Member Discussions

I'd like to hear some input from different MUD Administrators on how they deal with problem players. I've IMMed on a MUD before and I've been running my own for some time. However I don't always have the answer when dealing with certain situations, and thought some other MUD Admins would be willing to share their experiences.

Some questions I have:

1. Do you have a deny/ban policy? Why or why not?
2. If you do have a deny/ban policy, what type of behavior initiates them? Do you have a "3 strikes you're out" type rule?
3. How do you deal with general arrogance and demands from players towards the MUD or towards your position on the MUD? (I.E. Some players that say you're not coding enough, while others are saying you're coding too much and not initiating RP enough).
4. How do you handle disputes between players?
5. How do you deal with cheaters and bug abusers? Do you document past destructive behavior? Do you punish their character in some way (lowering of stats, etc).
6. What types of rules have you had to institute due to player behavior that might be out of the norm?
7. For RPI/RP MUDs, how do you deal with metagamers who focus very little on RP and either control their characters destiny OOC such as pre-planned PK groups or clearly have no interest in anything but powergaming?
8. Do you keep an open relationship with your players or are the game admins/imms fairly ominous? And why?

That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure I'll have more questions :)

1. Do you have a deny/ban policy? Why or why not?

No, because they're ultimately pointless - anyone with a bit of determination and basic knowledge of computers (or even Google) can get around your deny. If someone is behaving in a way that's truly intolerable, silencing/freezing them until they get tired and go away should be sufficient.

3. How do you deal with general arrogance and demands from players towards the MUD or towards your position on the MUD? (I.E. Some players that say you're not coding enough, while others are saying you're coding too much and not initiating RP enough).

With ignoring. If someone asks me questions about subjects in a calm and rational manner, I'd be happy to answer them as to how much time I have in my life for coding or coming up with RP scenarios - but why would I dignify poor behavior with a response?

4. How do you handle disputes between players?

Generally speaking, not at all. My job is to make a game that is an entertaining environment for them to play in, not to help them manage their social lives. If the dispute was to affect the overall MUD community (such as use of the boards or forums), I would curtail such behavior, but I have problems thinking of how the dispute itself would be my problem.

5. How do you deal with cheaters and bug abusers? Do you document past destructive behavior? Do you punish their character in some way (lowering of stats, etc).

I would credit them for pointing out bugs in my code. If there is game-based behavior I don't wish to happen, then I shouldn't allow it to be performed. I can understand that some people doing such things would intend it in a malicious fashion, but it's a game - why would you choose to let yourself get bogged down with tracking behavioral history and meting out punishment? Go be a grade school principal :)

6. What types of rules have you had to institute due to player behavior that might be out of the norm?

See above - the vast majority of rules should be enforced by code, not instituted by Immortals. What exactly do you have in mind for "out of the norm"?

7. For RPI/RP MUDs, how do you deal with metagamers who focus very little on RP and either control their characters destiny OOC such as pre-planned PK groups or clearly have no interest in anything but powergaming?

I've never run an RPI MUD, always RP-if-you-want.

8. Do you keep an open relationship with your players or are the game admins/imms fairly ominous? And why?

From a personal standpoint, why would I want to host a game that's open to people if I don't want to meet and socialize with those people? From a technical standpoint, games without active Immortal interaction lose players.

If someone is behaving in a way that's truly intolerable, silencing/freezing them until they get tired and go away should be sufficient.

Well, deny is kinda the same as freezing, only permanent. I was mainly wanting to see if MUD admin had a policy for each, when they feel it's appropriate to deny (or freeze), etc.

My job is to make a game that is an entertaining environment for them to play in, not to help them manage their social lives.

Well all of my questions were MUD related, not related to their social lives. But in-game disputes do happen, which is what my question was directed at, I suppose I should have been more clear on that?

If there is game-based behavior I don't wish to happen, then I shouldn't allow it to be performed. Go be a grade school principal :)

I can't really tell if you're intentionally trying to make your replies malicious or what. But to respond to your first comment here, the definition of bug abuse is that you don't know about the bug when the player finds it and abuses it. So while you may fix it afterwards, you can't catch everything, and most forms of bug abuse should be comment sense for players. Which is essentially my point in asking that question.

the vast majority of rules should be enforced by code, not instituted by Immortals. What exactly do you have in mind for "out of the norm"?

While it varies by MUDs, you can't enforce most rules by code. Such as MUDs that might enforce an age limit, or MUDs that might restrict sexually oriented roleplay, whatever the case may be.

From a technical standpoint, games without active Immortal interaction lose players.

