressured. The corollary of what I've said is that it potentially puts an Elim in a difficult situation and creates - similarly to what I've said about blue text - a protected class of utterances. On the flip side though, there's what happened with Striker/Heron in Steel's LG - where in particular, Striker's earnest insistence he was really good and we were mislynching him really got me to hesitate and nearly pull off him. There's also Araris's "Dude not me man" in Lotus's MR, where again, I nearly veered off because I was so convinced he sounded sincere. I think those types of manipulation are more subtle, because they're less attention-grabbing than a thread fight but those are a legitimate part of the Elim's playbook.
   
• I guess my distinction would be: don't lie about the gamestate/utterances about your game experience. Emotionally manipulating people to get them off your back is fine, but emotionally manipulating them by telling the whole thread you're not going to bother with the game anymore can create more downstream problems.

[Elbereth she/her]

Hello, all! Due to recent events and discussions, many but not all prompted by the most recent AG, we’re planning on adding the rules below to General Rules & Etiquette. We’re putting them here first to allow for discussion and suggestions (including suggestions for other rules not on this list), and they will be officially edited into the rules thread in one week. We’re also changing the rules to be individually numbered, for easier reference. The changes are listed in this post, and at the bottom is a spoiler containing the full proposed new rules. 

 

GMing-related Changes

The committee: @Haelbarde and @Young Bard are, sadly, stepping down from the game balance committee. We’re delighted to welcome @Kasimir and @Archer as their replacements! The new committee is @Amanuensis, @STINK, @Sart, @Fifth Scholar, @Straw, @Kasimir, and @Archer. (Also, for the record, all past committee members have a standing invitation to rejoin the committee should they ever find themselves with the time to be on it again.)

GM responsibilities: GMs are not required or expected to mediate player conflict. Frustrations can and should be addressed to the IM of the game, not the GM.

Any game with more than one non-standard role or mechanic requires that the GM have run a game previously or had a major role in coGMing a previous game. (This also applies to Break Tank games.) Additionally, a mod in the approval committee may decide that an GM will be required to have an experienced coGM if their ruleset is especially complicated. These requirements may be waived at moderator discretion.

If an upcoming GM doesn’t meet these requirements or the approval committee determines that there isn’t a clear path toward making the ruleset workable, the GM will have the option to either run a simple ruleset, or to temporarily pass up their slot until they coGM and/or fix the rules.

IM responsibilities: We’ve realized that going to the IM isn’t particularly natural for most people in part because the IM generally isn’t very visible in the game. As a result, IMs will be interacting more with the game, including posting something every cycle or two, which might be a quick reminder that they’re available, a meme, or a bit of RP. They will also be regularly checking GM PMs, and if you raise a potential issue in a GM PM, address it to the IM (see above re: GMs are not expected to be mediators).

Non-Sanderson Games: The requirement to have a pass in order to run a non-Sanderson game was implemented to reduce the number of non-Sanderson games when those were more than a third of the games being run. The effect, however, has been to make non-Sanderson games almost never run - there have only been three total in the last two years. As a result, we’re loosening the limitation somewhat: every fifth game in a format may be a non-Sanderson game. Pass-holders still have their passes, and may use them to run a non-Sanderson game whenever they want.

Break Tanks: We have a new game format! See this post for details, and the format description is also in the Game Signups OP. 

New and Proposed Rules

Etiquette

• Every player’s agency is important, and coercion is frowned upon. This includes but is not limited to blackmail, using your position of village trust to get other people to listen and do what you want (mayoring), and bussing a fellow eliminator without their consent. 
• If you are frustrated with another person, try to talk to a friend or the IM about it before addressing that person directly. But also, unless the IM advises you not to, do then go and talk to that person and let them know you’re frustrated. No one wants to upset you, and discussing the problem with them is usually enough to make things better. 
• Limit emotional manipulation. Even if you’re channeling real emotions into false pretenses, the end result is often people feeling like they have to question and suspect when others are being vulnerable. Being open about emotion is fine, but try not to tie those emotions into arguments you’re making. 
• Extending the section on conflict resolution: Your first step, should you have a problem with something game-related, is to take it to the impartial moderator. This includes frustration or anger with other players, the GM, the balance of the game, or anything else. They are there to diffuse situations. Explain what’s going on to them, and they’ll talk to the relevant parties, as well as the GM, to clear things up. Please be proactive; if you see tension happening, ping the IM even if you aren’t involved in the issue. And while you can certainly make this kind of communication in your GM PM, please address the IM rather than the GM, who is there to run the game and not to mediate. 
• Please stay active in games. Your fellow players are expecting you to be active and participate regularly, and your absence makes the game harder on everyone else. Participation means engaging with the game, not posting just enough to avoid an inactivity filter. But real life does happen, and your circumstances may change unexpectedly. If that is the case, please tell your GM, who may be able to arrange a pinch-hitter to take your place.

