Author Topic: How do you deal with a disruptive player in a play-by-post environment?  (Read 2731 times)

Offline Kuroimaken

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So we have this Bleach freeform game that has been going on for years. Was starting to drag its feet, so I decided to bring it to a conclusion come Hell or high water.

At one point two players started monkeying around with the game's consistency and power levels, to a point that one of the characters went on a teenage power fantasy to Hell just to prove that they could, and since I was more or less left as an authoritative figure, I warned said player that any further attempts to muck things up would be met by Deus Ex Machina. Said player decided to "retcon my godmodding", so I just godmodded harder, and it's gotten to a point where I might have to get actual forum mods involved.

And therein lies the problem. The game is hosted at giantitp.

This stupid game would not even still be running if it weren't for me. The player in question will not listen in any way. So how do I deal with this? I can't exactly delete the player's posts, otherwise I'd be fine.
Kami darou ga akuma darou ga, ore no michi ni tateru mono NASHI!!

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Offline Skyrock

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Re: How do you deal with a disruptive player in a play-by-post environment?
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2019, 11:52:10 AM »
If you're not officially the GM, the only thing to do is walk away from this blazing dumpster fire and write it off as one of the many failed PbP games. The mods will be unlikely to delve into some "he said, she said" drama about who derailed the game.

Offline Razade

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Re: How do you deal with a disruptive player in a play-by-post environment?
« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2019, 09:51:36 AM »
Man, I went out on a limb to see if you were complaining about this somewhere else on the interwebs Kuroi...just a quick google search of your name and it's the first thing that shows up. Kuroi is, of course, telling one side of the story. His side of the story. I don't know his reputation around here and I'll freely admit that hunting him down on an obscure webforum just to crow over his misfortune doesn't cast me in the best light but it is what it is.

I spent two very short stints in this free form game with Kuroi and a ever-dwindling number of players. None of them are here so I don't mind sharing that the steadily declining number of people playing the game was the ever-increasing attempts at being in control of the game with good ol'Kuroi here and his small number of friends. It's especially interesting considering the game ran for years before Kuroi and his squad rolled up into the game but from going through all the various Out of Character threads it was pretty clear that they showed up and started to push the old players out. The only player that didn't leave is one of the aforementioned "problem players". They're called Frozen Feet over on Giants and it seems they have finally had enough of Kuroi's nonsense. They've since left the forums in their entirety. The other is Rater202 who was left in the lurch as the two of them apparently had a lot of story ideas between the two of them.

The game, by my count, had 20ish active people originally. They're down to what I can only charitably say is two. Rater and Kuroi seem to have been the only two people still committed to posting in the game. The others, even Kuroi's posse, have left for greener pastures. I, like so many others, left because of Kuroi's corrosive attitude and his general attempts to be the GM in a game that didn't have one. Kuroi's general MO was to GodMod (and it's really good to see him owning up to it here when he is sure not to have people in the game see it) until he got his way.

Which brings us to the end here, with Kuroi trying to find a solution..that's out of his hands. Considering the last two players not named Kuroi and Rater 2020 aren't eager to finish I think it's safe to say the game is dead. Kuroi's bullying and condescending attitude is absolutely the top of bad actors in gaming I've seen in a long time. I'll give a few choice quotes from the Out of Character thread just to demonstrate how hostile and antagonistic Kuroi was and why he has absolutely no right to come to a third party website to cry over it.

Quote
Okay, I'm gonna admit it's a tiny bit frustrating for me to make a pitch on ways I could resolve my plot since, well, my original plan was derailed by the cross being set off-limits and then scuttled entirely by Frozen's leave of absence, only for you to say no for one reason or another and then the conversation goes dead after a couple of posts.

So...

So Sarah's story was always going to have a theme of Sarah not fitting in in the human world and eventually her unusual, evolving powers making her into something that better fit in in the spirit world than the mortal world and Sarah completely abandoning the mortal world for the spirit world would be her endgame if it didn't happen sooner, but the details werren't set in stone(see the previous comments about potential Hollow forms Sarah could undergo if she evolved in a certain direction, which are nothing like what I ended up as.)

