Anon Does Not Play Here - How TLV Handles Problems
Rei, here! (This would normally be posted under one of my accounts but since this is getting linked to the main info page, I decided to keep it under the mod name.) It's getting to that time of year again. As of May 4, The Last Voyages, as a community, has existed for three years. This was also the date of the very first In Character posts. On June 1st, the third year anniversary of TLV's official opening will come to pass. So this is partially an unofficial "Happy Birthday TLV!" post. I also intended to repost this on June 1st but saw reason to push the date forward.
I want to say that I feel like we're still running strong. Stronger than ever before. With that in mind, I would like to revise and re-iterate a Mod Note made just under a year ago, regarding how issues are handled on this game, how we deal with drama and anonymous shenanigans, which will be linked on the main page with the rules set and will henceforth be considered official policy that every new player will see on coming in.
First: A Little History
I'm Rei. In May of 2008, I created this game, based on a premise I used in one on one RPs with a friend. It began with an interest in the "traveling from fandom to fandom" aspect that the Kingdom Hearts games had, but we wanted to create a premise that didn't rely on one big-footed OC to catalyze the entire plot. It worked okay for us, and it ran differently in its early incarnation -- gods of death in all fandoms, mentioned or not, were in charge of bartering Wardens aboard the barge instead of the Admiral making the deals -- there was no official Admiral and the ship was assumed to make all the decisions itself. The Disney version of Hades was actually our go-to for most of our "deal-maker" scenes.
Several of the ports used in the game were tested at this early stage. And then I mentioned in a pan-fandom game of which I was a member that I wanted to turn this into a community. From there, time and again (for a good eight months before opening), person after person insisted that it would never work as a large scale game. One day I went ahead and did it anyway. I wrote the first html (badly), chose the first ports and floods, made the first (horrible) graphics, and passed the first applications. I created this game, in spite of its bizarre premise and the worries I got from mods and admins and players at other games, who were hesitant to join because they were certain it would be dead within a month. Two or three months tops. I had only one person I knew that was interested in giving it a go with me at first (and that player is still here today <3).
So after that prologue, here's where I get to the reason for this post:
How TLV Handles Problems
Problems. Every game has them. Every game has a system put into place to deal with them, whether it's a simple mod email or a complex series of stages it must go through to reach its eventual goal. A lot of games consider their systems to be satisfactory. None of them think their systems are perfect.
The Last Voyages RPG does not believe that its problem solving strategies are perfect. The staff here does its best to maintain consistent and fair standards. However, we have always acknowledged that there are outliers, extenuating circumstances, and a very human element to playing a successful game that makes guarantees impossible and introduces a lot of grey areas. This is why the phrase "on a case by case basis" rears its ugly head in almost every section of the site. I am here to say that there is no single decision made on this board that I am not openly willing to address and defend to players within this game that approach me desiring an explaination.
Bear in mind that I don't have to. This is my board, and nobody here is a paying customer. I choose to because I feel like it's the right thing to do. If you're still here, I should hope it's because you're enjoying yourself, so I'm going to count myself successful in that regard.
Having gotten that point out of the way, I am now going to ignore the fact that I just yelled "My sandbox and my toys!" and harp on about people acting like adults, because I'm classy like that.
One philosophy that we've always maintained is one based on communication. Players under a certain age are not permitted to join this game -- for reasons of content, and because while we are accepting adult players we expect our players to act like adults, and that means talking to one another when there is a problem. We strongly encourage this but have always been available over IM and E-mail should anyone need to bring a difficult matter to our attention. If you have not exercised any of these outlets, from talking to the person you have a problem with, or the mods, then it is just as much your fault as anyone else that there's an issue to begin with.
This is not always a policy that is followed, but as I said, no system is perfect.
