I think people here have already addressed the majority of my concerns here, so I'm going to focus on things I didn't see already. (Though if someone did mention something I say here too then I'm sorry I missed it when I read through the first time.) For reference, I'm coming at this as someone who has modded in the past, and my suggestions are things that I found worked for me and my past mod teams.
mod tone in posts
First, I wanted to talk about this comment from the post:
"We would like to emphasize that we cannot control, and have no intention to control, how players disseminate information on their own plots. However, if either the player with the plot or we as mods feel the plot in question could impact anything outside a small circle of people, we will strongly encourage players to actually make use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes, or at least for a heads up. We do hope this helps with the transparency issue."
I feel like this comment is missing the mark a bit. As mods, it IS your job to exert some control over player plots. Ideally you won't have to do much and can be mostly hands-off, but it's your job to make sure player plots fit into the game and don't conflict with either the main plot or other player plots. As mods, you are the only ones who know exactly where this game is going! And because of that, you're the only ones who know if player plots will have a negative affect on the game in the long run. Additionally, as mods, you can require that players communicate their player plots on the OOC comm. Which I think you should, because we're already having trouble with "players not in the discord are missing out on things" and that is a huge problem when the discord is optional and not everyone is using it. I wouldn't say every detail should be outlined in OOC comm posts (Like reading Agatha's post below about the plans to drop Aerith, I do think Aerith's death in it being kept quiet is a good idea, because that's the ultimate climax of the plot in the first place) but the general idea of "an attack is happening at this day and time" or "this weird thing is happening over in this part of town" is something that can and should be discussed on the OOC comm ahead of time.
I guess my main issue is that your initial comment sounds like you're trying to push player plots away from mod responsibilities in an "if things go sideways then it's not OUR fault, WE didn't make this plot", when it's not really about 'blame' to begin with and it actually is your job to proofread plots and tell players 'no' to parts of the plot that won't go over well. If this wasn't your intention in the first place, then re-wording what you mean in regards to the player plots may be a good idea, because this is what it sounds like to me.
Also, I want to point out that this is just one instance of a problem I see happening over and over in this post here: accountability. It feels like the mods are trying to throw their hands up and go "hey, this stuff isn't our responsibility, don't get mad at us!" Which is a Very Bad Thing for mods to do, honestly. You are the mods, this is YOUR game. You get the final say on what happens and doesn't happen. This is because, as mods, nearly everything that happens in your game actually IS your responsibility. So trying to back off on the responsibility when things go sideways isn't a great look, because you had every opportunity to say 'no' to everything that's happened in this game. If something goes wrong, you need to own it! You need to say "we wanted to do X thing but it didn't work out as we planned. This is what we learned from it and what we're going to do going forward." I feel like that is kind of showing in this post here, in some places? But in others there's still that tone of "it's not our fault", and that's not helping.
I want to say too, I think this is something you can fix going forward. As long as you take that responsibility now and continue to be accountable for the happenings in the game, things will be okay.
picking players for special things
I'm going to keep this part brief since a lot of players brought up transparency already, but I just wanted to express some thoughts and methods that have worked for me in the past.
I think others have it right on the nose to say that just grabbing people randomly and going "hey, do this" (like how Eski and Nik have expressed below, in regards to Hizen and Kate's involvement in things so far) really isn't a good method to get players to do tasks in this game. For one, it relies on you mods to specifically seek people out for the job, which is possible to do in a small game (like, how big the game was when it opened) but really isn't feasible with a game of this size. I expressed it in another comment, but it's really not fair to you guys to expect you all to remember all 180+ characters at all times and what they're all good at. And secondly, it's not transparent enough. When all we have is private chats with mods asking a player to do something, that's where accusations of mod favoritism come in. Especially since this game is anon-mods and we don't know who the mods are, it's very easy for people to look at that lack of answers for how characters are picked for special plot things and go "this character is getting Special Stuff and we don't see why, this is clearly mod favoritism."