Very little was something I decided beforehand: Sarah was an unusually Hollow Like Fullbringer who had some kind of energy absorption power that let her evolve more than normal. The how and why was made up over time--Svetlana wouldn't exist if Sarah had been taken to Soul Society instead of Hueco Mundo. Instead, Sarah would have ended up stranded in the Rukon and taken in by a "ronin" Shinigami who would have fulfilled the "surrogate mother" role that Svetlana took in Sarah's narrative, Sarah's fullbring would have evolved in a more "Shinigami" like fashion, and she may have even eventually become a "Substitute."

However, Sarah has had very little agency in the story. Quite literally all my initial plans for her after Hueco Mundo were her dashed by Frozen, KD, and Strawberry in the science district scene.

So I decided to play that up--Sarah has been screwed over by luck, chance, fate, every authority figure she's met except Svetlana and dream!Koutarou and even the arbitrary mechanics of the cosmos and a piece of her is sick of it and is going to make it so no one can screw Sarah over ever again whether Sarah likes it or not.

So, I'm just gonna state: No matter what happens, Sarah will be out of Hell and metamorphosed into a being who is beyond Karma before we move into the endgame. That is the ultimate example of leaving the mortal world behind for the spirit world, since uh... Transcendental beings actively kill mortals with their presence so Sarah wouldn't be able to live in the Mortal World anymore.

The question now is "how?"

Two more pitches: 1: In Sarah's introduction, I had a group of insect-like hollows with identical "devil masks" attack Sarah and Lobo. They're actually a single hollow whose gimmick is the creation of "drones" of various power that can consume souls for it and then those souls return to the Hollow when the drones are slain(IE, the priy those souls one needs to destroy the main hollow, the weakness being that the main body is much weaker than the typical hollow of that level due to the lion share o their power being distributed elsewhere.). I considered making this Hollow the third member of the Pack that Svetlana and Anim were in for a time after I established the Anim-Reincarnation thing

So, pitch: Devil-Mask has within herself several more of those "ancient soul fragments" that Shin-Tan is convinced are the Soul King's lost minor organs but might not be if tha'ts problematic. Devil Mask aslo recognizes Queen's power in Shin-Tan. Devil-Mask, a Vasto Lorde at this point(but only personally as powerful as a Menos due to her powers being distributed) approaches Sarah... And Shin-Tan senses the powerful soul fragments inside of her and plants her sword self in Devil-Mask's brain. She doesn't feel bad because some of Devil Mask's drones tried to eat Sarah. Drones are recalled/devoured upon Devil-Mask's death, Shin-Tan goes from being Menos Equivalent to Vasto Lorde equivalent and then she tries to break into SS by force to take some artifact or another that Sakura knew about. (Frozen had suggested Izanagi's zanpakuto as something that Shin-Tan might be interested in, but I don't think Shin-Tan would reasonably know about that or where it is) leading to a violent confrontation that concludes with Shin-Tan being sent to hell, rejoining Sarah, and Sarah escaping Hell.

Pitch 2: Shin-Tan goes to SS in hopes that she can leverage R to SS into them getting the cross for her...

And then Sarah escapes Hell by brute force then and there and attacks Shin-Tan right outside the gate to the Seireitei.

(Shin-Tan has previously stated that she serves as an Achor that could be used to get Sarah out o hell. She's not lying.)

Draws attention, but does not immediately result in Sarah's transformation into her transcendental form and Sarah needs to be talked down because she's pissed, hurt and irational in her Hollow

This is Rater2020, trying to find a compromise in the last few bits of the game before it got shut down.

Quote
Rater, I'm trying my level best here not to come across as bitter or adversarial or whatever, but I'm afraid I WILL need to get a little harsh at this point. And I want you to know that I deeply regret having to do that.

I get that you're anxious to resolve Sarah's plot. I really, really do. However, your persistence in pursuing Sarah's plot almost exclusively in ways that let you do your thing how you want it has been creating issues here. When I blocked you from accessing the Cross at the Kuzunoha compound at all, which was well within my limits as a player, what did you do? You went and gave Shin-Tan a Schrift anyway by having her eat a tiny part of the cross that was left behind at the scene of battle. Sarah eating a part of Hell to become a freaking Vasto Lorde is something that I honestly wasn't okay with, but at that point, there was no reasonable way to stop you.

