TLV - Mod Contact

[bargemods]

MOD CONTACT

If you have a question, comment, or complaint to raise to the mods, you can contact us directly by emailing us at any of our listed emails/Plurk addresses or by sending a PM to any of the listed character accounts. These will be forwarded to everyone else on the core mod team unless requested otherwise. If you have a general question about the game, you can also leave a comment over in the FAQ. The PM inbox of bargemods is not checked regularly.

GAME MODERATORS

Iddy || ZieglerFan719 (at) gmail (dot) com
Plurk: ihdreniel
Journals: citizendetective cactusy

Isabelle || ilseinthemorning (at) gmail (dot) com
Plurk: shipoftheseus
Journals: deuceoftears takestime

Kira || swordwithasmile (at) gmail (dot) com
Plurk: tinwateringcan
Journals: reformedsinner wildguardian divingdeep

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Comments

[smugreport]

Posting this here as well because I'd like a mod answer as mods!

It doesn't make sense to me that there is a form needed to justify a character demotion but not graduation. Why??? I really think players should have to show their work with regards to graduation, otherwise it just (and has, from what I've seen as both a former player, lurker and current player) give plenty of room to handwave the reasoning which makes the mechanic completely unbalanced for players who want to actually put in the time. It doesn't have to be super intensive, but a clear trajectory of growth should be shown in the form of links, maybe with summaries of the thread and how it was a stepping stone, a solid list of clear examples. And then after that an approval process. I think it's the only way to keep the system relatively fair.

[bargemods]

Jumping on this one first because it's quick: we are indeed planning to require a form to be filled out for graduations! The details are mid-post, in the paragraph starting with We're going to build in a place to track, describe, and celebrate graduations!

[smugreport]

To clarify does that mean graduation requires an approval system? Or is it just for the sake of individual players. Sorry, the original answer doesn't make this clear to me.

[bargemods]

Something in the middle! We want status change decisions to remain in the hands of the players, but we've always reserved the right to pull people aside if we have concerns. A status change page that tracks both demotions and graduations will allow us to formalize that, as well as make it easier for us to stay on top of things and make sure we don't miss anything that we'd like to have eyes on.

[smugreport]

I don’t think this really solves the issue, again because there’s no judge and jury, essentially, to give a grad the go ahead. Player to player leaves it up to each person’s personal discretion, which would be fine if it didn’t effect other inmates as a result.

[bargemods]

This is so long SORRY TL;DR:

Graduations have always been up to individual player discretion, because it's a major plot point/culmination that the individual player is most invested in and knows most about. Graduations can be wildly different - different inmates need to learn different lessons and have their redemptions in different places, and this kind of diversity is a big barge of why the W/I pairs are individual as well.

The go-ahead, such as it is, will be coming from us, just as it would for a demotion. Again, there have been times in the past where we had concerns about a player's plans and whether they made sense with the Admiral's standards, but those have always been pretty flexible in terms of characters having different paths. And the form will make sure that we're able to do that as needed even if we're not following the player's plurks about it closely/even if they don't run an edge case by us proactively.

Truthfully, we aren't interested in micromanaging graduations, or making someone hop through hoops to 'prove' things. It feels like it would be insulting to the playerbase to say 'you're all adults, you apped and were accepted, and you've been making these character decisions yourselves this whole time, but we've decided we need to analyze everyone for ethical compliance now'. If someone's graduation seems genuinely premise-breaking, we're ready and willing to pump the breaks and work with the player on adjusting it, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

Can you clarify a little what you mean by "effect other inmates?" Are you OOCLY worried there's a one-size-fits all graduation requirement and feeling like where other players drawn the line limits your own arc? Is it a matter of the characters being upset ICly at a lack of clear guidelines? Is it a matter of IC inmates becoming graduate wardens? Something we haven't covered?

[smugreport]

No prob! I definitely am not trying to suggest micro managing.

What I mean when I say "effect other inmates" is that yeah, there does not seem to be at least some kind of specific bar that has to be met. A character will, I don't know, not really change themselves but enter a relationship that softens them somewhat and this will be seen as grounds for graduating. Meanwhile they're still talking to other characters about how they'd do all the bad they did again. Or they'll start to feel remorse and that's seen as good enough, rather then and drive to atone and do better.

Meanwhile other players are keeping in mind that there at lease should be a standard and having their characters follow that, but then the characters end up feeling the system is skewed because people who haven't worked much for their grad are getting the pass while they linger as inmates.

If its left near entirely up to players personal discretion without tangible boundaries, that sets it up so that certain characters seem to have it easy while others don't and for no distinguishable reason.

