Recruiting for family - player input sought

[Adhira]

Hey all,

We've noticed an upswing in recruitment for families through the gdb as well as an increase in the number of family groups going through application. We've also noticed that the concept's of 'family' vary wildly from an application for a brother and sister through to a group of siblings mixed in with cousins, servants and loyal faithful retainers.

We have a restriction on pre-forming clan groups in an OOC manner as we feel that these groups have a distinct OOC advantage in that they often equate to instant trust, common goals and agreed upon roles and conventions. This bypasses a lot of the RP that others go through in game building up to a level where groups can work together. We allow the family groups as we realise there are occassions where people want to play with each other, where having a sibling or a parent in game can add to the dynamics of RP.

What we'd like to do is write up some more specific guidelines around the concepts of 'family' applications. This will allow players to have a better idea of what we expect to see in these pre-formed groups and give us, as staff, a process to fall back on when reviewing the applications.

So far we're kicking around a bunch of ideas such as restricting family size, requiring an email through to independants staff for sign off prior to application and asking that families are all of the same racial background.  What do you all think? Is this going too far, not far enough? Please put your feedback in this thread so that we can pick over your brainz and incorporate the findings into our documentation.

[Malken]

So far we're kicking around a bunch of ideas such as restricting family size, requiring an email through to independants staff for sign off prior to application and asking that families are all of the same racial background.  What do you all think? Is this going too far, not far enough? Please put your feedback in this thread so that we can pick over your brainz and incorporate the findings into our documentation.

I like that. To me, lately, it feels like the players are pushing it just a tad too much with their offers, up to the point of requesting specific classes to play in their 'family'. It is also my firm belief that there's ALWAYS ooc communication after you've accepted the role,
be it via PM or AIM or whatever, I'm willing to bet that nearly 99% of those who matches up with someone else in a family role starts some sort of OOC communication together.

It also feels like it's often always the same players starting families of their own with every new characters they create, while the rest of us go through making friends and contacts via IC means.

I was playing on another RPI mud not so long ago and they had this nice family opportunity as well, then when I got accepted in, they told me of their AIM chatroom and when I got there, they were all talking about how they would take over a shop and what exactly
everyone should do then. (Some of the players are/were even playing on Arm, I later discovered, meh.)

The more restricted those 'family' roles would be, and watched by the Staff, the happier I'll be. I hate having to start re-adding names to my AIM list just so I can feel like I'm 'equal' advantage-wise to the rest of the playerbase.

[mansa]

I think a size restriction of 7 members might be cool.
- that includes parents, brothers, cousins, etc.


I think a bio entry about each sibling, should both be written on each character involved.
- So if you have 2 other family members in game, you have 2 separate entries about each sibling, and both of them have one about you.


I think family members with the same mother, but different fathers would exist - hence a half-elf family member to a human.


That's all I got to say about it.  I think the bio idea would be very cool.

[Cutthroat]

I like the ideas presented, and would also suggest that the "leader" of the family (the person who put up the recruitment post) submit weekly reports just like the leaders of any clan, to describe how the other family members are doing, what sorts of things they're doing IG, and such. I like mansa's idea with bios.

[staggerlee]

So far we're kicking around a bunch of ideas such as restricting family size, requiring an email through to independants staff for sign off prior to application and asking that families are all of the same racial background.  What do you all think? Is this going too far, not far enough? Please put your feedback in this thread so that we can pick over your brainz and incorporate the findings into our documentation.

I like that. To me, lately, it feels like the players are pushing it just a tad too much with their offers, up to the point of requesting specific classes to play in their 'family'. It is also my firm belief that there's ALWAYS ooc communication after you've accepted the role,
be it via PM or AIM or whatever, I'm willing to bet that nearly 99% of those who matches up with someone else in a family role starts some sort of OOC communication together.

It also feels like it's often always the same players starting families of their own with every new characters they create, while the rest of us go through making friends and contacts via IC means.

