unforum

[ariock]

You Traitor!

[jlr1001]

[ariock]

[thebruce]

I totally agree =)

Another ILB situation was, of course, the rat-bastard weephun. In essence, he did exactly what the player did in the situation giving rise to this meta-rant, only about an IG character, rather than other players. He told an IG character (the antagonist in this instance) the whereabouts of another IG character (a favourite and hero) in secret - the PMs decided to run with it and unexpectedly had the hero effectively killed. No one knew until it happened and weephun was outted. He went through hellfire from other players who couldn't believe what he'd done, let alone keeping it secret from the community.

This kind of thing happens - and as I fully believe, the PMs then decide what to do with information and events such as that. As players, we want to foster community, but how we foster community isn't really of concern to the PMs. The PMs can decide whether their decision of how to react to a player or player's information would be a positive one for their playerbase or not; it's a decision they have to weigh.

Now when it comes to OOG info being used by a player IG, it's harder for the PMs IF they have no idea where the info came from - for all they know some players may have decided to use the info, or a player may have decided to betray his friends. A PM shouldn't have to go searching to find out whether info they've been given was posted IG or in some self-defined OOG location which is considered by players to be OOG. The PMs can only make decisions on a case by case basis based on what they know, and how they think the players will react.

So my first instinct in cases like this is not to blame the PMs for using info by a player, whether it was IG or OOG, or a community decision or a turncoat. All we can do is trust the PMs - if they decide to use a controversial situation IG, it has no become a part of the game - try to enjoy it and run with it, knowing the PMs have weighed the plusses and minuses.

For the points (and this is of course just MHO):
1. Do you think it is reasonable to use posts on UF to send information to the IG characters?

To -send info to a character IG-, no. To discuss 'secret' info one might send to a character by another means, yes

1a. If so, would you mind if another player used something that you'd posted and made your future interaction IG more difficult?

I might be miffed at the player, but if the PMs decide to use it ingame, there's nothing I can do, and I hope/trust that the PM has seen a good twist to the plot.

1b. If not, should there be specific rules about the use of info from UF, in the same way that PMs are required not to post on UF in order to prod their own games along?

I think if there were rules, the only thing that UF could do is punish a board member for using OOG info in an IG way. And we've seen repeatedly that as a community we want to avoid 'policing'. I don't know if there is an easy solution. The forums are readable by anyone. A player may take info posted in the forums and submit it anonymously to a character so they're traced back to their UF profile. who knows... I don't think there's an easy solution to this unless UF takes a more proactive role in how players play the game (which is pretty much not going to happen).

2. Could/should there be SubForums for games that begin to fracture due to some players wanting to be turncoats? That way players on one side would get an area and the other side would get a different area. Is that even feasible?

I think if a player has decided to use OOG info IG, they won't care if it's on one forum or another, and having sections restricted to 'approved' members is another thing that certainly won't happen here. I think this has been discussed in other games as well, and the solution was effectively that players formed their own off-UF discussion areas if 'teams' were involved.

2a. Should there be a rule that a player who intends to turn traitor should have to request a split so that perhaps players could stop posting information in the general forum that might be used against them?

If anything like this happens, again, I think it's up to the players themselves to enforce - not UF, not the moderators. Effectively that means basically going somewhere non-UF. I hate the idea of it, but there's nothing we can do to control how players play the game. Hopefully, PMs would see what's happening in the community, and do what they can to encourage teamwork and whatnot, but not every PM is the same. I think UF will encourage PMs and ARGs that have that ideal in mind, and others will naturally go elsewhere (another reason there was Immersion Unlimited, and Perplexorum - different ideals and thoughts of how a community should work, or at least allowing a place for those with variant ideas to go without constant meta-debate like at UF )

It's a touchy issue, but I don't think there's anything we can do. It's about how the players choose to play, and how the PMs choose to react to how the players play. Neither of which can beenforced per se, by UF, outside of the TOS which is more focused on fostering community than splitting it.

[ariock]

Thanks for the comments, thebruce.