So I think you should post monthly sign-ups with brief descriptions of the kinds of characters you're looking for with these requests. So for example, for the bombing plot, you could put out a notice that says "We need one character for a plot thing this month. Said character needs to be a member of Tamamo, 0 star rank, and ideally someone who just apped in this last round." Or as another example, you could say "we need a member of Shuten who will carry out a hit on someone else", or "we need someone from Tamamo who works as a courtesan" or anything else like that. Then you let people who qualify sign up, and then you either RNG from the list or pick the 'best fit' from that list. Though I must specify, you need to state ahead of time if you're going to do 'RNG' or 'we're picking the best fit from those who sign up' so the players know exactly how characters are being picked, and there should be a "cooldown" of a month or two before a player can sign up any of their characters again. You don't have to give the full plot details when you do these signups, but just having a "hey we need people for A Thing" in the plotting posts will go a long way towards providing the kinds of transparency players want.
Another part of the 'transparency' problem is answering why some players are able to get information through asking questions, while others who arguably SHOULD be getting information are being shafted. Again, this was covered more by other people, so I'll keep this brief. But I think an easy solution to this- and I saw some people touch on it too- is to just have a 'Q+A' section when new events go up and specify in the section which kinds of characters will be able to get extra information. "if you have questions ask here. If your character works X job at Y facility, they may be able to get extra information." And then give out information as people ask. Also, don't be afraid to tell people the same things! You don't have to give out unique information to everyone, it's okay for several players to get variations on "yeah we saw someone in Tamamo garb plant a bomb but we don't know who they were" when they ask questions, it's realistic that people would get the same information. Especially because, again, we have 180+ characters and nobody expects you mods to give out 180+ different pieces of information with each plot post.
the elephant in the room
I'm kind of hesitant to bring up this last point because it's talking about a specific player (albeit without mentioning their name, but I think many people will be able to figure out who it is anyway), but I do feel like this needs to be said. I'll try my best to speak vaguely because I don't want to be shitty and cause the player a ton of stress about this, but it DOES need to be addressed in some capacity.
I don't want to go too much into detail about what happened, because again, personal information and all. But basically, a certain player anonfailed with the mod plurk, revealing that said player has access to the mod plurk and is very likely a mod. And really, I'm not personally concerned with the possibility of them being a mod. What I AM concerned with, however, is the fact that several people have directly asked the mods "hey, is [player name] a mod?" and that screencaps of the anonfail have been given to the mods, and yet the mods have not said a single thing on this. There hasn't even been a "we're not going to comment on this, we're anon mods" comment on it, which is the bare minimum of what I would expect in this situation. In fact, the opposite has happened: comments got screened, then anon comments got turned off, THEN it got set to "members only can comment". And while on one hand I do recognize the desire to avoid people shitstirring just to shitstir, there was at least one player in this game who used a sock account to bring their concerns to you anonymously because they were worried about retribution over saying anything at all about this. And ultimately it was all for naught, because you screened comments and STILL haven't said a single thing about this situation. As with other problems in this game, I feel like the issue isn't the identity of the player involved (though I do know some people disagree with me here, and I invite them to speak on it as well), but rather the lack of transparency as to their part in this game and what they have access to.
Again, I don't want to go around saying anything about this specific player or their past. I literally have never played in a game with them before, we don't really have any CR here (not because I'm avoiding them or anything either, I've just been having shit luck with my health lately and my tagging has been slow), and I don't really have an opinion on anything about their past because I just plain don't know them. But what I DO think is that, if there are players who are uncomfortable with this player, you are doing them a huge disservice by not addressing this situation and instead taking actions that make it look like you're trying to sweep everything under the rug. And again, I don't want to talk about this player's past or the identities of anyone who might have problems with this player. I'm pretty sure EVERYONE in DWRP has at least one person they don't want to interact with under any circumstances, and what I'm about to say is coming more from a place of "this is what I would expect anon mods to do if they have people who have specifically told them 'DNI' and know that these players might not know that they are interacting anonymously with someone they don't want to interact with."
