A Land Far Away

Hello all!

By way of background for those of you who don't know me I live in the Eastern US; I'm really old (like over 40! ugh) and split my time between my family (three little kiddles keeping me home at night), my work and friends and hobbies (of which ALFA hogs too much time).

My interest in ALFA came out of a deep fascination with PnP D&D when I was younger (think Jimmy Carter ). Later in life when I was settled down I was delighted to find a way to play D&D online, and with such amazing immersion.

By way of qualifications for the PA I can outline the following: I joined ALFA1 in 2004 and have been actively involved in the project with a few RL breaks for the last 8 years. During that time I have held various roles in the community including player lead, alfa rep, applications reviewer, dm'd on several alfa1 severs including Shadowdale and the Underdark- by far my most active DMing occurred on the OAS, open application sever where I DMed many of our incoming members at the time. I also ran RP101 classes and rp sessions back then, when we had large influxes of new players (the good 'ol days!) Currently I actively play on BG and DM on a limited basis on SM. I am currently the department head for the ARs and have worked as an AR with various PAs since 2006. In this role I have dealt with ALFA's player complaint process in a detailed fashion and am very familiar with not only our rules and the role of the PA but also aware of much of the community's history in dealing with issues and members involved in the PA and the complaint process.

I think it's important to remember that ALFA is an entertainment venue for its members; and as such, the point is to have fun! I am extremely encouraged by what I've seen in the last few years on many fronts in ALFA. I believe we have a fantastic core community that makes unbelievable investments of time and talent to an open project that produces an amazing result. I'm proud to be part of that effort and I would like to see many of the initiatives begun by Dan and other members continue, and if possible contribute to the building momentum.

The PA wears several hats for the community. Foremost, the PA is the advocate for the player members of the community and needs to be objective, fair and impartial when dealing with member issues. The PA should be focused on recruiting players through the player application process; providing resources to develop rp, canon and community skills for these new players; and lastly, promote community interaction and game play and deal with dispute resolution and community censures.

Going in order, I think the player application process is going pretty well. The issue for ALFA has never been in getting new applicants through the door; rather, once here new members often drift and fade away. I think it's important that we as a community make an effort to engage new members. To that end I would aggressively pursue Dan's offer to re-establish the OAS program and look to evolve the effort into an immersive engagement of new members- where the new players have interest in this attention. Without getting into two much detail, three ideas I would like to see implemented include making use of the ARs and other members of the PA portfolio (like Dan's OAS department) as mentors/ player leads: The purpose being to actively engage and organize play for groups of new players. I'd like to see a revival of RP101 that would cover ALFA community rules, FR Canon expectations and changes to the NWN2 game engine. Lastly, I'd like to encourage each server dedicate some resources to helping capture the interests of new members.

The efforts of the PA in promoting community interaction and game play are probably the least visible of late. It's easy for this to take a back seat when there are so many other tall nails about. One of the challenges with an open community like ALFA is that invariably we are faced with conflicts between members. It bothers me on a personal level that so many talented, interesting members have left the community because of conflicts with other members. I know as we move forward we will lose more. I have and will continue to work toward providing venues and mechanisms for conflicted members to sort out their issues and remain in the community. As ALFA's membership growth slows to a crawl, I believe it's critical that we do whatever we can to retain our members by offering a fun environment that fosters and encourages contribution while minimizing drama and conflict. Policies that improve enjoyment and playability in ALFA include more community wide events; cross sever plots, support of player groups, support in organizing play for new players and engaging the admin in evolving requests from the player base (e.g. level 3 start). Policies to encourage better communication and mediated dispute resolution between members are needed not just when complaints arise but when there are issues between members anywhere in the community. The goal for me would be to reduce drama wherever possible. Drama kills ALFA.

The last area of concern is of course dispute and complaint resolution. Paramount to this process is an objective, consistent application of our rules and standards when resolving complaints and applying censures. A good deal of work has already been done in this area, in no small part from Dan and in large part from our tech department. We are better defining our standards, employing more effective tools in logging and tracking and implementing technical fixes like the running script and dim ret to relieve the DMs and admin of having to police and micro-manage mis-behaving members. The dispute/ complaint process itself could use a top-down review. Many prior PAs have expressed frustration at the inflexibility of the process, especially in being flexible in offering a wider range of censures. A priority would be to engage the current admin, Past PAs and the community at large in a review of the process for consideration of possible improvements.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my ramblings! I welcome any questions.

