Francine Peters (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thatsamilkshake) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh_ooc2010-08-16 09:55 am
thatsamilkshake) wrote in fandomhigh_ooc2010-08-16 09:55 am
Entry tags:
And while we're spaminating: August Open Forum Round-Up
Now that the BDE has stopped eating all our braaaaaaains and before the fall semester starts to chomp away, we'd like to get the round-up for our most recent Open Forum out to you guys! Drumroll optional.
NPCs: Who can Play Them, Where, and With Whom?
Who: You can play your own NPCs, of course, but you're always welcome to have other FH players portray your character's NPC as well. The only time non-players may do this, however, is during Parents Weekend/Graduation.
Where (game location): Certain characters have pre-approved NPCs that also live on the island (Gracie Winchester, for example) or business-owner NPCs (like Tino). Any other type of NPC (friend, relative, archnemesis) needs to remain off the island unless present for an approved plot. They can, however, write/call/text to your heart's content.
Where (journals): NPCs may be played out of your character's journal, another PC's journal, or an approved Parents Weekend/Graduation/Already Used It For A Plot journal!
With whom: Your NPCs are allowed to interact with your character at any time (barring plot-related communications breakdowns), and with other characters either off-island, or during on-island events and plots.
When it comes to phone calls, letters, e-mail, etc. with other PCs, we'd prefer that your character either be present in the scene somehow, or that the interaction be about your character in some way. For example, it's fine for NPC!George to call Mitchell's house in Fandom and get one of his new roommates instead, if the point of the call is to leave Mitchell a message and bitch about how he's never home and he's left his mobile off again and everything in Bristol is falling to pieces and it's all his fault. It's not fine for NPC!George to call Dinah on-island just to reminisce about old days when he was a Fandom High student.
What Should a Player Do if They Have an Issue With an Admin?
First, please know that any player-to-player problems where one of the players is an admin will be taken just as seriously and addressed in the same way as if that admin were any other player. We'd also like to assure you that if there are problems with any admin's actions as an admin, we as a team want to know, so we can do our best to make things right.
E-mail to administration at fandomhigh dot net is always welcome, and if you'd prefer to remain anonymous, there's the option of using the contact form on the FH website (http://fandomhigh.net/home/contact) which will forward to all of the admins.
However, we can understand why a player might wish to speak to other team members first; this is fine. You're welcome to e-mail or IM another admin to discuss the situation; that admin can present it to the rest of the team. (Please specifically let us know you want us to do that, though, so we can keep that separate from venting between friends.) We will, on request, keep the source of the concerns anonymous, but we think it's only fair that if complaints are being made about an admin, they should be made aware so they can address them.
Plot Scheduling and the Plot Calendar
Arising out of the discussion of a plot conflict that was our bad and took a few attempts at rescheduling to get solved, came the question of including a contact person when we add player-run plots to the calendar, so that other plotters can contact them to possibly negotiate moving dates around if needed. We appreciate the problem-solving intentions behind that idea, but we feel it would be difficult to impossible to make work in a fair way, on both a player level and an admin level.
On a player level, players may not wish to discuss their plots with other players before they make their big announcement, or to negotiate with other players for the timeslot. It feels inappropriate for us to open people up to the possibility of feeling pressured to move something, no matter how polite the request might be. The suggestion was raised of offering a yes/no checkbox on the plot submission form, where the plotrunner could check "Yes, I'm fine with my name being included in the public plot calender for this plot" which would solve the player issue, but would still leave us with problems on the admin side.
On the admin level, once we get a plot up on the plot claendar, we're planning things around it. Other people's plots, random events, OOC events, gamewide plots. Not everything goes up on the plot calendar right away, whether because a player is still figuring out their availability, or because we're holding on to an admin-run event until all of the player events are slotted into place. Those are just a few examples; we couldn't list every possible scheduling issue out if we tried, and you wouldn't want to read them all. Basically, one of the things the admins are here for is to try to schedule everything big that's going on in the game so that no one has conflicts. No one's perfect and we're going to occasionally miss something, but it's our job, and there's a reason for that: we're the only ones who have access to everybody's plans at the same time.
