Good behavior and showing respect to one another

[Paha]

Hey folks.

I want to raise once more the common topic of behavior in the community. I generally feel that people are nice to each other, and if someone truly asks for help, they shall receive it. This is awesome.

With time a lot of us have gotten to know each other, gotten familiar with one another and forgotten some boundaries. Both in good and bad, because the lowered barriers bring honesty, but it also brings with it some bad. Mistakes on both sides.

What I want to remind everyone of is this:

1.) Our most common rule. Everyone should respect one another. This means common courtesy. You do not call people out, you do not throw dirt on anyone, and you do not belittle people or treat them badly. If you have need to voice disagreements, you can do it perfectly respectfully, or better yet in private. Lets not get petty about this and start finding nitpicked points or excuses for this. Just remember, it's a game, and we are all people. We can all act better and have more fun when we don't need to make someone else feel like shit.

2.) PvP and following rules. Our rules are many, they have grown because it felt necessary to add more nuances since people leaned on those as grey-areas if they did not exist. But basics remain and always will be expected. It's matter of sportmanship and respect. Don't seek short term gain and intentionally try to put people down. Do bad and evil things IC, yesss! We encourage you. Be merciless. However, can you be merciless when it matters and not off people who are in no way danger to you or you've barely had chance to build up any interaction and relationship with? That's an eternal question. Just think of it for a moment before you make rushed decisions. Same goes for those at the end of the tip of a sword. Don't let your ego get the best of you. Understand that being weaker or defeated, at that moment, is not end of it. It does not define anyone. They are characters, and characters can grow and improve and make great stories of failures too. Think few moments before you spit out something you can't take back. It's a mutual exchange and requires two people to be at same level of respect and spirit.

3.) Lastly, this has become a lot to deal with lately. DM's, our decision making, rules and feedback.

It's not like there has not always been cases where players do not like decisions that DM make. There are always those cases where something we decided or do, will end up hurting someone. You are absolutely fine and you are entitled to dislike it. We feel sympathy in pretty much all these cases, don't mistake that. We see behind the scenes and just like you think "I wouldn't have made that choice or done it like this, it was not fair, or it was bad move", we have those thoughts at times when we see gameplay going. Difference is that we don't come throwing dirt in your face or bring it to public - instead we observe, and often try to help you out even and give you a boost, or challenge you.

Lets go over few points you can very well think with common sense.

1.) We use a lot of time for efu. That is both you, the players, and us the DM's. For the DM's, all of it is Aimed at creating exciting, mysterious, challenging - literally FUN, experiences for players. Not ourselves. We can't think ourselves at front of it. How can we when we often have very little time to play. And such design very quickly runs dry. Do we always succeed in everything we set out? Absolutely not. We try new things, different things and sometimes it does not work out. But lets get that straight. We do things for everyone and we use a lot of time and effort for it. We likelywise do not make short of the effort people put in their characters, but we have a big picture we look at and make aim for that bigger picture. This here does entitle DM's to expect a bit of respect in terms of not causing more troubles and forcing us to use shit ton of time with sorting out things that could be handled directly and smoothly.

2.) We have our own rules that we follow and try to uphold in DM'ing. The whole team is our own peer review board and it can be rough. And if you think we sometimes are not nice in public, you can bet that there's no barriers among ourselves. Respect the fact that we do not simply laugh off anything and enjoy misery of anyone. Goodness, our life would be miserable if our only goal was to make people suffer and let individuals just do what ever they want. If we get feedback, we discuss it and we review our choices and decisions. This is how we handle it, and this is how it must be.

3.) Feedback.

We welcome feedback, but if you truly do not only feel sour because something happened to your character, and you feel something was unfairly done in grand scheme of things, okey. Calm down and collect your thoughts. Then come to us privately. You can feel bad. We can take bad and hard criticism too, but you do not have the right to jump at us with aggression. This is now an OOC moment, person to person. What happened in game is IC and we are both in character, we as DM's in playing NPC's and you as your character. You come to us with appropriate respect, voice your concerns to the best of your ability without trying to scorn the person on other side, and our promise to you is that we take it seriously, and we hear you out. And the rest of the team will hear of it and we'll review it seriously. I do not believe there to be a moment where DM would treat you badly, if you came to them in this manner instead of making a public scene first or throwing dirt on them with first lines. If you are not snarky or mean, we certainly will not beither. This is not always possible on either side. We're people and shit happens. We have bad days, but consider it still. How many times has a DM treated you bad if you yourself treated them well.

Be mindful of this. We have server rules we generally follow. People may forget that we sometimes bend these little to allow people a lot more freedom than rules might say at first. In good and bad sometimes, yes, but people often have the choice. Lets just all accept that it's not always the case, but I can promise that at a point or another, you've received same benefits when someone else has been on the more unfortunate end of it. And we, the DM's, have also experienced both sides of these interactions.

We do however, as even our rules say, reserve the right to make calls and changes in situations as Dungeon Master's, in terms of the bigger picture. Factoring what we know, what we've experienced, seen, heard, and what we have built. Some places, some settings, and some timing can call for us, in our opinion, to do something you may not always consider fair because it did not happen to everyone else. Okey, that's fair. But this is a roleplaying game and we have good old Dungeon Masters that are there to try and liven up the world. We do not always consider individual fairness, but we look at overall picture and aim for something different, something interesting, or maybe it's just a moment and timing where some NPC force has an agenda of their own, and it's been building up in the background. You may not simply no, so don't make assumptions of that, please.

Consider for a moment, what do we get out of any of it. We do not have a character invested to reap rewards. The rewards go to players. We do pay a price though, for our hundreds of hours of work put into some things. And believe it or not, we often swallow and accept that player actions as result of this choice we make as DM's, may end up totally derailing our plans. It's frustrating and painful too, but we consider bigger picture and see other opportunities that players may end up creating and inspiring us to create for them.

This is not 1 to 1 ratio, or universally fair. We are not a static world, static game where everything is exactly as. We make judgement calls. I dare say that most of the time one can look at it and see that something awesome happened in the world, or the moment. It may not be fair towards and invididual, but it was not intentionally aimed to be unfair. We don't keep mechanical count of the points. But believe in us, and believe in other players. We try to play our roles as Dungeon Masters, and it's at times rough to be in this world, but that's why it's so engaging. This is the nature of the game we play, and if you want to play here, you must accept this. We respect the things you do, successes you've had, and also effort you've had in complete failure when it's sincere and honest. And if it seems some things do go the wrong way for you, we do surely try our best to pay it back in one form or another. It may be long time in future, or it may just be next day and in next concept, or next app. If you want to express frustration, come to us and talk, as I mentioned above. Or step away for a while to calm down. We have all gone through this.

One way or another. Please be more respectful to everyone around you. We do not want mobs grouping up on anyone, not other players, not the DM's nor do we want people to shit talk others, or troll them. You want to talk with others, take them seriously and be serious about it. Don't make fun of others efforts. You're going to start pointing out holes in this post, but if you start nitpicking, then consider who you're helping.

If you managed to read this wall of text, thanks for it. I hope it gets everyone thinking a moment and just lay back, and relax. This has been a hobby and passion, source of great fun and emotions for 14 years for a lot of people. New exciting chances for newer players, even DM's. Just keep in mind that people generally want to have fun and not make others or themselves feel miserable. Have fun and remember that it's still a game.

[SkillFocuspwn]

It needs to be said. Whether player or DM, we're people, trying our best to make cool stories and have fun. ICly, we don't always win, and all of us screw up sometimes; but whatever happens in game, nobody is trying to ruin anyone else's day.

Be kind.