[konamouse]

A similar instance happened in Sammeeeees (the original). We had a couple of folks pretending to be on the side of Mr Alan Johnson. The rest of us were on the side of Peeps. And we had a player who actually thought he was the true hero in the game (and didn't trust Patricia). So she took discussion information shared here in uF and "ratted out" one of our double agents to Mr Alan Johnson. Copied information from uF in emails to him.

The PM had been watching the board (but never the chat) and figured out an IG method to nicely divert the communication from the rogue player away from Mr Alan Johnson. When the rest of us found out, we reminded the player that information posted on uF was not IG and could not be used IG in the manner it was used. And this never happened again. There was some good META that followed my rant. And we all sailed on happily afterwards (even if she still didn't trust Patricia, even in the sequel).
Kudos to all involved!

[jlr1001]

I guess a take-away, in the absence of a players' manual for each game, is that there will always be some cycle of player education and re-education that we'd have to go through...

It's easy to imagine that a really creative PM could develop a game that challenges how even the most experienced player interacts with it, such that that experienced player would have to re-learn how to play the game...



-jlr1001

[SpaceBass]

Hmm, déjà vu. This discussion is about an important issue but I think the questions are misphrased. I hope that I get the impetus behind the framing of these questions but I really feel that the focus on Unfiction (while flattering to the effectiveness of this particular community in influencing the direction of specific campaigns), as well as on individual players or playing style, is slightly misdirected. The fact is that all of those elements are irrelevant to the possibility of this sort of event occurring.

To illustrate this point, let's examine our options as players to attempt to prevent our in-game information from being used "against" us. Ariock suggests codifying a playing guideline into the forum's Terms of Service but this solution assumes that Unfiction is the only place players play and that all users will abide by the ToS. What is to stop uF users from breaking the rules, or unregistered guests from not caring about them? How about the player who innocently reposts in-game information elsewhere, which is subsequently used by a third party in a fashion adverse to our desire?

The next step is to attempt to prevent dissemination of sensitive information beyond trusted parties. This generally results in a rapid decline in the number of participants with which an individual can expect to cooperate, depending on how many people he or she can truly trust. Such groups can be fun to watch if they devolve into the paranoia and peer-accusation to which they are prone.

The extreme step is to always keep all in-game information about oneself to oneself, with nothing left public, as that is the only truly foolproof way of denying its possible misuse. Except that there is always another party who knows besides the player: the puppetmaster.

No segregation of in-game information can prevent the puppetmasters from making the choice to use it, if one has chosen to interact with the campaign. The only further alternative is to cease interacting. These options seem to me to fundamentally defeat the entire purpose of the genre, which is based on making such connections rather than severing them.

Similarly, no amount of player exhortation could require the puppetmasters to do a certain thing. While a player interaction could provide timing, impetus, or even inspiration, these things must be chosen to be seized upon by the PMs. And nothing stops the PMs from choosing to do some such thing in the absence of any player input at all.

Without presuming to know what Ariock is thinking, I suspect his reaction to these types of events arises more due to a feeling of betrayal by the game itself, in conflict with his stated desire to give the puppetmasters the benefit of the doubt in their intent, while they have meanwhile attempted to thrust him into a more constricted in-game role without an obvious invitation or his consent. Perhaps this was implicit in the initial invitation to participate in this particular campaign's universe but such assumptions are likely ill met in these specific instances by those who would prefer to exert their own will rather than to blindly follow that of others. Nobody wants to feel used.

Does recognizing this allow us a different perspective on the problem? If we accept that secrecy cannot prevent these incidents, can we at least influence them in another fashion? Of course! ARGing is all about embracing the unexpected and making it work for you!

The sole audience of Unfiction is not just players, lurkers, and inquisitive folk. We hope (and know in most cases) that the puppetmasters behind these productions are using this resource as a source of information about gameplay progress. Unfiction is not the only place to play but it generally keeps up when it isn't leading the way in campaigns. Thus, it is not just of paramount import to share with other players but also with the puppetmasters themselves; perhaps more so, since we have much less opportunity for communication with them than with our fellows.