Rules

• Don’t use information about the wording, coloring, etc of your GM PM to make deductions about roles or alignments. 
• Going with not being able to quote PMs anywhere (including eliminator docs), you cannot add a player to an already-existing PM. If you have a group PM and want to add a member, you must create a new PM. 
• Rewording the codes policy, yet again: Do not use ciphers, codes, or other languages to communicate in a way other players cannot understand. If a game has limited or closed PMs, you can’t get around that by making private messages in the thread. At most, you may communicate a particular piece of information specified in PM (e.g. “the first name I say in my first post will be the person I think you should scan”), but you cannot just tell someone a key in PM so that they can decipher the piece of code you put in the thread. This policy is somewhat looser around anonymous messages, but you still may not give another player a key with which they can decipher your anonymous message. You are permitted to encipher a message in such a way that you can prove you were its creator. Ciphers which contain no game-related information are allowed. 
• If a player cannot access or edit a Google doc they’re part of for any reason, the GM may set up a PM to act as a replacement. Such a PM should not be counted as a normal one for purposes of restrictions on PMs or PM spying. 

 

Warnings

• We’ve changed and clarified the Warning section of the rules. Breaking a rule will generally get you a warning to reread the rules, then a discussion about how to avoid it if you break it again, and a third instance will mean being pulled from the game and a discussion with the full mod team. We may be harsher if it seems like you’re acting in bad faith; historically breaking a rule is almost always accidental and a discussion is all that’s needed. 

In addition to the above, we’re planning on making a pinned thread called something like “Introduction and Q&A” in order to give new people a less daunting way to figure out how to sign up and how it all works. We’re also unpinning the SEAcropolis thread, but not hiding it; it’s not used often and maybe having it unpinned will make it feel less “special” so y’all will feel more free to post whatever you like in there. This thread will stay around but unpinned; the Q&A thread is for rules clarification and random questions, while this thread is for discussion of meta or community norms that aren’t really about the rules so much. (These changes will go into place in a week, when we officially implement the rule changes listed above.)

 

Full Rules, with changes

Spoiler

Player Etiquette

Note: rules and advice on GMing can be found in the GM Signups & Discussion Thread. These rules are primarily about playing.

In an effort to keep conflicts to a minimum, here are some basic ground rules concerning player interactions. Please keep these in mind while you’re playing the games.

First and foremost, the general rules and guidelines from the rest of the forum still apply here. These include, but are not limited to, double posting (although we’re somewhat more lax about that than much of the Shard), cursing, and being polite. If you’re unfamiliar with the site rules, or it’s been a while since you last looked them over, we suggest you read through them again, just to be on the safe side. You can find them here. The spoiler policy of this subforum is the same as the rest of the site. 

A. General Etiquette

1. Remember that this is a game. This can be difficult at times as things can get quite heated, but this is just a game. If you’re having difficulties, take a step back and breathe for a moment. You might realize that it’s not the end of the world and that, win or lose, there will be another game in the future.
2. Remember that the other players are individuals. They will do things that you likely wouldn’t do or play in a way that you wouldn’t. They are still people and still deserve your respect. You can’t force people to do things the way that you would do them. This is a game and the first rule is to have fun. If you try to force people to play a certain way, you are taking away from their fun. You wouldn’t want someone to do the same to you, so don’t do so to other players. You can’t expect others to play the same way as you, nor should you try to force them to.
3. Similarly, every player’s agency is important, and coercion is generally frowned upon. Notable examples include blackmail, using your position of village trust to get other people to listen and do what you want (mayoring), and bussing a fellow eliminator without their consent. 
4. If you are frustrated with another person, try to talk to a friend or the IM about it before addressing that person directly. But also, unless the IM advises you not to, do then go and talk to that person and let them know you’re frustrated. No one wants to upset you, and discussing the problem with them is usually enough to make things better. 
5. Treat the GM(s) with respect. They’ve devoted their time and effort to create and run a game; it’s the least you can do. Remember that they’re only human and if they make a mistake or you disagree with their ruling, it’s not the end of the world. If you feel you must talk to someone about a ruling, PM the impartial moderator for the game.
6. Be proactive about dealing with potential issues. If you think something you’re writing could be taken incorrectly, adding a disclaimer or editing it to be more polite can resolve issues before they even begin. This is not an excuse to be rude or unsportsmanlike, however. Similarly, your RP and character are not an excuse to be unsportsmanlike. You’re still the one writing it. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a little leeway here, but if you’re being rude and your excuse is that it was all in-character, that isn’t appropriate.
7. We recommend against posting any notes you are taking during a currently-running game. We generally find that this leads to a more competitive atmosphere for the games, and makes players feel like they have to do more analysis rather than focusing on fun. If, sometime after the game, there is a meta discussion about note taking during games, you’re welcome to post notes from a past game as it’s relevant to the discussion, but do not go out of your way to post game notes.
8. Your forum or real-life relationships with other players should not cause you to play against your team's win condition, and should not be used to attempt to influence another person to play against their win condition.
9. Limit emotional manipulation. Even if you’re channeling real emotions into false pretenses, the end result is often people feeling like they have to question and suspect when others are being vulnerable. Being open about emotion is fine, but try not to tie those emotions into arguments you’re making. 
10. As a corollary to some of the above points, please limit gamethrowing. Sometimes, going for a tie or a mutual win instead of a victory for your team is not a bad thing, and can even be fun. However, do not make this kind of decision unilaterally if you have teammates. Consult your teammates (even if they are dead) to learn how they will feel if you throw the game, and ask your impartial mod for advice. If anyone is not okay with it, we strongly advise against throwing the game.
11. Please stay active in games. Your fellow players are expecting you to be active and participate regularly, and your absence makes the game harder on everyone else. Participation means engaging with the game, not posting just enough to avoid an inactivity filter. But real life does happen, and your circumstances may change unexpectedly. If that is the case, please tell your GM, who may be able to arrange a pinch-hitter to take your place. 

