Thread Reponse

Hi, I mentioned last night I intended on making a post explaining a few things. I'm just going to be as direct as possible in this! I have a lot of things I want to address, comment on, and also tell you all about.

Mr. Mischief & Azakaela
So, I want to extend an apology to you, Mischief. I came off far too hot last night initially, I think we both recognize we made some mistakes in how we approached each other. It wasn't right for me to tell you to leave the community in the manner I did, I see that. For a few of your complaints, though, I have no memory of Zed sending any scouts ahead and to match that, we don't roll with D100s, we roll with D20s. I have asked a few of the players (Nat & Max) and neither of them has any memory of that either. It's been a long few days, though, between all the drama and misunderstandings, if this was something that occurred, I extend my apologies. I will look to make changes to this in the next event. It's all I can do.

Now, in regards to Azakaela. I'll be blunt with you; I was harsh on her in staff chat. It's been building up over the last few months, I have had several encounters with her wherein she has made veiled threats to me or had straight-up become vindictive during her bad days at work. For the past few days--or possibly weeks--I'm not entirely certain, Aza started running events behind my back. It's not something we do on our team. We have set measures in place that every admin is expected to follow; where they have to post a concept in-detail with a set end, length, amount of enemies, and so on for them to receive approval from the admin team. This has been in play as far back as a few days after she decided to join our team. My frustration in how I, unfortunately, decided to handle the initial encounter was not exclusive to the situation at hand, but constant weeks of build-up. It's hard to explain, but when people do these sorts of things and disregard rules, it is deeply insulting to me.

Now, I will briefly go back to the situation we're all talking about. I'm not going any further into it past this, I don't want to derail this thread anymore than it already has been with stuff that should've been done with. From your positions, looking in, as an outsider not involved in the conversation, it may look like I was unsympathetic, uncaring, and downright mean to Azakaela by not acknowledging what she said. I see that. But, our conversation was not between "friends" nor have I ever expressed comfort with any of what she dropped on me--being dropped on me. It was us discussing admin business, and her decision to drop what she did on me was highly unprofessional and something none of you would ever do to anyone you were currently working with, or for. It's easier to judge when you're not in the heat of the conversation and looking from the lens of an outsider, interpretations change in the form of text in that light, but speaking honestly, I am not a counselor, I haven't ever agreed to be one and I have no responsibility to Azakaela to be one. All of us, players, admins alike have bad days, but most of us check them at the door and come into this with the understanding that it is not the problem of the players or admins on the server. It's also not an excuse for what she did, either, to match that.

I am deeply sympathetic to Azakaela's situation and having known her as long as I have, I wish her nothing but the best in her future endeavors. I want her to get past all of this, move on, and be happy.

A matter of perspective & speaking how you feel
This is something I really want to bring up to each and every one of you, admins and players both. It's an extension of our point-of-view but applies to both parties equally. I've noticed a lot of you mention being afraid to speak up for fear of banning, or any other number of things, I can understand that POV to an extent. But, I'm going to put it like this. You need to start looking at us with some modicum of trust because often, it's a matter of projection on our end - numerous admins have made attempts to feel out members of the community and nothing has happened to them. The method a lot of you have chosen to go about this is wrong, and the method we chose to respond to it in is wrong. I am seeing a lot of you mention being deeply upset by this, but, I have to point out we're not mind-readers. I can ask someone at the end of my event whether or not it was enjoyable--and I hear nothing but good feedback, only to in under 24 hours hear another story from the same person by extension of a third party. How can we be expected to make changes you want, and hear your feedback, if we're not given it? The method this has gone about is also not going to bring apart much, either, I do not believe some of the approaches taken in this thread is right. This stuff should be brought up BEFORE this point - before a lot of you are coming in here, making threats of quitting, breaks, or so on. To us? You're putting a loaded gun to our head and demanding it, with nothing in the middle for us to look into manners of change organically with discussion among the staff. It's ridiculous, simply put -- speak up on these matters before this point and recognize not all of your feedback pertains to our, or the rest of the community vision for this lore. It's a mutual ground, here, split fifty-fifty, not everything is going to receive an immediate yes, and that does not mean we're not listening. Just not every suggestion can become reality. That's how things like these work, I ask you to not take that personally.

