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@Kalak you are always side-stepping the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE for the spy to be found out unless the player makes a conscious decision to reveal themselves, e.g. roleplaying a mistake. Knowing that Enorian can't blackball players indefinitely for their previous org, by what mechanism could anyone have known aside from just holding onto their suspicions for eternity? Enorian knew OOC this was happening so those players were very generously waiting for Atarah to actually RP this theft, but that never happened.

I don't even have a strong opinion on the actual theft, but your unwillingness to address this is frustrating. Have you considered taking a 24 hour break from the conversation instead of restating your case over and over?

I am not sidestepping the fact....How could I say, hrm...Determining whether a person is dishonest or not from the words they present to you requires a kind of experience which can be possessed over time. And ICly if you are suspicious of anyone, you test them in subtle ways or put them on a safe spot where you do not offend them and can keep an eye on them.

It was one of my priorities in other games when I am the lead, that I would try to make the rules spy-tolerant. Hence no such unpleasant stuff happened on my watch while people had a chance to rise through the ranks of the organization itself. One aim is to make people not feel like they are second class members and another aim is that in the case they might be spies, their damage would be contained.

@Xavin I several times stated that people should take their decisions based on IC not OOC. If they take their decisions based on OOC sensibilities and get mislead or burned due to a consequence...that is their OOC responsibility. For IC world it means that you have been acting irrationally and out of context. Now I do not say that people should keep someone off from their city. Just do not hand them vital roles that easily and try to read into their intentions. Hints are not given willingly always, one of the responsibility of leadership is to talk with people and try to find cracks in their logic and words.

@Shachalai People do not have to give you any clues willingly, you have to cut the wheat from chaff. Engage them, observe them and draw a conclusion. I think at this point you try to mask the obvious failure of Enorian players by attributing to the external situations.

What they're saying, and what you are ignoring, is that there was no espionage game at play. What you are calling red flags, being a former member of a guild, having recently separated from the guildmaster of that guild? Those aren't enough of a reason to keep someone out of a city. Furthermore, any hints that she may have been up to anything that was not above-board would have to have -willingly- been given. By all accounts there were no signs that she was up to something icly. @Toz has admitted he knew she was spying oocly and played along because he was willing to play the loss and did not suspect that she would go so over and beyond what was appropriate. For there to have been hints in character that Atarah was up to anything, she would have had to willingly give them. She did not do so by all accounts. She presented herself as if she were acting in good faith both in and out of character, in fact telling at least two people out of character that had she not switched sides she would have retired or quit the game.

There was no way for Enorian to actually detect this beyond never giving any former Syssin any position that would give them any power at all. And that is not a reasonable expectation.

Here is where we really disagree I think. Some players think they have a responsibility to play the game in such a way that they do not knowingly cause hurt feelings OOCly even if what they did was entirely IC.

I, and I suspect @kalak, do not hold this view. I think it is up to other people to moderate their own emotions and if someone is upset IRL by something that my character does that is neither my responsibility nor my problem.

I don't think that's an especially responsible or ethical way to play the game. Taken to a literal extent, it allows you to justify any degree of victimization - like you're doing here - under the auspices of any action that can be justified in an in-character context. There are no limitations there.

And that, I think, is where you're sort of overlooking the meta-context that we're all unconsciously buying into when we play this game. There are rules to moderate our behavior; mechanical systems for governing what conflict there is; there is, inescapably, the knowledge that this is a game and our characters are constructs.

I think what you're doing here is idealizing IC/OOC separation, which - while a nice idea - doesn't in practice really exist. We're still human beings behind a keyboard. Our IC actions are, to a greater or lesser degree, constrained by the OOC context of the fact that this is a game. We are bound by norms - by roleplaying conventions that dictate how we use language, says, emotes, and other mechanical skills in the context of a scene.

Norms are unavoidable. They are inevitably an OOC intrusion. There is no pure, unspoiled, pristine IC realm totally separate from OOC considerations, and in trying to say so, I think you're trying to excuse bad behavior that goes against these norms.

It is certainly unworkable and absurd to expect that nobody should get their feelings hurt, ever, at all, but what I object to in your thinking - and what I believe you've left unexamined - is the idea that we're not responsible to each other, nor responsible for each other's fun.

IMO, that's a really great way to think of Aetolia if you want Aetolia to wither up and die.