 

B. On Winning

1. Don’t be boastful. One of the worst things you can be is a sore winner. There is still an element of luck to this game, so don’t behave like you were the sole reason that your team won. This doesn’t mean you can’t be happy about winning or have some good-natured poking at friends on the other team, but make sure it’s just that: good-natured and lighthearted.
2. Remember that when your team has just removed a new threat, the other team has just taken a substantial loss. Don’t rub salt in the wound by being demeaning, and be considerate about boasting and celebrating. 
3. Be respectful and aware of how the other team might take your comments during and after the game. If you’re about to say something you wouldn’t want to hear if you were in their position, don’t say it. Be the kind of player you’d want to continue playing with or against in the future.

  

C. On Losing

1. Accept defeat with dignity. Refer back to ‘it’s just a game.’ Don’t be the person that ragequits when they’re losing. Not everyone is going to win every time and there will always be another game to play.
2. Don’t take the game too seriously. It’s easy to feel like everyone is ganging up on you, no matter what team you’re on, but when you’re losing it’s even easier to feel like even the slightest provocation is a personal attack. 99% of the time, it’s not.
3. If someone is incredibly happy about a turn of events that adversely affected you, please keep in mind that they are not being happy at your expense. To them, they just received a break and are just expressing their relief and/or joy. 
4. If you feel you are being attacked or someone is intentionally trying to goad you, don’t engage with them. Talk to the impartial moderator and let them deal with the situation.

  

D. How to Approach Arguments

1. This shouldn’t need to be said but it will be anyway: be polite. Text is not a good medium for conveying tone. A sarcastic comment can be easily seen as an attack, whether or not you meant it to be. Emoticons can help convey your meaning. Conversely, if someone says something that you believe is an attack, take a couple of minutes to reread the post before you reply. Ask someone else, maybe the IM, to read it and get their take on it. More often than not, it was not meant to be an attack (and even if you think it was, don’t engage). Sometimes simply asking the person what they were trying to say will clear things up.
2. Don’t take an argument personally. People will disagree with you—especially the other faction—but that’s part of the game. Because of that, don’t take any arguments too seriously, and if you find you are, take a step back. Walk away from the argument. It’s not worth ruining yours and everyone else’s fun.
3. You don’t have to convince everyone you are right. Even if you’ve built a logical masterpiece and the other person’s argument stands on logical fallacies and faulty assumptions, that doesn’t mean you need to force everyone to see things your way. There are more people in the game than just you and the person with whom you’re debating. If you feel you’ve made a good case for yourself, end your part in the debate and let everyone else decide for themselves.
4. Disagreements are common, but just because someone says something you disagree with doesn’t mean that you can insult them or that they can insult you. Name calling and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

  

Feedback and Suggestions

Be polite with your feedback on games, both in the Game creation thread and post-game. There are many factors to account for within these games and even the best GMs are not going to catch them all. On top of that, many GMs are trying new things and building both roles and settings from scratch. Even if you lost due to what you feel was a flaw in the game, be polite about it and remember that you and everyone else are working to make future games better.

 

Conflict Resolution

Your first step, should you have a problem with something game-related, is to take it to the impartial moderator. This includes frustration or anger with other players, the GM, the balance of the game, or anything else. They are there to diffuse situations. Explain what’s going on to them, and they’ll talk to the relevant parties, as well as the GM, to clear things up. Please be proactive; if you see tension happening, ping the IM even if you aren’t involved in the issue. And while you can certainly make this kind of communication in your GM PM, please address the IM rather than the GM, who is there to run the game and not to mediate. 