[ninefox]

There should be some significant change that is meaningful to that character, and why/how that character was an inmate in the first place, but there really is not one standard! This has been the case since long before I was even a player. A character like Poison Ivy has a different standard of redemption than a character like Regina George (and yes, both have been inmates!) That's part of why the PTR is on the app, even if people end up deviating from it as unexpected events happen. And yes, this can be really hard for some characters to deal with ICly. I'm answering here with Jedao's journal instead of the mod one because this has actually been a big thing for him, and I want to be clear that I hear where you're coming from.

A few years ago (and long before I was a mod), one of the people he really loved was torn to shreds by another inmate, and she graduated about six weeks later, totally unrepentant. This drove him absolutely up the wall! He still has a grudge about it YEARS later. He doesn't think she deserved to graduate, and he trusts the admiral and the system less because of it, he's less hopeful and driven to graduate because of it.

But that's his problem.

As I understood it, the character in question, in her own canon, made a lot of her worst/most damaging decisions because she was caving under pressure and had very little sense of her own responsibility/agency and very little desire to do things for others unless it was because they were more powerful and she was afraid of them. The reason she murdered Jedao's friend was because he was involved in a nasty revenge cycle with some of HER friends - and murdering him was, apparently, part of her coming into her own sense of agency & wanting to protect others. Expressed in the most prosocial way? Definitely not! An important change for that specific person on her specific journey? According to the player who knew her character better than I did, yes! And she probably had some other changes/connections/developments in those last six weeks springboarding off the murder plot that I wasn't privy to, because it wasn't my CR involved. And although it's the most clear cut, it's not at all the only time that Jedao has felt a graduation was unearned or unfair.

Jedao is still an inmate partly because in HIS canon, not letting go of grudges and being a judgmental bastard are things HE has to let go of/learn to deal with differently, and he hasn't! ....and, also, partly Jedao is lingering as an inmate because I love to play him so much. I could have probably justified him graduating for the past year - but I can justify him not being quite there yet, too. It's flexible! The admiral is holding him to an extremely strict standard. Why? Maybe because he's destroyed actual planets! Maybe just because he has the potential to do so much good. Maybe because he's a bit of a jerk, or because he wants to make extra sure with someone so slippery. I don't know, and Jedao doesn't either. That's juicy IC drama for him to deal with!

More generally, numerous inmates over the years have graduated after long slow gradual improvements...but plenty of others have had One Last Fuckup that really helped break some of the self-delusions they'd been clinging to. Some characters needed to do 'the hard work of atonement' on the barge, but a lot of them couldn't really DO that work unless they were able to go back to their own worlds - so intent and commitment are the standard for them. ICly, the admiral DOESN'T have one clear standard, and I'm afraid we aren't going to impose one; that would take away something really fundamental to how individualized the premise can be. But on an OOC level, it's not meant to be unfair, but to give the same respect & choice to every player: everyone has the same amount of control over their own characters. Whatever kind of redemption story you want to tell, you get to tell.

If this makes it harder to play some of your characters, I'm sorry; I can only say that ICly, I've been there, and I hope you're still excited to tell your own stories with your standards within the premise of an Admiral who is sometimes capricious and a barge that is sometimes unpleasant.

[smugreport]

I feel like, ICly, this makes the system seem rigged. Like, using your example the character who murdered had a moment of growth because she was doing it to protect someone, but then what? Learned that murder is an acceptable means to do that? That doesn't feel like redemption, it feels like passing the buck to a new issue.

I'm not saying there has to be a one size fits all standard here, the path to being a better person is different for all characters, but I do think there should be like, a precedent? And if you do a murder without remorse but graduate less then 2 months later that sets a bad baseline for other characters to look to and be like "what the fuck" at best or be actively set back/become disillusioned with their own internment and graduation roadmap at worst.

[ninefox]

Sorry if I misunderstood you! "at least some kind of specific bar that has to be met" sounded like a one-size-fits-all sort of proposal, or at least one-minimum-fits-all, and that was what I was reacting to.

To be clear, I can absolutely imagine cases where a player wants/plans to graduate a character at a point that doesn't really make sense giving the setting and the broader, looser precedent of its history, and where we'd want to be able to check in with the player before they went ahead with it, and make sure everyone is on the same page. My point with the historical example in the previous comment, though, is how that graduation very much looked like a super dubious one from the outside! But since I was friends with that player and privy to her plurks and some of her plotting info, I know that she had a lot of thought put into where that seemingly counterproductive incident fit into her journey.