I've seen quite a few with ominous immortals (Armageddon for one), that are quite successful.



(Comment added by CrystaI on Wed Jun 3 13:06:53 2009)

comment sense = common sense

I'm really not sure how you managed to interpret anything I said as being malicious, so let me assure you it wasn't my intent - I was answering your questions as they were posed. I'll clarify on the points you responded to...

Well, deny is kinda the same as freezing, only permanent. I was mainly wanting to see if MUD admin had a policy for each, when they feel it's appropriate to deny (or freeze), etc.

In the event that there is a person who is spamming obscenities or something like that, I'll silence or freeze them (note that my silence doesn't send the player any silly messages, so they have the impression of shouting all they like and simply being universally ignored). I've Imm'ed on MUD's that felt it necessary to define a policy of when it should be done, but I never saw the point to that as you should have trust in the judgments of the people on your staff.

Well all of my questions were MUD related, not related to their social lives. But in-game disputes do happen, which is what my question was directed at, I suppose I should have been more clear on that?

I'll clarify - I consider the role of an Immortal on a MUD to be preserving and enhancing the gameplay experience for the players. What those players say to each other and their opinions of each other is their social life, not related to gameplay, and therefore not any concern of mine as an Immortal. You can certainly have a different opinion, but I don't know why you'd choose to run a game and give yourself the combined roles of babysitter, marriage counselor and psychiatrist :)

[T]he definition of bug abuse is that you don't know about the bug when the player finds it and abuses it. So while you may fix it afterwards, you can't catch everything, and most forms of bug abuse should be common sense for players. Which is essentially my point in asking that question.

I understand where you're coming from, but let me put it this way. What do you think is more useful to your MUD - punishing a player when he exploits a bug, making him resentful to your administration and more likely to either stop playing your game or exploit future bugs in a more secretive and malicious fashion, or crediting him with helping you to fix and improve your game, making him more likely to explore the functionality of future bugs and tell you about them in a helpful fashion?

While it varies by MUDs, you can't enforce most rules by code. Such as MUDs that might enforce an age limit, or MUDs that might restrict sexually oriented roleplay, whatever the case may be.

I might disagree with you that you can't enforce "most" rules by code, but I'll address your examples. There's really not anything you can do about enforcing an age limit. If you have reason to believe a player is under your age limit, you can ask them to stop playing or even delete their character, but there's nothing to stop them making another (see the above-mentioned ineffectiveness of "deny").

Your ability to enforce the restriction on sexually-oriented roleplay depends on the medium in which roleplay occurs on your game. If it's publicly broadcast, then, obviously, you can tell when it happens. If people roleplay via emotes, it's much harder to tell unless you log all of your players, and the same goes for them roleplaying via tells. Like personal player interactions, this is another issue that's hard for you to control without going to potentially extreme lengths to do so.

Note that code can do a good bit to help you enforce this if you install a language filter into your MUD's parser, but even those can only inconvenience people by forcing them to type alternate spellings or intersperse spaces or some such.

I've seen quite a few with ominous immortals (Armageddon for one), that are quite successful.

I haven't played Armageddon specifically, so I can't speak to their administration style - my reply was simply based off of my own experiences and the multiple posts I've read by other game administrators who reported direct corollaries between their active presence in the game and the size of their playerbase; this has come up recently in a few discussions of MUD size and graphing players. I'm not saying you're wrong and that a MUD can't ever succeed if the Immortals don't fraternize with the playerbase, but I believe it to be less likely and I furthermore can't understand why you would desire it.

Hopefully this was more helpful to you, as you apparently believed my first reply to be antagonistic or mocking or some such!

Yes, thank you. Your perspective is a lot different than mine, so it helps to see others. These types of things may or may not be implemented on my MUD, but they've come up in the past so I wanted some input before I institute certain methods.

> 1. Do you have a deny/ban policy? Why or why not?

No...I don't have any sort of deny command, and my 'ban' is what most muds call 'newlock' - it prevents new players from being created from the specified IP address, but doesn't stop existing characters from connecting.

> 2. If you do have a deny/ban policy, what type of behavior
> initiates them? Do you have a "3 strikes you're out" type
> rule?

The ban isn't for established players, it's for spambots who log on and start spam-advertising their muds over the public channels, creating new characters if silenced. I usually ban after the second or third character, but there's no official policy.

> 3. How do you deal with general arrogance and demands from
> players towards the MUD or towards your position on the MUD?

I typically ignore them, sometimes literally adding them to my ignore list. I don't mind a bit of friendly banter, but respect is a two-way deal - I talk to my players as equals, but I expect the same in return. I'm not going to stick my neck out to help someone who's being deliberately obnoxious to me.

