[MUD-Dev] Re: pet peeves

[Brandon A Downey]

diablo at best.com wrote:

>

[Proper and just treatment of whiny and uppity players snipped]

I have no problem with any of this -- this person is obviously not going to
learn, was being a pain, had been there long enough to know the rules, etc.

>
>
> So then some guy claiming to be the creator of some mud that this fellow
> is an "imm" on logged on and immediately sent a tell to me saying, "So I
> hear you are having trouble with one of my immortals?" I replied in-role
> and told him that it was preposterous that an 18-year old human male would
> "have" immortal beings to serve him. He carried on out-of-role, I carried
> on in-role. He eventually gave up, but if he wanted to talk to me, he
> doomed himself right away with his first statement.
>

I don't think this is appropriate at all. Even if the person who logged in wasn't
the immortal, he wasn't their to roleplay, and it strikes me you should have
taken the time to tell him the matter had been dealt with.

I've never been in a situation where one of my own immortals has been in a
situation of causing a ruckus on other people's mud, but I have had a
recalcitrant player or two who felt the need to spam advertisements on someone
else's mud. One of the admins from that mud showed up, and we were able to deal
with the culprit. Now, obviously, the other guy didn't show up and start
interacting with me IC, even though we require roleplaying on Pantheon as well --
he prayed there was a problem with a player from my mud, and was there something
we could do about it.

Bottom line: The person at least seemed legitimate, and interacting with him in
character just served to be irritating at best, and infuriating at worst (if an
imm, this other problem does probably want to know --
professional courtesy and all). He's in a vastly different class than someone who
shows up and insists/demand on a job as admin.



>
> As Caliban pointed out, and as I said before, I don't see why I should
> care if someone logs on and claims (or is) an admin on another mud. I know
> it's snooty of me, but if I were, say, Paul Theroux, and some hack no-name
> writer phoned me up wanting to talk shop, I'd have just as little interest
> in talking to him as I do in talking to a faceless supposed mud admin
> whose talents I know nothing of (and who I automatically presume to have
> no talent, given the horrid quality of most muds). I'm not claiming to be
> the mud-world equivalent of Paul Theroux incidentally. I was just using
> that as an example.
>

Certainly in general you shouldn't, but there a few cases you should, such as an
intra-mud disciplinary problem.


>
> The basic issue to me is that when you go into someone elses world, you
> are a nobody, just like everyone else. This especially holds in the case
> of a world with any sort of emphasis on roleplaying. If another admin
> really wants to talk to me, he or she could happily e-mail me an
> introduction and ask if it would be ok to talk to me in the game. I would
> extend that courtesy to any admin that I wanted to talk to and I don't
> think it is too much to ask of other people. It should have been
> especially obvious to this guy that I wasn't interested in his OOC
> babbling when I replied to his first statement (which he had to have known
> I realized was not an in-role statement) with an in-role statement.
>

He probably wanted a quick response on who/what had been causing problems for
you. Rather than waiting for a tedious exchange of emails, he just logged in.
It's often a lot more convenient, quicker, and more 'face to face' than just
exchanging email. What's disconcerting is that his query was a lot more
legitimate than the other guys, and you didn't bother to give him the scoop on
what happened -- instead, you gave him a RP blowoff.



(Decloaking)

Brandon