There’s a multitude of reasons for my decision to leave, chiefest of which is the extreme incompetence of the mods. It saddens me to go because I love pretty much everyone in this RP (although frankly, ‘pretty much everyone’ is leaving together) and I adore my characters, and I’ve had a lot of fun with them. Leaving it all behind is hard, but really, there’s no point in staying. I might be able to get over horrible mod behaviour once, but it apparently wasn’t the first time, so I doubt it will be the last (and in fact, I wrote this part several days ago, so since then there HAVE been further incidents, which only proves my point).
So why am I (and others) leaving?
1. MODS CANNOT BE CLIQUEY
Cliquey behaviour is awful when any ONE person does it (and has been actively discouraged in the rules. See: http://wickedgamerp.tumblr.com/rules). Now, I understand that not everyone can plot with everyone ALL THE TIME. That’s fine. There’s only so many hours in the day, right? When EVERYONE in an RP notices that you’re only interacting with the same people over and over (which, in this case, is basically really just the same two people with around 10 characters between them and the occasional third party, which is really also just a member of that clique), it’s a problem. Frankly, no one likes to find their dash clogged with sickly sweet romance paras between the same two people day after day, and some of the interactions really made at least me actively uncomfortable (”Daddy”? REALLY?), but that’s not even what I’m talking about. The cliquey behaviour I am referring to is the addition of two new characters to the RP, which was so extremely poorly handled, it basically triggered the current avalanche of leaving (even if that was by far not the only problem and really just the last drop; not to mention the extreme favouritism and hypocrisy in another instance that I won’t be writing about here because it didn’t affect me directly, so I’ll leave it up to the person involved to rant about it).
THROWING CHARACTERS INTO AN RP IS NOT OKAY.
The bios weren’t even part of the RP before, and from literally one minute to the next everyone was supposed to deal with it, while the mods DIDN’T EVEN SAY WHO WAS PLAYING THEM (and as I heard later, it wasn’t even the first time that had happened). Now, most people guessed that they were being played by the mods (who else has the power to pull something like that off?), but NOBODY SHOULD HAVE HAD TO GUESS. That is BASIC politeness. Just ONE line about adding new characters soon and who’s playing whom. Nada. Nothing. I don’t even care about either of those characters. What I care about is how extremely poorly the mods behaved in this instance, because to me it really just screamed “oh, but WE know what’s going on, and OUR characters are NATURALLY all buddy-buddy, so that’s okay. The rest of you will figure it out lol.” The subsequent displeasure (and believe me when I say that that anon was NOT alone, if it even was just one) was handled just as poorly and resulted in the mods trying to godmod a lot of people in the RP, which brings me to my 2nd point.
2. GODMODDING IS NOT OKAY, EVEN IF YOU ARE THE MODS
I have no idea what people said about Kazz, and really, I don’t care. Period. My point is, SOMETIMES CHARACTERS REACT TO OTHER CHARACTERS IN A CERTAIN WAY BECAUSE THEY ONLY HAVE LIMITED INFORMATION. Is it so unthinkable someone might think Kazz is a jerk because his job is brutal? That he’s a womanizer because all the character knows is that he’s often seen with different women or whatever? The reality is often irrelevant, and as I said, I don’t even know any details, that’s just examples. What I’m trying to hint at here is that resolving such a ‘misunderstanding’ is far more effective if you just TALK TO THE PEOPLE INVOLVED. Maybe they DID read the bio and DID understand it, but their character has their own reasons for thinking about them in a certain light. JUST ASK. There’s really no need to drag EVERYONE ELSE into the whole thing and get mad at everyone JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T GET THE PERCEPTION OR RELATIONSHIPS YOU WANTED. It is especially not okay to then make a post about people being ‘too controlling of each others’ characters’ (although it is certainly amusing). There have been other instances of godmodding by the mods which I will not be mentioning here because they didn’t affect me personally and I’ll leave it up to the people involved to make it public or not, but the point is: this was NOT the only time it happened.
3. NOBODY LIKES TO RP WITH RUDE PLAYERS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE THE MODS
This is getting really long, so I’ll just say at this point that not announcing the addition of new characters BEFORE the fact is rude. The handling of the subsequent displeasure by Russ was also rude. Basically copying another player’s character and then making it your own is… RUDE. The usage of certain RL topics that other players are uncomfortable with is rude. I won’t even mention the past incidents I heard about from older players that had one of the mods basically bullying them. Let’s leave it all at: RUDE. (Not to mention the incident of pretending to be another player who’s basically never on and then telling everyone a load of bullcrap about ‘Internet’ problems and the like. If you picked up that character, just SAY IT. We’re not playing secret agents here, this isn’t a James Bond movie. Just own up to it JFC. It’s not like you haven’t suddenly picked up a truckload of characters before without caring about other people’s reaction, why start feeling bad about it now?)
I’m sorry for everyone who’s staying in the RP and who I am effectively letting down with this. I feel terrible. I really do, but I KNOW it’s just a matter of time until something else happens, and I don’t want to be around to see it. I put too much work into my characters. I do hope to see everyone in another RP, one that’s hopefully better managed, and resume that collaboration. Until then, so long and thanks for all the fish.
(For past incidents, a player who left the RP before I joined summed their experiences up here)
jbbartram-illu
blakekathryn
2087
origamiaround
vaporwave
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