#swc-forum log link: http://swcombine.com/swc-forum.txt. This will be updated periodically throughout the day, as well as approximately one hour after each session concludes.

This has been a hectic 24 hours. After many conversations with many people, and after watching the forums, it seems that what I had hoped was a simple reminder of rules that people already understood a certain way was apparently an introduction to a foreign interpretation of the rules for many players. Several good posts have been made in the discussion on the forums, along with several bad ones, so instead of summarizing the arguments here, I’d encourage you to check them yourself.

First, I’d like to announce some adjustments. Leigh Kellan will be unbanned immediately. Her participation was misunderstood, and information that wasn’t available in our original source material indicates that she had actually privately raised objections to the methods used and information being collected. I appreciate those who came forward to fill in the gaps, and I’d like to apologize for our mistake. Kyran and Lex are unaffected by this change.

We’ve also taken a more careful look at Felix Goreclaw. His account was immediately reinstated in a leadership position in his previous faction, and he immediately began receiving assets from said faction, which is what triggered our internal respawn asset tracking mechanisms. After much discussion and some detective work, we’ve concluded that his received assets were related to faction work and not laundered assets from his previous character, and after accounting for the intervening time interval his personal net worth has not been improperly increased to that of his previous character.

However, for the time being, Felix has not been unbanned, although his ban will be reduced. This is related to the second point I would like to make. Our rules in this area are a mess and the reinstatement itself may still be too much based on our current interpretation. The spirit of the rules is hard to explain to people because it’s a gut feeling, and long conversations made it clear that there are many different interpretations that seem reasonable, not as special rules for the people who hold them, but as useful compromises between the extreme possibilities of characters resuming previous identities or of characters never being allowed to associate again with people they formed OOC friendships with.

We remain committed to the central objective of SWC: everyone should be able to come here and have a good time roleplaying an entirely different experience from their own lives, based on a common interest in Star Wars and its lore. By its nature as a game with a single, shared universe instance with permanent consequences for all characters, we must have rules governing behavior, in and out of character, to encourage the vague notion of “good gameplay.”

To address this, I’d like to invite you all to a forum-type rules discussion and review to be held next weekend (Saturday November 22nd) on IRC, in #swc-forum. We’ll be discussing IC/OOC separation in SWC with a focus on the two areas that came up yesterday: playing characters who are essentially continuations of dead characters, and responsible information gathering. The format will be a moderated discussion where one speaker at a time will present their perspective on these issues, covering three main areas:

• What is a reasonable level of character separation for recreates?
  • How do we differentiate between a recreate who is choosing to RP a similar experience because they enjoyed it and a player who is attempting to continue their previous character with a new name? Does attempting to make this distinction contribute to gameplay?
  • How do we handle the personnel challenges faced by differently sized factions? Losing one key player and being unable to replace him with a respawn can destroy an entire small faction, but it has much less effect on an extended command structure. Is this a fair balance? Does this merit different standards or allowances?
  • What is a reasonable standard for identifying recreates who intend to abuse the assumed independence of characters and how can we avoid OOC shoehorning based on past lives?
  • Related scenarios or considerations the speaker may wish to remark on.
• Spying and OOC information
  • What type of information is fair to collect about players/characters without their consent or knowledge?
  • What type of information is fair to request of players/characters directly?
  • How should OOC information be handled by factions? What are reasonable standards for use of OOC information to make IC decisions?
• What role do intentions play in analyzing all of these considerations?
  • If someone respawns to steal from a faction, is it always against the rules? Is previous alignment sufficient to establish a rule violation? How is it different from a completely new character who thought that would be an interesting direction to choose?
  • If players collect inappropriate information, how do subsequent actions affect guilt or severity? Should a misunderstanding of the rules be taken into consideration?

Each speaker will have 10 minutes. After all of our speakers, we will have 45 minutes of Q&A: people can submit questions to the moderators during the presentations, and then we will present them to the speakers and hear their responses. People who wish to present a set of opinions should email me (selatos@swc…) as well as CC the asims (assistants@swc…) with an outline of their case and their timeslot availability. We will have two sessions, one at 11 A.M. PST (D358, 12:00 combine server time) and another at 11 P.M. PST (D359, 00:00 combine server time), each tentatively lasting an hour and a half with four scheduled speakers. If there are too many well-argued cases to fit in a timeslot then we may add an additional speaker.

Selection for presentation will be based on the quality of the reasoning, not on the specific opinions presented, but the (clear) objective of your argument should be to meet the basic goals of SWC. For the presentation itself, I would strongly advise against preparing a wall of text that you paste into the chat all at once, because it is easier to follow text presented one line at a time, preferably at a reasonable reading pace (generally, typing pace is suitable because we experience it every day). The channel will be available for unmoderated discussion between the scheduled presentations. Full logs from both sessions and the unmoderated chat will be available after each concludes. Players who were banned from IRC yesterday will be permitted attend and participate, and even speak if they submit arguments and are selected.

The outcome will be used to help understand how the players see the rules and what perceived weaknesses are, whether in utility, enforceability, or fairness. The rules will not be updated to reflect the favorite opinion, but the discussion will serve as a guide for us to clarify things with the additional admin perspective and ensure that everyone plays the game on an equal footing. It is not fair to have people taking advantage of possible gaps in the rules to get ahead of more conscientious players, but it is also not fair to have the unlucky few who receive greater scrutiny be punished if “everyone is doing it” but most are unreported. Punishments may be adjusted based on any changes we make to the rules.

EDIT: To clarify, if you have a position or wish to submit thoughts on one or more positions, but you don't want to present it for any reason, I am also accepting this type of feedback which will be ground up and formed into one or more hypothetical viewpoints, questions, and concerns that I will present from an unaffiliated perspective as well.

#swc-forum log link: http://swcombine.com/swc-forum.txt. This will be updated periodically throughout the day, as well as approximately one hour after each session concludes.