At a minimum, this is what I think you should do:
1) give some kind of statement on the situation. If I were in this situation I personally would come out and say "yes, [player name] is a mod here" or "no, the player is not a mod, but they helped us make the game and thus have access to the mod plurk and journal". It's a foregone conclusion at this point, we KNOW the player has access to the mod plurk. But I would also understand if you went with a "we're not going to confirm or deny the identities of ANY mods, because this is an anon mod game" post, as long as you're saying SOMETHING about it. The players want to know that you are listening to them, and at a bare minimum they deserve an acknowledgement that you are reading these questions people are asking.
2) if this player does have access to the mod journal and plurk while not being a mod, I would remove that access. Mod accounts are for mod use only IMHO, and letting other people see private correspondences with mods when they themselves are not mods is a HUGE violation of privacy. (Disregard this point if the player in question is a mod though, I don't expect them to stop being a mod just because they anonfailed.)
3) To ease concerns about interacting with people they don't want to interact with, I think you should state a public message along these lines: "as anon mods, we know you're putting a lot of trust in our hands. We also recognize that not everyone wants to interact with everyone. So we want to assure you that if you have ever expressed that you do not want to interact with one of us, then we will not place your characters in our specific factions and we will let other mods answer your questions. We know it's a lot to say 'we'll do it even if you can't possibly know, just trust us', but this is the process we're going to follow and we want you to know what we're going to do, even if you won't be able to see us doing it." I think this applies to all of the mods too, since anyone can have problems with anyone and we all want reassurances that the mods will respect our boundaries. If you were non-anon mods, these two points (not placing someone into a faction run by a mod they do not want to interact with, and also having that mod sit out from talking with that player/making decisions about that player) would be pretty standard anyway. Trusting the mods to follow this same process even if we can't know for certain that they are is very important to keeping the game running.
4) Going forward, please at least acknowledge difficult questions like this, even if you don't want to confirm anything directly. This whole thing has been festering for weeks now. By not responding and instead limiting anon comments gradually (first by blocking anon commenting, then by making it so only members can comment), all you've done was give people space to go "I knew it, they're covering it up now. Shady mods" when I really don't think that's what's happening here. Appearances do matter, especially for anon mods. And how you handle things like this is how you build trust with your players. If the players can't trust you, then they'll eventually leave.
I think that's it from me personally. TL;DR these are the issues I see in the game, but I think they can be fixed and that the game will do better in the future if these issues are addressed.
no subject
mod tone in posts
First, I wanted to talk about this comment from the post:
"We would like to emphasize that we cannot control, and have no intention to control, how players disseminate information on their own plots. However, if either the player with the plot or we as mods feel the plot in question could impact anything outside a small circle of people, we will strongly encourage players to actually make use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes, or at least for a heads up. We do hope this helps with the transparency issue."
I feel like this comment is missing the mark a bit. As mods, it IS your job to exert some control over player plots. Ideally you won't have to do much and can be mostly hands-off, but it's your job to make sure player plots fit into the game and don't conflict with either the main plot or other player plots. As mods, you are the only ones who know exactly where this game is going! And because of that, you're the only ones who know if player plots will have a negative affect on the game in the long run. Additionally, as mods, you can require that players communicate their player plots on the OOC comm. Which I think you should, because we're already having trouble with "players not in the discord are missing out on things" and that is a huge problem when the discord is optional and not everyone is using it. I wouldn't say every detail should be outlined in OOC comm posts (Like reading Agatha's post below about the plans to drop Aerith, I do think Aerith's death in it being kept quiet is a good idea, because that's the ultimate climax of the plot in the first place) but the general idea of "an attack is happening at this day and time" or "this weird thing is happening over in this part of town" is something that can and should be discussed on the OOC comm ahead of time.
I guess my main issue is that your initial comment sounds like you're trying to push player plots away from mod responsibilities in an "if things go sideways then it's not OUR fault, WE didn't make this plot", when it's not really about 'blame' to begin with and it actually is your job to proofread plots and tell players 'no' to parts of the plot that won't go over well. If this wasn't your intention in the first place, then re-wording what you mean in regards to the player plots may be a good idea, because this is what it sounds like to me.