Where Communication is Not Valid
This is an official notice to make clear, however, that the above policy of communication does not, and will never include the following:
1. Anon Memes and Comms.
2. Gossip and hearsay.
3. Roleplay Secrets and similar and subsequent forums.
The unifying elements of these three categories should be very clear. Their purpose is to maintain anonymity, and I am here to tell you that using them to make a complaint about this game, how it is run, or how the players play, is completely unacceptable and will never be acknowledged in any formal capacity, and I will explain to you why.
All of my players? Have names. I ask for one in the application, even if it's not your real name. I also ask for an email, an AIM name -- all things that I have and the comm has. My players exist. Anonymous is not one of my players, and therefore, I have no reason to pay any attention whatsoever to what they think or what they want to know. If you approach any of the mods with a concern, then it will be considered and approached fairly. After reading this today you should understand that if you post it anonymously, then it may well be treated as illegitimate shit stirring and ignored. Most posts of this nature are, and that is not and never will be welcome here. Reasonable questions posted anonymously will likely be capped off with a request for IM or PM, but regardless, mods from this game are in no way obligated to be even that polite. Most of you know I'm also completely unafraid to voice my blunt opinion in those forums when my game is addressed. Still, if your complaint does not reach me, then it does not exist, and if you don't trust the mods to get it to me (and you should, because we have the most amazing mods), then there is nothing stopping you from contacting me yourself.
In Conclusion
This may not be how other people run games. In a lot of ways we may not run TLV the way other games do. This is not a legitimate complaint, because we're pointedly trying not to run TLV like other games. If it worked for them, they wouldn't still have problems. They do. Just like we do.
You may believe that this attitude is only going to scare people off, and that the manner in which I and my mods handle issues and conduct ourselves off the board reflects badly on the game. However, three years after this game opened, it has been home to nearly 600 different characters (150 new ones just in the last year) that have come, gone or remain. We currently sport a player base of over sixty people and an active cast of just over 140 characters. Pretty much equal to what it was ten months ago when this notice was originally penned. Without even posting ads, we have new players coming in every month.
Much of this comes from the fact that we refuse to treat this game like a product. It's not. It's a story that all of us are writing, and we will do what we feel is right to maintain its history and the continued development of its characters, past, present, and future.
Bottom line, this game does not need to sell in order to survive, and it does not need nor welcome children or anonymous troublemakers.
I want to say that I feel like we're still running strong. Stronger than ever before. With that in mind, I would like to revise and re-iterate a Mod Note made just under a year ago, regarding how issues are handled on this game, how we deal with drama and anonymous shenanigans, which will be linked on the main page with the rules set and will henceforth be considered official policy that every new player will see on coming in.
First: A Little History
I'm Rei. In May of 2008, I created this game, based on a premise I used in one on one RPs with a friend. It began with an interest in the "traveling from fandom to fandom" aspect that the Kingdom Hearts games had, but we wanted to create a premise that didn't rely on one big-footed OC to catalyze the entire plot. It worked okay for us, and it ran differently in its early incarnation -- gods of death in all fandoms, mentioned or not, were in charge of bartering Wardens aboard the barge instead of the Admiral making the deals -- there was no official Admiral and the ship was assumed to make all the decisions itself. The Disney version of Hades was actually our go-to for most of our "deal-maker" scenes.
Several of the ports used in the game were tested at this early stage. And then I mentioned in a pan-fandom game of which I was a member that I wanted to turn this into a community. From there, time and again (for a good eight months before opening), person after person insisted that it would never work as a large scale game. One day I went ahead and did it anyway. I wrote the first html (badly), chose the first ports and floods, made the first (horrible) graphics, and passed the first applications. I created this game, in spite of its bizarre premise and the worries I got from mods and admins and players at other games, who were hesitant to join because they were certain it would be dead within a month. Two or three months tops. I had only one person I knew that was interested in giving it a go with me at first (and that player is still here today <3).