GummyBear & My Role in Change
I'm glad you decided to come back to express your thoughts, I agree with a lot of them. I don't want to speak up for, or against anyone else. So, I'll acknowledge your post and respond to your segment on me. I agree with you, I have my faults and I need to look at them and improve how I handle situations going forward. But, I do want to offer a little bit of insight. I do make a lot of promises, and some of them I am unfortunately unable to keep - I do listen to your suggestions but I am not actually an owner of the community. I work as Senior Staff, and more importantly, my focus is primarily on the topic of Lore, Combat Systems, Rules, Wiki Management, and so on. When I say I promise something, I'm promising to take your case to the admin team and fight for your viewpoint to the best of my abilities. It's a given that not everyone is going to see eye-to-eye on everything and I am unfortunately not able to see that it happens each time. In some of the cases you're speaking of (which I will touch on in the next segment) there were pre-existing issues surrounding the situations that added a lot more complexity to them. End of the day, I apologize if our conversation left you with the impression that I supported any sort of admin abuse, or was looking to protect my friends. It's not what I intended, and I think is the byproduct of us speaking so soon after the events that unfolded.

Your Event (Gummy)
I do not want to get too deeply into this. But, I'll bring this up - I interfered with the production of this event for direct reasons. The method you and your faction came across said information was through a character--Ryker--directly story-crossing (an act where you have two of your own characters interact to exchange information, or offer opportunities you shouldn't have. It's against the rules, and deeply frowned on.) with his other character to get the aforementioned information. I went out of my way to try and accommodate members of the group in this incident by outright not instructing you to void it from the get-go, the reason for this being the potential roleplay gain from it from both parties had you been successful in the operation carried out. That, however, is not what happened. I'm not going to comment on the incidents of chat-bugs or the surprise Slavs in the middle of the event because I was not working as the gamemaster during it. While I played in this event IC, I had no actual reasonable method of getting out of it as I was directly hired by the person giving out the job. Now, I'm sorry at how it went, but with the number of complexities surrounding the situation, it ended up that way.

Now, I'll say this - I want you to know we did make changes to our factions. We removed all unneeded admins from it, and as far as I know, only myself and the owners are in every one of them. Everyone else is involved in them only because of their direct relation to the faction itself with their characters. If you have any further ideas on how we can protect the anonymity of our players, get back to me. I'll look into it, but I don't think there's been a huge issue past that.


Myself, Don Jones and Alleged Powergaming/God/Power Fantasies
In speaking with Rofl, I have come to understand the PoV many of you have come from in regards to this. I'll be more vigilant in my actions on this character going forward. But, I do want to offer some clarification on some of the aforementioned problems taken up with the character, my actions, concerns over wrapping lore importance, and so on. To start, I also want to elaborate; Don Jones is not an Admin NPC. He is my player character, and his importance to the lore is minimal. He is in possession of some of the information (his knowledge of special infected, suspicion on the military, his acts taken during the bunker event, and world history regarding the Disciples of Lazarus) he has because of his presence in Part 1 of this lore. At the beginning of this lore, I offered similar information to people who decided to be from Valley Station, Kentucky, and the said affected areas from where the events of Part 1 stretched out. There weren't many of them, and most of them ended up stepping out or dying before they had a chance to share any of that information. In our conversations, mentions of my contributions regarding the bunker we encountered "Davey Crocket" in were brought up. I'd like to assure you all that I shared this information after receiving it exclusively in-character, toward the beginning of this lore, Don briefly stepped way from Monroe and ended up encountering another player character--Darner Foxglove--and becoming employed to him as a mercenary. During my work with him, I was brought on several events where I legitimately obtained information in regards to events - which, as was in character for Don, he decided to share with Monroe given his knowledge of their on-going conflicts with both The Miller Family and The C-P-F. His in-character reasoning for this was feeling in-debted to Julianne Lynch, who had previously been killed in Monroe - guilt suffered for his prior abandonment of her there, and knowledge of her IC desire to see Monroe flourish as a bastion for people looking for second chances.

