Law Helpfiles/Policy

[Crayon]

There are certainly a broad swath of helpfiles that seem to be out-of-date, or which implicitly or explicitly contradict the current state of the game, which can be hugely problematic in that it creates a barrier to entry for new players familiarizing themselves with the game. One of the more problematic examples is the summary of laws helpfile, which poses a hazard of serious IC (and social) consequences to players by covering seemingly very little of practical in-game law.

The helpfile claims...

The laws of Lithmore are necessarily imprecise to allow the Reeves to handle criminal behavior where they see it and adapt to constantly changing situations.

But I would argue that the practical harm done by newb-trapping players into violating unclear, potentially fabricated, entirely undocumented laws outweighs the content creation benefit of giving Reeves an occasional opportunity to be Reeves to unsuspecting newbies, and there are plenty of other hazards besides. For one, fabrication can become reality, as a player can enforce an interpretation that has little substantiation in actual documentation or even that is explicitly or implicitly contradicted by documentation, which then goes on to become established precedent accepted and enforced by other players.

For example, a player may opt to have their bardic cloak described as patchwork of many colors and this is all fine and good, until other players start emulating them or enforcing this status quo as the canon and one day a confused oppified newbie wearing a silken cloak embroidered with a lyre of St. Thea is getting accused of having a fake cloak because they read the helpfile and weren't abreast with the undocumented canon that the game's players seem to be mutually agreeing to.

Laws are far worse. Imagine being a new player at a MUD, having no intention of playing a criminal, and getting publicly berated and shamed (with no warning whatsoever) for violating a law that isn't in the helpfile and which is even implicitly contradicted by other helpfiles.

It's easy enough to say that players shouldn't do that to newbies (and they shouldn't), but these aren't IC issues and they're not player issues, they're documentation issues.

It also might be a good idea for policy to dictate that any accusation of crime against a newbie be handled by the Reeves, who could be pretty easily nudged towards a culture of educating newbies and dealing with them in good faith (and already seem to be, from my experiences with them!). This would achieve the desirable end of giving Reeves a monopoly over the RP that's supposed to be theirs in the first place while mitigating the potential of newbies being abused over obscure, undocumented, or fabricated laws.

[astronamika]

It might be good to draw more attention to 'help cyans' and the preferential role-play treatment that cyans are supposed to be able to expect (help newbie protection), too, if this is a problem right now and anyone's feeling like established players are jumping on them or looking for player-side 'gotcha' moments.

[Sparkles]

For example, a player may opt to have their bardic cloak described as patchwork of many colors and this is all fine and good, until other players start emulating them or enforcing this status quo as the canon and one day a confused oppified newbie wearing a silken cloak embroidered with a lyre of St. Thea is getting accused of having a fake cloak because they read the helpfile and weren't abreast with the undocumented canon that the game's players seem to be mutually agreeing to.

The patchwork cloaks of many colors for Apprentices and Journeymen are actually sold on grid as items in the Bard Guildleader shop and thus the default color string/look tends to be the description many players are used to seeing on newer/unknown Bard folks. There's also a helpfile: help bardic cloak which is fairly recently updated and mentions the very thing noted here so not sure if there's something else that contradicts it somewhere that needs a peek.

[Crayon]

For example, a player may opt to have their bardic cloak described as patchwork of many colors and this is all fine and good, until other players start emulating them or enforcing this status quo as the canon and one day a confused oppified newbie wearing a silken cloak embroidered with a lyre of St. Thea is getting accused of having a fake cloak because they read the helpfile and weren't abreast with the undocumented canon that the game's players seem to be mutually agreeing to.

The patchwork cloaks of many colors for Apprentices and Journeymen are actually sold on grid as items in the Bard Guildleader shop and thus the default color string/look tends to be the description many players are used to seeing on newer/unknown Bard folks. There's also a helpfile: help bardic cloak which is fairly recently updated and mentions the very thing noted here so not sure if there's something else that contradicts it somewhere that needs a peek.

This was actually just a random example I presented as a hypothetical. All the helpfile really states regarding the cloak for apprentices and journeymen is that they're colorful and simple, made of wool and cotton. It mentions easily patched, not made of rainbow patches. My guess would be that exactly the hypothetical I am describing happened, and somebody drew from Wheel of Time's gleemen and it became the normative interpretation of what's actually in the helpfile, whereas a newbie might make a brightly-hued, patched cloak in chargen, which would be consistent with the helpfile, only to then get ridiculed as a fake bard or some such in-game. Laws are sort of the same situation except vastly more serious. In both cases, obviously it'd be bad to 'gotcha' newbies in super hostile ways contrary to the spirit of the helpfiles that astronamika mentions, but it would also be helpful, if the IC understanding of the canon has evolved and changed beyond what is stated in the helpfiles, to update the helpfiles accordingly so that newbies are brought up to speed.

It's like playing a game of telephone and giving newbies the original line and then expecting them to know what it is after the thirtieth repetition.

[Julea]

One of the biggest hurdles for me with TI is also one of the nice things about TI, in that it's a very rich world, filled with lore, and story. But.. for a newbie it can be very overwhelming too, trying to get your head around all the various ins and outs of religion, technology, style of dress, mannerisms, how you're supposed to act around nobles, speech styles, laws, how guilds work, and just... figuring everything out. It's a lot and it can be more than a bit daunting. Particularly because the consequences of not knowing, can be quite dangerous, and have huge impacts on your character.

And I will agree that the helpfiles are not always that clear. There's some aspects of the helpfiles that are really great and offer a lot of detail, and some that probably could do with updating. The game could really do with a few newbie guides with some basics that you need to know on your first week, first month, etc.

I just came out of cyanness and still feel like I'm very much a newbie and there's so much of the lore that I don't yet know and still getting my head around.

[Myrella]

Cyans and newbies aren't the only ones that could get caught in this trap. It's more than possible for an older more experience player to fall victim to this if they start a new character in a guild or social class or archetype that is new to them. Someone who has played for years but never played a bard before could get caught in the bard cloak example. But I could imagine a similar situation occurring around the use of recreational drugs which aren't explicitly illegal for instance. There's probably a lot of similar traps we're not thinking of. I wonder if a more thorough and updateable IC reference to the laws that reeves enforce, and one for the Order as well. Something that is flexible enough to be changed when guild leadership or social norms change, and vague enough to still give individual enforcers leeway to treat any individual case according to their discretion?