Also, I want to point out that this is just one instance of a problem I see happening over and over in this post here: accountability. It feels like the mods are trying to throw their hands up and go "hey, this stuff isn't our responsibility, don't get mad at us!" Which is a Very Bad Thing for mods to do, honestly. You are the mods, this is YOUR game. You get the final say on what happens and doesn't happen. This is because, as mods, nearly everything that happens in your game actually IS your responsibility. So trying to back off on the responsibility when things go sideways isn't a great look, because you had every opportunity to say 'no' to everything that's happened in this game. If something goes wrong, you need to own it! You need to say "we wanted to do X thing but it didn't work out as we planned. This is what we learned from it and what we're going to do going forward." I feel like that is kind of showing in this post here, in some places? But in others there's still that tone of "it's not our fault", and that's not helping.
I want to say too, I think this is something you can fix going forward. As long as you take that responsibility now and continue to be accountable for the happenings in the game, things will be okay.
picking players for special things
I'm going to keep this part brief since a lot of players brought up transparency already, but I just wanted to express some thoughts and methods that have worked for me in the past.
I think others have it right on the nose to say that just grabbing people randomly and going "hey, do this" (like how Eski and Nik have expressed below, in regards to Hizen and Kate's involvement in things so far) really isn't a good method to get players to do tasks in this game. For one, it relies on you mods to specifically seek people out for the job, which is possible to do in a small game (like, how big the game was when it opened) but really isn't feasible with a game of this size. I expressed it in another comment, but it's really not fair to you guys to expect you all to remember all 180+ characters at all times and what they're all good at. And secondly, it's not transparent enough. When all we have is private chats with mods asking a player to do something, that's where accusations of mod favoritism come in. Especially since this game is anon-mods and we don't know who the mods are, it's very easy for people to look at that lack of answers for how characters are picked for special plot things and go "this character is getting Special Stuff and we don't see why, this is clearly mod favoritism."
So I think you should post monthly sign-ups with brief descriptions of the kinds of characters you're looking for with these requests. So for example, for the bombing plot, you could put out a notice that says "We need one character for a plot thing this month. Said character needs to be a member of Tamamo, 0 star rank, and ideally someone who just apped in this last round." Or as another example, you could say "we need a member of Shuten who will carry out a hit on someone else", or "we need someone from Tamamo who works as a courtesan" or anything else like that. Then you let people who qualify sign up, and then you either RNG from the list or pick the 'best fit' from that list. Though I must specify, you need to state ahead of time if you're going to do 'RNG' or 'we're picking the best fit from those who sign up' so the players know exactly how characters are being picked, and there should be a "cooldown" of a month or two before a player can sign up any of their characters again. You don't have to give the full plot details when you do these signups, but just having a "hey we need people for A Thing" in the plotting posts will go a long way towards providing the kinds of transparency players want.
Another part of the 'transparency' problem is answering why some players are able to get information through asking questions, while others who arguably SHOULD be getting information are being shafted. Again, this was covered more by other people, so I'll keep this brief. But I think an easy solution to this- and I saw some people touch on it too- is to just have a 'Q+A' section when new events go up and specify in the section which kinds of characters will be able to get extra information. "if you have questions ask here. If your character works X job at Y facility, they may be able to get extra information." And then give out information as people ask. Also, don't be afraid to tell people the same things! You don't have to give out unique information to everyone, it's okay for several players to get variations on "yeah we saw someone in Tamamo garb plant a bomb but we don't know who they were" when they ask questions, it's realistic that people would get the same information. Especially because, again, we have 180+ characters and nobody expects you mods to give out 180+ different pieces of information with each plot post.
the elephant in the room
I'm kind of hesitant to bring up this last point because it's talking about a specific player (albeit without mentioning their name, but I think many people will be able to figure out who it is anyway), but I do feel like this needs to be said. I'll try my best to speak vaguely because I don't want to be shitty and cause the player a ton of stress about this, but it DOES need to be addressed in some capacity.