We'll always be willing to re-schedule player-run plots if it's needed (and as much as possible, we want the plot-runner to be able to choose from any available dates), but we'd rather not add yet another level of uncertainty to the process by encouraging players to negotiate with each other to re-arrange plots that are already posted on the calendar.
Radio and General OOC/IC Issues
While this was brought up in the concerns section, we feel this is really a player to player issue. The most we feel comfortable saying about it as admins is that given the huge amount of work required to collect and summarize everything going on in this game, there's no way to avoid occasional inaccuracies in the way events are presented in the radio broadcasts. Given that they're presented in character, yes, sometimes there's also going to be a deliberate slant that wasn't originally intended in the scene.
We can't always control what other characters say about or to our characters, and that's part of the game; it comes from sharing a dynamic fictional world with 60+ other people, rather than writing a fanfic. A number of good suggestions for how to deal with radio reports involving one's character were brought up in the thread; among them was using OOC communication to say "Could we please avoid discussing this because of XYZ" and that's part of the fabric of the game too.
On the flip-side, we can all try to be accurate when we have our characters state facts about others, try to avoid accidental metagaming so our characters don't mention something they can't possibly know, and use OOC communication both beforehand to avoid problems, and afterwards to fix them. There's nothing wrong with agreeing to take back a few pings in an active scene and send the conversation in another direction.
We can also, and should also, try as hard as possible to avoid letting our personal feelings about something bleed into what our characters are saying and doing. Even if being snarky is in character, think about whether that snark is coming from you or your character, and if it's you, or if it's both? Go talk to the other player directly about what's bothering you. It's honest, it's adult, and it stops paranoia and insecurity in its tracks.
Cabin Living Rooms
In the past, the instructions on cabin area posting have been that campfire posts get posted to the dorms community (because they're like common rooms, where anyone can walk by and join a conversation), and living room posts get posted to personal journals (because they're like room posts, where the door to the cabin can be open or closed to set how private and personal the interactions should be).
Since the creation of the cabins, the game has very obviously changed, and we've noticed that living rooms have become more open than room posts. So, the next time everyone is shuttled to the cabins, we'll be moving the living rooms from personal journals to the dorms community to join the campfire posts. Living rooms may only be posted by someone who lives in the given cabin, but any student may come inside. Alcove posts will still get posted in your personal journals as usual. We'll be updating this change in our big ole cabins info post!
Tips and Tricks Post
Ever wondered how to turn off custom comment pages? What about how to stop receiving those Livejournal news announcements? Then, we'd like you to check out this post. We went through and tried to put together some basic tips and tricks to better help with your Livejournal roleplaying experience. We can't list them all so the post is also going to open for suggestions, tips and tricks from you guys!
Duplication of PBs
While the question in the forum was specifically about new characters coming in and using a PB that's already in use by a canon character, this is really a subject that applies to all types of characters: PCs, NPCs, genderswitch PBs, weetiny PBs, you name it -- and we needed to revisit it on those terms and come up with a policy.
Here's the deal: please try to be as courteous as possible about it. Please drop a line to the other player giving them a heads up if:
* You're a current player bringing in a new character and you know that someone else is already using the PB as the main PB for their character
* You've chosen a PB for your NPC/genderswitch day/AU weekend character and you know that someone else is already using it as the main PB for their character
That's it. A heads up, not asking permission, and if someone is unaware that they've chosen the same face until it's in use and someone else points it out, it's unfortunate but no one's fault.
It's going to happen. People are going to look like other people. It's one of the things in-game that we as players can't necessarily control, and we shouldn't have control over it. Work with it or creatively avoid dealing with it; there are many options for either, and either can be fun. It's a game tradition, most characters are already aware of the Fandom Doppelganger phenomenon, and if you make it clear that you'd rather not have wacky twin hijinks with your lookalike, other players will work with that.
Bottom line? They're icons. We're grown-ups. Let's play together and have fun.