We're a community. We're responsible to each other. What's been valuable, again and again, in building Enorian as a community, is a mutual, shared assumption of good faith on both IC and OOC levels. I think it is inarguable that Atarah exploited this context in order to perform an action that, while legal per the game rules, was nevertheless enormously destructive and antisocial.

You're prioritizing the rules above people; I think Enorian's playerbase, largely, prioritizes people over the rules. We want people to have fun. We do consider other peoples' fun our responsibility. The reason we don't engage in org theft, extended raiding, and the like isn't necessarily because we hate conflict - it's because that sort of conflict has no point except to demoralize the players behind the characters.

It is absolutely exhausting extending a degree of consideration and basic fairness that has, time and time again, failed to be reciprocated, both in interactions with players on the other side as well as in various admin events both historical and contemporary.

We're not disputing tone. We're not disputing that conflict and consequences should exist. We're not disputing that spy RP should not exist. Let's bring in some Toz here, and get the context you've skimmed over:

Spy RP is, by and large, terrible. It cannot be detected save through shortcomings of the person doing it, there is no money trail tying them back to Russia, you can't go through their mail and look for key words - so long as they keep to tells, or just don't talk about it at all after being sent out, it's really just a matter of playing the waiting game and waiting for things to hit. In this specific case, the only thing the Syssin invested or 'risked' was time. Maybe she plays in Enorian for a day and gets lucky, maybe she's there a RL decade, there's still no loss. If you are discovered, in fact, which is the 'worst' thing that can happen, the consequences are (hilariously enough) the exact same as when you turncoat - you get killed and kicked and enemied. So on the one hand, we have a zero risk 'operation' occurring with the express intention of achieving victory at all costs.

You're responding to the initial assertion, but not any of the other points Toz has made. His qualitative assessment relies upon these other caveats - he is asserting, in fact, that the reason spy RP is terrible is because the field is heavily slanted toward the spy, and just as heavily against the people who would, theoretically, want to detect the spy. We're not playing a game that's built for that sort of in-depth espionage, and the mechanical shortcomings are punishingly silly in this respect.

If you can address that in further depth, that'd be great.

The scale of the theft should not have been possible - Agreed. At least not without a more robust system of retaliation of something consequential that could be done in return. I approve of @Tiur’s alterations.

Thank G-d we agree on something.

Aetolia, in its current form, is a world where characters ... refuse to accept loss.

"Refuse to accept loss" is a strawman of the criticisms here. Again, Toz's critique - as quoted above, from page one - is fundamentally rooted in the skewed playing field. He is observing, correctly, that Enorian was placed into an exceptionally unfair position in which winning was nearly impossible unless the spy - who has no incentive to do so - intentionally screwed up.

I would imagine that both he and I are a little bit mollified by the recent alterations, but nevertheless, this points to something key-

It's not losing we object to.

In fact, this didn't even feel like losing.

Quoting Toz, again:

3 Syssins start an impossible to lose game with Enorian that Enorian isn't even aware it is playing, and are able to crush an organization to the tune of millions (if not billions?) of gold worth of comms, highlighting yet another unfinished, unpolished system. These players were aware, on an OOC level, the significance of what they were doing. They were also aware of how long it would take to buy these commodities back, and the extent of the damage that would be caused to morale on the other side. In engaging in this conflict, they did not engage in good faith because there was no way they could lose.

In order for the concepts of winning and losing to make sense, there has to be a reasonable playing field and a reasonable chance for both sides. None of that was present here. It was a skewed playing field, offering every possible advantage to the Syssin - it was such a huge advantage, in fact, that we didn't even realize we were playing an espionage game until Atarah had already won.

It felt like being cheated.

There are times when consequences of this scope are appropriate, but not in this context - not because just one person slipped up. Consequences of this scope should occur when a city's collective effort, over a long period of time, has utterly failed. It shouldn't be a normal case, and one person shouldn't be able to pull it off so easily.

Of course, we agree on that, which brings us to my conclusion.

In light of the previously skewed playing field, and the fact that this is a community of players, there was an obligation for Atarah to use her advantage responsibly, and to perpetuate conflict that was good for the game as a whole, rather than punching down at people she had at her complete mercy. In the context of a game which is meant to be fun, meant to be a relatively fair experience for all involved, Atarah had a responsibility to consider the players she was hurting.

This laissez-faire concept of a game world only goes so far - extended to its logical conclusion, you have the powerful players ganging up on the powerless ones, and that's fine because, hey, you're not responsible for their OOC feelings, and hey, it's not against the rules, is it?

