New rule needed in the STGOD subforum?

[The Romulan Republic]

This occurred to me as a possible point of discussion during yet another debate over STGOD rules.

Basically, people seem to want extensive rules for each new STGOD in order to keep some fool from screwing everything up, and yet, their dosen't really seem to be an effective way to enforce these rules if someone chooses to break them. I've checked the current Gaming and Computers forum rules regarding STGODs, and while they do ask individuals to try to maintain continuity, they say nothing about some immature twat going "no, my troops are invulnerable", and derailing the roleplaying. So, I'm proposing a new rule that would specifically make it a punishable offense to pull that kind of stunt in an STGOD.

Now, in the unlikely event that anyone has paid attention to my previous posts , I have usually been against adding lots of new rules to deal with every eventually, partly because I feel that they stifle discussion and lead to stagnation. However, I'm sick of each new STGOD discussion becoming a debate over just how extensive and complicated the rules have to be to prevent the kind of behavior described above, when the problem might be solved by one simple rule that explicitly forbids such behavior and makes it a punishable offense. I would like to see it clearly spelled out that such behavior is not acceptable, and I would like to see it enforced if necessary.

Keeping in mind that rules in an STGOD might be somewhat open to interpretation, I'm thinking something like the following:

"Please don't ignore the rules or the judgement of the game moderator in an STGOD. Frequent offenders may be subjected to a custom title or temporary ban."

Note that this is simply a suggestion, and that if this idea is deemed bad, unnessissary, or unworkable, then that's fine by me. But I already said I could bring this up in the House of Commons, so I figured I should put my money where my mouth was.



[Spellcheck done ~~ Coyote ]

[Hotfoot]

It would seem to me that the moderator of the STGOD forum would be ultimately responsible in disciplining problem players, and should take the advice of Game Moderators seriously in such matters.

Ultimately, people who have been banned or tossed out of STGODs or RPGs but continue to post are being a certified pain in the rear and should be tossed up the moderator ladder because they are then trolling and derailing threads.

That said, clear rules in STGODs that provide common ground for players are essential. Free-form play does not work unless there is a clearly understood common ground that everyone is operating on. I've said it before many times and frankly it's unlikely I'll change my position because evidence keeps stacking up to confirm it. The key point here is that some people can be absolutely lousy designers when it comes to rules. Getting overcomplicated is not the way to go. Rules should be simple, straightforward, and easy to understand. Elegance is the word of the day for things like that. One reason I got fed up previously was because during brainstorming sessions for STGOD rules, every little piece of minutiae was being brought up when it didn't need to be.

Maybe one day, a few intrepid individuals will sit down and write up a formalized set of STGOD rules that can be applied to just about any STGOD or other method of formalized diceless games. In fact, I invite people to do so. I know I made several attempts over the years, but my current job prevents me from continuing such endeavors. Perhaps someday...

[Darth Fanboy]

That is where the FOES LIST comes in handy.

I want that back, but i'm not going to press that issue. However if someone is wrecking a STGOD thread that is where a tempban comes in handy as a nice little deterrent.

[Bounty]

Is a new rule for this necessary? If a player is deliberately sabotaging a game, he can be cautioned by a moderator, and once that's happened any other stunt he or she pulls can be dealt with as "ignoring a moderator's warnings" or even plain trolling. Seems to me like this behaviour is already covered under the board rules.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If it is to be of any guide, the first iteration of the STGOD SDN.NET World collapsed because... Shep decided to nuke almost everyone and the game was quite over by the time we hurled nukes at each other. The reason Shep decided to nuke was... I dunno.. God knows what the real reason was beyond the itch to press that trigger.

[Sea Skimmer]

Now, in the unlikely event that anyone has paid attention to my previous posts , I have usually been against adding lots of new rules to deal with every eventually, partly because I feel that they stifle discussion and lead to stagnation. However, I'm sick of each new STGOD discussion becoming a debate over just how extensive and complicated the rules have to be to prevent the kind of behavior described above, when the problem might be solved by one simple rule that explicitely forbids such behavior and makes it a punishable offense. I would like to see it clearly spelled out that such behavior is not acceptable, and I would like to see it enforced if nessissary.