I was playing on another RPI mud not so long ago and they had this nice family opportunity as well, then when I got accepted in, they told me of their AIM chatroom and when I got there, they were all talking about how they would take over a shop and what exactly
everyone should do then. (Some of the players are/were even playing on Arm, I later discovered, meh.)

The more restricted those 'family' roles would be, and watched by the Staff, the happier I'll be. I hate having to start re-adding names to my AIM list just so I can feel like I'm 'equal' advantage-wise to the rest of the playerbase.

I advertised for a family member of a different race and non-blood relation. Under the circumstances I felt that it was an extremely appropriate thing to do. I sent an email to the MUD to explain it, and had an intricate history already written.

I kept the MUD account appraised as to what I was doing, and received encouraging feedback. I don't really know if it was necessary, but it felt like the right thing to do.

I'd like room to flex when recruiting for roles, I don't think that limiting it to immediate family, the same race, or an arbitrary size cap is necessary. (Though I can't see much cause to have more than 3-4 people in a family, as often clans don't have more than that.)  I do however understand the borderline abuse that Malken is describing. However: Organizing on the board is a fairly transparent process, staff can watch it and make a note to check up on what's going on. I'd rather the organizing happen there than over AIM.

I would suggest that when recruiting for a family role players be asked to have a history written in the in game bio, and an explanation sent to the appropriate staff. (clanned or unclanned accordingly)  I'd suggest that the recruited player be asked the same thing.  That requires that some amount of thought, effort and transparency are involved in the process.

You can't stop people from organizing things ooc.  You can encourage good behavior. I don't want the people using the tools for legitimate purposes to be unnecessarily restricted because a few people are playing fast and loose.

I like the ideas presented, and would also suggest that the "leader" of the family (the person who put up the recruitment post) submit weekly reports just like the leaders of any clan, to describe how the other family members are doing, what sorts of things they're doing IG, and such. I like mansa's idea with bios.

I'm absolutely against this. It encourages the idea that there's ooc networking and goals going on. The family is not a goal oriented organization, and half the time they should be at conflict, estranged, or otherwise not cooperating toward the same ends.

Not that sending in weekly updates is bad, just not progress reports on your family.

[Cutthroat]

I was thinking that those instances of non-cooperation should be described just as much as instances of cooperation. And perhaps it should be expanded so all players of family members do this?

[brytta.leofa]

Each player should generally be allowed to arrange close blood relationships out-of-character without restriction.  Let Amos' player arrange a father or mother, full or half-siblings, and children over 13 without special scrutiny.

Don't allow mate arrangement out-of-character; this means that you can't create a family with PC father and mother.

Don't allow a player to arrange relatives past the immediate family (parent, sibling, child), or "siblings" who aren't actually related (a stepparent's child).

(All this unless a special arrangement's been made, of course.)

[Marauder Moe]

My thoughts on the matter:

I definitely like the idea of putting some sort of limit on family "clans".  4 seems like a fair number.

I also agree that the "endless cousins" recruiting is borderline abusive.  I would suggest that in addition to a cap on active family PCs that there be a post-family-creation (OOC) recruitment limit of like 1 or 2 per RL year.

Children born IG perhaps could be exempt from some or all of these restrictions (13 years later, of course).

However, were restrictions on family roles like this put in place, could we perhaps broaden the label from "family" to simply "preexisting relationship"?  Let people start small groups of childhood friends, mates, adopted family, or independent masters with slaves.

EDIT:
Also, if caps and recruitment limits aren't enough, starting (and maybe even joining) one could count as a special application in terms of each player's annual limits.  This would account for the extra staff attention needed to approve a multi-character family concept.

[Malifaxis]

As one of the folk who lived through The Klestion Years (yeah, you.  For those who don't know, LARGE family from about 2002 or something), I am strongly against prefab families.  Fuck that.  We have to struggle and fight and worry about if X is going to backstab us, so should everyone else.

However, as one of the folk who helped eliminate The Klestion Problem (yeah, you, I took two of you out and had fun cutting up both bodies, one of you while still alive), I can't encourage them enough, just because I love killing them so damn much.  So much, in fact, that Spawnloser and I designed a dish called The Klestion.

