Draft Policies

This page is for policies that are likely to be formally added, but content is still being workshopped by staff.

Anonymous

Telling staff "someone said X", without saying who, is generally unhelpful.

• We understand you may want to protect sources against perceived retribution, but usually we just want to explain if we feel they're off track.
• We understand you may want to avoid negative bias due to the identity of the source, but usually non-disclosure itself causes negative bias.

Posting an anonymous bbpost is acceptable.

• Use @name to change your name to e.g. "Prospect Signal", then bbpost, then use @name again to change your name back to normal.
• Staff can still see who it was.
• Don't be a dick.

Not Fun

If one player frequently OOCly annoys several other players by ICly being incompetent (+policy village idiot) or antagonistic (+policy antagonist) or whatever, staff will exercise their discretion based on who they think is being OOCly unreasonable (the one player, the others, or both) and to what extent. This may extend to disallowing new alts in the same splat, or in extreme cases, pro-actively removing an existing alt.

Nothingburger

(aka 'molehill', 'tempest in a teacup)

Sometimes it makes IC sense to pursue some course of action (e.g. investigate something, shore up defenses and otherwise pre-emptively prepare for something), but OOCly it appears that it would just require a bunch of staff paperwork over something that's bound to go nowhere (e.g. unapproved players, PRPs that fizzled out). In such cases, staff may take the Fade to Black (FTB) approach, handwaving 'these PCs ICly do their due diligence and can legitimately claim credit for it' without getting into exact details. The PCs are then generally free to handwave more specifics if they feel the need.

NPC Leadership

Add:

• Staff can have NPC leaders step in and overrule PC leaders, but this is rare and reserved for egregious behavior on the part of the PC leaders. Usually, NPC leaders either agree with PC leaders, or at least don't feel there's any compelling reason to disagree with them.
• Attempting an end run around PC leaders by appealing to NPC leaders tends to be rejected as 'the NPC leaders have a negative opinion of your evidence, interpretation, and/or motives'. Again, it can work, but it's rare.

Village Idiot

Add:

• Some forms of IC incompetence are OOCly entertaining, others are much less so. 'Gaian kinfolk gets blood bound by vampire PC' is much different from 'mage gets drunk and throws up in the back seat of other mage's car', for instance.

Wallflowering

Add:

• It's okay for you to show up while ICly invisible (wraith, Obfuscate, etc.) and wallflower. However, it's also okay for others to conveniently decide to get up and leave.

Miscellaneous

• General: In a situation requiring staff involvement, don't continue to add complications faster than staff can keep up.
  • It may not be obvious to a player that they're doing so. Staff should tell them explicitly.
  • If the player keeps doing it anyway, staff will likely apply +policy dead horse.
  • Race wars would compound this problem, another reason why staff strives to avoid them.
• General: Repeatedly making unconfirmed and self-serving claims about what another person feels.
  • Even if you turn out to be right sometimes, this makes you look bad. Put the microphone down and let the other person speak for themselves. "Oh, they're super shy" is not an excuse.
• General: Making mountains out of molehills is drama. We don't want this.
  • Violating '+policy village idiot' is a specific and common form.
  • Pushing for a course of action that would potentially lead to a race war.
• General: When staff says they're discussing/working on something, don't continue to spam the job with justifications for your side.
  • The borderline between "I thought of a new thing" and spam is subjective and debatable.
  • At best, you'll get your way despite the spamming. At worst, you won't get your way because of the spamming.
• General: If staff feels that a decision could reasonably go either way based on staff discretion, they also feel that "you were so annoying that we're picking the choice you didn't want" is a valid way to pick a choice. Don't be annoying on the assumption that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"; sometimes the squeaky wheel gets removed/replaced instead.
• Vampire: Risk implications of feeding.
  • On a PC, without their IC permission: Yes, it's a form of assault. That doesn't mean everyone else wants to commit to a potential messy war of attrition over it. It's okay to avoid the location where it happened, and ICly tell the vampire to knock it off (if you ICly know who it was and how to reach them), but don't expect to get risk escalation above 1.
  • In another PC's domain, without their IC permission: If they ICly learn about it, this is reasonable grounds for ICA=ICC.
• Shifter: Examples of what will reasonably draw a punishment rite, including risk escalation if needed.
  • Renown crew will hopefully come up with a few good examples / general principles.