---

Other Rules & Warnings

A. Game Information Restrictions

1. The rules below are standard unless the GM allows something that deviates from the General Rules (with approval from the committee or the moderators for the deviation). The GM’s rules and stipulations are law within their own game. Those rules are what players are expected to obey.
2. Don’t use your forum or real life knowledge of a player to guarantee to someone that you are telling the truth. The bluffing and lies are part of the game. Similarly, don’t use your real life relationship with another player in any way to convince other players of a person’s honesty or alignment. If you know your sibling is an eliminator because you saw them in a doc, don’t tell other players what you saw. (Do contact the GM to let them know.) This goes for any game-related knowledge you may have due to your real life relationship with that person. The lack of information is part of the game.
3. If you’re currently playing in a game, do not talk about that game with another living player (outside permitted PMs including the GM), or in any public place where another player might see. Be cautious even when talking to dead players or spectators who know more than you do about the state of the game, and if you are the non-living-player in that scenario be very careful not to give anything away. If you gain knowledge about a player(s) through this type of communication, don’t tell other players about the details. If the information is sensitive enough, talk to the GM and the impartial Moderator and let them decide what to do.
4. If you are not a living player, you cannot participate in that game (unless the Impartial Mod and GM both give consent, in certain circumstances). This means you cannot post in the thread after you die, and you cannot continue talking in any docs you were part of. You should also generally avoid upvoting posts as a dead player, especially if they’re good because of something living players don’t know. 
5. Editing your posts in a way that changes the meaning is not allowed. Fixing grammatical errors or adding more information so as to not double post is fine, but do not change the intent of your post. This applies to deleting your post as well. The mods will see it, and you will get a warning. Also, please do not edit your vote in, even if you were the last to post, as it’s easy for other players or the GM to miss. Double posts are not nearly as frowned upon as in the rest of the forum, and if you need to post again to cast your vote, feel free. 
6. Don’t quote anything from your GM PM during the game for any reason. This includes quoting your role PM or action results. Do not show your GM PM to any other player. Don’t use information about the wording of your GM PM to try to make alignment-related deductions. 
7. No one can quote PMs from other players or your own to other players, the game thread, or eliminator docs. If you need to relay what happened in a PM, you must paraphrase what was said. As a corollary, in games where group PMs are allowed, you cannot add a player to an already-existing PM. If you want to change the membership of a group PM in any way, you must create a new PM. 
8. Do not use ciphers, codes, or other languages to communicate in a way other players cannot understand. If a game has limited or closed PMs, you can’t get around that by making private messages in the thread. At most, you may communicate a particular piece of information specified in PM (e.g. “the first name I say in my first post will be the person I think you should scan”), but you cannot just tell someone a key in PM so that they can decipher the piece of code you put in the thread. This policy is somewhat looser around anonymous messages, but you still may not give another player a key with which they can decipher your anonymous message. You are permitted to encipher a message in such a way that you can prove you were its creator. Ciphers which contain no game-related information are allowed.   
9. If a player cannot access or edit a Google doc they’re part of for any reason, the GM may set up a PM to act as a replacement. Such a PM should not be counted as a normal one for purposes of restrictions on PMs or PM spying. 

B. Colored Text

1. All game discussion should be in black once the game starts. This applies to RP and out of character discussion pertaining to the game. This includes using knowledge of basic game mechanics to identify suspects, detect lies, and get others to vote to kill someone. This is all game-related and should be in black. Optionally you may choose to put RP in a separate color, so long as it is not one of those listed below.
2. All out of game discussion should be in blue once the game starts. This applies to everything that is unrelated to the game, mostly pertaining to real life events/situations that affect your ability to play or that you wish to share with the other players. Site issues like the server going down and being unable to access the site or a site update creating problems in other parts of the site that affect the game would be blue-text as well. If it pertains directly to the game itself in any way, keep it in black. You are never required to use blue text. 
3. Lying about real life or site issues that are in blue text is forbidden. Using blue  text for in-game discussion as a way to prove you’re telling the truth is also unacceptable.
4. Moderator comments for in-game issues will be in gold . Please pay attention to these posts as they are for all players, and please do not use similar colors.
5. Red  text is for voting who to remove.  Green  is for retracting prior votes. Adding new votes into old posts is NOT allowed. Double-posting in order to make a vote is acceptable and preferred. If you don’t have access to the rich text formatter, use the following codes to color your votes:

[color=red]My Vote[/color]
[color=green]My Vote[/color]

 

C. Anonymous game rules

There are a number of rules associated with the use of an Anonymous Account. Please follow them carefully. Given the potential for abuse of Anonymous Accounts, any rule breaking using the accounts will be dealt with harshly.

1. Do not change the password of the anonymous account you are issued, nor anything else about the account. (You may follow threads or adjust notification settings if you’d like.) The IM and the GMs will have access to all anonymous accounts for the duration of the game being played. Do not use your anonymous account to post in any thread other than the thread of the game it is currently being used for.
2. Do not use the anonymous accounts to PM any non-anonymous account, other than the accounts of the GMs or the IM. Please do not use your normal accounts to PM anonymous accounts.
3. Do not tell any other player or individual associated with SE if you are playing or not playing the Anonymous Game. Player identities will be revealed after the game, not on the death of their avatar. You are not forbidden from telling others your identity (truthfully or no), but we ask that you at least not use OOG confirming information. Part of the attraction of anonymous games is keeping identities obscured, and we’d like to ensure that nothing is certain while the game is ongoing.

  

D. Warnings

To make sure that these games remain as fair and enjoyable as possible for everyone, people caught in violation of the rules above will be given a warning. For GMs, this also includes the rules in the Game Signups thread. 

Breaking a rule once gets you a warning, and you'll be directed to reread the rules. If you break the same rule again, you’ll have a discussion about how this problem can be avoided in the future (and a chance to argue that the rule should be changed). Continued refusal to follow that rule gets you pulled from any games you’re in and more discussion with the full mod team. 

At their discretion, the moderation team may decide on further measures based on the situation (e.g. a modqueue, a period of time not playing any games, or a note to GMs that they can refuse your signup if they choose), and will elevate problems to the Shard moderators if necessary. Historically, rules have almost never been broken knowingly or deliberately, and we will act more harshly if we think you are acting in bad faith. On the flipside, acting in good faith and showing that you’re trying to follow the rules will likely mean less or no punishment, especially for those that are easy to break unintentionally. We're here to make sure everyone enjoys the game and no one gets hurt, not to be strict or punish people.

 

Edited February 5, 2022 by Elbereth
putting full rules in spoiler

[Kasimir he/him]

22 hours ago, Elbereth said:

Participation means engaging with the game, not posting just enough to avoid an inactivity filter.