> 4. How do you handle disputes between players?

I try to avoid getting involved in player disputes - I don't want people thinking I'm taking sides, particularly as it's a PK mud.

> 5. How do you deal with cheaters and bug abusers? Do you
> document past destructive behavior? Do you punish their
> character in some way (lowering of stats, etc).

My mud doesn't really have a concept of 'cheating', just people who play the mud in a way I find undesirable - if they do that, I try to curb their activities through code changes.

I don't punish bug abuse either, but then my bugs are rarely things that can really be abused - they mostly tend to be cosmetic, or things which don't work properly, rather than things you can really benefit from.

> 6. What types of rules have you had to institute due to
> player behavior that might be out of the norm?

Some of the players occasionally got really nasty over the chat channel, to the point that they themselves admitted they'd probably have quit had they seen those sort of discussions when they first started. So I added a gossip channel, switched off by default, and said they could use it to discuss anything they liked - but that the chat channel should remain civil.

I do occasionally have to ask people to move their discussions over to gossip, but it's usually fine. On a couple of occasions they've refused, in which case I've temporarily taken away their access to that channel.

> 7. For RPI/RP MUDs, how do you deal with metagamers who
> focus very little on RP and either control their characters
> destiny OOC such as pre-planned PK groups or clearly have
> no interest in anything but powergaming?

N/A - my mud is non-RP.

> 8. Do you keep an open relationship with your players or
> are the game admins/imms fairly ominous? And why?

Very much an open relationship. Players are great for bouncing ideas off - some of my muds best features were originally player suggestions.

Disclaimer: We're not officially open yet, so we have a small, but stable playerbase. As a result, many of my answers may come from a combination of previous experiences, occasional problems we've had on the game, or plans for future policy.

1. Do you have a deny/ban policy? Why or why not?
This is something I feel would need to be dealt with on a case by case basis. We currently have 5 IPs banned, which the majority would be spammers or people who caused so much trouble and refused to leave willingly that a ban was necessary. One of the bans was a player who couldn't play by the rules as he would get bored (since we aren't open or finished) and asked us to ban him until we opened because he knew he couldn't behave himself until then. Prior to opening, we will lift all bans. But generally, we only ban in extreme instances, such as someone who seems to just simply break rules, abuse bugs, antagonize others, spam, or whatnot just for the sake of being a problem.

2. If you do have a deny/ban policy, what type of behavior initiates them? Do you have a "3 strikes you're out" type rule?
I guess see above. Everything is more of a case by case basis, and I would prefer to resort to asking them to behave, asking them to leave, or deleting their character and thus convincing them there's nothing left for them before resorting to a ban. Of course, bans are super easy to get around these days, so... If we have a persistent problem maker, I might leave the game new locked for an hour or so and generally they'll give up.

3. How do you deal with general arrogance and demands from players towards the MUD or towards your position on the MUD? (I.E. Some players that say you're not coding enough, while others are saying you're coding too much and not initiating RP enough).
We haven't had to deal with a whole lot of that, but my first inclination would be to first ignore them. I have laid a bit of "well, if some of the people who are so eager to see the game move forward would like to build us an area or two, that'd help greatly." I don't know if that specifically has netted us any builders or not, but some of our builders have come from players who wanted to help things move along quicker.

4. How do you handle disputes between players?
I generally stay out of it. If it is happening on a public channel, they are often times told to take it to tells or a private room, and if that doesn't work, they'd both be no channeled. We have an ignore feature, so people are free to use that if someone is harassing them. If that doesn't work, more extreme measures might be taken, but there's been very few, if any times I've seen it come to that.