I don't want to go too much into detail about what happened, because again, personal information and all. But basically, a certain player anonfailed with the mod plurk, revealing that said player has access to the mod plurk and is very likely a mod. And really, I'm not personally concerned with the possibility of them being a mod. What I AM concerned with, however, is the fact that several people have directly asked the mods "hey, is [player name] a mod?" and that screencaps of the anonfail have been given to the mods, and yet the mods have not said a single thing on this. There hasn't even been a "we're not going to comment on this, we're anon mods" comment on it, which is the bare minimum of what I would expect in this situation. In fact, the opposite has happened: comments got screened, then anon comments got turned off, THEN it got set to "members only can comment". And while on one hand I do recognize the desire to avoid people shitstirring just to shitstir, there was at least one player in this game who used a sock account to bring their concerns to you anonymously because they were worried about retribution over saying anything at all about this. And ultimately it was all for naught, because you screened comments and STILL haven't said a single thing about this situation. As with other problems in this game, I feel like the issue isn't the identity of the player involved (though I do know some people disagree with me here, and I invite them to speak on it as well), but rather the lack of transparency as to their part in this game and what they have access to.
Again, I don't want to go around saying anything about this specific player or their past. I literally have never played in a game with them before, we don't really have any CR here (not because I'm avoiding them or anything either, I've just been having shit luck with my health lately and my tagging has been slow), and I don't really have an opinion on anything about their past because I just plain don't know them. But what I DO think is that, if there are players who are uncomfortable with this player, you are doing them a huge disservice by not addressing this situation and instead taking actions that make it look like you're trying to sweep everything under the rug. And again, I don't want to talk about this player's past or the identities of anyone who might have problems with this player. I'm pretty sure EVERYONE in DWRP has at least one person they don't want to interact with under any circumstances, and what I'm about to say is coming more from a place of "this is what I would expect anon mods to do if they have people who have specifically told them 'DNI' and know that these players might not know that they are interacting anonymously with someone they don't want to interact with."
At a minimum, this is what I think you should do:
1) give some kind of statement on the situation. If I were in this situation I personally would come out and say "yes, [player name] is a mod here" or "no, the player is not a mod, but they helped us make the game and thus have access to the mod plurk and journal". It's a foregone conclusion at this point, we KNOW the player has access to the mod plurk. But I would also understand if you went with a "we're not going to confirm or deny the identities of ANY mods, because this is an anon mod game" post, as long as you're saying SOMETHING about it. The players want to know that you are listening to them, and at a bare minimum they deserve an acknowledgement that you are reading these questions people are asking.
2) if this player does have access to the mod journal and plurk while not being a mod, I would remove that access. Mod accounts are for mod use only IMHO, and letting other people see private correspondences with mods when they themselves are not mods is a HUGE violation of privacy. (Disregard this point if the player in question is a mod though, I don't expect them to stop being a mod just because they anonfailed.)
3) To ease concerns about interacting with people they don't want to interact with, I think you should state a public message along these lines: "as anon mods, we know you're putting a lot of trust in our hands. We also recognize that not everyone wants to interact with everyone. So we want to assure you that if you have ever expressed that you do not want to interact with one of us, then we will not place your characters in our specific factions and we will let other mods answer your questions. We know it's a lot to say 'we'll do it even if you can't possibly know, just trust us', but this is the process we're going to follow and we want you to know what we're going to do, even if you won't be able to see us doing it." I think this applies to all of the mods too, since anyone can have problems with anyone and we all want reassurances that the mods will respect our boundaries. If you were non-anon mods, these two points (not placing someone into a faction run by a mod they do not want to interact with, and also having that mod sit out from talking with that player/making decisions about that player) would be pretty standard anyway. Trusting the mods to follow this same process even if we can't know for certain that they are is very important to keeping the game running.
4) Going forward, please at least acknowledge difficult questions like this, even if you don't want to confirm anything directly. This whole thing has been festering for weeks now. By not responding and instead limiting anon comments gradually (first by blocking anon commenting, then by making it so only members can comment), all you've done was give people space to go "I knew it, they're covering it up now. Shady mods" when I really don't think that's what's happening here. Appearances do matter, especially for anon mods. And how you handle things like this is how you build trust with your players. If the players can't trust you, then they'll eventually leave.
I think that's it from me personally. TL;DR these are the issues I see in the game, but I think they can be fixed and that the game will do better in the future if these issues are addressed.