Want to ask if this means that we are officially frowning on Lurker Elim / Lurker Power Role strategies. I can see grounds for it - filter dodgers are frustrating to deal with, especially on a Village front, and I was just talking to another player the other day about a filter dodger in QF7 who returned just in time to vig kill another, active player (rather than taking the filter) and then went back into inactivity, which was absurdly painful for the Village.

I will grant there's a line there this rule wants to preserve: you can still lurk and engage minimally, rather than really just blatantly filter dodge, but I feel LG5 Khas and LG7 Fain could easily have skewed a bit towards filter dodging, and maybe I'd just like some clarity there. (To put it another way: some teams do encourage players to lurk in order not to have a power role or an Elim taken out. I think up to this point there has been some amount of community dislike for this strategy but also acceptance it is a valid strategy. How does this engage with the current consensus?)

22 hours ago, Elbereth said:

Rewording the codes policy, yet again: Do not use ciphers, codes, or other languages to communicate in a way other players cannot understand. If a game has limited or closed PMs, you can’t get around that by making private messages in the thread. At most, you may communicate a particular piece of information specified in PM (e.g. “the first name I say in my first post will be the person I think you should scan”), but you cannot just tell someone a key in PM so that they can decipher the piece of code you put in the thread. This policy is somewhat looser around anonymous messages, but you still may not give another player a key with which they can decipher your anonymous message. You are permitted to encipher a message in such a way that you can prove you were its creator. Ciphers which contain no game-related information are allowed. 

I am absurdly proud of being the person who motivated this through my cunning and extensive use of codes

22 hours ago, Elbereth said:

But also, unless the IM advises you not to, do then go and talk to that person and let them know you’re frustrated.

This makes sense, but I guess I have mild contextual concerns about this coming from the altercation between Archer and myself in LG79. I could have been Evil and legitimately frustrated at Archer's fixation on me being Evil for weird reasons that have to do with my playstyle - I feel that, as Archer pointed out, knowing about my frustration caused him to back off because he'd rather take the L than make things worse. He explicitly noted that if I was Evil, this was essentially very good for my team because he wasn't interested in going after me anymore. I also note there are similar player altercations in games I can't explicitly mention in the thread (happy to DM if you want to know) for confidentiality reasons where players express discomfort shrekking a player because they know the player will defend aggressively and emotionally and express significant frustration, and they don't feel they can carry on if the player is Evil. In all of these cases, it has washed out fine because the player was in fact Village, but I think there is a very powerful and worrisome counterfactual there.

I guess this slightly ties into emotional manipulation talk insofar as that the mere fact of my frustration, communicated whether directly or indirectly, was sufficient for Archer to decide to back off. This had nothing to do with arguments we were making: his argument was that I was doing weird stuff, my argument was that this is pretty bog-standard for me and so NAI. We were fortunate that I was Village and so it was a V/V brawl anyway, but I feel as though this could very easily become a more complicated situation and I don't know what the correct move would be. I absolutely agree with talking to the IM, but in a way, I feel this just kicks the can up the road one step because the very conversation is supposed to be about the acceptability of such things, and I don't know that the IM has a better solution if there is no community consensus or conversation about this.

22 hours ago, Elbereth said:

We’re also unpinning the SEAcropolis thread, but not hiding it; it’s not used often and maybe having it unpinned will make it feel less “special” so y’all will feel more free to post whatever you like in there.

The real question is who's gonna archive the meme-off in SEAcropolis :eyes:

j/k  

22 hours ago, Elbereth said:

Any game with more than one non-standard role or mechanic requires that the GM have run a game previously or had a major role in coGMing a previous game. (This also applies to Break Tank games.) Additionally, a mod in the approval committee may decide that an GM will be required to have an experienced coGM if their ruleset is especially complicated. These requirements may be waived at moderator discretion.

I'm curious if this means that there is now a de facto presumption that a prospective GM will be doing a co-GM apprenticeship first, unless they are running a vanilla game or a Tyrian variant (that's how I interpret 'more than one non-standard role or mechanic' anyway.) I don't at all think this is a problem - in fact, while I wouldn't change the hard GMing lessons that MR7 bashed into me, I do wish that I'd had my co-GMing stints before MR7 made me realise I was woefully inadequate to the task, so I guess this is probably just a clarificatory question  My players could have used a more experienced GM for sure.

I've definitely also seen (historically) cases where the GM was struggling so this from a prospective GM perspective is actually reassuring/helpful.

Can I has experienced co-GM please :sob:

22 hours ago, Elbereth said:

GM responsibilities: GMs are not required or expected to mediate player conflict. Frustrations can and should be addressed to the IM of the game, not the GM.

I am extremely grateful for this ruling. I've largely exclusively GMed clusterchulls and in a lot of cases, I felt like I was both running a game and having my classroom management skills sorely tested. This is not too much of an issue for me in that I'm used to proactively crying (often literally) for IM help thanks to the non-stop cycle fires of MR7 (RIP Moderation doc), but it is also immensely stressful when players expect me to do things that aren't always my problems to solve and continue to pressure me on them - precisely because I know I can't do anything about this and am just referring the issue on to the IM for resolution at the correct level. I'm happy to listen to player venting, and happy to use my TA classroom management skills to suppress fires until the IM can get to things (as was the case in a few of my games), but it's felt a lot as a GM like players are expecting me to handle - for want of a better word - disciplinary issues, and as a GM, that's frankly not my job, and I absolutely think a GM should not be making judgement calls on bad player behaviour - as a matter of fact, I really think that departing from upholding the rules of the game as written is already very murky territory for a GM.