5. How do you deal with cheaters and bug abusers? Do you document past destructive behavior? Do you punish their character in some way (lowering of stats, etc).
Generally the punishment fits the crime. I implemented a "smite" feature that handles much of it for us. Mostly as a "lazy" way for even enforcement, the first 'smite' issues a warning and raises the character's smite level to 1. The 2nd smite raises their smite level to 2 and strips them of all money (on hand and in the bank) as well as lowering their total exp. Smite level 3 does the same thing as 2 but in addition to them losing all equipment and items plus having their experience needed to level permanently increased. Smite level 4 does all of the previous things plus permanently lowers all of their stats, prevents their natural skill improvement from functioning, and adds a visible cheater flag that allows anyone to attack and full loot them. Smite level 5 deletes the character, although I imagine a player would have self deleted by this stage anyway. Smite is mostly handy in dealing with people that cheat for things such as levels, money, or equipment, and is one of the tools available for an immortal to choose when punishing someone. There aren't many people that have had to deal with this. Another thing we have is, being based on Final Fantasy, I built the "solitary island" from FF6 and it serves like our "prison" area. Exp gain and skill improvement don't work on the island and there is no way off, although there are clues within the area and a mini quest to build a raft to be able to escape. What they don't know, however, is without fail the person builds their raft, begins to sail away, but the raft will break apart before they get away and wash back up on shore. One particularly bleak Christmas, it provided quite a bit of amusement when the guy mentioned earlier to eventually asked to be banned was the first person sent there. In the event of, I guess, accidental bug abuse, if there was any unbalancing benefits from the bug, those are reversed and the bug fixed. As we are in beta, and one of the core functions of our players is to report bugs in exchange for being able to play and not be wiped once we open (basically getting a head start), we don't deal with many people blatantly abusing bugs as most players tend to report them pretty quickly. I can see the merit in some people's argument about not punishing for bug abuse, but I tend to believe that if people find a bug and know there aren't consequences for abusing it, they'll be more likely to run it ragged until its closed rather than report it.

6. What types of rules have you had to institute due to player behavior that might be out of the norm?
Pretty much this: "Repeated breaches of the below rules or behavior that impedes on the enjoyment of the rest of the playerbase will see your privilege to be here revoked. If you have a concern or disagreement over the enforcement of any of our rules, direct a note to Diablos expressing your concerns and the matter may be reviewed. Arguing with another Immortal over rule enforcement will not do you any favors." We've had people come in whose only purpose there seemed to be to get under everyone's skin, degrade everyone else, try to make everyone else feel stupid, and with us not open and such a small community at the moment, that type of thing is difficult to deal with. Since there was no really established rule of "don't get on someone else's nerves" or whatnot, I didn't feel justified in doing more than asking him to shut it, but it got to where builders were threatening to leave unless something be done, so I felt it necessary to amend the rules to state that the first bit that I quoted. The second bit mostly have come from when someone felt unfairly punished, they'd just bitch to other players and there has been a time or two I felt like another immortal stepped out of line, but I would like the players to understand that I am the final authority in the game, and if they feel like someone overstepped their bounds, then discuss it with me. The last bit should be common sense, but for some people it seems they can't understand that trying to make a scene about a rule enforcement over a public channel won't really help their cause. We're all pretty easy going, and coming to us privately is the best way to handle something like that.

7. For RPI/RP MUDs, how do you deal with metagamers who focus very little on RP and either control their characters destiny OOC such as pre-planned PK groups or clearly have no interest in anything but powergaming?
We haven't had much of this one way or the other since we are still in development. I've been the victim of this, however. I think as a general rule of thumb, we're going to be letting the players regulate most of the roleplay. If someone roleplays something stupid, the rest of the players are free to ignore it, chalk it up to the character being insane, or whatnot. If someone requests official clarification, we'll provide it, or if we see someone blatantly abusing something and getting away with it, we may step in. I've been a part of an administration before that felt like non-interference was the best policy, and I've seen "cliques" basically ruin a game as a result, so we'll get involved if we need to. Oh, and we are RP Encouraged, not enforced, but PK requires a valid RP reason, so that's really the main places that might come into play.

8. Do you keep an open relationship with your players or are the game admins/imms fairly ominous? And why?
I believe in as personal of a relationship between the staff and the players are reasonably possible. I detest games that people feel afraid to speak to the immortals, and I've had numerous experiences where I've dealt with players in a respectful and understanding manner (such as catching someone cheating and then actually talking to them about it) and as a result they've grown to greatly respect my administration style and show the same respect back. This has proven beneficial in numerous areas, including people reporting bugs, not cheating, being more willing to discuss things (systems or policies) they disagree with or don't like, newbies tend to stick around more when they see there is an accessible and helpful admin, and so on. Games I've been on where the players don't know very well or respect the administration, there is generally an undertone of distrust, secrecy, and resentment. I don't that's healthy for the game and one of my favorite aspects of MUDs is the social aspect, so it benefits my enjoyment for the game being social with my players. I've also noticed a direct correlation with my interest/activity/sociability and the interest/activity/sociability of my players. So, I only see positive in being accessible and open with my players and I don't really see why anyone would choose the opposite route unless they've just grown disillusioned and bitter, and just don't like interacting with people. Even then, I think you should have 2-3 other immortals on hand that do enjoy being social and have them serve as the public face of the staff so it at least appears as though the staff in general is open and accessible.

