Over the last several months, I have been keeping an eye on The Gallows. I've noticed a lot of creative number juggling, fake suicides (fixed now that death is permanent) and complete character re-writes with full karma rollover. Not to mention the purchasing of positive qualities post CG.

The Gallows is there so the player base can police its own. So far I've not seen any complaints about what goes on, so it makes me wonder if all the players condone these methods, ignore them, or just don't realize they are going on.

And before the offenders start shouting that this isn't the 'real' game and anything they do is justified simply because Staff doesn't enforce the rules, remember this: It is not the Staff you have to answer to. Its your fellow players.

-Hades

I've actually been looking through it as well.  A few of the players that I've seen in the Gallows are mainly the ones that are completely redoing their characters are brand new players who had no idea how the game operated until now.  Positive qualities CAN be purchased after chargen (Buying a Paragon, getting Home Ground, etc).  In the case of Bubblegum's post chargen Restricted Gear purchase, she had never realized that she didn't purchase the Restricted Gear Positive Quality until just recently.

I'm not saying that everyone on here is honestly doing the correct thing, just the ones that I've personally noticed have had at least a semi legitimate reason for their changes.

And personally (if you haven't noticed my occasional grumbling) I'm among the playerbase that does -not- condone the blatant abuse of the open sheet/chargen/grid/karma system.

The correct way to correct that error is to remove the gear, not buy the quality. If the quality was indeed forgotten, then why the need to spend Karma for it? I don't think Restricted Gear is one of the few you can buy after CG.

And what book and page is the rule for buying qualities after CG, please.

-Hades

Page 270 in the Anniversary Edition.  And I will concede your point on removing the gear.  That is what I personally would have done.

As for the Gallows, I never look at it. As far as I am concerned if a player hasn't hit the grid, they should be able to tweak their character if they messed up in chargen or did something wrong. As for people doing full karma roll overs, that, I am not cool with. At all. Period.

I have several characters with Karma on them that I won't touch and I think that is vastly considered cheating.

However, without someone watching the Gallows (Which we really can't effectively do since we don't know the particulars of why ANYTHING was done on it) it makes it hard to police ourselves because, well, we're not the police. It's one of the flaws with having an essentially staffless system. That said, considering how easy it is to manipulate SR4 at the chargen level anyways... I don't really know how it's going to affect much.

I have characters built I won't ever play because they're simply to 'much' for the average run as it is. But they're perfectly legal.

Green Elf, the Gallows only records actions of people who are already on the grid.

And yes, you are the police. You can investigate problems and solve them on your own. That's what "player-run" means.

Being the person to have found out about the change in Bubblegum's character sheet, expending karma for the mistake, I'm fully happy with the action.  I can give you quite a few reasons for that but the most notable is that she didn't have to change ANYTHING.  Had she merely not been as open about her character sheet as she was with me, she'd of never realized the booboo, never had to expend the karma or whatnot, and still would have the Move By Wires system AND 5 extra BP elsewhere on her character sheet.

My basic assessment is, "Was this character built around this concept?"  "Was what they changed fair and something any GM would've acknowledged and allowed post-CG should something come amiss?"  And to all of these I'd say yes. To have removed the gear would have meant that the character was no longer viable in their original concept.  An original concept fully possible and by the book, because 5 BP is really easy to find on a character sheet.

Full karma rollover?  Why not?  Same player, let them rollover.  Karma is pretty slow on the MU* anyways, and if they've added to the fun of the game and are getting rid of their old character I say, screw it.  Let'em.  Later on when more and more people get higher karma bases, and a character dies, it means they aren't suddenly ousted from the higher karma groups.  It won't matter if the place gets MORE popular, but if they player base stays as it is, all the plots are really going to be for those higher karma characters.  You're bound to lose people.  And if someone only has 6-10 karma anyhow, and wants to do a rollover, than by all means do it!

