Are We The Baddies?

And another MUSH behind me. This one was an intriguing case in that the main interacting staffer was all behind everything I've blogged about here ... and yet was so clueless that he broke almost every rule I've put here, while claiming to uphold them. From my Ten Commandments for MUSH Staff alone he broke I, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII very openly and probably also broke II, III, and X.

But hey, one out of ten done right? That's well ahead of the curve for MUSH staff, truth be told!

The root sin behind all the rest of the broken commandments at this particular MUSH was IV. Thou Shalt Not Permit Cliques. What is so intriguing is that the staffer in question professed to hate cliques and to have set up the game so there were none.

And yet not only was there a clique, it was a clique formed around the three main staffers and a few hangers-on, and it was a clique that was so in your face that someone who spent longer than a few seconds perusing just the list of scenes on the game could spot it without effort.

So what went on?

How not to clique

As I discussed in Clique-Busters, there are two types of clique. One is incidental in its formation and one is deliberate. Of course this nomenclature of “innocent” vs. “malevolent” cliques is a bit simplified and there is actually a spectrum between each end (like, for instance, how this game's main clique is mostly-innocent with ever-increasing malevolent traits), but the core takeaway here is that it is possible to be a clique without even realizing it. So here's a toolbox to help you answer the question “am I in a clique?”

Definitions

Before we can introduce the toolbox, we need to define a term. In an online RPG like a MUSH, the unit of “currency” (for want of a better term) is the scene. But what is a scene? There's quite a few definitions which could apply, but for this article the following will have to suffice:

A scene is a period of time, with a clear beginning and a clear end, in which two or more characters interact to further a narrative of some form.

This is pretty broad so some examples will help. These are scenes:

These are not scenes:

What distinguishes a scene, in this definition, from a non-scene is that there is both more than one player, and a purpose. It may not be a good purpose. (The resulting scene may not be a good scene!) But each of the “scene” examples has both multiple players and a purpose. The same cannot be said for the bottom four.

As a further element of this definition, in cases of games based on scene recording systems like Ares or Volund's Code, a scene is also specifically defined as something which, upon completion, the players would share, barring rules against certain kinds of scenes being shared. (Games without those will have to use other ways of judging if a scene has been actually completed.)

That defined, we can now look at some ways of testing if you're in a clique or not.

The numbers game

Go to your saved scenes or your logs. Count your scenes for the previous week. Then make a list of all the players (not characters) in your MUSH. Go over each scene and add a tick mark each time a particular player was in your scene. Count up the tick marks and put that number next to each player. Don't start making excuses at this point! Just count.

You might get something like this:

Andy: 17, Betty: 0, Charlie: 12, Dawn: 15, Ernest: 14, Faye: 0, George: 13, Horace: 0, Janet: 1, Karen: 2, Larry: 0, Michael: 0, . . ., Zedekiah: 0

Congratulations! You've already answered, if you got a result like this, your question. You are, indeed, in a clique. Your clique consists of you, Andy, Charlie, Dawn, Ernest, and George. It's pretty clear that you six play almost exclusively with each other and that you shun almost the entire player base, tossing out occasional one-offs here and there, but rarely follow up on those.

Note: Yes, there are valid reasons for such numbers to happen. But not as often as people like to claim. I don't have the time, space, nor inclination to go into the statistics of this all just to please a bunch of statistics nerds. No matter what statistical cheap tricks you pull, getting results like the above means you need to take a serious look at your behaviour as a MUSHing citizen.

What do I do with these numbers?

If you're regular players, you decide if you feel any obligation whatsoever to the player base. If you feel you do, you use this information you've found out about yourself and you go out and seek others to play with. Spread the RP around to the other players and, most importantly, follow up on it.

Don't just scatter a handful of one-offs (like poor Janet and Karen got!) and then think you're done. That will make things worse, not better. Integrate other players into your RP. (Within reason. Nobody's asking you to play with people whose RP or RL makes your teeth hurt from the grinding.)

If you don't feel you have any obligation (which is a perfectly valid conclusion to take; nobody can tell you what to do with your free time!), keep doing what you're doing. Just be aware that you're a) a problem from the game's perspective and b) likely not to be liked very much by the people you're shunning.

What about if I'm staff?

You should be ashamed of yourself. Get out there and start interacting with players not in your clique RIGHT FUCKING NOW! Or just be honest with yourself, admit to yourself that the game is a sandbox game, and close it to all but your invited friends. Then the issue goes away.

The player game

As a staffer, there's another way to find out if, specifically, your staff is perceived as a clique: ask the players. But here's the key: don't ask the players who are performing aural sex (sic) on you, giving you what you want to hear. Pay attention to VI. Thou Shalt Not Shun The Disaffected from the Ten Commandments for MUSH Staffing to get an honest view from someone who's already got a foot out the door and who thus perceives there to be nothing to lose.

And then get ready for brutality. Because the malcontent is, well, a malcontent. They're unhappy. And they may not be able to clearly and succinctly state why they are. And they may have reached the point of not giving a shit, and thus say some things to you your ego desperately doesn't want to hear.

Tough it out.

Even if, in the end, you disagree with the malcontent in question, sticking it through and listening will at the very least give you some insight into perception of how you're running the game (since games die by perceptions of malfeasance as often as they die from actual malfeasance).

And if you have several malcontents with the same perception, you'd better fact-check yourself to ensure that it is only perception...