(Comment added by Hades_Kane on Wed Jun 3 19:42:44 2009)

Oh, and I also meant to second that an open relationship with your players is great for getting good suggestions and ideas. When the players feel like their input matters and that they have a hand in shaping the game, I think it helps them feel like it is "their game" also and leads to a greater care and respect for the game and the people working to make it.

Whomever just logged in to my MUD in reference to this post, I just now got to work so I apologize I wasn't around to answer questions :P

(Comment added by CrystaI on Thu Jun 4 9:04:50 2009)

In addition, no we're not listed on any sites yet since we're still in alpha :) We'll list when we move to beta.

I wanted to poke specifically at the 'bug abuse' thing because I feel like admins who don't have a punitive policy, never had to deal with serious bug abusers. There's lots of ways that bug abuse can go south, but if your policy is just "when I find it, I'll fix it", players have a great incentive to not help you fix it. IE "Hey, there was a typo in this monster that's not supposed to be killable, that makes it so you can kill it easily and get a gazillion XP". If one player does that, you get a little resentment...but if that one person is secretly informing other players, and a quarter of your playerbase does it, your MUD is going to be kind of weird for a while--but way worse than that, players who heard about the bug but chose not to exploit it 'because it's wrong' are going to feel really pissed when you fix the bug and the abusers keep their high stats.

The general guidelines I've seen and used for bug abusers are:
- Minor exploit, reported right away: Small reward of something hard to get.
- Minor exploit, abused and then caught: Generally no punishment if the player didn't get any serious benefit from it.
- Major exploit, reported right away: Small reward of something hard to get.
- Major exploit, abused and then caught: Everything that the player could have gotten from the bug is nuked. Oh, you had ten million gold, and you say you only got two million gold free from the exploit? Well, all your gold is gone. You were level forty before you started exploiting and jumped up ten more levels? Now you're level thirty. Hurt everyone involved to the point where they KNOW they are better off not exploiting.
- Major exploit, repeatedly abused and then finally, grudginging, reported before being caught... Same as above but be nice about it. Don't hit them very hard with the stick. Try to remove only what they actually gained, and a little more just as protocol. This is the best way to make sure they'll report in the future: They trust you to be predictable, but they know they still can't gain from exploiting stuff.

Make sure if you smack someone, you get their friends too. If you find out someone gave cheated gold to a friend before you took it away, take away all that cheated gold AND THEN SOME from the friend, even if they beg and plead. Cheaters ruin the game for everyone, and this will make cheaters accountable to their friends. (Of course if someone tries to abuse this in a griefer-ish fashion to hurt other players, nuke 'em 'til they glow and siteban.)

If you catch someone exploiting a major bug twice within a couple years, simply reset their character back to level 1 with no stuff. Bad dog. Look what you made me do. If you'd reported it, you would have got a present, but now you made me hurt you.

This is just for exploits that help their character. Other bugs are a lot simpler to deal with (ignore most of the time, and deal with malicious behavior like anything else).

[P]layers who heard about the bug but chose not to exploit it 'because it's wrong' are going to feel really pissed when you fix the bug and the abusers keep their high stats.

I think you should make sure to differentiate between choosing not to take punitive action and having the common sense to reverse damage done :) I think it would be foolish not to set any gains players got from cheating back to normal game levels, but I think it would be equally foolish to do things that punish those players beyond said resetting since there can be no gain from it.

I have personally coded on MUD's where players have exploited bugs to earn huge amounts of money, damage-increasing buffs and beneficial items - in each case, I was able to fix a bug in the game's code and remain on perfectly amiable terms with the involved players.

------
If you catch someone exploiting a major bug twice within a couple years, simply reset their character back to level 1 with no stuff. Bad dog. Look what
you made me do. If you'd reported it, you would have got a present, but now you made me hurt you.


------

Speaking from a player perspective, this seems a particularly unsavory way of dealing with players. It's a game, and everyone will contemplate cheating if the option is given to them. Not everyone will go through with it, but some will. To implement a policy that says I'll take away what you gained, and then slap you around a bit more just in case, makes me, as a player, reluctant to even give your game a chance, let alone stay around. A player plays a mud for the fun of it, and it's the players that keep a mud alive. Remove the benefits they gained from a bug, rebuke them verbally perhaps, but when you start using your power to kick them in the face after they've already been caught you discourage players to stay and hurt yourself more than the bug ever could.

Just my cent's worth.

Remove the benefits they gained from a bug, rebuke them verbally perhaps, but when you start using your power to kick them in the face after they've already been caught you discourage players to stay and hurt yourself more than the bug ever could.