Prior to Strawberryman leaving, every powerset of every character was approved by common accord of the other players. You very nearly overstepped that. Major changes to character power levels was also something that everyone needed to sign off on. You DEFINITELY overstepped that. The whole addendum of leaving Hell's door "a little open" has thrown a particularly unneccessary length of plot our way that we now have to deal with SOMEHOW, giving it an explanation at the very least. Frozen has enabled a lot of that and most of the discussion of that particular plot never went through anything resembling peer approval.

I have been dealing with a lot of RL complications that I will not discuss here. So if 'frustrations' are anything to go by, unfortunately, yours are at the bottom of my to-do list - my graduation is at the very top, and these are going to be a busy six months. I have at times actually pondered simply letting the game die. My stubborness is the one thing that has prevented me from doing so.

With all that in mind, I want you to understand something that you have been neglecting so far.

You wrote Sarah into a corner of Hell.

You made Shin-Tan's plan so ridiculously convoluted that it required multiple levels of enabling to just let it happen.

And I am not under any sort of obligation to open the gates back up.

You want to discuss further ways Shin-Tan can make a nuisance of herself as an antagonist, or give Sarah some adventures in Hell (preferrably something that tones her down a bit, because really, Vasto Lorde level?), I'm all for it. But I need you to understand that neither this game nor Sarah's plot are priorities for me at this moment, and again, I'm SERIOUSLY trying to be civil, polite and understanding here, but it's not getting any easier.

This reply is sure to rile you up I'm afraid, so I ask that you take some time after you read it and reply to it later.

Again. I am VERY sorry to need to take this tone, but the situation is what it is.

This is Kuroi here, trying to be the GM when there are no GMs. It's actually against the forum rules (which there are many at Giants) to have GMs in the Freeform section. So ya know. Here's Kuroi breaking the rules. Luckily the forum moderates don't bother with the Freeform area most of the time because of its fast posting rate and general clique-y-ness.

Rater then, because he was utterly fed up with Kuroi's general nature in trying to be the GM...so many posts to that effect...declared they were leaving the game. Only to post this.

Quote
Okay, I know I said I was leaving but I've been having intrusive thoughts about this for days.

I am starting school soon, I need to be able to focus.

Which means I need to finish what I started.

So I'm going to write an ending to Sarah's storyline.

Specifically: The Hell Verse establishes that if you're strong enough to break the chains, you're strong enough to force the gates open.

During the time skip, Sarah will force the gate open and walk out.

The gate will automatically close behind her, and unless Frozen miraculously decides to return the "piece of the broken Rukon is holding the gate slightly ajar" thing will have no bearing on any of this and can be ignored. Sarah will actively keep anyone else from getting out with her.

Shin-Tan will sense this and come to investigate.

They will fight.

Sarah Will Win.

Sarah will be transcended as I described above.

Sarah will return to Las Noches, re-unite with Svetlana, and then will most likily be retired from play. In all likelihood, I'll leave the game for real after that since I've utterly failed to get any of my characters involved in the main plot, up to and including this storyline, every other time I tried it.

This Will Not In Any Way Affect Kuroimaken's planned Endgame, nor will it infringe upon it, or draw on story elements that he has stated his intent to exclude from the game.

It Will Not In Any Way Result in There being a High Level Character who needs to be Delt With, as Sarah will still be Weaker than most of the characters who are still in play, despite Kuroimaken's concerns about her rapidly getting to Vasto Lorde Level, and regardless will be unwilling to use most of that power and in all likelihood will not even be in play afterward.

As the conclusion will be entirely self-contained, it can be ignored if one so chooses.

I put up with a lot of stuff trying to tell Sarah's story after I joined this game way back when up to and including being essentially railroaded into an unwinnable fight that crushed all of my original plans for her. I just want to give her story a proper ending at this point. That was more or less the only reason I came back in the first place but well, once I'd worked out a way to do it...