Regas

Regas wrote:As ALFA's membership growth slows to a crawl...

Dwindling player base is something that concerns me greatly. I don't want to see ALFA slowly slide into a dusty death.

I want to see old alfa players return, new alfa players join from other projects (yay poaching), and pnp players join from RL. How can we make this happen? I doubt there will ever be a NWN3 to drop new players into our laps.

I like your support for better support and engagment for scheduling and matching dm/players. With new servers in the not so distant future I think we need to be wary of the effect of spreading players and dms to thin.

Would you make any changes to the membership of the ARs if elected (obviously, your own seat would suddently be vacant-- new person for it, or continue to do the job while PA)? In a related vein, I notice that all of the active ones either are or were for a very long time part of your player group on BG; do you believe it is a desirable demographic for the ARs?

Can you provide some examples of the cited venues for member conflicts you've worked on, and how they worked out (provided that the work can be talked about without violating confidence)?

And questions that I probably should have asked everyone in the first place, what with it being the stuff I would have to do work for:
How good are you with the technical side of PA work? When it comes to investigations, for example, how many of your own queries will you be writing and how much will you be leaning on others for help when, for example, trying to place an order of events from logs after getting conflicting reports from players?

And do you believe there is a reward system (specifically static XP and wealth) that can make the benefits of farming trivial enough that you wouldn't bother to enforce? Related to as much, do you believe that opportunity cost can be implemented well enough that the benefits of powergaming would be triival enough that you wouldn't bother to enforce? If either is a yes, what would that look like?

Regas wrote: I'm really old (like over 40! ugh) and split my time between my family (three little kiddles keeping me home at night), my work and friends and hobbies (of which ALFA hogs too much time).

Given that you have to split your time between three children, work, friends, hobbies, ALFA playing, and ALFA DMing, how do you plan to dedicate enough time to the PA position to accomplish any of your goals and still keep up with the busy job of being a PA while still performing the far busier and more important role of being a family man?

How will you separate potential conflicts of interest (or the appearance of such) between being both a DM and a PA? (Example: DM Regas observes farming on TSM. DM Regas submits farming complaint to PA Regas. PA Regas investigates farming and censures.) Such a scenario may not be a concrete conflict of interest, but given that there is no separation between "prosecution" and "judge," if you will, it may give the appearance of being a conflict of interest as it lacks separation of powers. There are other scenarios where this applies as well, but this came to mind instantly.

Yay Regas!

shad0wfax wrote:There are other scenarios where this applies as well, but this came to mind instantly.

General rule of thumb, which happens quite often, is the LA steps in and decides the case.

Thanks for your questions Zelk!

Zelknolf wrote:Would you make any changes to the membership of the ARs if elected (obviously, your own seat would suddently be vacant-- new person for it, or continue to do the job while PA)? In a related vein, I notice that all of the active ones either are or were for a very long time part of your player group on BG; do you believe it is a desirable demographic for the ARs?

In general AR numbers have been a function of the demand for AR help in dealing with PA business. Complaint work has been steady but moderate, and well within the current team’s capacity. It is true that several of ARs have not been active and if they should indicate a lack of interest to continue their work as ARs I would certainly look to replace them with new volunteers. Obviously a new AR lead will need to be assigned. There are seven ARs aside from myself, and I play regularly with two of these players. I also play regularly with many players who are not ARs. As far as the demography of ARs, I support the notion of offering staff positions to members in different time zones and on different servers as well as those members with special talents that can contribute to the cause.

Zelknolf wrote:Can you provide some examples of the cited venues for member conflicts you've worked on, and how they worked out (provided that the work can be talked about without violating confidence)?

I could offer examples yes, but I certainly don’t want to single any members out, particularly in this context.

Zelknolf wrote:And questions that I probably should have asked everyone in the first place, what with it being the stuff I would have to do work for:
How good are you with the technical side of PA work? When it comes to investigations, for example, how many of your own queries will you be writing and how much will you be leaning on others for help when, for example, trying to place an order of events from logs after getting conflicting reports from players?