That said, at the brilliant suggestion of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flowering_mind, we've created a post for those wondering who those faces are and who they ought to give a heads-up to. It's linked on the FH user-info, and players are welcome to start a thread for their character and list the name of the main PB, then if they like, add images and actor-names of any attached NPCs, genderswitches, wee kids, or anybody else with a face. Behold the Fandom High PB Gallery! (When characters leave the game, we'll go through and delete the related comments to keep things up to date.)
List of Meta!
A request was made for a list of meta names that have already been used, since the two previous player-run wikis that contained the information have both passed into the Great Beyond.
angelo_wings jumped to the challenge, players leaped to fill in the information, and the FH Meta Wiki was born! Go forth and make up wacky names, then write them down so others can share the fun.
Keeping an Eye on Open Forum Threads
We'd just like to reassure you that we do! All of the admins who are available are watching the forum as it progresses; usually we've tracked it so every comment is coming to our inboxes, as well.
If things get out of hand in a discussion, or if someone contacts us in the OOC thread or by email to indicate they're feeling uncomfortable and would like us to intervene, we're happy to step in. Generally, though, we try to be very careful about interfering when players are talking to each other, because we don't want to make anyone feel they're being shut down or censored. This isn't just an open forum for you to talk to us; it's an open forum for you to talk to each other, too.
FH Secrets
We're not going to tell you what you can or can't do outside the game, though we'd be overjoyed if people were kind to each other, tried to solve their problems like adults, and avoided bringing negative attention to Fandom High.
However, a suggestion was made outside the open forum, with a request for mention in the round up, that an official locked fh_secrets community be created, on the premise that problems and wank are unavoidable, but we can at least keep it within the game, and control what gets posted.
This is us mentioning it, as requested. This is, however, also us saying that we ran out of ways to describe the many reasons that such a comm wouldn't work, would be inappropriate for us to create or condone, would make both the players and the admins uncomfortable, and would directly contradict our stance on solving problems like adults.
We appreciate the concern behind the suggestion, and we know it was meant with the best of intentions, but no. That's not going to happen.
Sexytimes in the Comms
Another concern brought up directly to us rather than in the forum, but one that we agree everybody could use a reminder on. Please be careful about where your sexy threads get posted. It's fine if you're flirting around in a comm post, but if things start to get graphic, whether in actual actions or just in description/dialogue, move it on over to a personal journal and add a link with a warning to the comm thread! If you're just skirting the edge but don't really feel it's time to move it elsewhere, adding a warning to the subject line of the thread would also be a nice compromise.
Retconning and Re-pinging
Something that's been confusing people a bit, partially because we needed some clearer guidelines on it, is the subject of rewriting tags to fix a jossing/accidental metagame/conversation that's just going in an uncomfortable direction for both players.
If it's a private conversation, then as long as everyone in the conversation agrees to it, and the specific exchange being edited hasn't been mentioned on the radio or by one of the characters in a later conversation with someone else, this is fine. It's fine to edit the comment you just made, and it's fine to delete multiple comments to get the conversation back to the place where it's not causing both parties a problem.
When we say (as the FH website does) "no retconning without permission," we're referring to scenes that multiple people have participated in, top-level posts, events that affect more than just the people in that scene, and descriptions of what happened in the past that are known by the game at large. Basically, anything that would force other players to amend their own character's history to deal with your changes.
Lack of Awesome Macros
Not anymore!
Questions, comments, and baklava are of course welcome.
Questions Round-Up
NPCs: Who can Play Them, Where, and With Whom?
Who: You can play your own NPCs, of course, but you're always welcome to have other FH players portray your character's NPC as well. The only time non-players may do this, however, is during Parents Weekend/Graduation.
Where (game location): Certain characters have pre-approved NPCs that also live on the island (Gracie Winchester, for example) or business-owner NPCs (like Tino). Any other type of NPC (friend, relative, archnemesis) needs to remain off the island unless present for an approved plot. They can, however, write/call/text to your heart's content.
