unforum

[rose]

Charter, Rules ?? "Community Relations"

[Adrian]

Good list so far, although I'm not sure I understand no. 3.

Another suggestion:

- The players must respect the privacy of the PMs and their organisation, including any actors or associated individuals.

[Diandra]

Ten Commandments

[AnthraX101]

The problem is that this game (Project syzygy) seems to already have thrown rule #3 out the window. (How else are you supposed to solve an MD5 hash of a word that you have never seen the game use but by brute force) I understand that this should still apply to web-based resources, but what about local things?

Then again, in Acheron they gave us a passwd file to crack, and then did not aprove of me brute forcing a password to a jphide'd file. It becomes quite a double edged sword.

AnthraX101

[Adrian]

At least IMO, the prohibition on brute forcing is meant to apply to practices that would harm game servers or resources - like brute forcing a password form on a website. If a game has a puzzle that can be brute forced locally (i.e. without contacting any game servers) then I would say that players can do whatever they want.

It may be that a puzzle was meant to be solved in another way (perhaps by use of a hidden key) but the fact remains that if it is feasibly brute-forceable, then the PMs have no-one to blame but themselves if it is indeed brute-forced. After all, it's not difficult to make a puzzle that *requires* you to find a key because it's immune to attack - you could just use a high bit PGP or something.

I would hope that when players see a puzzle, their first reaction is not to brute force it but to look for a key - but if a key is not forthcoming and the puzzle can be brute forced, then the PMs should full well expect it to be cracked that way.

[aliendial]

"Misleading websites" - half the fun is seeing what sort of fanfic sites pop up and seeing how quickly the community can "out" them. And if we don't, the PMs will .... During AI we had some wonderful fan sites that added to the depth of the world. And the Gentel Janitor was an inspired bit of player invention during Lockjaw. Abusive ones should be cut off, but don't discourage such creativity!

[Wolf]

As a PM, I can say fan sites as a rule are welcomed. I'm thinking GuysGuise and the Janitor. Players knew they weren't official but we managed to work them in to the story anyhow—and it was both fun for us and added another layer to the blur of what's real and what isn't.

During Mu, we hit the same issue with different results (their intent wasn't to be a fan site, just to cause confusion) so we worked out a way to tag the real sites, by linking the Underscore logo to the individual sites. To verify the site was in-game all you had to do was check the logo properties.

As for rules, I personally enjoy watching the community that forms around a game figure out what's OK and what's not. As others have already said elsewhere, we'll let you know in-game if something is out of bounds. You may not "get it" right away but eventually it gets figured out.

Just because most games have had a "Do Not Hack" sign posted on them doesn't rule out somebody coming along with a kick-ass new concept that requires it. And if you've made a rule as players to stay away from hacking, then you can't play it the way it was meant to be played.

I guess what I'm saying is "Pay Attention To The Signs," to borrow a phrase.

[Adrian]

I think we all agree that by 'misleading sites' we are not talking about fan site (like Shipbrook in the Beast) but sites that deliberately intend to confuse players and detract from the game experience.

There really is nothing you can do to stop a dedicated person from messing up your game in this way (or other ways) - if they made a website that constantly posted contradictory information and kept up with all your tagging efforts (after all, they can link to whatever logos you use) then it would be difficult to stop them. However, eventually players would cotton on and things would go back to normal. Also, I find it unlikely that an intelligent person would go to such lengths just to mess a game up.

So you might ask, what's the point of making a 'rule' or guideline against it, if it's not going to dissuade the dedicated? I would argue that the point is to outline what is acceptable behaviour. We all *know* that it's not on to make a website that deliberately confuses the game because we have common sense and have played these games before - however, there are enough people out there who lack common sense or might think it would spice the game up to throw in a bit of chaos. Making it clear that this just isn't acceptable will slow down some people and prevent confusion.

One important point to note is that I'm thinking of these as guidelines, not rules. I can conceive of a game where we might *possibly* want people to hack into our game servers, and if there was a cast-iron rule against it, that would make things difficult. However, if we had a guideline against hacking which said, 'No hacking unless explicity encouraged' then it would be a bit better. Ditto for making imitation sites.

In an ideal world all of these things would be left largely for the community to sort out themselves, with assistance from a community liaison from the PMs (as is done in some MMORPGs).

[Wolf]

[Adrian]

Ah, very clever. I like it

[bill]

[mysteryjones]

some thoughts

[Slyfox]

Here's a hypothetical. Could a game based around the concept of ARGing work? The characters within the game would all be ARGing fans playing an ARG within an ARG. You could then have the situation where the PMs running the characters are posting on sites like UF using Character names about the ARG they are playing which would effectively put sites like UF in game.

[BrianEnigma]

[Slyfox]