You say working out rules for each game is too complicated, but somehow you think we can make an all comprehensive set of rules for all games which won’t cause even more bullshit? Yeah right… the vagueness if your own thinking just points to the massive problems inherent to such an idea. What are you going to say, one cannot powergame? Yeah sure that’s great, now define power gaming in terms specific enough to avoid dispute on what is power gaming and just see how far that goes. Not gonna work. If you have to spell it out... you've already lost.

We don’t need new rules anyway; truly deliberately sabotaging a STGOD with erroneous posts is just trolling. Refer it to the mods when it happens. Anything else, that’s the players problem. Pick you’re players well, make rules that work, don’t chose settings when details matter overwhelmingly. The most successful games I’ve seen had almost no rules and worked fine, some going on for even years, because everyone was just on the same page on what they wanted out of the game. If you don’t have that, then you don’t have shit. I've also seen games with highly complex rules run for long times, but this was also because everyone was on the same page and could agree to those rules and didn't just hunt for ways to beat them.

If it is to be of any guide, the first iteration of the STGOD SDN.NET World collapsed because... Shep decided to nuke almost everyone and the game was quite over by the time we hurled nukes at each other. The reason Shep decided to nuke was... I dunno.. God knows what the real reason was beyond the itch to press that trigger.

Something about the rest of the world openly plotting his downfall maybe and generally playing the nuclear game poorly. What he did violated no rule of that STGOD anyway, which basically had no rules to start with and people introducing armies of killer robots and mutant megafauna, so it has no relevance here except as an example of how having everyone on the same page matters more then anything else.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Something about the rest of the world openly plotting his downfall maybe and generally playing the nuclear game poorly. What he did violated no rule of that STGOD anyway, which basically had no rules to start with and people introducing armies of killer robots and mutant megafauna, so it has no relevance here except as an example of how having everyone on the same page matters more then anything else.

As far as I know, there was no plan to attack him. Though, yes, he did nothing to violate any rule whatsoever.

[Starglider]

I still think it's worth trying an STGOD where the game state and rules are all handled by a computer program. It wouldn't completely be a 'narrated multiplayer game of MOO2 / Civ', because the GMs would be able to override stuff where appropriate to implement crazy player suggestions, but it would be two thirds of the way in that direction. That's the only way I can think of to completely eliminate the possibility for game-state-breaking crap (assuming sane GMs). Regrettably I don't currently have time to write such a system.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's up to the individual posters to discuss (and argue) on how they are going to create their specific game, what rules to implement, how to play, etc. So of course there's going to be A LOT of bickering.

Of course, there are still gonna be pricks who just want to ruin everyone's fun...

Something about the rest of the world openly plotting his downfall maybe and generally playing the nuclear game poorly.

Sheppard did play as a blatant asshole in the game. Come on, he nuked a SAM battery that shot down one of his dumb planes and killed an entire city of thousands as a result. THAT'S playing the nuclear game poorly.

[CmdrWilkens]

Honestly much as I enjoy a good STGOD the reason why the old ASVS STGOD's were so successful is that everyone collectively decided to destroy anybody that got out of line. The issue with SDN World Mk I was that we didn't have any consensus on where we were going, what constituted excessive behavior, nor the will to eliminate anyone seen as disruptive. I agree that Shep acted MOSTLY within the spirit of the rules (we can nitpick fine details but that doesn't matter to the overarching issue) the problem was he was playing a different game than everyone else. It stemmed from the fact that age of a game lends weight to a certain form of gameplay, that is SDNWorld was such a new concept that it didn't really have a set style and goal of gameplay yet.

Making a big set of rules to be followoed is silly and I think most STGODs just need to engage in two things:
A) Clearly lay out a sort of vision statement for the game, you don't need to be specific but saying something like "run a country of given size in an effort to better the citizens and their palce in the world" would have put everybody on the same page in SDNWorld (conversely saying "run a contry with an eye towards dominating the world" would have done the same thing but been a very different game).
B) Either deal with miscreants by popular action within the game or appeal to the forum mods to remove and/or redact posts from disruptive participants.

Sure there will be minor disputes over a whole host of issues some of them highly technical some of them not but by setting those two items as a basis for gameplay you make it clear what is considered (with obvious latitude) "good gameplay" and what is considered disruptive.