Okay I guess this is more a rant than a comment but 100% happy about this, I GM clusterchulls, I am used to this :|

Edited to add:

22 hours ago, Elbereth said:

• Going with not being able to quote PMs anywhere (including eliminator docs), you cannot add a player to an already-existing PM. If you have a group PM and want to add a member, you must create a new PM. 

On top of this requirement, I'm curious if there's going to be a definite policy on whether pinch-hitters have access to PMs from the person they're replacing. This is de facto true in ANs because you are using an anon account, but I believe there was a discussion in LG74 about whether it was okay to just add the pinch-hitter to all the previous PM groups. I recall the eventual decision after talking to Wilson and you and STINK was to not do that on privacy grounds. Has this changed?

Edited February 6, 2022 by Kasimir

[Araris Valerian he/him]

31 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I'm curious if this means that there is now a de facto presumption that a prospective GM will be doing a co-GM apprenticeship first, unless they are running a vanilla game or a Tyrian variant (that's how I interpret 'more than one non-standard role or mechanic' anyway.) I don't at all think this is a problem - in fact, while I wouldn't change the hard GMing lessons that MR7 bashed into me, I do wish that I'd had my co-GMing stints before MR7 made me realise I was woefully inadequate to the task, so I guess this is probably just a clarificatory question  My players could have used a more experienced GM for sure.

While I would say that this would allow a new GM to have a few more options than vanilla/Tyrian+, that is the idea. It’s best to draw the line somewhere, and we can consider special cases if they come up.

 

36 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Want to ask if this means that we are officially frowning on Lurker Elim / Lurker Power Role strategies. I can see grounds for it - filter dodgers are frustrating to deal with, especially on a Village front, and I was just talking to another player the other day about a filter dodger in QF7 who returned just in time to vig kill another, active player (rather than taking the filter) and then went back into inactivity, which was absurdly painful for the Village.

I will grant there's a line there this rule wants to preserve: you can still lurk and engage minimally, rather than really just blatantly filter dodge, but I feel LG5 Khas and LG7 Fain could easily have skewed a bit towards filter dodging, and maybe I'd just like some clarity there. (To put it another way: some teams do encourage players to lurk in order not to have a power role or an Elim taken out. I think up to this point there has been some amount of community dislike for this strategy but also acceptance it is a valid strategy. How does this engage with the current consensus?)

My personal take on this is that it’s better to err on the side of lowering the feasibility of such lurker strategies than to have to consistently have to deal with inactive players. Like you say, it is possible to lurk without filter dodging, and as the man known for flying under the radar, I can say for sure that it’s possible to maintain a low profile without doing either. 

With regards to the IM thing, and specifically you/Archer, my number one priority was to defuse the conflict, and number two was to keep everyone in the game. Something worth adding would be emphasis on the IM’s part that those sorts of emotions can come about from players on either team. The wording above is a little vague because to some extent we use the emotions others are expressing to read them. I think a bit of a tell for (past?)elim!me is ranting about people voting on me for the wrong reasons; me expressing frustration in a certain manner. It’s valid for someone else to use that as a reason to vote for me, but there is more substance behind it than just the emotion. I think the big problem is deliberately weaponizing other people’s perception of your emotions to guilt them into acting differently. That’s the sort of thing that leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. And this is probably rambly and doesn’t address your concerns exactly, but maybe it’s a start on the discussion you wanted at least.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

3 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Want to ask if this means that we are officially frowning on Lurker Elim / Lurker Power Role strategies. I can see grounds for it - filter dodgers are frustrating to deal with, especially on a Village front, and I was just talking to another player the other day about a filter dodger in QF7 who returned just in time to vig kill another, active player (rather than taking the filter) and then went back into inactivity, which was absurdly painful for the Village.

I would pick a standard somewhere along the lines of one game-relevant (mechanics discussion, suspicions, vote, or addressing the above from other people) post per filter period. That still leaves plenty of room to lurk while requiring a contribution to the game.

3 hours ago, Kasimir said:

I absolutely agree with talking to the IM, but in a way, I feel this just kicks the can up the road one step because the very conversation is supposed to be about the acceptability of such things, and I don't know that the IM has a better solution if there is no community consensus or conversation about this.

It is a good idea to have a discussion about this because I believe the idea behind this ruling is for players to PM the IM before judgements start being made based on another player's emotional state. Someone who worries that a post or PM they're writing veers into emotionally manipulative territory can send the draft to the IM to look at. A player who feels that another player is unfairly using emotion to drive an argument should also talk to the IM about it, which may lead to a conversation between the IM and that other player. Approximately how much leeway should be allowed for emotional arguments before the possibility of intervention should be discussed here, but the IM will listen to any concerns that pop up in game.

4 hours ago, Kasimir said:

I'm curious if this means that there is now a de facto presumption that a prospective GM will be doing a co-GM apprenticeship first, unless they are running a vanilla game or a Tyrian variant (that's how I interpret 'more than one non-standard role or mechanic' anyway.)

