TLV - HMDs

[bargemods]

MANDATORY HMD FACTS AND CONSIDERATIONS

When approaching an HMD there are important things people should take the time to consider:

► This is a hobby. The critique not supposed to be approached as a harsh judgment with life- or livelihood-altering consequences, or a gauntlet to be run.¹
► The player of a particular character knows what was going on in their character's (and their own) head and what their intentions were better than someone giving crit and they deserve the chance to explain and cite material and to have their explanations received by an open mind that is willing to reverse prior judgment if a reasonable explanation is given.²
► The goals of one player might differ and contradict those of another. Both sets of goals are equally valid.³
► The HMD is not the place where someone should unload personal grievances unrelated to game play about another player.⁴

►Most of available models for critique are often vicious and highly competitive. On reality shows, judges tear people apart after they worked thanklessly with limited supplies and under stressful time constraints. Editors give harsh, unapologetic rejections from publications, openly ridicule an awkward writing style, or cruelly mock art that is too obviously traced out of Poser. In school, students are encouraged to pick apart other students’ writings in peer evaluations that affect final grades. For a moment, as a part of an HMD, players are placed in a position where they are allowed to express their opinion just like one of these people, and sometimes we go in as if it has the same amount of weight and competitive importance.

It doesn't. Role-play in any shape or form is a hobby that requires investment. If it doesn't involve accumulating rule books it frequently involves acquiring books or DVDs for source material, buying paid accounts and icon space for journals, hours of scouring the internet for appropriate played-bys, downloading chat programs, and scheduling time to RP with people. It's a large expenditure of time and money for a game and fellow RPers and it's difficult to be faced with the idea that the time we're spending with them isn't at all appreciated by some.

Very often role-players say that they need to step away from the hobby because it reminds them of work; it should have stayed an escape for them. Under too harsh of a judging eye role-play stops being fun. It starts becoming a nerve-wracking balance to make sure that one person isn't upset by an in-character choice while another person can still get the story they want. And it does sometimes begin to feel like it takes more focus than necessary to satisfy all expectations, to the point where those participating can no longer get pleasantly lost in a story in progress. This makes good players step away from something that was supposed to be a relaxing escape from everyday obligations and has instead become one more stressful chore. People don't invest in hobbies that make their life less fun and more difficult, it's as simple as that.

That doesn't mean that crit should be reduced to simplistic feedback on an HMD. Those previous examples of harsh critique where an enormous cash prize, post-graduate success, and future publication depend on review don’t have to be as painful as people sometimes make them. Neither do HMDs. Professional writers have useful guides for critique and there are business models (including the compliment sandwich) for giving assessments that don't make it sound as though someone's creative future depends on it or that the player receiving the crit is a failure in their creative endeavors and should give up. HMDs shouldn't be a gauntlet to pass, but an opportunity for active participants to express a desire to see things continue or improve.

►It's often extremely difficult, too, when someone is very much a fan of a series or an expert in a certain occupation or culture, for them not to get very invested in someone else's portrayal of a character involved in the fandom, occupation, or culture. Sometimes there are in-game or in-storyline circumstances that contribute to a player's character choices that have nothing to do with what's previously known about the character. And sometimes writers within a series use inaccurate material because they're not intimately familiar with a profession or culture. They give bad or biased material to draw from. This doesn't mean that something shouldn't be said if concerning interpretations pop up, just that the player needs the opportunity to justify their decisions and be heard. A technically “incorrect” procedure or cultural detail or scientific fact might part of the character’s canon. A character choice that seems inexplicable might be the very logical end result of a series of in-game events and experiences.

Deviation from canon is frequently cited as a reason that a character's actions need to be called into question, but it’s often forgotten or downplayed that the moment a character is taken up (unless the goal is to play out the novelization of an episode) that the character will be placed in non-canonical situations for which there is no guide for how a character will act. Unless a player avoids all plots their characters will have to have a response. Some degree of deviation from canon in inevitable. On top of that, the conclusion that one person draws from a series of events and bits of dialog might be different from the conclusion another person draws. Role-play often strays very far from canonical situations. In a pan-fandom RP where abilities are retained even basic physics might be different than in the character’s native universe. Different people, different circumstances, different cultures, different hierarchies and systems of social organization. It's sometimes extremely difficult for a player to choose a course of action when presented with situations so far removed from canon that they have little to no reference to go off of. So when approaching a player it's best to keep in mind that they might have had difficulties with some of their decisions too, and had to think them through very carefully, using whatever small tidbits of canon they could glean to attempt to guide their choice.

When concerns about in-character behavior are brought up in HMDs, these things should be kept in mind when approaching the other person.

►Different players have different life experiences, different ways of thinking, and different ways of playing. Some players are very dialog and plot focused but forget minor details. Some players are extremely detail focused and involved in their character's thought processes but have difficulty with quick action. Some players are better with humor but have a lot of difficulty giving their characters interpersonal relationships. Some want to control the consequences and emotional reactions of their characters and don't like spontaneous twists because it interrupts their focus and changes the results they've been anticipating. Others have more fun by improvising every element of a plot and seeing where it takes them. Some people don't want to be reminded of their jobs and want to avoid anything even vaguely reminiscent of work. Other people want to enjoy pretending that they have a job that they don’t have in real life.

A player has a right to say that a type of playing made them uncomfortable, or is just unfun for them. Other players should respect a player’s comfort levels and feelings and not force them into a type of play that they don't want. If two styles of gaming clash, and what someone wants out of their plot is making another person uncomfortable, both players should work together to find a resolution. If two players have equally valid but incompatible goals or playing styles some other characters or players might be able to satisfy the goals of each instead to everyone’s advantage.

►Although players will tend to gravitate toward other players with the same goals in mind, in games it's necessary to come together to either organize larger plots or review one another's playing. An HMD, whether anonymous or not, should not be one player's opportunity to unload all of their stored up grievances against another player in an accusatory way that's not at all constructive.

Too often people go into HMDs having lost sight of what an HMD is about. Another name for this sort of community is a story-telling game, and in order to tell the best story possible players do need to sit down and ask, "Why did your character react this way and not that way when this happened?", "What was your reasoning behind this decision?", "This plot point or behavior makes me uncomfortable and how do we get around it?", or "I find this particular writing style difficult to work with, can you adjust it at least for me?" A player should be able to ask, "Am I playing in a way that makes my characters useful or engaging?", "Am I helping the story progress or holding it back?", or "Where am I inconveniencing someone that I don't know about?" The focus should be more related to continuing the story than the player personally.

If a player feels that someone has personally affronted them? It should be addressed, but it is not appropriate for the HMD. That's something that should be discussed privately or taken to game moderators. More than that, approaching an HMD like it will be an exciting train-wreck only encourages people to be more hostile toward their fellow players. Instead of something that draws players together to be good writers and create a smoother story, it ends up pushing players further apart, people needing to prove points, and those tight-knight groups become even tighter because the people in them become afraid to play outside of them.

-Originally posted here.