Another friend on here was asking about sex games, and Midsyn got brought up again, as happens, and one of the things I said was that, no matter what kind of game, there are two things that can help you gauge it
however, there was no real page on magic, despite it being such an important thing. as far as anyone else could tell, you just requested to learn a spell
and this was apparently asked about for months, but, the entire time I was in the game, it never became a thing. So that was, like... The game started in February, and I think I got banned around May
Obviously just forgetting something or not realizing it would get brought up because Players Sure Do Things is fine, but that always felt like a kind of big deal to just... not have up for a while
the biggest red flag for me is how many NPCs there are and if there are factions involved with them. Like, it just leads to people trying to suck up to the mods to get favors and likewise feeling like they are being punished if the mods are ignoring them, like, it just generates a lot of bad feelings really quickly
it isn't that the presence of npcs are always bad, but if those npcs are say, givers of the plot or leaders of a faction, it gets kinda... messy for me
....and 2 is of course a thing on favoritism as well, because if you struggle with getting A Thing done, but another person seems to get A thing done much easier, well...
Yeah, I've had a coinflip with anonmods - Midsyn was obviously a shitshow, but I ended up joining a different anonmod sex game (because I never learn my lesson), and they were very good, although the game didn't last. So definitely a hazard sign and something to be careful about
my rule of thumb is that npcs are okay, but they can never be plot important npcs that intermingle with the characters. so the npcs can either give out plot or be generally like normal characters, but not both
It depends on the kind of game. Plot-important NPCs who mingle with the characters are nearly essential for many short-term games and, when done right, are often either beloved allies or love-to-hate villains whom the playerbase is all over for their own sake as opposed to just to suck up to the mods.
Whereas in long-term games, these NPCs often eat up all the plot for themselves, slow the player characters down, or lead to favouritism or attempts to curry such.
I've had pretty good experiences with NPCs in the several games I've been in, so I think it's all right (but I knew and generally trusted in the players behind them)
they can be done fairly well in longer-term games as well; the main NPC in LifeAftr was a fun character to interact with, though that might be mitigated because in a way they were discovering a lot of the plot themselves along with the players. plus any actual plot important information the mods made sure all characters and players would have access to
one for me is just the tone that the game info and app questions and stuff are written in, like...if I read all the game materials and I feel like they're judging me before I app or something, hard pass
For example, mods being harder on canons they're personally familiar with, giving the third degree to certain elements of the history (e.g. the "why'd you make this OC trans?" that you see from time to time), or when you can see that they technically allow something but they really don't want it in the game (we see this with fad canons and CRAUs sometimes)
how strict the applications or AC are tbh, like. Mods that forget this is about fun and not about work? no thanks. opposite of red flag is like. if they've got funny/witty jokes and references mixed in with their like Official Info bc to me that says they realize this is about fun
Red flag for me includes anon mods. I know. I KNOW. I get it, as a former mod, some players can be really cruel or stress you out, but as a player ... I just can't bear to do it again.
2 was def a mydsyn thing. I had to jump through a million hoops and have so much bonus ac for what I wanted. another character was in game 3 months and had a bank if I remember correctly
Seconding anon mods as a hazard sign. FAQ questions is something I look at - I couldn't give you an exact question that being there/not there is a flag, but it shows how much forethought there is in the game.
I've only run into this once, but games with both high levels of technology and magic but some of the FAQ stuff makes it sound like they don't have anything for characters with mobility issues even when they explicitly can magic nonhumans into squishy humanoid bodies including robots and golems and the like
For older games, how up-to-date the information is - if the mods have a "one and done" philosophy about info pages, they can get out of date pretty quickly if there's a metaplot going on, and not keeping them updated shows how much the mods care about the playerbase having info (or... don't care, as the case may be)
like, I get that's not something that'll be a problem for the characters most people want to play, but, uh, maybe don't subtly imply people shouldn't app characters with physical disabilities???
