Fwurg

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I would like to have the newly accepted laws and modifications (i.e., the Bozzy Spine Connection law and the Tax deductable technology research law ) on the wiki.

Altough I could easily update the wiki myself, I think it's better for an admin to do this (I would need to post the law text, and immediately tag it with unvalidated, as I'm not the authorative law-writer).

So I hereby apply for the position of co-admin (or moderator, wiki gardener, bureaucrat of the fifty-seventh rank, whatever you want to call it).


As an aside, we'll sort out how this is going to work in this thread, and we might even make a list of possible 'positions' or ranks for players wanting to help out admin with parts of the game. As an example, I think that tax-reports could also be checked by players, as long as you don't check your own report.

[Sundarian Federation]

I would have no problem with taking up some of the workload concerning the checking of Tax reports and such..

[Praetorian Empire]

I agree that we need to balance the work more. I am active enough and could do tasks like checking turn reports as well. We should probably have some more explicit ranking system for administrator tasks. Its important that it is clear who is responsible for what.

[Mercury]

I consider Fwurg to be a collaborative effort - player involvement in both IC and OOC decisions is of a very high level, well beyond any other RP game I have played in. As such, I think both the proposal of Brend (who has been especially active) joining up as administrator, and players participating in certain tasks are excellent idea's and I approve!

I don't really want to create a deep system of hierarchies and ranks that you need to acquire before you are allowed to take up this or that task. I think having a basic grouping of players and GMs is more then enough (actually the line between the two is very thin in this game).

I think certain tasks can easily be open to all players: approving turns, helping with various development stuff, even designing proposals for new rules, technologies, climates, etc. I can even see a player running a one-shot Jedi adventure at some point - might even be at their own planet.

As a GM, you'd probably do such things more easily and have the additional responsibility of making rules, running NPC's, moderating, various technical stuff. With the added advantage of making official decisions.

I would propose the following guidelines to help things run smoothly (both for GM's and players) - Please comment / add to / etc.:

1. Don't GM yourself - i.e. don't approve your own turn report, run a story with your own PC as a player or sanction a technology you designed yourself
2. Check with others - We have a very collaborative game, and I'd like to keep doing this together.
3. Don't forget to have fun - Fwurg isn't a job ^_^ Its for fun

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I agree that we need to balance the work more. ... We should probably have some more explicit ranking system for administrator tasks. Its important that it is clear who is responsible for what.

+

I don't really want to create a deep system of hierarchies and ranks that you need to acquire before you are allowed to take up this or that task. I think having a basic grouping of players and GMs is more then enough (actually the line between the two is very thin in this game).

= ...?

I'm not sure about this yet. I think I have to agree with Chris that it might be useful to have a simple list of responsibilities. It doesn't have to be a deep system of ranks and hierarchies -- but it is good to have clear responsibilities. Maybe we should have some simple 'badges'?

These badges would serve two purposes: making clear who is responsible for what: this is especially important when new players join. Just having a group of GMs is a little confusing; it is a bit weird to see GMs just run around playing their own faction.

Secondly, the badges offer some recognition for the players toting them around. Just calling everyone that has some administrative duties or perks 'GM' doesn't really feel like we recognize the effort they put into the game. We should of course have a serious 'game master' badge for the admin -- unless admin is truly humble in which case a small badge will suffice

[Mercury]

In many of the online roleplaying environments I visit, game masters are often players as well - this is not generally a problem. To help clarify position and identify with what "hat" someone is speaking, there is usually a separate GM account used for GMing which is recognisable.

I can probably make a usergroup for GM accounts and give them their own special colour, like how 'admin' is always displayed in red. Would that fit with what you are imagining or do you have different idea's? I'm open to suggestions

[Veolian Commonwealth]

That would be a good start.

My point of clarifying responsibilities is mainly for the benefit of new players: I for example, am new to this online RP thing. And I would be thoroughly confused if I saw a bunch of players running around with GM-hats on. I would however, love to see who is able to check jedi, and ask them pointed questions on Jedi construction (it helps me determine who's opinion to value in the Game Questions forum). I think we should keep in mind that for the player base to grow, we need the game to be accessible to both veteran (online) RP'ers and those new to the concept.

