Archive:GM Guidelines

Being a GM (game master) is a responsible job. In part, your actions affect what the community will be like. Hence, here are some basic guidelines to help you make decisions.

General guidelines

1. Use your own common sense. You are a GM because we have trust in your judgment.

Enforcing the rules

If a situation arises not covered in the rules, you might want to request players to follow your temporary guidelines to restore order. Use the usual @t warning to log the event. GMs are encouraged to explain the offense and the possible punishment. Usually 'common sense' rulings spawn controversy so be careful in your measurement of punishment. Keep it as mild as possible to restore order.

Rules and punishment for breaking them

The primary job of a GM is to keep people happy with the game by enforcing The Rules. Standard punishment for each rule varies:

1. Do not abuse other players (insults, swearing, and the like directed to a particular person or persons)

Punishment: Request the player(s) ignore each other or an hour ban for excessive abuse. Punishment may increase should abuse continue. Reason for punishment: To calm down a player dispute. To encourage a player to not use derogatory language against other players or directed at groups of people (such as racist, sexist, homophobic language).

2. No bots (and botting means ANY activity while away from keyboard)

Punishment: Permanent ban. Reason for punishment: To encourage a social environment in the game. AFK killing takes up an area where monsters typically spawn and prevents players that are actively playing the game from having access to the monsters. It creates an unfair advantage over other players that play the game without botting. It discourages social interaction and the party system. It grants monster drop scavengers an advantage of growing in wealth without having killed monsters to receive it.

3. No spamming / flooding (including trade spam)

Punishment: Automatic ban, 1 hour. Drop parties and other client based actions may create a similar effect, which can be punished by kicking the offender or banning for an hour. Continued offenses can result in longer punishments, including a permanent ban. Reason for punishment: Spamming/Flooding can cause clients to slow or crash and log out of the server. It also can be an annoyance to people in the area that are attempting to interact socially. Players can be encouraged to ignore a chat spammer, but should this not work (the offender is moving or standing in a way to make click and ignore difficult, the offender is spamming in an area with a large number of people, some of who might not be computer savvy enough to handle the spam) punishment may become necessary.

4. No begging

Punishment: Kicking the offender or an hour ban. Continued offenses can result in longer punishments. Reason for Punishment: Primarily an annoyance, it can also grant a player an unfair advantage without fighting the monsters. Begging sometimes can be considered chat spam, but not always. It also causes players that might otherwise be good natured to become less social in the game and resent players that might need actual assistance in the game.

5. Speak English on public chat

Punishment: Request players speak privately in public spaces or move to another area to talk. Not speaking English may not be an automatic offense if a player is unfamiliar with English and is requesting assistance. Refusing to speak English can result in kicking, an hour ban or longer punishment should the offender continue. Reason for Punishment: Social interaction, understanding the rules and other problems that may occur in the game may not be understood, so players are usually encouraged to understand some English in order to interact with the game. Without understanding this rule, some players may abuse the rules and then claim to not understand the GM when the GM is attempting to enforce the rules.

Keeping track of who is banned, why and when

The GM Log and the Court House helps to keep track of who was banned and why. GMs are encouraged to make note of the reason for a ban for the GM Log and announce bans longer than an hour in the Court House for the sake of transparency.

Once a player is banned, a player often comes to the Court House to ask to be unbanned. In the case of some permanent bans (typically first time botting) the player's character may be reset, at the GM's discretion.

Command reference

There are many command commands GMs use. All of them are logged. Here's a selection of the more important ones:

• @ban <name> - Ban temporarily an account

time usage: adjustment (+/- value) and element (y, m, d, h, mn, s)

• @unban <name> - Unban an account
• @charreset <name> - Reset stats AND skills of a character.
• @charbaselvl <#> <name> - Adjust a character's base level, a number of 1 ADDS a level and -1 takes a level.
• @spawn <monster_name_or_monster_ID> [<number to spawn>]
• @hide - Make yourself invisible to monsters and on the list of users online.
• @warp <map> <x> <y> - Warps you to map at location. Eg. @warp new_3-1 30 30
• @charwarp <map> <x> <y> <name> - Same as above, only warps a player
• @recall <name> - Warps player to you
• @goto <name> - Warps you to the player
• @die - Kills your char
• @log - Log a string; can also use @l
• @tee - Same as @log, but also sends the text out to normal chat; can also use @t
• @invisible - Makes you completely invisible
• @visible - Turns off invisibility

The information above is based on the conf/help.txt