[Coyote]

I've been trying to do this in the games I play over at SpaceBattles; there are, it seems to me, three types of games:

1- FPS style. You control one or two characters, not governments.
2- Empire-building: You control a government/society with intent to dominate.
3- Political/Civilisation: You control a government and gameplay involves policy, diplomacy, and occassional wars where global dominance is not necessarily the goal.

You just have to have an agreement on which one you're all playing, and stick to it. When organizing an STGOD, make sure the first post, where the proposal is made, clearly states the intent.

[The Romulan Republic]

Now, in the unlikely event that anyone has paid attention to my previous posts , I have usually been against adding lots of new rules to deal with every eventually, partly because I feel that they stifle discussion and lead to stagnation. However, I'm sick of each new STGOD discussion becoming a debate over just how extensive and complicated the rules have to be to prevent the kind of behavior described above, when the problem might be solved by one simple rule that explicitely forbids such behavior and makes it a punishable offense. I would like to see it clearly spelled out that such behavior is not acceptable, and I would like to see it enforced if nessissary.

You say working out rules for each game is too complicated, but somehow you think we can make an all comprehensive set of rules for all games which won’t cause even more bullshit? Yeah right… the vagueness if your own thinking just points to the massive problems inherent to such an idea. What are you going to say, one cannot powergame? Yeah sure that’s great, now define power gaming in terms specific enough to avoid dispute on what is power gaming and just see how far that goes. Not gonna work. If you have to spell it out... you've already lost.

Perhaps I didn't spell it out clearly enough for you to understand, so I'll try again.

I am not, I repeat, not asking for a single standard set of rules for all future STGODs. That would be an apallingly bad idea, and if anyone got the impression that that was what I was talking about, I appologise and would like to make it explicitely clear that it is not what I had in mind.

All I am suggesting is a one-line addition to the rules that makes it an explicite violation of board rules to ignor the in-game rules or game moderator of any given STGOD. Each individual STGOD would still be run in its own way, with no standardized set of rules.

I acknowledge that powergaming may be an implicite violation of existing rules about trolling as you suggested below, but I felt it would be good to make it explicitely clear, both to deter such behavior in the future and to allow an STGOD to actually get started without demands for an over-complicated set of rules to prevent powergaming. I also acknowledge that powergaming is hard to define, but so are flaming, trolling, and sometimes logical fallacies, and we have rules regarding those. In any case this is intended to deal with blatant violations that could shut down a game, and in such a situation the infraction should be obvious.

We don’t need new rules anyway; truly deliberately sabotaging a STGOD with erroneous posts is just trolling. Refer it to the mods when it happens. Anything else, that’s the players problem. Pick you’re players well, make rules that work, don’t chose settings when details matter overwhelmingly. The most successful games I’ve seen had almost no rules and worked fine, some going on for even years, because everyone was just on the same page on what they wanted out of the game. If you don’t have that, then you don’t have shit. I've also seen games with highly complex rules run for long times, but this was also because everyone was on the same page and could agree to those rules and didn't just hunt for ways to beat them.

You know, I agree with most of this. I have consistantly argued that over-complicated sets of rules in an STGOD are needless. But others disagree because of concerns over powergaming, so this is my attempt to resolve the issue as much as possible. Having more rules has questionable effect, as a player can ignore them as easilly as a game moderator. Maybe if we made it clear that repeatedly ignoring a game's moderator or rules was a punishable offense and would be delt with, people wouldn't feel the need to debate for a week over increasingly cumbersom rules for each new STGOD.

[Sea Skimmer]

Sheppard did play as a blatant asshole in the game. Come on, he nuked a SAM battery that shot down one of his dumb planes and killed an entire city of thousands as a result. THAT'S playing the nuclear game poorly.

Nice job giving a selective account of the story. See, you forgot the fact that at the time Shep’s plane was over friendly territory, and it was shot down by a SAM launched across the boarder. That’s as clear and blatant an act of war as they come, and it happened because a certain someone didn’t read Shep's post right and through it WAS an airspace violation. Commit acts of war against a power which has made it abundantly clear that it will treat all wars as nuclear, and you get nuked, end of story. If you do this because you fucked up, then its your fault. Maybe someone shouldn’t have tried to get in a cheap kill against a world power.

[PeZook]

Sheppard did play as a blatant asshole in the game. Come on, he nuked a SAM battery that shot down one of his dumb planes and killed an entire city of thousands as a result. THAT'S playing the nuclear game poorly.

