GM Abuse: Ulterior & Killian

[ActuallyRakaesa]

Hey there, thank you for the report.

The actions of the GM and staff member are unacceptable, and while not malicious, they were not done with due regard. However, I think it's important to acknowledge the novelty of the position for Killian. There will be growing pains, as every person of staff, the gamemaster team, and the mentor team are subject to.

Killian will be receiving a verbal warning with possible future repercussions. The reason for the leniency is that they have had no time to gather the experience expected of an experienced GM. Their application was accepted during the break, so they have only just above two weeks of actual GM experience. It is not unreasonable to conclude that they were not aware of other options or how to properly conduct an event of this scale. I cannot speak to Ultima, however, as he is a staff member and thus it falls under the purview of Head of Staff.

To take a step back and begin viewing the meta report as an admin, rather than a coordinator, here are my thoughts.

This post is a pitiful attempt at disrupting the community by striking at its core members for reasons I can never understand. I will not be punishing these players as the content within the discord isn't sufficient enough to sustain any sort of punishment. Furthermore, the video provided doesn't display any metabaiting or metagaming. Players are allowed to be within a voice chat while they're roleplaying, we've never forbade this. They're also allowed to TALK about an ongoing scenario that they are all being subjected to, we have never disallowed this. In fact, staff do this exact same thing in their own channels. As long as players outside the RP scenario aren't receiving this information, and as long as they don't use it ICly, there's no reason for anything to happen. You have no credence for your claims, much less so given your standing within the community. The very fact that you attempted to usurp members of this community for your own benefit is sickening.

I hope this helps you all in your endeavors.

For sure I don't think this little 'event' warrants either of them losing their position or anything, don't get me wrong. It wasn't a massive deal. But a pattern of gm/staff characters being able to get away by noclipping, or getting somewhere by teleporting, isn't a good thing. It's really not the end of the world, just an indication of possible bigger problems.

 

[Neonity]

I will only be looking into ultima's case here, considering the CT member's part was handled by CT Coordinator's respectively.

When investigating abuse reports, one of the first (and arguably most important) things to determine is someone's intent.
What was the intent behind the admin's actions? Was it to give you a bad time, was it to gain something for their character, was it to cause chaos, etc.

Based on what happened and the answer provided by ultima it's safe to determine his intent was entirely to give players a fun encounter to roleplay with and provide some development to characters in a time where otherwise nothing would really be happening. The admin went out of his way to ensure no characters received any lasting repercussions from the event and even went as far as to apologize to the players involved for the event not unfolding as good as was hoped.

At no point during any of this can I say there was an abuse of power present whatsoever. Instead, ultima tried his best to provide players with a fun and engaging time, but unfortunately, that doesn't always work out the way you want it to. While that can happen, admins shouldn't be disciplined because an event didn't go the way they had planned, or didn't have the effect they were hoping for. Nobody's perfect, and we're sure as hell not all perfect writers or producers. You can't expect them to make perfect blockbuster events all the time. Punishing staff for events that go wrong will only lead to bland, repetitive but safe events, which are boring overall and not creative in the slightest. We shouldn't punish staff for trying to be creative, even if some people didn't like it. I hope you understand.

In terms of the noclip situation, then.

YES, using noclip during ongoing IC situations is bad, and shouldn't typically be done. However, in this case I don't really consider it a major problem considering the character in question was brand new, event-only, and served only to provide an engaging RP encounter. If it was an actual character with development behind it and things to gain or lose, I'd feel different, but in this case it's just a silly 2-minute old event character that can be deleted or recreated at a whim and has absolutely nothing to lose from any of this. It still shouldn't be done, and they know that now, but in the end it's very insignificant, considering the context of the characters and the intent behind the event.

But a pattern of gm/staff characters being able to get away by noclipping, or getting somewhere by teleporting, isn't a good thing. It's really not the end of the world, just an indication of possible bigger problems.

I'd agree with this if these were actual developed characters and not brand new event characters created exclusively to create a harmless RP encounter for players lasting only a few minutes at most. If you can actually point out these "bigger problems" then I'll happily change my stance, but at the moment I've been provided nothing, so I can't.

Apparently I am now marked BOL. Presumably thanks to your 'event', which my citizen was in the middle of, and due to your disappearance, he is likely now a suspect. Thank you so much for that!

I personally looked into your BOL and it was exclusively a BOL for questioning relating to the incident and in no way, shape or form did that BOL mean anything negative towards your character, considering the only reason they wanted to question you was because you were a witness. It was applied by a CP who took part in the event so there was no way for you to be mixed up as the suspect either.

Also, like. I'm the citizen that was there during the interaction, therefore I was involved. And I am not okay with it.

That's fine. We don't (and shouldn't) expect everyone to always be on board with every event people try to run, and it's fine for people to disagree with things or the outcome of said events. You're free to express that as well. However, I wouldn't consider this abuse. Just an event during lowpop that ultimately didn't have the desired effect.

I asked afterwards if this fell in line with the /checkcrime requirement. I've confirmed this in an in-game PM. I was told that this whole interaction did not follow that rule.

Considering the characters used were purely narrative-specific event characters with no intent to cause any harmful effects to any player characters, I do not consider this a big deal. ESPECIALLY since there were enough cops on to partake in the event in the first place. The petty crime requirement was met, and I'd consider this thing a petty crime myself.

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With that, I'll be rejecting this report. Have a nice day.