With this little players, we don't really need any further distinctions. But when the player base grows, I think it is best to have a clear idea of who is responsible for what. This is especially useful for things like turn-report checking or system and Jedi validation -- you don't really need to be a GM for that: you only need to be thorough and have a working know-how of the rules.

Maybe the term 'badge' is poorly chosen, and 'qualification' might be better. Whatever you call them, the idea behind the badges system was as follows: as I see it there are multiple types of GMs:

• First off, you have admin. Admin is the 'boss' of all GMs (admin runs the complete game, and has GM-word is final, as far is GM-words go).
• Someone with the GM badge posts accepted laws to the wiki, might take up part of running an adventure, and does GM-like jobs in general. (In accordance with the guidelines stipulated above)
• Someone who has the 'Turn Auditor' badge does just that, he takes up part of the work of turn checking, but he does run games, etc.
• Someone with a 'Jedi and System Checker' badge does that, they validate Jedi and Systems (could be split out if need be).
• Some other important things (don't know any yet).

I'm not advocating a strict distinction or seperation of 'authorized' actions: the point is that although a lot of people really help out, they are not actual GMs. They don't change the rules by themselves (nobody really does around here); and they don't speak with the admin voice. But they are important or knowledgeable and they should be recognizable as such.

We can also do it the other way around. Let co-GMs update the 'badge' page themselves, and give a list of things they feel responsible for. We can always worry about giving them some visual recognition at a later point in time.


As I have no experience with online RP's, I'm leaving this in admin's hands -- but I like the idea of having a GM group for players that also co-GM, and maybe a simple wiki page that lists some of the responsibilities of these GMs (and of course the guidelines set out above as well). I think this will clarify a lot to new players.

EDIT: By the way: make 'em gold instead of red.

[Mercury]

Okay, I have a better idea of the direction your thinking now - you'd have a list of badges, each covering a certain area of expertise with associated responsibilities. Though with 6 players, that might be slightly excessive, it would help clarify things if the player base comes to be numbered in the twenties or thirties.

What I am worried about is creating a hierarchy where one person is perceived as more important because they have more badges. I don't consider myself more important than any of you - ironically my own solution did not fully alleviate this problem either.

For that reason, I really like the "other way around" approach. It removes any dividing line between "the GM team" and "everyone else", since anyone can be part of the GM team in whatever capacity they desire and feel confident about.

That leaves a question as to how to implement this, however, as it won't be as simple as making a usergroup and setting their colour to gold.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

In my mind, 'more badges' did not equal 'more important', but I see how this is easily confused (again: especially for new players).

The other way around should work. It is good to remove the dividing line between, though there will always be a little bit of vetting required. I also think there will always be a a little bit of seperation; even if only because players expect a certain level of behaviour of GMs.

That being said, I think the implementation of this will be as straightforward as most other things that we decide to change. After some thinking and deliberation (that's what this thread is for) we try it out, and see if it works.

To this end we might actually start out as simple as making a usergroup and setting their colour gold. This, together with a page that gives a simple overview of the GM-teams qualifications, means we're there right?

[Mercury]

I have added a group 'GMs', with the gold colour and manually added brend. The group is set to "open" and you should be able to become a member through the User Control Panel, except the usergroups tab is sorely missing from the list. I don't have a clue why. Maybe I removed it manually at some point, but I can't for the life of me remember how or why. For now I'll add GMs who want their gold by hand...

Btw, we'll need to make a list of badges.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I'll look into a simple list of badges this weekend.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I have taken a stab at creating a simple list of badges. You can have a look at GMs.

I would like for the other players to have a look, and see if I missed something, or if they could be reorganized into a better collection. Do not hesitate to update the wiki if you think it can be done better (but please post the idea behind your changes here as well).

I couldn't make up my mind on the "<something> Balancing" badges, as there is a certain level of interaction to be expected between the different parts of the game. Maybe we should just refactor those badges into a more generic 'is knowledgeable about' type of badges?