Take one large steak, cook it so it's seared on the outside, nice and pink and bloody on the inside.  Take several slices of your favorite cheese and melt them over the top in the oven.  We're talking a -lot- of cheese.  Then open up a pack of Twinkies, and set them to the side.  Drink with a good beer or a mix of 99 Bananas and Chocolate Milk (50/50).

All seriousness, however, I think limits of amount of players involved in a family (5 at max, imfho) and race limits to ONE step away (humans can have half-elves, half elves can have humans and elves) would go a lot towards clearing this bullshit up.  Cousins?  Fuck that.  I have cousins I would gleefully push off of a cliff because they're fucking ninnyhammers who are polluting my gene pool.  Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, THAT IS IT.  Personally, I would greatly appreciate some oversight on these fuckers (yeah, you) just so they don't pull some bullshit like they have in the past.

Also, in no fucking case whatsoever should the 'recruiting' family member be able to hold sway over what goddamn class the incoming player is.  NONE.  I don't give a fuck if your history is that he's a 20 year Byn Sarge and fucks mek's in the ass for a laugh.  If the incoming player wants to make him a fucking merchant, they should be able to play a goddamn merchant, no matter what you fucking say.  That shit is bullshit, right there, and I'm calling it.

em drops some gas and a match on ~soapbox before walking the fuck away into a sunset which magickally appears for his exit even though it's one fucking PM in the aftergoddamn noon.

[spicemustflow]

I can't help but be very curious about The Klestion Problem now.

[staggerlee]

As one of the folk who lived through The Klestion Years (yeah, you.  For those who don't know, LARGE family from about 2002 or something), I am strongly against prefab families.  Fuck that.  We have to struggle and fight and worry about if X is going to backstab us, so should everyone else.

My ideal family would probably increase my struggles, fighting and backstabbing. No way would I want a smooth ride. I don't think family should be like guaranteed allies.

Oh and yeah. There should be no talk of class. Just a rough history that the staff and players all have access to.

[Marauder Moe]

Also, in no fucking case whatsoever should the 'recruiting' family member be able to hold sway over what goddamn class the incoming player is.  NONE. 

Oh yeah... I strongly agree with this too.

Though, I guess an exception would be requiring nomad subguild for tribal families.  Magickers too I suppose (but I'd hope the staff would be quite leery of allowing a magicker family).  Cavilish-speaking families... eh, that's iffy.  Perhaps players wishing to do this need pre-approval from the staff that anyone who joins will be given Cavilish regardless of their chosen guild.

[staggerlee]

Also, in no fucking case whatsoever should the 'recruiting' family member be able to hold sway over what goddamn class the incoming player is.  NONE. 

Oh yeah... I strongly agree with this too.

Though, I guess an exception would be requiring nomad subguild for tribal families.  Magickers too I suppose (but I'd hope the staff would be quite leery of allowing a magicker family).  Cavilish-speaking families... eh, that's iffy.  Perhaps players wishing to do this need pre-approval from the staff that anyone who joins will be given Cavilish regardless of their chosen guild.

1) They can describe a role as laid out in the history, but not class. Pretty sure we'll be unanimous on that.
2) Magicker they can kind of call for, if you've been playing a character with a gemmed family member they clearly won't be a warrior or ranger. Like #1, just describe the role and let them guess what class works best.
3) Cavilish? Meh. That kind of thing would go through special app like anything else. You'd call for a merchant family, and lay out the role, what class they chose and whether they special apped for their warrior to get cavilish would be their own issue.

[Gimfalisette]

Children born IG perhaps could be exempt from some or all of these restrictions (13 years later, of course).

Also, in no fucking case whatsoever should the 'recruiting' family member be able to hold sway over what goddamn class the incoming player is.

Sometimes there are circumstances which have actually been RPed out in game which might determine the eventual guild of a child PC. If so, the imms would be aware of these from prior communication, I'm pretty sure. I can't really elaborate more, but--I'm saying that there definitely are possible exceptions specifically for ICly born child PCs.