It's the same as breaking any other rule. If you harass another player and break that rule, there isn't exactly any "take what you gained" from it. You break a rule, you suffer some sort of consequence. Do you feel like punishing for other rule breaking is bad and stands a chance to run off players? Reversing gain from bug abuse isn't punishment, so I agree with the sentiment that willful and purposeful bug abuse should not only be accompanied by the reversal of unbalancing benefit, but also accompanied by some sort of punitive measure. If all a player knows will happen to them for abusing a bug for unbalancing gain is a return to the previously held balance, there's nothing to discourage them because they have nothing to lose by taking that risk.

I don't think I'd be interested in playing a game that didn't seem interested in backing up their rules with punitive measures.

While it may be true there needs to be a reason for the player not to abuse bugs, I don't think punishment is necessarily the answer. As an admin, you should earn the respect of the player. If they are unwilling to respect you as the admin and insist on abusing multiple, major bugs, then I doubt punishing them will do anything. They are unlikely to care that you reduced there level, and, furthermore, are less likely to respect you after the fact. On the other hand, a player who respects you, if only as one stranger should respect another stranger's property, and they abuse a bug, you can simply remove the benefits, inform them what they did was wrong and that they are essentially taking away the fun of the game by forcing you, the admin, to code new ways to prevent you from abusing bugs instead of adding new features. If you the admin have earned that player's respect as an admin should, they will understand and will prefer for new features to be added rather than the latter. If the player doesn't respect you, in short, then punishment won't suffice and will only escalate the problem, and the player should not be playing your game at all.

> I don't think I'd be interested in playing a game that
> didn't seem interested in backing up their rules with
> punitive measures.

I don't think I'd be interested in playing a game that was so buggy it needed extensive rules for dealing with bug exploitation.

But having said that... carrot > stick

I figured I toss out some answers, not sure how helpful they'll be.

I suppose I should open with my game's rules as they are a bit different than most:

THE RULE
                    The Golden Rule of Tir na nOg

      Do unto others as you would have the Staff do unto you.


                         See also:  HELP AUP
<==-----------------------------------------------------------------------==>

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
* You may multi-play, bot, script, and trigger as long as you don't
  annoy other players.  Be creative.  Kill-stealing is frowned upon.
  Bugs happen.  We reserve the right to change any code at any time.

* What you send to the mud might be seen by a child, a grandmother, or
  a priest.  We have these and other diverse people in our playerbase.
  Rude language in public places or on channels may result in minor to
  severe punishment, even deletion.

! DISCLAIMER: Despite the above policy, we have no control over what
  a player sends to the MUD, thus we can not guarantee you won't see
  something you (or your parents) might not like.
<==-----------------------------------------------------------------------==>

1. Do you have a deny/ban policy? Why or why not?

Uhm, no. I know the code is there, as I've copied it for other purposes, such as saving player-owned rooms, but we've never needed it. In fact, we have a level between the Gods and the Imps that have the ban, freeze, disconnect, and similar commands. Any God is free to make such a character so they don't have to use their player friendly God persona to play Bad Cop, but no one ever has in the 7 or 8 years we've been open.

3. How do you deal with general arrogance and demands from players towards the MUD or towards your position on the MUD? (I.E. Some players that say you're not coding enough, while others are saying you're coding too much and not initiating RP enough).

As they say, 'laughter is the best medicine.' :)

4. How do you handle disputes between players?

No one's ever asked me to.

5. How do you deal with cheaters and bug abusers? Do you document past destructive behaviour? Do you punish their character in some way (lowering of stats, etc).

I put bugs in the code for players to exploit. Most people don't find them, some people report them. I just say, "No, no, it's supposed to be that way."

6. What types of rules have you had to institute due to player behaviour that might be out of the norm?

None. (Honestly, I'm not sure quite what you mean. I assume people playing MUDs aren't normal, and even if a norm emerged, I wouldn't try to enforce it.)

7. N/A

8. Do you keep an open relationship with your players or are the game admins/imms fairly ominous? And why?

Open and friendly, we are. I mean, that's the point isn't it? To surround yourself with people who are fun and entertaining?


I don't mean to come across as quite such a Pollyanna, I've worked on games that had control freaks for admins and lunatics for players. I've seen games run (ruined) by cliques where no one really played because they all knew if you left your room you were asking for trouble. I've been on games where the real game was navigating the rules and policies put forth in an attempt to limit the playerbase to those conceived of as 'good' players, and I've played on private games that were invitation only, yet still seemed to have more strife than life.

My theory, based on all this experience, is MUD owners get what they ask for. If you treat players with respect, they'll respect you in return. If you make them laugh, they'll tell you jokes. If you're paranoid, then you'll have to watch your back. If you tell players they can't do something, they will. It's human nature, at least in the "free world", to defy authority.