Additionally, I've heard some comments on a few other things; Don's survival and the outcome of his and Kai's fight with the Trullan, as well as a few prior mentions he made in regards to the Miller's. I'll start out with the most pressing of the two: Pika was working as our GM during the time of the event and had received a few complaints from players participating in regards to the number of injuries sustained. At this point, she did not feel comfortable in doing much more extreme damage to players participating in the event - nor killing them - and made the decision to let us get ourselves out of it through in-character communication & working together. The stalagmites utilized in the cavern were used prior to this as a weapon - and is something we intended on using as another, alternative method to combat them outside of direct, outright gunfire (the similar reason for the dynamite being implemented, Trullan are not easy opponents, and I, unfortunately, gave that impression with our light-version of the combat system. That is on me.). It was a mistake on our end to not bring more attention to them at the beginning of the event. This is not all on Pika, either, as it was her second-time actually handling a scene like this, a lot of mistakes were made, as one can expect. I'll mention this since I don't believe we have anywhere else - but our admins are being trained in how to utilize this system on-the-fly and in-game with live experience with players. It's the best way to get experience, as we cannot account for all of the possible things our players may do during these. It happens, sometimes, even I am still learning the system and working out the best methods for GMing while utilizing it. The decision made during the event, however, was not made out of favoritism - I am fine with my characters dying, and if the character who did what he did during the event decided to pull his gun and shoot me, I'd of taken it with no argument. That's how life is - people die suddenly, and I'm not exempt from this.

If my word in this is not enough, which is fair, I'll share a few examples of the failings that I've taken during this lore -- I did not originally intend on playing Don as my full focused, near sole character.

* - Francis Nial
Got asked to go outside and help a new player & give them some roleplay. Did it, I came across Rook and his group and got found out relatively quick due to his accent and stature. I managed to escape during the initial encounter, made it back to Monroe, had some pretty good roleplay with the player of Job, and a few others. I ended up willingly turning myself in with Rook after the aforementioned conversation. Since then, Francis has been in custody off-map. Provided roleplay for everyone, I did not put myself above others and it led to some nice development for those around him.
* - Conrad Miller
Did some roleplay with people as Conrad - who was an initial, starting character in Monroe. I owned the bar, I didn't log onto him an awful lot but started to toward the end of his character. I had him develop some mental issues; dealing with paranoia after the death of his good friend Arlo Gray and Bonnie Mills at the beginning of the lore. It led to him managing to convince a few players to commit an actual assassination attempt against the C-P-F which would ultimately serve as his downfall. By his own friends, Avery Dekker, Marian Castle, and former member of the C-P-F, Julianne Lynch, he was arrested to clear Monroe's name of the act and to pin the blame solely onto him. Outside, Conrad ended up getting himself killed, and that was that.
* - The Great McManus
I logged on him for literally five minutes, walked to the gates of Monroe with someone I was lightly grouped with, yelled at the gates for a while to get someone's attention, and the minute the leader arrived, I got shot from behind by Darner Foxglove, initiated mechanical PVP with him and nearly beat him to death with a hammer. I lost, I died, I was upset for one night and then I got over it. That was that.

Each and every single one of my characters had full backstories and applications which I will go out of my way to share screenshots of, as well as transcripts of if need be. None of them were NPCs, and I treated each of them identically to how I treat Don Jones. None are more special, and I'll take an L wherever I need to so long as rules are abided by, and everything is legit.

Now, onto the lesser comment - The Miller comments, I cannot honestly remember what was said. But, I'm going off of the assumption what I said was the one comment I can actually recall: Don making mention of having seen the handiwork of the Millers and being interested in going for their bounties. I'll point to the bounties thread - I utilized information seen in that. Don Jones is a mercenary, and by extension--a bounty hunter. His comment was nothing more than flavor text.