It thus behooves us to be as forthcoming and visible as possible in our presentation of gathered knowledge and reactions thereto, if we wish to influence the puppetmasters in a more meta-sense with respect to their game design and implementation. Imagine how useless this very thread would be if it were locked away on some private darknet bulletin board; the puppetmasters would never be able to see any benefit from it, from even knowing of it. This question was at the root of a fundamental design decision behind both these forums and the recent introduction of despoiler wikis.

By focusing on this sort of incident as a design decision by the puppetmasters, we can also begin to more carefully question its purpose. By attempting to insert players in game, are the PMs not taking a risk that those individuals might not "play along?" It seems to me that it should be pretty easy for a player to get him or herself written back out of a game in short order, if so desired. The puppetmasters have only one other alternative with a recalcitrant or deliberately obstructive player who has been acknowledged by them as in-game: to break the game itself.

Is this really an invitation to those players who were named to take part in a deeper role within the campaign universe? Or is it a deliberate slight against the players on the part of the puppetmasters? An attempt to control when, where, and how some of the players might play?

[konamouse]

I sense a good topic for ARGNetcast discussion in this thread.......

[ariock]

[celina63]

Personally, it's been one of my pet peeves about EniTech from day one that they did not choose to use their own forum, or even the blog comments, as the means of player communication with the Game... that they instead chose to look at interactions on the UF forum (or, earlier in the game, SomethingAwful forums) and pick and choose what they wanted to use.

Alot of this could have been avoided if the PMs *ONLY* considered information that was given to them via email or the blog comments as "in game", rather than reading the forums and using information posted there. Granted, they didn't use *everything* posted there or things would have been pretty confusing - but the fact that the Unfiction Forums, or information contained *withing* the forums, were used in-game, caused great confusion - and something I'm looking forward to questioning them about, should there be a post-game PM Chat.

Granted, I don't think if EniTech had stuck to this "rule" or guideline, that the present situation could have been avoided, since the player *did* inform the in-game characters via email. In this situation, the onus was STRICTLY on the PMs, and since they choose to use this information in-game, they are the ones to "blame" (if blame should even be assigned to this).

Lastly, being one of the Terminated - I don't feel so bad about it. I haven't noticed any lack of personal game interaction (yet), and it's my opinion the PMs used this mechanism as a means of keeping down the number of people emailing and confusing "Skynet"

As always, IMO.

[thebruce]

well, again, to be fair, all that happened was they mentioned Unfiction and Somethingawful. I haven't seen any information explicitly used in-game from unfiction (at least that was not transferred to them by a player outside unfiction). IIRC, it was only a mention, encouraging the various communities they knew about in their discussions and in helping enitech. There was no OOG use of information IG by Enitech, or the PMs, that I can recall. Maybe I missed something, but let's not blow this way out of proportion on the PMs' side.
Since then there's been no reference to unfiction at all.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

While the idea of a rule/guideline/best practices statement/whatever regarding player's sharing of unfiction-specific fellow player information and or activities sounds like a good idea, we know how ineffective it'd be due to new player and PM learning curves and the overwhelming desire to "jump in".

I mean... Who knows? Jane might come up with a game that replicates the Nazi buildup during the pre-war period that rewards players for turning in others based on nothing nothing more than their suspicions about another party, regardless of how those suspicions were fomented.

These situations are unfortunate... But. can really only be regarded as learning opportunities and examples for future campaigns.

[celina63]

[natas]

I am currently experiencing a difficult situation in a game I am playing (which I won't mention for obvious reasons). I believe the PM is wanting me to inform on other players, but wasn't sure if I should keep this to myself or post e-mail contact on the forums, which I believe are strictly OOG. Wanting to keep the community we have built so far as close knit as possible, I chose the latter.

Now my dilemma lies in the fact that I hope the PM doesn't out me once again for posting his emails in the game thread. Did I make the right decision in informing the rest of the players as to the intentions of the PM, or should I have kept the info to myself. Any feedback is very welcome.