I think having a hard limit on the quantity of family members would be OK, and I think limiting families to "nuclear family" blood relations would probably be a good thing.

I definitely think that there should be no setting of recruited PCs' guilds or other details by the primary recruiter, other than my exception noted above. I think most details about the recruited PCs should be up to their players--name, age within a range, many details of background. Recruited PCs should not tell the recruiter which guild they've picked, and vice versa. Recruited PCs should not be expected to join the recruiter's clan or organization--though that's fine if it happens ICly.

I'd also like to see PC families looking like one another. All the same race is preferable.

I did run a very interesting PC family once and the above are the guidelines I used, mostly. There was soooooo much conflict and drama. It was very awesome. Yes, there was some kind of base loyalty there due to family ties, but it honestly was not that strong by default--it had to be built on in game, or not built on.

[mansa]

I can't help but be very curious about The Klestion Problem now.

The Klestion problem is just an OOC Communication problem.

Someone "died", and soon -everybody- knew about it, proclaiming it, were trying to get revenge, even though they were killed in absolute secret.

So I recall...  I was played Oseres Kadius at the time, and didn't much bother with anything outside finding a better drink.

[staggerlee]

I don't understand the necessity of blood or even race.

I think it should be more about the relationship. An adopted father seems just as legitimate as a blood one, and gives more room to  play around. I'd rather have a full range of creatively designed relationships, and not just calls for brothers,sisters,fathers and mothers because that's what we've demanded people stick to.

If people are trying to build a gang and abuse the system they'll just call them all cousins or brothers anyway, so it doesn't stop that, but it does limit the creative potential of others.

I'm mostly basing this off of my own experiences with the system, and opportunities I had that I wouldn't want to see others deprived of in a futile attempt to stop a few people's abuse.

[AmandaGreathouse]

Personally, I don't see a very big issue with it. Starting out with only VNPC allies is an OOC thing, not an IC one. -Everyone- has some form of kin or friendships from earlier in thier lives. I don't see the issue with allowing them to express that. Cousin, uncle, Ox-named-blue, not a big thing to me. I know there's likely going to be one or two people that come along and abuse to to start up their own gang, but keeping them from recruiting for it is only more likely to make it a completely unmonitored ooc thing. Nothing like having a shitton of people IMing about it with no regulations:

twinkluv: yeah, my sdesc is: The shaggy, yuku-tressed woman
l33tg4m3r: sweet.
twinkluv: remember, it wasn't the tall muscular elf that backstabbed me, it was the short muscular elf.
l33tg4mer: gotcha. dont worry, we'll take him down 4u.
twinkluv: Your still playing in Tuluk, right?
l33tg4mer: Hells yes. my short is: The hawk-eyed lass.
twinkluv: Alright. Let's make our char's be friends or whatever from b4 we started playing them.
l33tg4m3r: We can even split an apartment and stuff.

Just my take.

[Lizzie]

I don't see anything 'borderline' about the abuse involved in players OOCly recruiting for family members. To me, it's clear-cut abuse. It's a way to synthetically create an IC roleplay group in an OOC way, bypassing the IC trust issues. To me, it is the ones who play it legitimately who are the exception, and the abusers who are the rule.

So it's pretty simple to me: any families of my PCs are virtual, unless they are in a sponsored role where the Staff has approved/denied the family relations (such as if I was playing a noble - my PC family is whoever the staff says it is, not who *I* choose for it to be).

Personally if it were up to me, ANY family relation outside of the established "IMM-sponsored" houses/tribal groups would be considered a special app, whether brother/sister or mother or 3rd cousin twice removed on the man's step-father's concubine's side. Mundane, Magicker, or Mindbender - if they're related and you want it to be an OOCly recruited role, it should have to pass through the special app process.

It'll make people think twice before recruiting for these roles, and it'll make people think twice before applying for them. If it's important enough, you'll do it. It's equally annoying, I can imagine, to agree to be a "leader's" brother/sister/cousin, only to log in from the Hall of Kings and discover the guy who recruited you is dead. Or stored. Or his player left to play WoW for a month. Or his mom made him stop mudsexing.