Nice job giving a selective account of the story. See, you forgot the fact that at the time Shep’s plane was over friendly territory, and it was shot down by a SAM launched across the boarder. That’s as clear and blatant an act of war as they come, and it happened because a certain someone didn’t read Shep's post right and through it WAS an airspace violation. Commit acts of war against a power which has made it abundantly clear that it will treat all wars as nuclear, and you get nuked, end of story. If you do this because you fucked up, then its your fault. Maybe someone shouldn’t have tried to get in a cheap kill against a world power.

You know, it just occured to me that for all the bitching about how SD.net world I ended, it was still one of the most succesful STGODs on this board ever, and it had hardly any rules at all.

[Shroom Man 777]

For all the poo-poo that goes around between Shep, Stas, and the MESSheads for killing the fuck out of one another, no one can fault me for anything. I played fair and had totally awesome homoerotic shenanigans and lame acronyms and alliterations - FART!

I was the true winner of SDN World.

And, yeah, it was totally the most awesome STGOD - better than its sequel. The lack of rules and the game's apparent flexibility helped it, rather than constrained it. Robot Wars, Sea Monsters, OMSK-MESSes, and fucking Goddamn Libertopians!

It's just a game, it shouldn't be SRS BSNSS. It should be fun, and that's what a STGOD mod should enforce. Fun might not be in the letter of the law, but it sure is in the spirit of it.

Too bad Shep's fun constituted of sucking the fun out of everyone else's fun. Fucking thermonuclear fun-sucker!

(I still love you, Shep! )

[Coyote]

I think if people want to dissect the SDNworld-1 scenario, it should be in its own thread. This topic should be for rules in general, and not a post-mortem on one particular STGOD.

[Crayz9000]

Honestly much as I enjoy a good STGOD the reason why the old ASVS STGOD's were so successful is that everyone collectively decided to destroy anybody that got out of line. The issue with SDN World Mk I was that we didn't have any consensus on where we were going, what constituted excessive behavior, nor the will to eliminate anyone seen as disruptive. I agree that Shep acted MOSTLY within the spirit of the rules (we can nitpick fine details but that doesn't matter to the overarching issue) the problem was he was playing a different game than everyone else. It stemmed from the fact that age of a game lends weight to a certain form of gameplay, that is SDNWorld was such a new concept that it didn't really have a set style and goal of gameplay yet.

Making a big set of rules to be followoed is silly and I think most STGODs just need to engage in two things:
A) Clearly lay out a sort of vision statement for the game, you don't need to be specific but saying something like "run a country of given size in an effort to better the citizens and their palce in the world" would have put everybody on the same page in SDNWorld (conversely saying "run a contry with an eye towards dominating the world" would have done the same thing but been a very different game).
B) Either deal with miscreants by popular action within the game or appeal to the forum mods to remove and/or redact posts from disruptive participants.

Sure there will be minor disputes over a whole host of issues some of them highly technical some of them not but by setting those two items as a basis for gameplay you make it clear what is considered (with obvious latitude) "good gameplay" and what is considered disruptive.

WIlkens, thank you for so concisely laying out the reasons why I haven't really participated in any STGODs here since the first one.

Actually, thinking back, the best STGODs that we had were ones where someone decided to try something very, very stupid and pissed all the other players off in the process. First it was Transcend with his Taelon Empire crap, then it was Deimos Anomaly with his Phallus and Romulan terminators/cockroaches. Now that was one guy who just refused to go down.

Then again, there was the ASVS Civil War, which was more or less a free-for-all with laughs and planets to be blown up all around.

Frankly, I think a large, overbearing list of rules is insane and will just lead to 50+ page threads of lawyering over the rulset before the game even starts. Excessively defining what a player can and cannot do stifles creativity (unless you happen to be a law student and love bending rules and arguing about them).

Also, there was one relatively consistent factor in the ASVS STGODs: the moderator. Phong, as a moderator, typically played the Star Kingdom of Serenity, which was one of the most powerful in-universe factions partially for out of universe reasons; if you decided to flip everyone the finger, he could pretty much smack you down but usually left that to the rest of the players and only stepped in when absolutely necessary. In essence, he was the sleeping bear you didn't want to wake up.

If we're going to go with a laissez-faire approach to games, we'll need to basically agree on someone to be a moderator who can be relatively impartial.