I need to do this for my own peace of mind.

To reiterate: This will be entirely self-contained and will not affect anything else unless you want it to.

There's a little back and forth and Kuroi just drops any pretense of trying to be fair or not ya know, "in charge".
I'm not reopening this for discussion.

You have three alternatives. You can go ahead with your plan, and Deus Ex Machina will happen. You can leave quietly, and nothing more happens. You can devise an alternative for your plotline.

Pick one. I will be ignoring everything else, as this drama is completely unnecessary to the completion of the plot.[/quote]

The ultimatum is made. Rater2020 posts their last post in the In Character thread. Kuroi then does exactly what he says he's going to do and straight up over-writes Rater2020 instead of just letting it go. Like an adult would. Angry words are exchanged and your boy Razade here decides to slam the last nail in the coffin and report the thread to a Moderator.


I told you Kuroi, that you'd be the reason the game died. I expected it to come a long time ago, you stuck it out. But now that it's here, I'm really glad I took a little time out of my morning to be petty, hunt you down to your cry corner and poke at you one last time.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2019, 09:55:02 AM by Razade »

Offline Kuroimaken

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Re: How do you deal with a disruptive player in a play-by-post environment?
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2019, 10:38:57 AM »
Wow. You literally went and searched the internet just to see if you could be a pain in my ass somewhere else?

You even went and created an account here just to do so?

How juvenile can you get?
Kami darou ga akuma darou ga, ore no michi ni tateru mono NASHI!!

Give me internets. Now.

Offline Kuroimaken

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Re: How do you deal with a disruptive player in a play-by-post environment?
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2019, 11:09:18 AM »
I'm just going to take like three minutes of my Saturday that would have otherwise been spent playing FFRK to put together some actual facts here.

First of all, here is a link to the forum rules over at Giantitp, and here is a link to the FFRP Central sticky on the freeform subforum.

Notice how neither states that it is against the rules for a freeform game to have a GM, or its equivalent.

For the record, at least a year before you joined the game (with a character that defied consensus in the definition of his powers, which was the system we were going by at the time, might I add), the game was already in danger of dying from inertia. It never had 20ish active players during this iteration - maybe, MAYBE around 10, which was practically a record. Some left early, including Tebryn, and literally killed their characters in the process. At its most active, at least while I was there, we had Draken, Strawberryman, KD, Frozen, Dorizzit, Ammutseba (for a brief period) and myself. Unlike you, I will not speak for the motives of any of them (though I'm aware of the ones who left), because it would be improper to discuss something that was said to me in confidence.

But I can tell you this: if any of them left because of me, they still made sure to do so in amiable terms.

Frozen, in particular, I still speak to even after he left, and while we had our disagreements about plot and where to go with it, he never once took it personally.

Also for the record, you joined AFTER I rallied everybody who was still paying attention to the boards to get the story done. You wouldn't have had a story to participate in if it weren't for me. When you did, you spent the majority of your time with your character asserting himself into a position of power, committing a number of acts that were simultaneously hilarious and horrifying from the position of anyone with an ounce of common sense.

After you left, in a huff that no one really cared about (Frozen included), you took the time to stalk the boards and occasionally barb away to get some sense of self-satisfaction since I "bullied you by rejecting your ideas" or whatever. In reality you tried to godmode your way through an encounter that happened because your character's actions went completely and absolutely counter to my character's personality. You couldn't deal with a single conflict without trying to assert that it was your right to win and that you would do so at any cost. You did not accept a single blow.

What you are is a nuisance, and as a nuisance you shall be ignored. At least now I know for a fact that Rater was not behind the mods getting involved, it was just you trying to get attention again when I did not respond to your feeble attempts at getting a rise out of me.

It will amuse me when I dig the game's corpse from its so-called grave and give it an ending fit for its running time.

And thank you for coming forward - this will make finishing the game as was intended so much easier.
Kami darou ga akuma darou ga, ore no michi ni tateru mono NASHI!!

Give me internets. Now.

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: How do you deal with a disruptive player in a play-by-post environment?
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2019, 06:47:57 PM »
This thread is a sea of rules violations now. Closed