Those of us who would rather just start fresh, then fine, we do that.  And we re-invent the wheel.  I watch the posts and if there's something I find questionable I @mail the person about it to see why or what they did.  After all I can always not play with the person.  If I think their reasoning is justified, or I think that they aren't hurting game balance by doing so, I won't care.  Which, in most situations, I won't care.  People awarding themselves karma, or money, without a reason next to it that makes sense with the game, that stuff is really the only thing I look for.  At times I've seen skills swapped evenly, which tells me a mistake was made, or the person added the wrong one.  Sometimes I see some equipment removed and money returned, and I'm not shocked, I just think it through that as long as they are small quantities I'm not going to care.

I barely see any rolls, assuming that most people are doing them on grid by themselves, but you know what?  Who cares if I can't see their rolls?  I don't really care if the person was going to get something in 18 weeks but instead gets it in 12.  I really don't.  I'm not in a versus mentality on this MUX.  We'll see.

All I can recommend is if you have a complaint with some action done by some player, private message them or @mail them, asking them why they did something.  Then decide, based upon the answer whether to play with them anymore.

I would have to disagree...if I were the gm I would remove the cyber and refund the money for it.

This isn't about this specific case. This is because we have a small playerbase that has a few very outspoken players. Once in a while one of the less outspoken players will page a staffer and ask something along the lines of, "Can they do that?" And, because this is a player-run game, staff must say, "They can if you let them." However, since the playerbase is small, if you opt not to play with them, essentially that means you don't play at all.

I've brought this up before and I think it bears repeating now: pay attention to the kind of game you're building. Are you building something that will attract and retain a diverse playerbase? Or are you building a private game for closed group of players?

Then the problem is that there aren't more outspoken players.  Which won't change unless they speak up.  My recommendation, as I stated, was to SPEAK UP!  Talk to the player, ask them how this or that happened, why this worked or didn't?  You won't necessarily get a response... but there's no way of operating this game without players talking to players.  I've gotten in quite a few debates already about rules of the game, and it had an effect.  So, why isn't staff telling the players who page them, "Well, don't ask me that question, ask a fellow player or the particular player you are worried about?"  Now you are promoting the player ran environment, instead of making such a downtrodden statement like, "They can if you let them."  It may be true, but instead you can refocus them in a direction that might actually get something done.

The nature of the game is player ran.  So, if we have players who are docile, quiet, and still need someone else to talk for them, they'll naturally either swarm into a clique OR they'll leave.  That can't be helped.  They can talk to one of the players who DO speak and ask them to bring up a point, and I'd be more than happy to do that for anyone.  But that still requires them to speak.

I'm not, on the other hand, going to go around and take a vote on every thing that needs to get done in the game to operate, that only seeks out disruptions.  I'm not going to ask to see everyone's +sheet so I can personally go over it with a fine toothed comb.  I'm going to trust.  Because we are players, only, and no one person's say is higher than another person's, all we have as leverage is either running plots/scenes and refusing to allow in whomever we consider to be abusers of this system, or by shutting up and taking it, if we want to play here at all.  I don't mean that as a rude comment, just a factual one.

I think the nature of a player ran game means that it will be for a closed group of players.  Those able to handle a lack of all powerfulness, those able to speak up, and those able to survive the issues that will pop up either through proactive or passive dealings with the other players.  Those people who want, or are used to a uniform, locked down, MU* experience with all of it's normal bonuses and minuses aren't going to find it here.  What they are going to find is when they log in and they want to play something, no one's going to say no.  People might tell them, "Oh, you might not want to play that here's why..."

When this place first opened as Wild Wild West I thought about all the issues people have told me in the past about player ran games and the first one that always seems to pop up is people will make these hugely powerful things that then go around and massacre everyone else.  When, in testing, it seems we've made quite the opposite.  A pretty care bear based game, where people make plots for one another and work with one another's BGs and implement disadvantages and whatnot from other people's character sheets.  I'd like more conflict, but that's not the player base, not yet anyhow.

An intersecting of BGs comes from a close-knit playerbase.  People who are interested in another person's character enough to help develop it in game.  And I don't just see this every so often, I've been in quite a few character developing plots and I haven't been in that many plots total at all.  That seems good, whatever is happening in the game seems good, overall.  Bad stuff happens, sure, but overall this place has given me a better ability to experiment with characters, develop them, and have people interested in them, than any staff ran game I've ever participated in.  I'd like to see that continue, everything else doesn't matter to me.  And I have no clue if it matters to any of the other players until they say something, I will not assume anything on behalf of the silent masses.  I think that's just rude.

