Proposed Rules Update: Feedback Request
We're proposing some major updates to our rules

Over the past few months the staff have been working on updates to our rules in general, and also more specifically around OOC Communication. Some of these rules have already been rolled out or updated:

- Punishments

- Discussing Old Roleplay (War-Stories)

- Reporting Rules Violations

- Failure to comply with punishment

- Community Harm

- Multiple Accounts Playing from the same IP

- Using a Proxy or VPN

We have some additional rules updates we've been work-shopping. A lot of time has gone into discussing these rules changes, both on the staff side, and by soliciting feedback from a number of different players. For something this large however, we wanted to open up discussion to the community and get feedback before we finalize the proposed rules and bring them a vote on the Staff side.

Below, I will share a Google Doc which you can read through which contains the proposed rules changes, some supplementary help file information on what is/is not allowed (so we can keep the @rules themselves lean) as well as an FAQ with questions we think will be asked or that came up when we were getting feedback from individual players.

Before I share it, a warning: The proposed rules have NOT been adopted. They still might NOT be adopted. The current rules are still in place.

Until such time as the staff votes and some or all of these rules are adopted, the current rules remain in place and you are expected to follow them.

There will be feelings

People are going to have feelings about these proposed changes. Some will think they are great, some will think it is a bad idea. Please be respectful of other people when discussing. Please read all the way through, as the FAQ explains why we are considering these changes, why we think it is important, and what we hope will improve as a result.

I firmly believe that the changes we are proposing here will be a positive for the community. It shows the staff trust our players to make good decisions. It modernizes our rules to be more in-line with what people expect from a game these days. These rules changes acknowledge that there is a large interest from our playerbase to have more tools to form lasting OOC friendships as a result of Sindome, while still maintaining the IC/OOC divide that is at the core of Sindome as a game.

Some people may wish that we had gone further with our changes. We did discuss and propose some rule changes that went further, but the staff felt that the changes proposed in the doc are already large enough. That isn't to say we won't revisit these rules in the future when we have more information.

A lot of thought has gone into what you are about to read

We have put a LOT of thought and discussion and time into the proposed changes. We've considered a lot of different variations, some that went further, some that didn't go as far. We've considered the trade-offs, the potential risks, the potential benefits, how this effects current and former players, etc. There are definitely risks involved here, and if we adopt these proposed changes and it becomes clear that this isn't working, we'll take a step back and decide how we want to move forward.

Our Ask of You

- Keep an open mind, both in reading the proposed changes, and in writing and reading feedback

- We want your feedback. Please read through the proposed changes and respond with your feedback in this thread

- Keep it cool and be respectful in your responses

- You can discuss the proposed changes, and respond to other peoples thoughts on them

- It's OK not to like a change. We are open to hearing about alternatives

- It's OK to think a change doesn't go far enough

- Please try to be constructive in your feedback. If you like/don't like something, why? What are some alternatives?

- Do you have questions that we don't answer in the rules or FAQ?

- Are there gaps in the rules that we haven't considered?

Living Document

This is a living document. And it will be updated based on feedback gathered here. So if you get in early, and then read it again later, it may not be exactly the same. We want to be as clear as possible, cover as much as possible, but also keep the rules lean enough that someone can actually read through and understand them. That's a bit of a balancing act in and of itself.

Proposed Rules Changes

I have heard about game worlds dying because the Discord chatter became the main method of community engagement, but as long as opt-in is really opt-in, and players who don't want to opt-in are not at some permanent disadvantage in participating in the game's development and the community, then I suppose there's no holding back the ocean.

I still strongly believe the BGBB should be the central place where game and community and rules matters get discussed in a official and impactful way, because everyone can participate there regardless if they're one hour or one week late to the topic at hand, and there is much less pressure to remain constantly engaged with whatever is going on OOC in real time.

* OOC Chat / Discord / Etc remain opt-in.

* The purpose of OOC Chat / Discord is community building, not game building

* The staff aren't planning to shift discussions to Discord, Discord is just another way for the community to stay in contact

* If there are discussions that take place on Discord, they will hopefully be on channels that are also linked to the MOO like a 'Discord-Chat' channel where people on the MOO can take part, and people on Discord can take part, together. This is TBD, based on how possible it is.

I'm not sure we can totally address FOMO in terms of people who don't want to engage in OOC Chat or Discord. There won't be anything special about Discord in terms of features or added value in terms of people who just want to play the game.

Does that answer your question? If not, let me know what specifically you're looking for and give me an example so I can better understand your question(s).

I think it's optimistic to hope people won't go into private channels and reveal who they play. I don't mock the optimism or look down on it, but I do think it's inevitable we'll have people who reveal who they play and don't come forward. I think if we're going to have an OOC discord and opening up these means, then it's probably better to dive in head first or just not go the way of the discord. But maybe this will work.

I was going to ask about staff communicating with players privately if it wasn't in the rules, but I see it's included.

So my only questions are:

1. There's a lot of expectations about players reporting violations. What's going to happen to people who make false accusations, either by being bad faith actors (which I assume falls under community harm) or by jumping to conclusions, being in a moment of anger, misinterpreting something in the ooc discord?

2. What is going to happen if there are times when people either initially report to staff but don't want to wait/feel it's being ignored? Or just don't report to staff and come out and make those accusations publicly? On the discord, on xooc, on the boards. Does this also fall under community harm? I feel like in cases where this has happened in the past, even recently, in moments of jumping to conclusions or anger that it's caused a lot of hurt to people in the community. By introducing a discord to the game and a lot more factors, intricacies in how people are communicating, even just the options for people to communicate in different ways, that people might be more prone to these situations where they jump to conclusions or are impatient.

There's a brief conversation about FOMO for game mechanic/gameplay discussion that happens for people who aren't in OOC (and now who won't be in the OOC discord), but my FOMO question is a little different.

Sometimes when big stuff is happening in-game, there's some vague allusions and wink-winks said on the xooc sometimes. Nothing to directly reveal what's going on, but just a player showing enjoyment - even when they shouldn't. People who aren't logged in might see this type of stuff happening on the ooc discord/xooc and then feel compelled to log into the game because of FOMO, which might bring them into something that's happening IC. Which could directly impact/change/influence what's happening based on that FOMO.

Will that fall strictly under meta-gaming?

I don't think we want to move any further in the direction you described at this time. It's possible in the future, when we have some data and have seen how this has gone and gathered some feedback from how it is going, we'll look at it again.

As for if someone is weaponizing the rules in the way you described, we would handle that on a case by case basis. In my opinion a player doing that would need to be suspended at a minimum for using OOC to avoid IC consequences.

There are also situations where someone is outted against their will or by accident (xooc instead of xhelp for instance). We'll handle those situations in a one-off fashion as needed, and create a policy if needed.

What we have now isn't perfect, and doesn't account for all the edge cases because we also need to keep the rules as brief as possible so people will actually read and internalize them heh.

That is definitely a good suggestion and something that we could do, aye.

Setting it to the last setting means that you can't accidentally get exposed to someone maliciously DMing you, regardless of server settings.

I don't outright oppose more OOC engagement (although I did argue XOOC should be removed entirely at one point), but I don't think the analogy to other types of games are often all that applicable, because limited communication and limited access to information are such core aspects of the game which is really unlike almost all other RPGs.

If people want to talk about sports or politics or tech or whatever with other players that is all fine and dandy.

Please do not encourage or enable discussions about the game itself on Discord. FOMO has already been mentioned.

I said at one point there was no Pandora's Box that was opened, but I think in retrospect that was pretty wrong. One way or another, this is probably the best way forward now.