Where (journals): NPCs may be played out of your character's journal, another PC's journal, or an approved Parents Weekend/Graduation/Already Used It For A Plot journal!
With whom: Your NPCs are allowed to interact with your character at any time (barring plot-related communications breakdowns), and with other characters either off-island, or during on-island events and plots.
When it comes to phone calls, letters, e-mail, etc. with other PCs, we'd prefer that your character either be present in the scene somehow, or that the interaction be about your character in some way. For example, it's fine for NPC!George to call Mitchell's house in Fandom and get one of his new roommates instead, if the point of the call is to leave Mitchell a message and bitch about how he's never home and he's left his mobile off again and everything in Bristol is falling to pieces and it's all his fault. It's not fine for NPC!George to call Dinah on-island just to reminisce about old days when he was a Fandom High student.
What Should a Player Do if They Have an Issue With an Admin?
First, please know that any player-to-player problems where one of the players is an admin will be taken just as seriously and addressed in the same way as if that admin were any other player. We'd also like to assure you that if there are problems with any admin's actions as an admin, we as a team want to know, so we can do our best to make things right.
E-mail to administration at fandomhigh dot net is always welcome, and if you'd prefer to remain anonymous, there's the option of using the contact form on the FH website (http://fandomhigh.net/home/contact) which will forward to all of the admins.
However, we can understand why a player might wish to speak to other team members first; this is fine. You're welcome to e-mail or IM another admin to discuss the situation; that admin can present it to the rest of the team. (Please specifically let us know you want us to do that, though, so we can keep that separate from venting between friends.) We will, on request, keep the source of the concerns anonymous, but we think it's only fair that if complaints are being made about an admin, they should be made aware so they can address them.
Concerns Round-Up
Plot Scheduling and the Plot Calendar
Arising out of the discussion of a plot conflict that was our bad and took a few attempts at rescheduling to get solved, came the question of including a contact person when we add player-run plots to the calendar, so that other plotters can contact them to possibly negotiate moving dates around if needed. We appreciate the problem-solving intentions behind that idea, but we feel it would be difficult to impossible to make work in a fair way, on both a player level and an admin level.
On a player level, players may not wish to discuss their plots with other players before they make their big announcement, or to negotiate with other players for the timeslot. It feels inappropriate for us to open people up to the possibility of feeling pressured to move something, no matter how polite the request might be. The suggestion was raised of offering a yes/no checkbox on the plot submission form, where the plotrunner could check "Yes, I'm fine with my name being included in the public plot calender for this plot" which would solve the player issue, but would still leave us with problems on the admin side.
On the admin level, once we get a plot up on the plot claendar, we're planning things around it. Other people's plots, random events, OOC events, gamewide plots. Not everything goes up on the plot calendar right away, whether because a player is still figuring out their availability, or because we're holding on to an admin-run event until all of the player events are slotted into place. Those are just a few examples; we couldn't list every possible scheduling issue out if we tried, and you wouldn't want to read them all. Basically, one of the things the admins are here for is to try to schedule everything big that's going on in the game so that no one has conflicts. No one's perfect and we're going to occasionally miss something, but it's our job, and there's a reason for that: we're the only ones who have access to everybody's plans at the same time.
We'll always be willing to re-schedule player-run plots if it's needed (and as much as possible, we want the plot-runner to be able to choose from any available dates), but we'd rather not add yet another level of uncertainty to the process by encouraging players to negotiate with each other to re-arrange plots that are already posted on the calendar.
Radio and General OOC/IC Issues
While this was brought up in the concerns section, we feel this is really a player to player issue. The most we feel comfortable saying about it as admins is that given the huge amount of work required to collect and summarize everything going on in this game, there's no way to avoid occasional inaccuracies in the way events are presented in the radio broadcasts. Given that they're presented in character, yes, sometimes there's also going to be a deliberate slant that wasn't originally intended in the scene.