If log mining becomes a focus I can certainly take the time to learn how to write and run the queries. If I need help I’ll ask for it; Riot is extremely capable in this area and has agreed to help me with these sorts of things- as I’m certain will Dan and any number of other Talented members.

Zelknolf wrote:And do you believe there is a reward system (specifically static XP and wealth) that can make the benefits of farming trivial enough that you wouldn't bother to enforce? Related to as much, do you believe that opportunity cost can be implemented well enough that the benefits of powergaming would be triival enough that you wouldn't bother to enforce? If either is a yes, what would that look like?

This is a very technical question, one I would like to address in more detail after reviewing the current work and discussion done so far. Until I have a chance to review the discussion in detail and get a better understand of the many variables at work, including how these restriction might impact good intentioned players, I can give you a high level response to your question.

This question speaks to evolving policy of the current admin meant to deal with farming. Dim Ret, short hand for diminished return is the process of reducing xp rewards for players who kill or “farm” the same mob types. It’s designed to deter players from farming by making the return on effort unworthy of the investment in time. My hope would be that Admin and other stakeholders could reach a consensus on a dim ret function that would eliminate the need to police farming. Farming complaints are a high proportion of overall complaints lately and have certainly contributed to community drama and wasted resources.

I think this is a great example of the ongoing contributions by the Tech team to improve ALFA’s environment and infrastructure. I was really pleased to recently hear that there are running scripts implemented in ALFA. Like sleeping in armor, this will not be something DMs will have to waste time on in the future.

Regas wrote: I'm really old (like over 40! ugh) and split my time between my family (three little kiddles keeping me home at night), my work and friends and hobbies (of which ALFA hogs too much time).

shad0wfax wrote:Given that you have to split your time between three children, work, friends, hobbies, ALFA playing, and ALFA DMing, how do you plan to dedicate enough time to the PA position to accomplish any of your goals and still keep up with the busy job of being a PA while still performing the far busier and more important role of being a family man?

My family is a priority and they do come before ALFA. The good news is my kiddles (and the Mrs. too usually) are asleep by 9:00 pm. I have four hours most nights to work on alfa, read or whatever. If I was single without children I probably would have a lot less time for ALFA! More good news, I have a very flexible schedule and can access alfa from anywhere with my laptop and Ipad. Remember too, I have been an active AR for the last six years and a big part of the job is complaints and mediation- things I’d be doing anyway as an AR.

Many of our past Pas and admin in general do have both families and jobs. They are able to conduct their responsibilities and maintain their lives at the same time. Likewise folks in school and/or not married with children have lives too and enjoy and contribute to alfa.

shad0wfax wrote:How will you separate potential conflicts of interest (or the appearance of such) between being both a DM and a PA? (Example: DM Regas observes farming on TSM. DM Regas submits farming complaint to PA Regas. PA Regas investigates farming and censures.) Such a scenario may not be a concrete conflict of interest, but given that there is no separation between "prosecution" and "judge," if you will, it may give the appearance of being a conflict of interest as it lacks separation of powers. There are other scenarios where this applies as well, but this came to mind instantly.

I know someone already gave away the answer to this! The LA steps in whenever there are conflicts of interest real, imagined or otherwise.

You kinda skipped one of my questions there-- the one where all of the active ARs are from the same player group (your player group, specifically). Does that not strike as problematic or worthy of special note, beyond what's implied by the couple inactive ARs? No worries of anecdotal evidence causing a skew in their work or treating some players unfairly (or was there some plan to block anecdotal evidence from investigations)? In that case, how do you plan to curb bias, and who can we even be sure would catch it?

Do you think you being admin is going to stop me from killing Merrin Allister?

Do you think our RP XP system needs an overhaul? See this post for most of my thoughts on the matter.

Zelk, is the number of AR volunteers even greater than the number of ARs? I'm thinking not, but have never been involved in ARing except when they ask me "Ronan, plz help me understand why ur players are being such asshats to each other".