IMM-approved or bust. That's my take on it.

[staggerlee]

I don't see anything 'borderline' about the abuse involved in players OOCly recruiting for family members. To me, it's clear-cut abuse. It's a way to synthetically create an IC roleplay group in an OOC way, bypassing the IC trust issues. To me, it is the ones who play it legitimately who are the exception, and the abusers who are the rule.

So it's pretty simple to me: any families of my PCs are virtual, unless they are in a sponsored role where the Staff has approved/denied the family relations (such as if I was playing a noble - my PC family is whoever the staff says it is, not who *I* choose for it to be).

Personally if it were up to me, ANY family relation outside of the established "IMM-sponsored" houses/tribal groups would be considered a special app, whether brother/sister or mother or 3rd cousin twice removed on the man's step-father's concubine's side. Mundane, Magicker, or Mindbender - if they're related and you want it to be an OOCly recruited role, it should have to pass through the special app process.

It'll make people think twice before recruiting for these roles, and it'll make people think twice before applying for them. If it's important enough, you'll do it. It's equally annoying, I can imagine, to agree to be a "leader's" brother/sister/cousin, only to log in from the Hall of Kings and discover the guy who recruited you is dead. Or stored. Or his player left to play WoW for a month. Or his mom made him stop mudsexing.

IMM-approved or bust. That's my take on it.

This is a roleplaying game, not a pvp arena.

[mansa]

I'd want a character to 'announce' that they have pre-existing relations in game, somehow during the character creation stage, rather than an email that is separate from the game.

Hmm.  I don't think that can be easily added... so right now we're stuck with an email ahead of time.

... or, the ability to write multiple bio entries during character creation?

[Marauder Moe]

Sure you could.  Mention them in the background, maybe with some sort of tag like "(PC relative)" for anyone you may wish to hand over to a player.  Then, only characters mentioned in an existing character's background with the (PC relative) tag are allowed.

That's how I'd do it, not that I support that particular measure.

[spawnloser]

So far we're kicking around a bunch of ideas such as restricting family size, requiring an email through to independants staff for sign off prior to application and asking that families are all of the same racial background.  What do you all think? Is this going too far, not far enough? Please put your feedback in this thread so that we can pick over your brainz and incorporate the findings into our documentation.

I think none of these would be a problem, except with race allowing for humans and half-elves.

I think a bio entry about each sibling, should both be written on each character involved.
- So if you have 2 other family members in game, you have 2 separate entries about each sibling, and both of them have one about you.

I like this idea, too.  If they're family, you should have members of your family members.  Describe that history and those memories.

However, as one of the folk who helped eliminate The Klestion Problem (yeah, you, I took two of you out and had fun cutting up both bodies, one of you while still alive), I can't encourage them enough, just because I love killing them so damn much.  So much, in fact, that Spawnloser and I designed a dish called The Klestion.

I'm just happy that I was the one that got to make the decision to wipe an entire family off the face of the world... until I was told to stop by the Faithful.  (snicker)

Malifaxis brings up good points, though.  A limit of 5 sounds good to me, because anything above that allows for this family of insta-loyal people to outnumber an entire clan in some cases.  Remember, also, that class is not job... the recruiter can dictate job, but not class, as it isn't their character.  "You can't play a magicker!"  Why not?  My character may be unmanifested.  "You have to be a magicker!"  Oh, even more bullshit.  A family of all magickers?  Magickers can have non-magicker children.  Building a family of magickers is broken, seriously.  "My sister is a vivaduan and my brother a rukkian, my mother a whiran and father a krathi and I'm a drovian!"  No matter how much history you put into this background, I cry pile of shite ten miles high.  You shouldn't even be allowed to tell what guild/sub you are when you are the recruiter... just what is public knowledge.  In the case of magickers, I suppose it is possible to say your guild, but you shouldn't be able to say, "I've a merchant PC..." or "My character's a ranger, but you can..." or ANYTHING like that.  Saying, "My character is a hunter and is known to make some weapons and stuff," is fine.  If your character is an unmanifested magicker, though, you should be restricted like everyone else.