We can't always control what other characters say about or to our characters, and that's part of the game; it comes from sharing a dynamic fictional world with 60+ other people, rather than writing a fanfic. A number of good suggestions for how to deal with radio reports involving one's character were brought up in the thread; among them was using OOC communication to say "Could we please avoid discussing this because of XYZ" and that's part of the fabric of the game too.
On the flip-side, we can all try to be accurate when we have our characters state facts about others, try to avoid accidental metagaming so our characters don't mention something they can't possibly know, and use OOC communication both beforehand to avoid problems, and afterwards to fix them. There's nothing wrong with agreeing to take back a few pings in an active scene and send the conversation in another direction.
We can also, and should also, try as hard as possible to avoid letting our personal feelings about something bleed into what our characters are saying and doing. Even if being snarky is in character, think about whether that snark is coming from you or your character, and if it's you, or if it's both? Go talk to the other player directly about what's bothering you. It's honest, it's adult, and it stops paranoia and insecurity in its tracks.
Suggestions Round-Up
Cabin Living Rooms
In the past, the instructions on cabin area posting have been that campfire posts get posted to the dorms community (because they're like common rooms, where anyone can walk by and join a conversation), and living room posts get posted to personal journals (because they're like room posts, where the door to the cabin can be open or closed to set how private and personal the interactions should be).
Since the creation of the cabins, the game has very obviously changed, and we've noticed that living rooms have become more open than room posts. So, the next time everyone is shuttled to the cabins, we'll be moving the living rooms from personal journals to the dorms community to join the campfire posts. Living rooms may only be posted by someone who lives in the given cabin, but any student may come inside. Alcove posts will still get posted in your personal journals as usual. We'll be updating this change in our big ole cabins info post!
Tips and Tricks Post
Ever wondered how to turn off custom comment pages? What about how to stop receiving those Livejournal news announcements? Then, we'd like you to check out this post. We went through and tried to put together some basic tips and tricks to better help with your Livejournal roleplaying experience. We can't list them all so the post is also going to open for suggestions, tips and tricks from you guys!
Duplication of PBs
While the question in the forum was specifically about new characters coming in and using a PB that's already in use by a canon character, this is really a subject that applies to all types of characters: PCs, NPCs, genderswitch PBs, weetiny PBs, you name it -- and we needed to revisit it on those terms and come up with a policy.
Here's the deal: please try to be as courteous as possible about it. Please drop a line to the other player giving them a heads up if:
* You're a current player bringing in a new character and you know that someone else is already using the PB as the main PB for their character
* You've chosen a PB for your NPC/genderswitch day/AU weekend character and you know that someone else is already using it as the main PB for their character
That's it. A heads up, not asking permission, and if someone is unaware that they've chosen the same face until it's in use and someone else points it out, it's unfortunate but no one's fault.
It's going to happen. People are going to look like other people. It's one of the things in-game that we as players can't necessarily control, and we shouldn't have control over it. Work with it or creatively avoid dealing with it; there are many options for either, and either can be fun. It's a game tradition, most characters are already aware of the Fandom Doppelganger phenomenon, and if you make it clear that you'd rather not have wacky twin hijinks with your lookalike, other players will work with that.
Bottom line? They're icons. We're grown-ups. Let's play together and have fun.
That said, at the brilliant suggestion of
flowering_mind, we've created a post for those wondering who those faces are and who they ought to give a heads-up to. It's linked on the FH user-info, and players are welcome to start a thread for their character and list the name of the main PB, then if they like, add images and actor-names of any attached NPCs, genderswitches, wee kids, or anybody else with a face. Behold the Fandom High PB Gallery! (When characters leave the game, we'll go through and delete the related comments to keep things up to date.)List of Meta!
A request was made for a list of meta names that have already been used, since the two previous player-run wikis that contained the information have both passed into the Great Beyond.
angelo_wings jumped to the challenge, players leaped to fill in the information, and the FH Meta Wiki was born! Go forth and make up wacky names, then write them down so others can share the fun.Keeping an Eye on Open Forum Threads
We'd just like to reassure you that we do! All of the admins who are available are watching the forum as it progresses; usually we've tracked it so every comment is coming to our inboxes, as well.