Ronan, I count three people auditioning for a harder, but related, job here who aren't in the Sword's Edge. They seem obvious folk to ask-- but I also note that no general requests for volunteers appeared anywhere. Maybe there were stealth efforts out there to add diversity to the ARs, too. Could see an argument for recruiting being done on the down-low, on account of the pretty significant power that any adjudicators of disputes hold. In any case, the Head AR seems the obvious guy to ask about it-- especially now that he's seeking a higher office.

If the PA thing doesn't work out, would you continue to volunteer as an AR?

How does AR recruitment work anyhow, either historically or as the ideal under "PA Regas?".

ARs don't adjudicate disputes Zelk, They assist the PA in investigations and they assist players who are being invesitgated or who have brought charges. For the most part they help people to understand the process, refer them to rules that may be implicated, help explain and interpret those rules if they need help with that. They also offer opinions and input during the context of investigations. The decisions, however, are made by the PA. Those decisions are generally posted publicly along with the reasons for the decision. ARs also assist the PA in offering counseling to players to help them improve their RP and avoid additional rules transgressions.

I have been an AR for years in ALFA. In my experience most ARs will recuse themself from most situations where there would be even the appearance of impropriety. Also, I like to think that the vote of the membership for PA constitutes a vote of confidence that the PA will perform his/her duties without bias, appoint appropriate members in good standing to be ARs and police any issues that come up. If a PA fails in this function there is the option of a recall. In all honesty, being an AR is mostly a thankless job (except for the thanks you usually get from the PA and your AR colleagues) in which you have to regularly deal with drama and disputes and tedious review of logs. In the time I have been an AR I have not seen a huge rush of others stepping up to volunteer and think this is the reason the ARs have remained consistent over time. If others want to step up and demonstrate that they have the proper temperment for the job, I'd be willing to step down and work with Dan on RP101.

I offer this post for those members who may not know what ARs do and perhaps have some concerns over the content of your post.

Zelknolf wrote:You kinda skipped one of my questions there-- the one where all of the active ARs are from the same player group (your player group, specifically). Does that not strike as problematic or worthy of special note, beyond what's implied by the couple inactive ARs? No worries of anecdotal evidence causing a skew in their work or treating some players unfairly (or was there some plan to block anecdotal evidence from investigations)? In that case, how do you plan to curb bias, and who can we even be sure would catch it?

Sorry if I wasn't clear Zelk, I'll try and speak directly to the questions. There are currently seven AR’s, I play with two of them. I actively play with around 20 players on BG; many only occasionally as schedules and play time are limited. More explicitly, I do not find it problematic nor do I see it worthy of any special note.

I am unaware of “of anecdotal evidence causing a skew in their work or treating some players unfairly”. If you believe you’ve been treated unfairly by the PA department please report your complaint in writing to the LA immediately. If you know of another who believes they have been treated unfairly have them do likewise.

As for bias, I’ve seen no evidence of it. The admin all have access to the PA forums, so that’s four other sets of eyes reviewing the proceedings.

Ronan wrote:Do you think you being admin is going to stop me from killing Merrin Allister?

I hope not! I want to beat your spawn wand fair and square! So stop hard coding Merrin’s AC to ten!

Ronan wrote:Do you think our RP XP system needs an overhaul? See this post for most of my thoughts on the matter.

This is a great question Ronan. I definitely think we need to open up a formal discussion on this with admin, standards, dms and the community at large to consider a review of RP XP. I’ll offer some of my thoughts here but reserve finial analysis for a proper discussion:

I have to admit that this has been brought up to me many times by members. For a long time now I’ve had this image of a hot keyed phrase “turns the page” rigged up with a mouse and an oscillating fan. Do I think we have folks who farm this script? Absolutely. Still, I’m reluctant to throw out the rp xp scrit out of hand as it’s one of the only outlets for players with poor access to dms (e.g. time zones ect) to build xp and many players benefit from the scrip with genuine rp. You said something to me a few days ago that I believe rings true: on its own, RP XP should not contribute to adventurer class levels. I see no relation between flipping pages of a book and becoming better with swords and spells, earning greater power with your deities, improving your ability to sneak attack, ect. The idea of commoner levels is intriguing if not a bit “pie in the sky” from an implementation standpoint.