So after that prologue, here's where I get to the reason for this post:
How TLV Handles Problems
Problems. Every game has them. Every game has a system put into place to deal with them, whether it's a simple mod email or a complex series of stages it must go through to reach its eventual goal. A lot of games consider their systems to be satisfactory. None of them think their systems are perfect.
The Last Voyages RPG does not believe that its problem solving strategies are perfect. The staff here does its best to maintain consistent and fair standards. However, we have always acknowledged that there are outliers, extenuating circumstances, and a very human element to playing a successful game that makes guarantees impossible and introduces a lot of grey areas. This is why the phrase "on a case by case basis" rears its ugly head in almost every section of the site. I am here to say that there is no single decision made on this board that I am not openly willing to address and defend to players within this game that approach me desiring an explaination.
Bear in mind that I don't have to. This is my board, and nobody here is a paying customer. I choose to because I feel like it's the right thing to do. If you're still here, I should hope it's because you're enjoying yourself, so I'm going to count myself successful in that regard.
Having gotten that point out of the way, I am now going to ignore the fact that I just yelled "My sandbox and my toys!" and harp on about people acting like adults, because I'm classy like that.
One philosophy that we've always maintained is one based on communication. Players under a certain age are not permitted to join this game -- for reasons of content, and because while we are accepting adult players we expect our players to act like adults, and that means talking to one another when there is a problem. We strongly encourage this but have always been available over IM and E-mail should anyone need to bring a difficult matter to our attention. If you have not exercised any of these outlets, from talking to the person you have a problem with, or the mods, then it is just as much your fault as anyone else that there's an issue to begin with.
This is not always a policy that is followed, but as I said, no system is perfect.
Where Communication is Not Valid
This is an official notice to make clear, however, that the above policy of communication does not, and will never include the following:
1. Anon Memes and Comms.
2. Gossip and hearsay.
3. Roleplay Secrets and similar and subsequent forums.
The unifying elements of these three categories should be very clear. Their purpose is to maintain anonymity, and I am here to tell you that using them to make a complaint about this game, how it is run, or how the players play, is completely unacceptable and will never be acknowledged in any formal capacity, and I will explain to you why.
All of my players? Have names. I ask for one in the application, even if it's not your real name. I also ask for an email, an AIM name -- all things that I have and the comm has. My players exist. Anonymous is not one of my players, and therefore, I have no reason to pay any attention whatsoever to what they think or what they want to know. If you approach any of the mods with a concern, then it will be considered and approached fairly. After reading this today you should understand that if you post it anonymously, then it may well be treated as illegitimate shit stirring and ignored. Most posts of this nature are, and that is not and never will be welcome here. Reasonable questions posted anonymously will likely be capped off with a request for IM or PM, but regardless, mods from this game are in no way obligated to be even that polite. Most of you know I'm also completely unafraid to voice my blunt opinion in those forums when my game is addressed. Still, if your complaint does not reach me, then it does not exist, and if you don't trust the mods to get it to me (and you should, because we have the most amazing mods), then there is nothing stopping you from contacting me yourself.
In Conclusion
This may not be how other people run games. In a lot of ways we may not run TLV the way other games do. This is not a legitimate complaint, because we're pointedly trying not to run TLV like other games. If it worked for them, they wouldn't still have problems. They do. Just like we do.
You may believe that this attitude is only going to scare people off, and that the manner in which I and my mods handle issues and conduct ourselves off the board reflects badly on the game. However, three years after this game opened, it has been home to nearly 600 different characters (150 new ones just in the last year) that have come, gone or remain. We currently sport a player base of over sixty people and an active cast of just over 140 characters. Pretty much equal to what it was ten months ago when this notice was originally penned. Without even posting ads, we have new players coming in every month.
Much of this comes from the fact that we refuse to treat this game like a product. It's not. It's a story that all of us are writing, and we will do what we feel is right to maintain its history and the continued development of its characters, past, present, and future.
Bottom line, this game does not need to sell in order to survive, and it does not need nor welcome children or anonymous troublemakers.