Any rerun of games that weren't broken/complex/unusual should also be acceptable for a first game, but would almost certainly require a coGM.

4 hours ago, Kasimir said:

On top of this requirement, I'm curious if there's going to be a definite policy on whether pinch-hitters have access to PMs from the person they're replacing. I recall the eventual decision after talking to Wilson and you and STINK was to not do that on privacy grounds. Has this changed?

There has been no recent discussion about this, so that ruling probably stands, although this is an opportunity to discuss every rule in case other people have different opinions.

[Kasimir he/him]

4 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

My personal take on this is that it’s better to err on the side of lowering the feasibility of such lurker strategies than to have to consistently have to deal with inactive players. Like you say, it is possible to lurk without filter dodging, and as the man known for flying under the radar, I can say for sure that it’s possible to maintain a low profile without doing either. 

Generally agreed, I also think this is a fairly clear line:

1 hour ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

I would pick a standard somewhere along the lines of one game-relevant (mechanics discussion, suspicions, vote, or addressing the above from other people) post per filter period. That still leaves plenty of room to lurk while requiring a contribution to the game.

In a way, I think it's in fact fairly heartening because there was a lack of collective will during the inactivity blight era precisely because of lurker concerns, so I'm actually happy to see the needle being shifted. Think Bev'ika would approve too.

4 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

With regards to the IM thing, and specifically you/Archer, my number one priority was to defuse the conflict, and number two was to keep everyone in the game. Something worth adding would be emphasis on the IM’s part that those sorts of emotions can come about from players on either team. The wording above is a little vague because to some extent we use the emotions others are expressing to read them. I think a bit of a tell for (past?)elim!me is ranting about people voting on me for the wrong reasons; me expressing frustration in a certain manner. It’s valid for someone else to use that as a reason to vote for me, but there is more substance behind it than just the emotion. I think the big problem is deliberately weaponizing other people’s perception of your emotions to guilt them into acting differently. That’s the sort of thing that leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. And this is probably rambly and doesn’t address your concerns exactly, but maybe it’s a start on the discussion you wanted at least.

and

1 hour ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

It is a good idea to have a discussion about this because I believe the idea behind this ruling is for players to PM the IM before judgements start being made based on another player's emotional state. Someone who worries that a post or PM they're writing veers into emotionally manipulative territory can send the draft to the IM to look at. A player who feels that another player is unfairly using emotion to drive an argument should also talk to the IM about it, which may lead to a conversation between the IM and that other player. Approximately how much leeway should be allowed for emotional arguments before the possibility of intervention should be discussed here, but the IM will listen to any concerns that pop up in game.

Because apparently I forgot how to multi-quote so RIP. This is just to set out that I'm engaging in discussion with these two points/paragraphs specifically, before I zoom in on specific chunks I want to - IDK, gadfly I suppose.

4 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Something worth adding would be emphasis on the IM’s part that those sorts of emotions can come about from players on either team. [...] I think the big problem is deliberately weaponizing other people’s perception of your emotions to guilt them into acting differently. That’s the sort of thing that leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.

I agree with this, but I also think that's what makes it so pernicious. 

Let's go back to LG79 because I think it's the easiest case study. Suppose I really was Evil; suppose that Archer happened to be right to suspect me, but wrong that my playstyle oddities were AI (it's just oddities from prior SE experiences.) Plausibly, Evil Kas would still self-vote, because Village Kas does that, and I have to do what Village Kas does. Suppose further - ex hypothesi - that I do end up voicing my frustration, and that it is genuine frustration. Suppose that this - just as it did in the actual game - causes Archer to move off of me and begins a case for IM intervention. (Let's bracket the IM issue; it's relevant but not extremely relevant here since we're looking at the player side actions for now.)

I would agree with you that in this scenario, perhaps Evil Kas isn't deliberately weaponising Archer's perceptions of his emotions. He's just frustrated and reacting out of that frustration, and playing into a known part of his Village meta. But the raw frustration is very real, and Evil Kas just isn't controlling it very well. Archer senses that, and reacts accordingly.

Does that make the situation any better? Does Evil Kas bear any culpability - or responsibility - for failing to manage his emotions properly? Because in my view, it would absolutely make sense for Archer to feel frustrated or manipulated - even if Evil Kas insists he genuinely felt upset and just didn't control himself well - in such a scenario. Even if the emotions were genuine and there was no manipulative attempt, it was predictable or at least partly predictable that the loss of control would result in such and such a reaction from Villagers. And there's an additional layer, where even if Evil Kas swears hand over heart that the emotions were genuine, I think it would be reasonable to point out other players may still perceive him to be engaging in emotional manipulation, because they don't have access to his emotional state, or his mental states. I think there's still very deep potential for high temperature drama after the game as a direct result of player behaviour, and that seems to still generate a problem.

In the long term, whether or not Evil Kas genuinely slipped up, I think we still reach the situation where players may feel unduly punished for basic, normal human sympathy and pulling off of a struggling player. In a single game, that's fine. In more than one game, that's a problem. (So yes, there's a 'pattern of behaviour' question here as well, but the point I also want to make is it doesn't have to be a consistent pattern of behaviour from one specific player; this happening from several players over several games already can poison the well!)