If things get out of hand in a discussion, or if someone contacts us in the OOC thread or by email to indicate they're feeling uncomfortable and would like us to intervene, we're happy to step in. Generally, though, we try to be very careful about interfering when players are talking to each other, because we don't want to make anyone feel they're being shut down or censored. This isn't just an open forum for you to talk to us; it's an open forum for you to talk to each other, too.
Other Things of Note
FH Secrets
We're not going to tell you what you can or can't do outside the game, though we'd be overjoyed if people were kind to each other, tried to solve their problems like adults, and avoided bringing negative attention to Fandom High.
However, a suggestion was made outside the open forum, with a request for mention in the round up, that an official locked fh_secrets community be created, on the premise that problems and wank are unavoidable, but we can at least keep it within the game, and control what gets posted.
This is us mentioning it, as requested. This is, however, also us saying that we ran out of ways to describe the many reasons that such a comm wouldn't work, would be inappropriate for us to create or condone, would make both the players and the admins uncomfortable, and would directly contradict our stance on solving problems like adults.
We appreciate the concern behind the suggestion, and we know it was meant with the best of intentions, but no. That's not going to happen.
Sexytimes in the Comms
Another concern brought up directly to us rather than in the forum, but one that we agree everybody could use a reminder on. Please be careful about where your sexy threads get posted. It's fine if you're flirting around in a comm post, but if things start to get graphic, whether in actual actions or just in description/dialogue, move it on over to a personal journal and add a link with a warning to the comm thread! If you're just skirting the edge but don't really feel it's time to move it elsewhere, adding a warning to the subject line of the thread would also be a nice compromise.
Retconning and Re-pinging
Something that's been confusing people a bit, partially because we needed some clearer guidelines on it, is the subject of rewriting tags to fix a jossing/accidental metagame/conversation that's just going in an uncomfortable direction for both players.
If it's a private conversation, then as long as everyone in the conversation agrees to it, and the specific exchange being edited hasn't been mentioned on the radio or by one of the characters in a later conversation with someone else, this is fine. It's fine to edit the comment you just made, and it's fine to delete multiple comments to get the conversation back to the place where it's not causing both parties a problem.
When we say (as the FH website does) "no retconning without permission," we're referring to scenes that multiple people have participated in, top-level posts, events that affect more than just the people in that scene, and descriptions of what happened in the past that are known by the game at large. Basically, anything that would force other players to amend their own character's history to deal with your changes.
Lack of Awesome Macros
Not anymore!
Questions, comments, and baklava are of course welcome.
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THANK YOU.
Therefore you get this:
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I mean, if I am running a giant plot for Karla off in Kaeleer, I see no reason that someone else can't run their own plot either on the island or in their own world. If it isn't an all-inclusive plot, having the option to run it during other people's non-inclusive plots might make things that much easier for scheduling?
Does this make sense?
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Just taking a look at the plot calendar shows the differentiation of off-island and on-island as well as personal vs. all-island plots. The admin team does an amazing job already putting your suggestion into place (and always has made that a priority IMHO). :D
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also mmm, baklava.
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If it isn't, however, the "feel free to schedule plots at the same time" checkbox may be a way to open up days that would normally be closed off for a plot limited to only three or four people. The Bobby/Emma plot is a good example of that. There's no reason that another on-island personal plot couldn't have run simultaneously with that one. Though it may take a bit of coordination, it might be worth it to have more plot-availability in the future, especially as an opt-in only feature.
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If you look at the plot calendar for today, there are actually two plots scheduled - one personal and the adults in cabins.
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It seems like what's needed here isn't a check-box or for plot-runners to worry about stating their willingness up front (we get that from the "How is this going to affect the island" part already), but for us to make it clear (probably with a note on the plot application instead of a check-box) that any plots that don't say "inclusive" on the plot calendar are potentially open to share space with other plots! Yes/no/pie?
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Also, yay baclava.
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So much so that I won't even nom.