The point I was making in the last thread, and the point I'm making here now, is simply this: we're people. Every single one of us is a human behind a keyboard. We have names. Some of us go to school. Some of us have jobs. Some of us have pets, partners, children. A lot of us are playing this game because we've played it for ages; a lot of other people play it because it's cheap, it doesn't demand a good computer or a good Internet connection, and it hits that creative/social/mechanical spot.

We've all got a part in making sure that we're being as decent to each other as we can, because, after all, we're the main draw of this world. If you have bad players, you have a bad game, and I want my game to be as good as it can be.

So, let's quote you again, just to contextualize this properly:

What I want from Aetolia and I have not been getting is a dark fantasy. Something that had weight to it. A world where things matter. Where death isn’t brushed off, where stuff can genuinely turn south, where the best laid plans can genuinely come to ruin. A world that has consequences.

Aetolia, in its current form, is a world where characters ICly murder their way to endgame, become nearly invincible, immortal, unaging, and then form social cliques and refuse to accept loss.

Making that a secondary priority in favor of some sort of abstract "dark fantasy" ideal? You've as good as said that our mechanics don't back that up, and unless major changes are made, there will probably never be a severe enough degree of consequence in an IRE MUD to capture the bleak, uncompromising feel you're after. Maybe try Armageddon? That's a good-faith suggestion, btw.

Me? I just want to log onto my silly, over-the-top MUD with undying, ageless immortals and self-indulgent RP cliques and the occasional bit of conflict. I've played this game for over ten years. I've been through my grimdark phase, my jackass phase, my snuggly phase... and ultimately I guess what I've come around to is that people play this silly game for a million different reasons and it's not for me to tell them why they should be playing it, as long as they're not messing with the way I want to play it.

And ultimately, it's no one's fault that the game isn't what you want it to be. You may - wrongly - not consider yourself responsible to the community you're a part of, but...

I think if you were really carrying this principle - "I, and I suspect Kalak, do not hold this view. I think it is up to other people to moderate their own emotions and if someone is upset IRL by something that my character does that is neither my responsibility nor my problem." - to its logical conclusion? You would recognize that your response here is, fundamentally, emerging from a place of entitlement.

This also explains why you've been arguing against Enorian's overall response to what happened - to you, our complaints, and we ourselves, are barriers between you and the game that you want, that you feel that you deserve.

You are refusing to give our emotions due consideration not because you necessarily feel that we're wrong, but because if you give them any room, any validity, it's admitting that your idealized vision of the game world is less important than the people playing in that game world.

Nobody owes you a particular experience of the game. Take your own bad advice, step back, and moderate your emotions.

The fundamental problem here is there is no mechanical fix to metagaming, and anyone who doesn't think this was metagaming when there was, and is, such a clear disconnect between what was said and done ingame, and what was said and done out of game, is fooling themselves because they're spoiling for conflict.

I am never going to be happy with people going out of their way to make players suffer. It is callous and toxic behaviour that should be removed from the community. No other course of action is going to make me happy, because it means I will forever have to distrust my fellow players and their intentions. As @toz said, the well has been poisoned. I am not going to trust a single soul who comes to me looking for Trade aide status.

Or after this thread, like half of you period, frankly. There's a distressing and sociopathic lack of basic empathy on display here.

I am writing everything in good faith though that does not mean I have to embellish my words and sweeten the truth for people to swallow it easily. People are apparently having a hard time to grasp the reality that they are having difficulties in differentiating IC circumstances from OOC circumstances. So yeah, someone has to tell the truth and be treated as the spawn of devil or something.

I am far more concerned with you being cruel, callous, and overall toxic. The fact that you're fractally wrong about practically everything you've ever posted about on these forums is equally true, but that seems less germane to the discussion at hand, such as the discussion is.

I will attempt to salvage this by asking you where, precisely, you break with Toz's excellent post. Where does Toz's explanation of why this was unfair, gross, and unacceptable fall flat? Where is Toz's reasoning flawed?

I'd like you to answer those questions, first and foremost, before we proceed to assuming that people need to be insulted and belittled in order for a point to be made.

Re: Ethne, divine advisory is an old and practically meaningless mechanic, and lore-wise and per past and present RP, Ethne is closely and definitively associated with Enorian. Her participation isn't at all odd.