To return to your original point, the fact that such emotions can come from players on either team is precisely what makes such altercations so sensitive: because players aren't certain if they're being manipulated, or if that's really just how the other player is feeling. The fact that the possibility of manipulation is a live one is what creates this hesitancy to begin with. I also share Orlok's hesitancy to become a player who immediately and reflexively is forced to question whether emotion is genuine or utilised as I feel this creates a very bad set of meta-expectations, though I admit it's probably too late for me for RL reasons that don't have anything to do with forum stuff.

1 hour ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Someone who worries that a post or PM they're writing veers into emotionally manipulative territory can send the draft to the IM to look at. A player who feels that another player is unfairly using emotion to drive an argument should also talk to the IM about it, which may lead to a conversation between the IM and that other player. Approximately how much leeway should be allowed for emotional arguments before the possibility of intervention should be discussed here, but the IM will listen to any concerns that pop up in game.

I would agree with this, but that's partly why the model case I'm currently looking at is a bit tricky: in theory, players are adults (hopefully?) and should be able to regulate well, but this does not always come about. Under pressure or in extremis, these emotions can leak, and I think part of the conversation worth having is to say how we should respond/react to such cases. These too wouldn't be emotion-driven arguments: this would be players reacting to the raw emotion radiating off the player and choosing to behave in particular ways in response.

More along the lines of: Player X is no longer having fun, I don't want to do this, I should stop.

I agree with El (I do not remember whether in the AG thread or here) that we don't want emotion to be a clear sign that the player is Village because that's counterproductive, and as Araris pointed out, and I agree with, players will feel emotion, whether Village or Evil. But I think there's a bigger question of how we should handle those emotions (wow look at me, so very much one to talk) and if there is a responsible way to handle them. Because I think in the scenario I outlined, a series of perfectly normal and understandable emotional responses from both players can lead to a cascade of consequences, drama, and potentially poison the goodwill the community relies on.

This is where I think part of this does kick the can up to the IM, but also part of this has to be discussed or expectations set/people resolve this prior to needing IM engagement. (Cf. part of the issue is, perhaps, not ending up in the mire to begin with and needing the IM to haul both of you out and yell at you.)

In the other interactions I reference, there has been a similar dynamic at play, though again, fortunately it was a V/V brawl anyway. 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Kasimir

[|TJ| he/him]

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to mention this or if I should post this in QF59 Aftermath thread or just mention it on Discord and I didn't mention it earlier, because it's sorta game-related but this is in reference to the first time @Amanuensis lost parts of the content of his post in the QF and the likely reason behind it. I think it's because while multi-quoting specifically inside a spoiler box, if we try to undo using Ctrl + Z, I've noticed it doesn't just remove the last letter or word. It removes everything we've typed since quoting something last (including that particular quote box) and redoing using Ctrl + Y doesn't work here. I'm not sure if it happens every time or the frequency of this occurring, but I've personally noticed this while typing up the sign-ups for MR49. So this is just a 'be careful' kinda thing from me when undoing stuff inside a spoiler box with quotes in them.

[Archer he/him]

I've got a proposal for a new rule/best practice.
-To improve accessibility for the colourblind, all vote retractions are put in brackets.
-To make votes easier to find, all votes are put at the end of posts. Ideally on a separate line from other text.
I know we already (are supposed to) bold votes to improve their visibility, but I think we're less likely to miss votes if they're always in the same spot. For GMs, it means the difference between having to scan entire posts versus just checking the end of them. It might not be a huge time savings, but it'd probably improve their peace of mind once full implementation is achieved.
I actually think putting votes at the start of posts would make them easier to locate, but it's less intuitive for people who decide who they're voting for as they write. This also allows you to continue embedding your votes organically in a paragraph, since precedent says the last vote listed counts, so so long as you repeat the votes at the end of the post, there won't be any confusion.
Thoughts on a more efficient strategy or whether this is worth the effort?
Example (Retraction)

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

22 minutes ago, Archer said:

I've got a proposal for a new rule/best practice.
-To improve accessibility for the colourblind, all vote retractions are put in brackets.
-To make votes easier to find, all votes are put at the end of posts. Ideally on a separate line from other text.
I know we already (are supposed to) bold votes to improve their visibility, but I think we're less likely to miss votes if they're always in the same spot. For GMs, it means the difference between having to scan entire posts versus just checking the end of them. It might not be a huge time savings, but it'd probably improve their peace of mind once full implementation is achieved.
I actually think putting votes at the start of posts would make them easier to locate, but it's less intuitive for people who decide who they're voting for as they write. This also allows you to continue embedding your votes organically in a paragraph, since precedent says the last vote listed counts, so so long as you repeat the votes at the end of the post, there won't be any confusion.
Thoughts on a more efficient strategy or whether this is worth the effort?
Example (Retraction)

I like this, although the bold being necessary at the bottom would be annoying, as bold is at the top of the post editor. You could use [ b ], but that is also time consuming, especially with color already being needed to be put in on mobile.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

On 4/30/2022 at 6:19 PM, The Unknown Novel said:

I like this, although the bold being necessary at the bottom would be annoying, as bold is at the top of the post editor. You could use [ b ], but that is also time consuming, especially with color already being needed to be put in on mobile.

A quick fix to this is using ctrl + b to change to bold. At least on computer. It is a little annoying on mobile, but a little annoyance would be better for everyone if it saves the GMs headaches.