This is a roleplaying game, not a pvp arena.

And we're trying to keep it that way.



Now, for a few new thoughts of my own...

I want NO families that are not IMM approved.  If you want to recruit a family, you should have to talk to the appropriate staff.  All recruitment should be done through the staff as well to ensure that nobody pulls any foul move when they think the staff isn't watching.  Any recruitment for a family member not pre-approved by staff, denied.  Find people being family in game without pre-approval?  Both characters stored.

[Halcyon]

I'd vastly prefer a series of written expectations on player behavior that are enforced in egregrious cases of complaint, far more than moving another catagory of character creation or approvals into the hands of imm's.  Legislating patterns of behavior would have to come at the expense of other imm tasks.

[ibusoe]

Adhira,

I appreciate your reasoning.  I think that this would be problematic.  I doubt that the system can ever truly be made fair.  By making it more difficult for people to register their clan families I think you would be effectively driving a de facto process under ground.  Personally, I'm happier with people representing OOC alliances through "family" process that can at least be recognized by other players and be easily monitored by the staff.

Hey all,

We've noticed an upswing in recruitment for families through the gdb as well as an increase in the number of family groups going through application. We've also noticed that the concept's of 'family' vary wildly from an application for a brother and sister through to a group of siblings mixed in with cousins, servants and loyal faithful retainers.

We have a restriction on pre-forming clan groups in an OOC manner as we feel that these groups have a distinct OOC advantage in that they often equate to instant trust, common goals and agreed upon roles and conventions. This bypasses a lot of the RP that others go through in game building up to a level where groups can work together. We allow the family groups as we realise there are occassions where people want to play with each other, where having a sibling or a parent in game can add to the dynamics of RP.

What we'd like to do is write up some more specific guidelines around the concepts of 'family' applications. This will allow players to have a better idea of what we expect to see in these pre-formed groups and give us, as staff, a process to fall back on when reviewing the applications.

So far we're kicking around a bunch of ideas such as restricting family size, requiring an email through to independants staff for sign off prior to application and asking that families are all of the same racial background.  What do you all think? Is this going too far, not far enough? Please put your feedback in this thread so that we can pick over your brainz and incorporate the findings into our documentation.

[Kevo]

At least one bio entry per recruited family member. I'm not keen on family caps, while reasonable, it seems like any unreasonable actions that are put into your bio would be noticed by staff, and taken care of, hopefully. If you're recruiting for six relatives, your an idiot anyway. Stop stealing the playerbase. OOC communication is just that, OOC communication, it had better not have a damn thing to do with anything IC. Anything IC that results from OOC communication is cheating, unfair, and a crock of shit. Get your facts straight in a PM, IM, email, whatever, then send the whole damn thing to the staff, because if that's too much work for you, you're too lazy to play arm, or you're lying, there's something you don't want them to see. Like the completely powergamish personality you've been hiding from them.

That said, what I expect to see from preformed groups is detailed emails about everything each involved char knows, from each of the involved chars. That way, when amos reveals to you he's been plotting your assassination for the last five years, you can actually be suprised, and not pre-informed from the email you two, three, whatever created.
I expect very smalls groups, nothing more than three or four.
I expect the player to be completely ignorant of everything the char is, ESPECIALLY -anything- involving the future, or very recent events, as in, post-char-creation. If you happened to talk to your cousin about something IG, good, hope you have it logged, because it'd be very poor form for you to suprise the immortals with, 'Oh, we totally talked about making a secret underground racial hate group about six weeks ago, for like, two minutes. So, him recruiting for -my- guild idea was totally IC and good RP'.

More so, I naturally expect any arm player to update the staff and imm's of anything that could even be remotely twinkish, or poor taste out of a natural respect for the people who update your addiction. don't bite the hand that gives you crackageddon freely, don't even look at it wrong.
But that's just a side note aimed at people I know, intended to make them feel guilty for being twinish jerks, and allegedly sharing ooc information likes it's mono at pep rally.

em drops a match onto Tide box, and watches it fizzle out in the darkness.