Police Force

[coniurati]

Because apparently it's Mod Spam Night!

Many of you may have noticed a scarcity of the Police Force as of late, and there's a reason for this! Basically, we've had an attrition of members, a loss of a leader, and a loss of interest from the community in general.

Now, the Police Force in kind of a big deal, because without it, we've got nothing left but vigilante justice and a jail that can't be kept up. All of our lovely, cherished villainous creatures out there could simply run amok! And we've got a lot of law & justice types out there that wouldn't be too keen on that. But at the same time, without enough of the playerbase behind it, it simply can't be upheld.

SO

We'd like to talk to you guys about it.

We're of the opinion that the Police Force is something that's simply inevitable, as there's always going to be a character (or more likely, several characters) that are going to notice the lack thereof and try to make something of the sort to fill the gap. But it's kind of obvious that the system we have going now isn't working as well as it should. Some of the main concerns are:

- Low Membership. This is the biggest problem. A lot of characters that were on the Force have just plain left Discedo, and others have simply quit. In order for it to function properly, it needs more members. How do you propose we solve this?

- Leadership. Currently, the Force doesn't have a leader. We've already figured out that it needs something of the sort, so that's a moot point. So it needs a new one! Or more ideally, more than one new one. This would be in case of one character leaving, going on hiatus, etc, the Force wouldn't be stuck without.

- Laws. the laws that have already been established need to be re-hashed, or re-instated at the very least. There are many characters and even players that don't know them at all, and therefore they could be broken pretty easily. who would like to do this? Who would be in charge?

- Organization. Some sort of page needs to be made, so all of this information can be easily accessed by everyone. Us mods are willing to help on this one of course, but we're going to need all of the information to put on it first!

- Cooperation. We're looking at you, Discedo badguys. Up to no good? Well, you're going to have to let the Police Force know, OOCly of course. It doesn't mean you'll have to be caught right away of course, but our boys in blue are gonna have to be on the up and up if they're gonna do their jobs properly!

And that's it for our main concerns. Note, however, we're not saying that the Force absolutely has to stay. If these things can't be ironed out, disbandment is certainly an option.

Thanks everyone for your time and patience! It's gonna be tough, so we really appreciate it.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't agree, only because 'player run police force' has been utterly terrible in the past. Why not split it between mods OOC and players IC. At least that way, if someone drops the ball and vanishes on the game, the mods will be able to dictate a fix instead of letting the problem languish for months.

[(Anonymous)]

Because the mods can't hold our hands throughout everything, and this has always been player-run. We can't just shove everything on the mods when it needs fixing. If we can't fix it ourselves, is it really a good idea to have one in the first place?

[(Anonymous)]

It's always been player run, yes, and it's always had quite a few problems because of this. Even before its last leader, it ended up in the hands of inactive characters/muns. Everyone was always sitting around waiting for weeks to make a decision on an event that's happening now. That's patently ridiculous. If the mods had part of the say/responsibility, they could give permission to react in a timely IC manner.

[(Anonymous)]

Then we need to find people that can run it properly - there has to be a player out there that can be a responsible leader. To be honest, I don't think it's going to be better off in mod hands; they have enough to worry about, that aside.

[(Anonymous)]

Any one person is a bad idea. Even the most 'responsible leader' can't have their character available 24/7 IC to spout off all the force related knowledge and info to the general public. Not only is that impractical, it's a dubious way to play a character. You'd basically doing nothing but police work, or else the Force would fail. Whereas the mods are concerned with plotting/planning/ooc stuff for the game in the first place, so permission could go through them without needing IC posts for every little validation.

Not only that, they seem perfectly happy to work with the players on this (see above.) Probably not a good idea to talk for them.

[(Anonymous)]

That's why more than one person should be involved. And whether or not they're willing isn't really relevant when there are some players involved in the force that would prefer for this not to happen.

[(Anonymous)]

Very much this. Yes, it's not fair to the mods, but dumping ALL the work on one player is just as unfair to that player, who would have to give up actually rping and enjoying the game to deal with all the ooc headaches. Also, if that player drops or bows out because being in the game is not a hobby anymore, everything goes tits up. I'd go so far as to say that the head of the police should be an npc that can be puppeted by either mods or players who volunteer, and split the planning among players and mods.

[(Anonymous)]

Another problem is the "mother may I?" that a player would have to go through for even minor things, acting as a go between for the criminals and the mods. Not only does this put an aggravating burden on both the players and the mods, but it takes time to settle issues that realistically should be solved in short order. Having a player-run police force sounds like a good idea in words, but in practice it's simply not practical.

[embracethewaves.livejournal.com]

i think a large problem with the police force is that there's always been one person in charge of it, so when they drop, everyone is out of luck. people have been putting the idea out there that we could have a group of people working together to be in charge, which would ease a lot of the panic that happens when one of the 'head honcho' characters, so to speak, bows out of the game.

i don't want us to be uninvolved at all, as mods, but i definitely wouldn't mind having some players help us take charge of it in an ooc capacity