Now, before someone starts running around claiming, "Keri said if you have jerks on your game you are a jerk!", allow me to delve a bit into game design. I think Bartlet is wrong. (A lot of expletives died in the creation of that last sentence.) You look at a MUD, and gee, you can kill mobile and get XP and neat loot. Some people do a lot of that, achieving a high score, so they are Achievers. And you can also kill other players, and some would rather do that, so they are Killers. Some like to sit around and chat.... you know, if I ever passed in a paper, even in grade school, where I said "Water is wet, and fire is hot..." I would have gotten a barely passing grade only if the teacher really, really liked me. Yet this... gentleman... has based an entire academic career on such obviousisms. I much prefer the ideas of Raph Koster and Richard Woolcock. Raph has a cool website, but you'll have to look up old usenet posts to read Richard when he was waxing poetic about how games ought to be. (Now, quite naturally, he tends to talk more about the nut and bolts of it all, as he's actually creating a game of his own, and he often uses a pseudonym to avoid the paparazzi.)

The thing we all three hold in common is that games are really about learning. Players want to be able to develop skills, learn new tricks, and succeed or fail based on their own merit. If all you offer them is a fancied up flip of a coin, then they will look for other ways to test their skills. If you are posing as an authority figure, then they will use what they learned in school, and while a few might try to polish the old apple, most will give you no more quarter, and a lot more grief, than the average substitute teacher gets. Because, deep down in the skinny part of their hindbrains, they know you're a substitute for a teacher. Except in this class, they can walk out and go have a smoke any time they want. So, insisting they respect you, insisting they follow rules, insisting anything is just going to bring on the ridicule.

To avoid this, you have to distract them with a game that is fun, not too hard but not so easy they master it in a week, and that has something worthwhile at the end. In the old days, of course, players just kept gaining levels. The reward at the end was being an IMM. You need a solid codebase, one that can stand on it's on and not be propped up by rules and restrictions. You need friendly and helpful hall monitors, er... staff, and complete help files in case the staff's not around. Mostly, you need to show them you care. Show them you're trying to make things better, and that you are concerned about their concerns. Don't pretend your game is perfect, just make sure it's better than most. Don't pretend you are perfect either, and remember you're not their boss, you're not an owner of them, you're more like a host. Treat your players like guests you want to return, and that will keep almost everybody happy and out of your hair.

Now for the dark side, and there is a dark side... those people that crash the party just to spoil your fun. What do you do about them? They're playing by their own rules, and they're free to change the rules at their whim, ensuring it's never fair. Complain, and you've lost, because they feed on your pain. Ignore them and they run rampant, chasing off the players you worked so hard to win over in the first place. Ban them, and they find another IP. Myself, I humour them. I don't embarrass them or ridicule them, but simply show no real concern. If they rant about bugs or poor design, I admit I'm not a very good coder. If they bother another player, I favour that player. When enough players start coming to them begging for abuse so they can get extra XP or cool gear, it really takes the fun out of being a bully. If all their attempts at disrupting the community produce laughter and gaiety, they soon move on looking for normal people. In short, the best defence is a lack of offense. If they can't offend you, they lose. :)

Once, we did have a group of very nasty boys from a library in California. We moved the pfiles of all the regular players to the test server, and privately asked everyone to log in there. It took a few days for everyone to move over, but in the end, the nasty boys were playing alone, and started crowing they'd taken the place over. They didn't play nicely with each other, though, when there was no one else to pick on, and one by one, they left. Gee, I hated to cause rifts between childhood friends. ;)

It's traditional at this point to say, "Sorry for the long post." I do hope it helps, someone. Crystal, I've known you for several years now, and I don't think you'll have a problem. You're even-handed, light hearted, and generally fun to be around. I don't know your staff as well, but if they can stay focused on serving the public and keep any attitudes out of sight, I think all will go well.

This is my game policy. It is simple. It is made for adults.

Rule 1 : Don't be a dick.
Rule 2 : If you "threaten" to leave or are too angry, sad, or tired to follow Rule 1 then log out.
Rule 3 : All people connected follow the same standards. See Rule 1 and Rule 2.

Warn 1 : You and the Admin talk.
Warn 2 : Player removed from Out-Of-Character channels, bboards, and rooms.
Warn 3 : Player locked from character generation and his characters given to others.

