From: trsnyder@mcs.drexel.edu (Bob Snyder)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: Transcript of the "God Conference on Players' Rights"
Date: 12 Jan 93 16:39:46 GMT
	<1993Jan11.093859.24683@leland.Stanford.EDU>
	<1ish71INNr0k@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>
Organization: ASCI

>>>>> In article <1ish71INNr0k@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>, msjle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
>>>>> (Joi L. Ellis) writes:

Joi> Ask?  Get real.  Every wizard I've talked to has refused to answer my
Joi> questions on policy or basic rules.  I'm left to experiment and
Joi> trial-n-error to find out what the gods allow and what they don't.  I

Every wizard?  One is left to wonder if this is the wizards' fault, or the
player's.  As a god on an LP, and a former wizard for a MUSH, I answer(ed)
every question I get on policy.  Sometimes, though, the answer is "I don't
know" or "I'll have to check to see what the other admins think about that."

Joi> stopped playing SouCon because everything I tried to do that I thought
Joi> would be appreciated turned out to be against the rules.  And these
Joi> rules were never posted.  NONE of those objects were malicious or
Joi> out-of-theme.  I got *really* tired of wasting my time coding objects
Joi> that could never get put to any public use. 

SouCon does have rules posted.  However, I suspect you were bitten by
the "common sense" rule that a lot of muds run under.  If using the
common sense of the administrator, something is "bad", then it is
stopped.  You can't legislate everything.  If you try, you'll spend
more time reading/writting rules than enjoying yourself.  For example,
there's no rule (that I recall) that prevents you from calling
yourself in roleplay the illigitimate love child of Player X.
However, if Player X objects or isn't told, most administrators would
deem this "bad" and put a stop to it.

The problem comes, of course, when your common sense is different from that
of the administrators.  In that case you probably want to move on to a
different mud which is more closely aligned with yourself.

Joi> the legality of some action.  On a mush/mud/lp, who do you ask?  No game
Joi> I've been on has had  100% wizard coverage, and none of them had really
Joi> helpful wizards.  The wizzes on Dragon's Dawn don't answer questions,
Joi> and even basic questions and suggestions get wizard-flamed.

100% coverage is impractical.  However, usually the mud will provide mail...

Joi> Hell, Dragon's Dawn won't even fix drastic damage done to a
Joi> player by a bug in new code.  And they don't have much in the way
Joi> of rules and guidelines online ANYWHERE.  I asked for *that* and
Joi> got flamed by a god and a wizard.

Sometimes this can't be done, as Amby pointed out in a different article.

Joi> The only thing I'd like to see you all agree on is fair treatment for
Joi> your players.  If you write a new combat system that ends up killing
Joi> most of your players, you shouldn't be surprised to hear complaints
Joi> about it, especially when you didn't post anything about the changes
Joi> anywhere.  WHen you change the store code and introduce a bug that
Joi> STEALS MONEY from characters, you should be willing to restore the funds
Joi> if players can produce logs or other proof of their previous status.

Fine.  I don't see a problem with this.  I also don't see a connection with
this and the previous section of your article.

Joi> If players offer suggestions or comments you've heard a million times
Joi> before, but which aren't discussed anywhere in your help or rules
Joi> system, you don't need to jump down their throats about it.   If you
Joi> deliberately boot your game so you can install something on it, and
Joi> don't give your players enough (or any!) warning, you don't need to jump
Joi> on their butts when they complain afterwards.

Sometimes muds need to come down quickly, and often when they come back up,
the admins are quite busy trying to reslove the crisis that caused it to go
down.

Joi> The most frustrating thing I've seen about playing muds/mushes/whatever
Joi> is the high-handed way wizards and gods treat their players.  If you'd
Joi> COMMUNICATE with your players instead of flaming them, you'd all be
Joi> better off.  I detest asking some immortal a question, only to be told
Joi> GO READ THE HELP.  It's not IN the damn help, or I wouldn't be asking!
Joi> 50% of the entries under DD's main help have NOTHING in them, and most
Joi> of the rest are out of date.

I would say quite a bit of the same stuff, except reverse "player" and "god".
Jumping down some god's throat about x, y, or z, when they are volunteering
their time to run a game for your amusement isn't particularly nice, and tends
to irritate them.

Bob
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