RP Rant
(aka things to avoid when looking for an RP or while in an RP)


Like most people, I like to join in Rps – from Forums, to IM, to Play by E-mail. I have had good experiences....but I've also had plenty of bad. What's your pet-peeves in RPs? Have you had bad experiences? This series of journals is about some of mine. 'd like to also hear some of yours



POWER-MAD MODERATORS/GAME-MASTERS

Most games get set up by either you or someone else starting the game – a thread on a forum or whatever. Generally the person who starts it has power over the game and the players. They have the responsibility to keep the game moving along and interesting to their players. They have a bunch of things to do, from coming up with scenarios to settling any disputes between players.

Its a tough, often thankless job. Good ones are wonderful to interact with, to be around but they can also be pretty rare. Because unfortunately, sometimes the power that comes with their responsibility can go to their heads. This is common in human-nature and happens in all positions of authority.

Over a decade ago, I was part of a GI Joe play by e-mail role play game; when I joined, it was right after a group of players had left abruptly. I should have paid more attention to the former members who warned me what would happen, but the GM was being so nice to me, acting like a mentor, that I thought the warnings were sour grapes.

Everything was fine so long as I agreed with everything the GM and her fiancé wanted. Things however started to show she wasn't as nice as she appeared. She was manipulative and talked about people behind their backs -- something she later accused me off when the only sort of talking I had done behind her back was asking if she was OK or asking the other game moderators if she'd like an idea I had for the game.

I had brought some friends of mine into this game. The three of them I always saw as family. It was a guy (Dev), his wife (CJ), and his best friend (Per). They loved GI Joe as much as I did and I had been bragging about how fun the game was, so they applied to join and was accepted. Dev and I have always had an excellent repertoire when it came to writing. We've finished each others ideas at times and we still do that. We had agreed to have a couple of my characters and a couple of his pair up romantically because it was our favorite couples from our joint writings.

After the GM's fiancé joined the game, things started to change. She became more demanding of Dev's time. It confused me because she liked to talk about how much she loved her fiancé and all yet she seemed to want to be around Dev more. When I talked to her about Dev and myself wanting the second couple we had agreed on meeting so they could get together, she began to throw certain things out. The character Dev had, General Hawk, was previously moderator controlled but she granted him permission to have him because of how good Dev was portraying him.

She said it was established in the game Hawk was sterile after my ideas. My first idea was that they meet at an embassy party, get drunk, and end up in bed together and she'd end up pregnant. My second idea had been that while our characters were on vacation, they meet in a dimly lit bar, not recognize one another and end up in bed -- my female character would later turn up pregnant and she'd leave Cobra to be with him.

After finding out from here where it had been established Hawk was sterile, Dev, CJ, another player, and myself read over the posts from the beginning and found no mention of Hawk being sterile. We were then told it had all been the idea of one of the players that left a couple weeks after I joined after we confronted her with that. The sudden change in stories was suspicious, but we passed it off as her being under stress.

Her fiancé put up a rather outlandish idea on our idea board. I replied with how it wouldn't work and ways it could work in a very logical scientific manner. She then accused me of attacking him even though he and several other people said it wasn't an attack that I had presented several valid points. It was around that time I noticed none of the few ideas I had proposed were ever approved, yet the more outlandish ones were -- this after she told me she didn't want to make the game too fantasy/supernatural/sci-fi and each of the outlandish ideas she approved were of such, while mine were more in tune to the theme of GI Joe -- the fighting of Cobra and other terrorist forces.

Not too long after I had mentioned Dev and I wanting to pair Hawk with my character, she developed a female character to become Hawk's love interest. There was no way we could protest this -- she was the GM and her word was law. Dev had already mentioned to me that the thought of writing a love scene with her made him feel very uncomfortable.

Later as I began to notice she was demanding more and more of Dev's time, I felt that she was trying to separate me from my best friend who had become a brother to me, she created another female character, one that was making moves on the male character Dev had that was with one of my female characters. The couple had been established since Dev had joined the game yet she was working her way to break that couple up so her female character could be with Dev's male characters.

This was making me suspicious and I did a look around the game. She had almost every female character in the game and Dev had most of the key male characters who were paired up with her characters.

Then my grandmother fell very ill and was on her deathbed. At the same time, my brother and I made our own GI Joe game to distract ourselves and cheer ourselves up. We were understandably distracted, so we invited people we wanted as Moderators (or those we could remember that we wanted in the game) right off the bat.

It was the day my grandmother died that the GM confronted me. I had been planning on inviting her and her fiancé, but like I said, I had been distracted with my grandmother on her deathbed. She took it as a personal insult and the next day I was informed via an e-mail I had been banned for harassing other players and being overly aggressive to the point of threatening.

I asked her what was she talking about and who I had supposedly been harassing. She said it was Dev, my brother and best friend. Then she dug a barb in that she talked to Dev prior to banning me to get his input AND she accused me of chasing Dev in a romantic interest. She did this to drive a wedge between me and my big brothers and big sister.

It worked. I had talked with some of the members of my game, people who had been in her's until they had walked out. She had done this to them and a male friend of theirs. It seemed she had a history of doing that.

Things worked out between them and I, but to this day I have a wariness of GMs because of what happened.


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How about any of you? Have you had problems with GMs high on the power they weild in the past?