I do think some very simple fixes that would not impact legitimate users of the scripts would be the following: Require activity every minuet, cap rp xp on a daily/ weekly or whatever basis, eliminate rp xp rewards beyond a certain level (say 10th). I probably would not be up for going back and retroactively stripping or criminalizing the behavior, even where it was obvious, as I am not a fan of witch hunts or Ex post facto type rules in alfa.

Ronan wrote:Zelk, is the number of AR volunteers even greater than the number of ARs? I'm thinking not, but have never been involved in ARing except when they ask me "Ronan, plz help me understand why ur players are being such asshats to each other".

Zelknolf wrote:Ronan, I count three people auditioning for a harder, but related, job here who aren't in the Sword's Edge. They seem obvious folk to ask-- but I also note that no general requests for volunteers appeared anywhere. Maybe there were stealth efforts out there to add diversity to the ARs, too. Could see an argument for recruiting being done on the down-low, on account of the pretty significant power that any adjudicators of disputes hold. In any case, the Head AR seems the obvious guy to ask about it-- especially now that he's seeking a higher office.

Brokenbone wrote:If the PA thing doesn't work out, would you continue to volunteer as an AR?
How does AR recruitment work anyhow, either historically or as the ideal under "PA Regas?".

If I do not end up serving as PA I would like to continue as an AR; I will also pursue helping with rp101 and the OAS2 and will continue dming.

Just a few points here in response to what I might call the “mechanics of adding ARs”:

I looked over the AR forums and didn’t see anywhere a list of qualities, traits and skills we would look for. So let me try and lay out here what we look for in ARs. Please refer to Oldgrayrogue’s post above for what ARs do, he was spot on.

ARs need above all else to have strong people skills. The ability to communicate, empathize, actively listen and generally collect information from often upset members and process it in and unbiased manner is critical. Ideally, ARs will have a good understanding of ALFA’s rules, infrastructure and culture. ARs should not be regularly causing drama, themselves the subject of complaints or the sources of strife and conflict in the community.

I mentioned in a prior post, we don’t need any more help at the moment; the case load is pretty slim. I am reluctant to add ARs for the sake adding them simply because the AR forums contain a great deal of meta information and vitriol. I will not add an AR with an obvious axe to grind. I will not add an AR that is regularly the source of drama and conflict for the community.

In the past we've added ARs by either posting a notice for volunteer or by simply asking folks out right that we thought might be a good fit. Most recently, I actively solicited both SSM and Hollyfant because I wanted to see more euro participation in the ARs. OGR got dragged into the ARs (again) by Rotku because we needed someone with his particular real life skills in the ARs. Rotku was added because we didn't have any Aussie representation in the ARs and he already knew the ropes, as a past PA. I asked Brokenbone to join the ARs because of his inhuman ability to produce answers to any question I can come up with relating to ALFA, FR lore; He's also Canadian and has good people skills.

In the past we've added ARs by either posting a notice for volunteer or by simply asking folks out right that we thought might be a good fit. Most recently, I actively solicited both SSM and Hollyfant because I wanted to see more euro participation in the ARs. OGR got dragged into the ARs (again) by Rotku because we needed someone with his particular real life skills in the ARs. Rotku was added because we didn't have any Aussie representation in the ARs and he already knew the ropes, as a past PA. I asked Brokenbone to join the ARs because of his inhuman ability to produce answers to any question I can come up with relating to ALFA, FR lore, the Game engine or anything else I can think to ask. He's also Candain and a lawyer, and amazingly good with people. I consider every one of the current ARs MVPs, and I think the community is damned lucky to have these folks stepping up to help do one of the shittiest jobs in alfa.

So what about the fact none of those people chosen as ARs have played regularly and/or have had 3-5 month absences in last six months or more? At least two don't even have active characters or actively dm.

How does that inform you to represent that community if everyone you depend on for in the AR informed counsel is detached or absent from it?

Cloud_Dancing wrote: So what about the fact none of those people chosen as ARs have played regularly and/or have had 3-5 month absences in last six months or more? At least two don't even have active characters or actively dm.

How does that inform you to represent that community if everyone you depend on for in the AR informed counsel is detached or absent from it?

I have DM'd or observed OGR and BB play at least once a week consistantly over the past 8 months at least. I do not believe that statement is accurate.