I fully understand that not every case is like this! Very occasionally (like, once or twice in a year or two) a proposed/intended graduation is one that shouldn't fly, and the form is intended to help us respond to those rare cases more consistently. But we don't want to open the floor for heavily scrutinizing the plot arcs of every character, and in general we are just not going to make hard-and-fast rules across the board, because character growth can be so different and weird.

In terms of it being potentially disillusioning/disheartening/an obstacle to other inmates graduation....yes. It can be! Jedao was super disillusioned! He's still here almost four years later! But there are and have always been lots of things about the barge that are damaging or disillusioning for at least some inmates. For example, we have a horrible port event where the characters have to fight off/rescue their comrades from evil scientists who want to experiment on them? There's drama! Tension! Stakes! People making choices! IC plot happens! But it's also 1000% reasonable for some inmates to react to events like that with "wow, the fact that I got crashlanded somewhere and vivisected makes me really feel like the admiral does not actually give a shit about me or my welfare, I don't believe any of this crap". A more simpler example might just be "I really trusted and made a lot of progress with my warden, and then they fucking disappeared" - because the player had to drop. But IC, it can be a huge blow! Part of the game having this many moving parts means that nothing is going to be 'good' for everyone (in terms of moving toward graduation). Some things are going to be 'bad' for almost everyone (like unexpected drops) but are OOC necessities. Some things happening that can harm an inmate's progress toward graduation and cause backsliding is always going to be a part of the game.

In terms of it being 'rigged', we've tried hard as mods to make it clear that the admiral MOSTLY is on the level, because that makes it more tenable for Warden characters with a lot of doubts about the setting to remain in play rather than quitting in protest, but that's always come with a big heap of the admiral being snarky, shady, and refusing to fully explain or justify himself, not always in control of exactly what goes down and sometimes failing to fully understand what the mortals in his care need. Which allows for things like drops and dark events to happen. Giving players agency over their own characters (barring, as I said, RARE exceptions, which I am not discounting) is an OOC priority that's pretty core to the game premise.

TL;DR: We're hoping to keep a closer and fairer eye on graduations but that's not going to lead to a version of the barge where graduations are never shocking or upsetting to other characters, or effects their own arcs.

[smugreport]

Er, idk if I'm not communicating this correctly but I am very very much in favor of more drama! I just think that the barge and graduation specifically seeming rigged/corrupt to characters is counterproductive to the premise as a whole?

Like, I don't really see how what is essentially divine judgement and a core mechanic is really comparable to IC plots. In your case maybe you wanted that drama and discouragement for Jedao, but what about players who don't want to put their character through that? Do they just have to make them blind to a seemingly unjust system?

[ninefox]

I didn't necessarily want it, but I have rolled with it, because sometimes that's what happens in a large game.

I'm trying to understand where the difference is between 'rigged/corrupt' and 'inconsistent/individual-to-unfair'. Rigged by who, or against who, and why? It's not like the characters who graduate at "I'm going to be more careful about collateral damage" because they're never going to be pacifists vs the characters who graduate at "for my arc to be meaning to be meaningfully complete, I need to renounce violence as a solution in general" are like...a class that is more 'on the admiral's side' or privileged or is bribing him or something.

And if you're not proposing a one-size-fits-all solution, I'm not sure how 'sometimes graduation is in a different moral place for one character than another,' is ever going to come across as 'fair', because from a broad comparative viewpoint, it isn't - the Admiral's goal is significance of the change for the individual inmates, and getting them into a place where they can use their second chance at life well, rather than being 'fair' or applying a specific ethical rubric.

If it's any comfort, 'divine' runs counter to a lot of how the admiral has been played, both by us and previous mod teams. There's a long, long history of inmates and wardens alike hating his decisions, yelling at him, or just finding them inscrutable. Characters don't have to be blind - they can be super mad at the system! Many, many characters have been, on both sides of the divide, and many inmates have graduated by learning to value other people while still hating the Admiral's guts and thinking he's a petty tyrant. There's tons of precedent for characters who do very much think the system is bullshit - or even a lie covering for something actively malevolent - nevertheless having amazing CR/plots/arcs and being fantastic parts of the game. If you don't want to play that out you don't have to - maybe you set up your character to talk with a veteran who has a positive perspective on the admiral and can reassure them, maybe you reach out to us and we plan a thread with the admiral where your character manages to get a small answer or an apology (it's happened! occasionally!) but doubts and resistance have always been as much a part of the game as characters who wholeheartedly believe in the admiral and his mission.

Ultimately the Admiral is just Some Guy with a boat and a lot of power who earnestly wants to give people last chances and do some good, but he's definitely not a paragon of anything, and nobody has to trust him and lots of people don't. We're sorry if we've given that impression that treating him as one is the only way to engage with the setting.