Who Has Two Thumbs...

And was banned from the NERO National boards?

THIS GUY.

It was about time. I had known it was coming for some while, since someone at National had been on the rampage about banning accounts, deleting threads, and changing signatures.

I've had a long talk with Dan Comstock on the topic of proper forum moderation etiquette, and the consensus is that the National boards are doing it wrong. I understand there's a time and a place for posts to be removed or people banned, but when that happens, it's supposed to be a last ditch effort.

You see, if a thread strays off topic or into a bad place, you normally post a warning or lock the thread. You don't delete the whole thread. And you don't do it without communication.

Additionally, you don't delete accounts simply because they say things you don't want to say. A person needs to do a number of malicious acts, post pornography, or hack another account to get banned. It's not something you secretly do in the dead of night, hoping no one finds out.

I don't like to toot my own horn (but I do it anyways) but I feel like after much of the drama that was posted here, the activity on the NERO boards actually picked up. There was a brief, shining moment where if NERO went hands off, they may have actually jump-started their boards.

But the ownership doesn't want that, because the ownership doesn't really know how internet communities work.

I'm back on for now (but imagine I'll get banned the moment a certain someone sees this), but it really seems like yet another nail in the coffin that represents NERO's national community.

BTW, a question for our NERO readers: If someone were to put up an unofficial NERO forum for national inqueries and discussion in hopes of less ridiculous moderation, would you use them? Or do you think that it's too little, too late?

Male Privilege in LARP

I was turned on to this article by a facebook friend of mine, and I think this is something of huge import when it comes to LARPing.

Male Privilage is alive and well in LARPs. For those of you who don't want to sift through the article or wikipedia, it basically means that there are things that male players take for granted that female players tend to have to remain congnisent of or, at the very worst, actively work do dispel or defend themselves against.

It's not that we (men) are bad people. It's just that we really have no concept for how the other half lives and how much we might take for granted.

Now, the article I linked is more specific to comics, but the same rules apply at LARPs. In fact, it might be more important, based on the fact that most LARP groups are rather tightly knit social clubs, which means that one or two bad apples can ruin a LARP.

Now, I'm not an expert on this subject, so I'm not going to go in depth in fear of saying the wrong thing. But here are some things that I believe you might want to consider on the subject of male privilege and how it affects female LARPers.

No Gender Stereotyping
I know that some games like to fall back on realism to defend some forms of stereotyping, but the fact is that realism tends to be a weak argument for LARPs, as they almost always involve some form of fantasy and/or magic. Don't automatically assume that women need to be healers and men need to be fighters. And stop making sexest jokes while you're at it, even if it's "in good fun".

Don't Be an Asshole
This should go without saying but it bears repeating. Even if your "character" is an asshole, you want to gauge how well others react to your roleplaying before embracing said character. LARP is not intended to be a place where you can be a chauvenist dick without any real life consequences.

IG Love Interest
Don't fawn over someone IG unless you've discussed it with them OOG. You might think it makes for good roleplaying, but it's probably more creepy than anything else. And for the love of God, if you get turned down IG, don't keep pursuing it. If you do, you're going to make the other person think you're going to go all Wild Hunt on them.

Don't Be a Creeper
I think Doctor Nerdlove puts it best with his article of the same name.

Avoid Taboo Subjects
I really don't think any roleplay situation is improved by topics such as domestic violence or sexual assault. It's not clever or cutting-edge. It's just uncomfortable for everyone.

What do you think? Have any more tips on how to make LARPing a better environment for female players?

PS: It's my birthday, so go easy on me if I said something wrong.

Selling IG Items for OOG Money Revisited

http://nerolarp.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?385.10

Turns out the selling of magic items is allowed, according to Joe V. I imagine this is going to get very hairy, very fast. Especially since they probably won't be able to show where the money goes.

As for what this means for the current game policy which disallows said action, none can say.

THIS JUST IN: SALE ON MAGIC ITEMS ON BLACK FRIDAY. GET THEM WHILE SUPPLIES LAST*

*Just kidding

Selling IG Items for OOG Money

Anyone who follows the NERO National boards probably already heard about all the hub-bub regarding the selling of magic items.

Unbeknownst to the rules team, someone decided to sell items in the National Newsletter and on the national online store. While they were technically selling the phys-rep with the tag as an added bonus, this is clearly against NERO policy.

Here's the excerpt from the NERO General Policy that forbids it:

Selling NERO ® Items for Out of Game Money: Tagged NERO ® Items cannot be sold for out of game currency. This applies to both chapters and players. Any items sold in violation of this policy will be destroyed and the involved players will be suspended from all NERO ® International events for a minimum of 3 months. Physical Representations can still be sold, however the NERO ® tags that represent the In-Game item cannot be sold, nor can they be "included" with the physical representation sale.

I will note that the rules team flagged this incident as breaking policy, but unfortunately policy enforcement is outside of our jurisdiction. But I highly suggest none of the local players purchasing these items, since if this is ruled against policy, the new owners of the items may be suspended as well.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the effect of a game selling IG benefits for OOG cash.

I know, everyone immediately leans towards saying something like this is terrible. To put it simply, people want to compete on a fair playing field. Having some guy pay his way into being a superpower without putting in the time can be devastating for game morale.

But the truth is, "micro-transactions" could be one of the few ways for a struggling LARP to maintain stability and keep running. I know of several instances where players have kept a game up financially through a tough time. Should they be crucified if given thanks in the form of IG benefits?

I might get strung up for suggesting something like this, but I would like to see more LARP games utilize the idea of micro-transactions in order to help support the game. But here are some important rules when implementing those micro-transactions.

On NERO National Membership

I know I have a history of starting some serious shit. I am really not trying to do that with this post. Instead, I'm trying to be constructive.



No, it's true. There's definitely been enough vitriol on this topic already, so I don't really need to start shit. Instead, I thought it would be a lot more insightful to talk about the various arguments and expand on them, including what I believe to be valid and invalid points and what could be done to fix the issues.

Here goes...