1. Do you have a deny/ban policy? Why or why not?

To the best of my knowledge on 4D we do not have a specific policy that has specific actions that will result in a ban. this is not to say no one has ever been banned from 4D but more that it seems to be more of a case by case thing than a specific set in stone list of actions that will result in a ban. The only two bans that have occurred recently (ie. last 4 years or so) that I can remember were both players that were intentionally harming the MUD. (One DoS'ed the MUD and the other threatened to do the same if we didn't comply with his "wishes".)

3. How do you deal with general arrogance and demands from players towards the MUD or towards your position on the MUD? (I.E. Some players that say you're not coding enough, while others are saying you're coding too much and not initiating RP enough).
4. How do you handle disputes between players?

In both situations described there doing nothing is often (if not always) better to do nothing than to react to it. You can never please everyone, the admin on a MUD should do what they feel is best for the MUD as a whole, there will likely always be someone unhappy about the way the staff do things. If no players are unhappy with what the staff are doing that's most likely due to the MUD in question having few players and not a sign of staff that are doing a better job than otherwise. In disputes between players I tend to just keep out of them to not there be any claims of favoritism. The only case where I wouldn't stay out was if it was very very clear cut as to who was at fault and there was an obvious solution as to how to solve said scenario that most everyone can agree on.

5. How do you deal with cheaters and bug abusers? Do you document past destructive behavior? Do you punish their character in some way (lowering of stats, etc).

I find that if you reward players for reporting bugs they are more likely to report them when found instead of abusing them as they may otherwise do.

[quote]Do you have a deny/ban policy? Why or why not?[/quote]
Yes to both deny and ban. It's listed in the rules as to not abuse any of the rules posted. This applies with bug abuse, being an overall **** to imms or players, things like that. Playing is a privilege with a staff that dedicates their time to throw quests, build areas, code, and otherwise provide more entertainment for the player base. If a player breaks the rule(s), they get talked to first, then depending on what it is, punishment is dealth accordingly. Fortunately, nothing's been abused to the point of players being banned or denied for quite some time. Like it's already been mentioned, the players understand enough to know that the punishment fits the crime and hence, generally don't do it. It's a 3-strike ruleset.

[quote]How do you deal with general arrogance and demands...[/quote]
If it's done in a polite manner, I'll explain my position and try to dedicate more time to whatever it is I'm supposedly lacking. If they're being a prick about it, I generally ignore them. If they keep ragging on whatever, I simply tell them "I pay for the internet for this mud to run, I bought the hardware for the server, and I pay for the electricity to keep everything up...you don't".

[quote]How do you handle disputes between players?[/quote]
I don't generally...it has to seriously out of hand before I enter the scene. All the rules are listed and commonly known and easily accessible so it's not like there's nothing written. I really don't get involved with PK issues since that's always been problematic to some degree.

[quote]How do you deal with cheaters and bug abusers? [/quote]
If they find some exploit and report it via a note or telling an imm or me right away, no punishment and they're rewarded accordingly. If they report how to crash the mud, we'll go to the test port and let them have at and they're rewarded. If they don't and abuse whatever exploit/crash bug and I find out about it, life gets real hard for them real fast for them, their alts, and any of their friends who might've been involved. I've implemented an iron maiden system that jails them in front of everyone (global ridicule) and that's after I've seized all their equipment, all their gold, and anything in their bank account and locker. I have an online documentation system that records who it was, what they did, what I did, how I fixed it, punishment,

[quote]What types of rules have you had to institute due to player behavior that might be out of the norm?[/quote]
Not really sure on this question. I've gone over the rules several times to make sure everything is pretty much covered. But that aforementioned iron maiden system might be consideree 'out of the norm'.

[quote]For RPI/RP MUDs, how do you deal with metagamers who focus very little on RP and either control their characters destiny OOC such as pre-planned PK groups or clearly have no interest in anything but powergaming?
[/quote]
I generally don't enforce strict RP or PK. It's nice if they join in if it's an RP event/quest or if they hop on the bandwagon if it's a PK quest (or RP PK) but I'm not going to rag on them just because they didn't on any given day. If they're disruptive during an RP event, then that of cours gets handled accordingly.

In ending, I like to maintain a decent open relationship with the players and the other staff members. We're all there to have fun. The imms do have a 'hands off' mentality but just like the players are there to play, the imms are there to keep the peace and do their specific jobs.

Hey, maybe Crystal will learn to keep out of OOC player disputes that have nothing to do with the MUD thanks to you guys.

Cheers to the reduction of "STOP BEING MEAN TO FURRIES AND PEDOS" bans.

I used to just kill their character on the spot and tell them to cut the *CENSORED* or I'd start lopping off stats, inventory, etc...

Of course that was, oh, going on 15+ years ago. Maybe times have changed.