I would play more, but all my old gamers have been driven away. Whatever am I to do?

Tell them to come back?  Play with that group?

That's one of the longest rationalizations I've ever read. Basically NES appears to be saying that a player-run (not "ran") game is by definition a closed game. I find that troubling--the whole point of this exercise is to make the game more accessible.

As far as I can see, the answer to my question about what the players are doing to build a diverse base is nothing? Seriously? 

I don't think that NES exactly meant that the game is considered a 'closed game' in that sense.  I think, at least in my interpretation, she meant that this game is a very close knit game where all of us help each other out.  That the people who have a small voice should speak up.  I learned to do that a long time ago.  In essence it gave me more or less a: I don't give a <explicative> attitude.  If I catch people doing something wonky, I'll voice my opinion.  I might turn toward a staffer at first (because that is basically what we've all done for several years on online games), but when I'm redirected with the reminder that we are a player run game and that I should personally call the discrepancy to the surface and have it discussed amongst the player base at large, I do so.

Daiden gets the gold star.

A player run game is going to be a close knit game.  A group of people who come together to play because the game that's being formed matches them.  Most people aren't ready for that.  We've had quite a few guests come in, we help them, we tell them they can play anything, and that players run the game, and guess what?  They leave.  Maybe after a few days, maybe that instant, but they leave. 

The rest of us are people who stayed, and we would have taken them in, tried to be helpful, but the lack of a dictatorship scares people.  The inability to go to someone who takes the responsibility out of your own hands, is not something people are innately comfortable with.  At least not at this stage of MU* culture.  We are doing that, and those of us who stick around to keep it going are the ones who like it and hope to see it flourish.  I think we are growing, steadily, more activity has been on the MU* than I can remember, more plots running on a regular basis, more scenes, more RP on grid, more enthusiasm toward characters, more people finding that one character they want to play with perhaps a few alts kicking around for that 'something new' when things get dull.

As far as 'diverse' goes.  I don't want people who want staff playing on the game.  I don't want people who can't be constructive to play the game, and I don't care if that's because they are quiet and/or shy.  They will see disappointment, and I don't want to disappoint.  I do want people who are looking to try out a staffless game, who do speak up, whom even if shy are willing to put in their two cents to make the place better if only by asking questions.  It all helps.

Diverse as in people with greatly different creative ideas coming into one place to make something, I hope for that in every MU*.  This one though we actually have the opportunity to get out from under the 'one idea' mentality and move with a bunch of different ideas.  We can only do that with people who speak up.  Are different ideas always good? By gosh no.  But it isn't something many of us have been able to experience on a MU* before.

So, the question that gets asked, "What are we doing to encourage a diverse player base on the game?"  I don't know.  I really can't say.  I don't even know how you get a MU* that is any more accessible by people than we've currently got (seeing as people can APPROVE their own characters). What I can say is, whatever we are doing is seemingly bringing in more people.  We aren't competing for the largest SR player base ever, there are times still when I login and there's nobody on, but those are getting to be very few and far between.  There's enough people on that even a few sub groups of runners are starting to form.  So, whatever the hell we're doing I would think we'd like to keep it up.

NES condones questionable practices among friends. Green Elf ignores it. Daiden doesn't notice it until its pointed out to him.

Anyone else?

Please note: I'm not talking about making a change to your sheets because of a CharGen error, a mistake made by you or the code. Mistakes happen. Its how you handle the mistakes that comes to question.

There have been a few very questionable changes posted to the Gallows. I am still curious to know why no one points them out. Is it because you didn't know it, or because you didn't think it appropreate to say anything? Do you ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen? Do you condone it? Are you happy with people making questionable changes? Are you happy with the paper thin reasoning?

Those of you that play are obviously a close knit group. I can see why no one would want to step on toes. So if you do have an opinion, PM or page me. I am very curious to know what you think.

-Hades