I am not suggesting that GMs ban players or ask players not to play. I am saying that allowing someone to play, but only on the condition that they get a certain role or faction is a poor solution and has the potential to break or diminish the game. I think that if we allow someone to play, it should be on the same terms as every other player. If it isn’t, it injects GM preference into the role sorting process in a way that goes against the spirit and object of the game.brainbomb wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2024 1:50 pmNow, as far as a solution to the perplextiy problem. The GMs can refuse a player to play, and in the past these actions have been toxic and met with backlash. It is alot of drama. It is bad publicity, and it reflects poorly on the community to have to publicly tell a player they cant play. As we have seen even with this current issue happening there is a herd mentality here. "US" vs the "GM", or "US vs the "Kouncil" and it spreads like wildfire. it becomes easy and fun and popular to rush to the defense of some thing.
A gm tells someone they cant play, and a flood of people rush to join the disenfranchised person: "if he cant play then im not playing either", "why isnt he allowed to play why are you denying someone from playing".
And of course there is also the opposite "why is he being allowed to play he should be banned", "if he plays im not singing up, nope, not dealing with that".
A GMs game should not become a forum for exacting players personal desires for retribution upon other players. Our job as a GM is to act as a recruiter, a creator, an administrator, a judge, and a caretaker. We have plenty of duties. Deciding on if a player is maybe too unethical to allow to play when they maybe dont even have a formal sanction from the kouncil is going to create toxic drama and negativity, right smack in the middle of when the GM is just trying their heart out to fill their player lists.
As such, I am opposed to the GM telling people they cant play as any solution to how to avoid reranding a setup, or handpicking a rand that causes less damage. I still think this falls under the GM may make these decisions as needed in extreme situations clause.
The only other solution would be the kouncil can bar players from playing who they feel would complicate things.
The only person this level of authority was enacted on was chippeerock who the ban for signups when even above the kouncil, and became an issue for the actual moderation team of webdip, saying he would not be allowed to post or try to signup in these games.
I havent heard someone suggest how to create a fair and drama free system for this. but I also am aware there have been mafia invitational games where only certain players were permitted to sign up, and that was also somewhat shitty as it created cliques within the community of "acceptable" player types, and left out people who were basically just degenerate in their play style. I of course was not invited to that game, and I think doing games like that should probably just be done somewhere else or on a discord, and not meant to make people feel unwelcomed.
thoughts?
As for other solutions to toxic players or blood feuds, I think that’s outside the scope of the issue I wanted to raise — that player-roll assignments should be random.