[Sundarian Federation]

These balancing things usualy range over more then just a single field. there i feel that creating separate badges for them might not be the best choice, as most of these things have been handled with some form of a discussion between Admin and several individuals.

As for my application, I am will to take up Turn auditing and System approval, where i'll also shine my light over economic balancing.

[Brend]

See my post in Re: NPC colour.

[Mercury]

I read the 'badges' text and have some idea's (numbered for ease of discussion):

1) The text lists applying for the position. This implies there is some sort of interviewing / testing / approval process. I'd rather change the wording of this to a notification so their GM account can be marked as this implies less of a barrier to "get the gold".

2) Perhaps the word "badges" isn't perfect (though I can't currently come up with a better one). If anyone has a better idea, I'm curious, though badges does cover what needs to be so it doesn't need to change unless we have a better alternative.

3) We currently split up between Auditor badges (for checking new stuff designed by players) and Balancing badges (for balancing rule changes). But the auditor badges also include some rule balancing. What was the reason behind this?

[Brend]

Replies to:

1) Agreed. This can go away as we are not colouring GMs any more. I will update this immediately -- but I will add the suggestion that the badges be added to the signature of the OOC account; this increases visibility.

2) Agreed as well. The only thing I could come up with was 'Qualification', but that sounds to official for my taste.

3) The reason behind this was that auditing is mostly checking if everything complies with the current rules, while balancing is judging changes or additions to those rules. It might be unclear due to the phrasing I used. The intention was to indicate that it might be necessary to contact someone with enough know-how to actually judge the balance of the proposed additions. (e.g. I'm comfortable with auditing a Jedi, but I'm not comfortable with judging a new combat style for said Jedi).

But seeing how they turned out, I'm not really happy with the badge divisions either. If someone has a better division, edit away!

[Praetorian Empire]

added myself to the list.

[Brend]

How about we call rename the badges to "confidences"?

It's not completely correct to use the word like that, but it does convey the intention of the 'badges'. They are meant to indicate what you feel confident in.

[Mercury]

How about "competences"? Since you are (presumably) competent in these area's.

I'm not currently sure what to do with the gold - should this be applied to anyone with a badge / confidence / competence / thingy, or if not what will the requirements be?

[Brend]

"Competences" sounds good.

let's just drop the gold and apply it only to those using a narrator hat. This reduces the ammount of intimidating colors on 'normal' accounts, while still making absolutely sure that narrators are easily distinguishable (the distinction between the narrator hat and OOC accounts should be very clear, I think).

PS. If you don't want a 'gap' between players and GMs, why is admin dark red? Aren't you just another person participating in the game as well? Why is the account called 'admin' anyway -- that's basically a technical term -- isn't it better to use a Mercury (GM) account or something? Admin seems to me like just creating the gap anyway by putting a single person at a distance.

[Mercury]

The red colour you get for free with the forum.

The point is well taken: I think it is a good idea to make a GM account for running stuff. I don't know how much I am allowed to change so I might have to make a new account rather than simply change name and I am not sure if I can change my colour.

EDIT: Apparently, I can change my colour!

EDIT 2: And my name worked too and I didn't even break anything! Yay!

[Brend]

I updated the GM page on the wiki to talk about competences instead of badges. Please update your signatures to match.

I'm still not sure about the distinction between balancing and auditing, but I think there should be one. I still don't feel confident to actually a new climate (mainly due to the lack of information on internal mechanics calculations that seem to be done by Mercury for each change), while I do feel confident to audit a new system.

Maybe we the name is the problem, and it's not the balancing that's the issue?

[Mercury]

Thanks, the change looks good! Your point regarding the names could well be it. Let's see how it goes.

Btw, I removed the NPC colour of blue and instead gave NPC's the NPC sub-title - this should help avoid confusion. I decided to keep the Site Admin sub-title on this account to avoid confusion regarding who manages the machine, but if people want various sub-titles, I'm sure we can help there.

Also, brend, I can give you a capital B if you want

[Brend]

I'd rather have a capital ship! But go ahead, I'll make do with a B.

[Mercury]

Fixed!