I've enjoyed games with anon mods and games with plot npcs tbh - the biggest flag is inconsistency and a lack of transparency in how ac/apps/player disputes are handled
(Note: if a player has jumped into an opt-in event where they are vaguely warned that Shit May Go Down, this does count as permission - sometimes mods can't tell you exactly what's going to happen without spoilers but can give you a general idea, and that's okay)
One of the wildest things the MidSyn mods did was, for a horror event, drop the mangled corpses of dropped characters (almost literally, I think) on current characters
They sought NO ONE'S permission to do this or warned dropped players that their characters might be brutally killed after they dropped them, which was bad enough
But where it REALLY gets wild is that MidSyn had an explicit policy of letting players re-app dropped characters, and if they came back within a certain period of time, they'd retain all their old memories
I always read all the rules and all the comments on the faq page to get an idea of how a mod interacts with the players. A mod that communicates clearly and takes feedback on those pages gracefully is less likely to be a dick
A player whose character they killed while they were dropped actually tried to do this, and the mods didn't want to let the player re-app the way they explicitly laid out was okay in the rules
Because they wanted that character's mod-dictated death they had no permission to cause while the player was dropped to remain game canon, and the player re-apping the character would mess up their horror lore
So they tried to make the player jump through a bunch of weird hoops to be allowed to re-app their character the way the rules said they were totally allowed to do!
I forget if the player persisted because they refused to let their character be treated like that, or if they were so enraged and disgusted by the mods that they no longer wanted to play in the game
Speaking of which, in my experience, "dropped characters become drone NPCs who don't remember the plot/won't or can't believe your character when they tell them" or similar sounds like a good setting detail, but it usually only works in horror games. Non-horror games doing it to try and make things easier leads to a jarring shift in tone.
(I still don't know why the mods couldn't have just let them app back in while leaving it hazy how the character came back, let the other characters wonder if those deaths were somehow faked or not, so like...even with their initial shit decision, they had to CONSISTENTLY CONTINUE TO MAKE TERRIBLE CALLS to fuck over that player that badly)
One character drops, their CR gets depressed about a broken relationship they can't tell anyone about (on top of only being able to confide in identified player characters -- again, not in a horror game), then more people drop, and eventually, the game stops being fun because your character is just being miserably broken, but you feel guilty thinking about
I've only ever done one group rp so i dont know if it counts, but unreasonable activity rules, i was a middle schooler with hardly any free time so being asked to log in and make a post at least 2 times a day every day of the week was too much
expired milk
: i must have been a young teenager so this was 2008, 2009 maybe, but yeah, i got kicked very fast and berated by multiple grown adults (i'm talking 20s and 30s), it was a very strange experience so i haven't roleplayed in groups ever since
Azure ☪ Moon
: both, these were the very very old forums like arcadia and roleplaytown or whatever their names were, i dont know how common that was but you were expected to participate in the out of character chats, post in character in the replies, and also make whole ass posts just as updates kinda like status updates in videogames
Azure ☪ Moon
: like... i was a young teen in middle school just trying to cope with life and these 30 something would be on my case if i skipped a single day
well, if you ever decide to try group RP again, dreamwidth is good for that, and I can promise you that you wouldn't get dragged into that kind of hellscape
I could see two tags per day for like...a plot heavy game where you should at least check in, but tags, entire new top levels for people to respond to, ooc chat, and a daily activity log sounds like hell
also piggybacking off something Jisu said, re: drop trains vs misery, and also horror games more generally: If all I ever see people talking about is how miserable their characters are, that's a red flag for me. As much as I've enjoyed horror games in the past, misery porn is a different genre and it's one I hate.
gods i feel so iffy about joining games because i am afraid of mods doing bad stuff with my characters after dropping, aha, without permission or even warning.
I think one of my red flags is if the game is trying to be everything to everyone. I'd prefer a game that's good at one or two things rather than bad at a lot of things.
pastel ranma
: 100% agree. unless it's a very simple concept (Luceti got MILES out of characters grow wings, back in the day) and you cut players loose to make their own fun (which is what Luceti DID), keep to your core concept.
anonmods (I was in Wonderland Wars I KNOW what can happen with anonmods) is a big one for me. Typos in FAQ and info pages and TDM. Aspects of the game that are explained only by "this was added during [link to a big event] in [year], for more information read every thread made by NPCs in this three part event"
2. How much are the mods willing to work with you on something you want to do?
dup is great for that. you need to be established before getting a house/business/etc