With that out of the way, I want to say - I understand all of your perspectives on this. It's reasonable and sometimes hard to disassociate my characters from me, as the loremaster. It's fine, I expect it to an extent. I just want you to know if any of you ever feel like I'm overstepping in what I'm doing with my character, you can reach out to me. I'm not going to ban you, I'm not going to get mad. I like to know these things because I try to make an effort to not make it that way. I don't like stories of power fantasies, I don't like characters who can never fail and I don't like players who can never die. I do not want to spend my time in this community like that, I care deeply about the collaborative aspect of this server, and I want to respect that. Past that, I might be able to offer some insight and show you my intentions, or you might show me something I've done--haven't notice--and can improve on. I consider a lot of you my friends, even those of you who may be new to the community, and I don't want you feeling uncomfortable around me OOC or IC. Period. That's not the environment I ever want to see fostered here. New Dawn and Gateway Roleplay have seen too much strife between both the players and admins in the years we've been up--and it's up to us to not see that going forward. Communicate with me, I'll communicate with you because at the end of the day - I have no grudges with any of you. This, at the end of the day, is a game, not my livelihood, and it's one I want to have fun on with my friends--not at the expense of them. I hope the same is regarded by everyone here.


The changes we want to make going forward
So, I'll get up to the next part. It's not a lot, right now, I want to discuss a lot more with Rofl and a few other members of the community so long as they are willing to either speak here--or in DMs in regards to what they want. I've had some time to reflect on our events, and I agree, there's not a lot of actual material merit of going to them, and the two I've hosted have been particularly dangerous, on top of that. That's not fair to you and is frankly unenjoyable. We had some initial concerns with our events potentially providing too many powerful weapons (as we did and still want to avoid having that problem). But, I'm of the mindset we can work something else out and minimalize the number of weapons found by looking into other alternative rewards such as; monetary gain, ammo, building materials, explosives, armor, vehicles, horses, not to mention more roleplay-based rewards, such as unique lore notes and even potentially roll-boosting items. A lot of possibilities, I am of the current mindset of creating an actual loot-table for certain "mobs" and rolling on the search of their corpse for what you might find, and outright having more rewards during our events, ones that tie directly into it.

In terms of difficulty, I've been of the mindset of not scaling enemies as much as requested in most cases. I'm probably going to be changing that going forward--not in every event because some should be more lethal than others. Just more spread apart. Now, I'm not going to sit here and promise I'm easing up on traps -- you can easily scout ahead and see most of them. They're inherently designed to be very noticeable, and if you miss them, sometimes you miss them. Name of the game. What I will, however, do is look into minimalizing the injuries sustained from them in most cases. I will also lessen the amount I'm adding in events - though, they will still be present and utilized often in regards to certain Miller events, and even some other faction related ones going forward. There is another thing I wanted to suggest, and get player feedback on in regards to traps.

How do rolls against them sound? So, depending on your distance--we might ask you to roll a negative. Nature of your roll determines if you were hit, and if you were hit, you roll again to determine the severity of it with another advantage, or disadvantage. It might lessen the damage done to these, and also give you cool moments where you can come up with something on the fly in a successful roll to avoid long-lasting, permanent damage! I'd have to think of a few more things on that addition to our system, but I'd love some feedback on that in specific.


That's it.
I don't have a lot more to add to this already severely long post. I hope you all have a read through it, and I look forward to some feedback. I may not immediately respond to anything - as I am technically taking a bit of a break today - but I will get to it when I can. I'm confident all of us can have some really positive discussions here, and I can look into making some changes where and how I can in the department of lore. I hope y'all take some time, too, we've all had a stressful past few days with all of this and I think we can all do with a little break. If you don't want to discuss your stuff here, you can hit me up on Discord. I have the same name there, or you can throw it here! I'll do what I can.

Also. If I haven't addressed something that someone posted, I apologize. If I haven't answered -- tag me in the post, or copy and paste me with a tag and I'll do my best to answer it. Word of warning, I might not be able to if it doesn't fall within my actual department. I'll see what I can do, though.

Thanks for readin'.