Player Accountability / Karma

Please hear me out, it will take a little time to get to the point... So I am brand new to Roll20, just joined this week. I haven't played table-top RPGs in many years. I recently was listening to the "Total Party Kill" podcast and it rekindled my interest in playing D&D. I researched online communities/gaming tools and found Roll20. Total Investment = 4 Hours I searched thought the Looking for group message boards, trying to find a game that met my interest, at a time I could play and was " Welcoming to New Members ". Found a great game (Tilverton Gap, AD&D 2E) playing on Saturday's @ 11am (Starting Oct 11 - My Birthday!!). I applied on their LFG post, and signed up to be a Roll20 Supporter. Total Investment = 7 Hours & $50 The next day I was delighted to receive a PM and an invite to the group. Because of the short notice I only had a 4 days to get ready for the group, so I sprang into action. The campaign was going to be set as a group of 6 young Thieves joining together to form a Thieves guild using the supplemental PHB Thieves guide. I never played a rogue before, but this sounded awesome! I spent a couple hours on what I would need to be ready to play, part of the research was where to buy the books. I found a great RPG store "The Bearded Dragon" in Bernardsville, NJ. I took off work early on Wed and drove the 20mi to get there. I was able to pick up collectors editions of the AD&D & AD&D 2E Player's Handbook, Monstrous Manual, some dice. Online I was able to buy "The Complete Thieves Handbook" in PDF which was the basis for the campaign. Total Investment = 12 Hours & $125 I spent the entire night reading the PHB, and the supplemental thieves guide, started working on my char. The DM requested each player to have a backstory with an origin location in Faerûn. I wanted to play a Tallfellow Halfling and I found wiki references to Halfling cities in that world, chose one and developed my characters background, and sent it via PM to the DM ( <a href="https://app.roll20.net/users/437855/jim-w" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/users/437855/jim-w</a> ) and send a contact request to the DM in skype. I also visited the marketplace.roll20.net and purchased a token pack to represent my char. Total Investment = 20 Hours & $130 Next day I rolled my char, learning the dice system in the game, and going through step by step to create my character. I got lucky and rolled 18,17,16,12,12,10,9,9 (pick 6 of 8) [all rolls in game chat]. The non-weapon proficiencies are complex in the Thieves supplement, so it took a lot to research each one and find a fit for my char backstory. At this point another player in the campaign (Ryan M <a href="https://app.roll20.net/users/152948/ryan-m" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/users/152948/ryan-m</a> ) logged on and helped me with char creation. I spent 7 hours creating all the nuance of the character, height & weight, skills, languages, picking out all of the starting equipment that would fit his backstory and be useful and not encumber a Halfling with 9 Strength. Ryan was very helpful, and answered all my newbie questions, and was relaying messages from Victor B ( <a href="https://app.roll20.net/users/512587/victor-b" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/users/512587/victor-b</a> ) on house rules for the game. Total Investment = 27 Hours & $130 Next day I received a PM from Ryan “Hey, sorry to bother you again, but it seems the guy who came up with the game (Victor) is wanting you to just stick to the rules in the PHB and the Thieves' Handbook. The additional bonuses you got from the complete race guide just seem a bit to extensive to them. It's nothing major, we just need to take out the stuff exclusive to Tallfellows since the rest of us didn't really get the chance to get those sorts of boosts”. There was a couple of bonus skills for Tallfellows that they wanted me to take out (find hidden doors and +2 bonus to surprise rolls when in forest or wooded terrain) weird, but whatever, I took them off the char sheet. They also wanted me to take non-weapon skills in place of additional languages. (since, I would have had 5 languages with a 16 intelligence). So again some research on the non-weapon skills that fit with the char and would be beneficial. Total Investment = 30 Hours & $130 On Saturday (My Birthday) I get up early get all my work done around the house, get my workstation setup, reference materials out, and login to the game about 10:50 for an 11am game. I see all the other players in the game console. Bovak (me): “Cheers” 5min pass Bovak (me): “Hello?” 2 more min… Bovak (me): “Hey am I roll-playing being shunned?” PM from other player: “You were supposed to send your skype name to join the call” Bovak (me): “I did, skype is open, my skype name is davidb….” From DM on Skype: “There were problems with your character, so we decided to go with just 5 players” From Me on Skype: “What? What problems with my char? I have been prepping for this game all week, I rearranged my whole weekend to play” My char sheet was deleted from the game client. I don’t have any of it, it was all in the sheet, all my notes, everything, all 20+ hours of char creation gone in a blink. From DM on Skype: “Are you available on Wed at 2pm?” From Me on Skype: “Fu** You” I was removed from the campaign. So finally to my point: This would never happen in a face-to-face game. If I show up with all my books and dice and char sheet, the group is not going to turn me away at the door cause they don’t like that I have a 19 dex with racial bonus, we would talk it out and compromise and play. The ability for people to be anonymous on Roll20 needs to change. Being a jerk has to have some consequence, We should be able to have some mechanism to hold players accountable for their social actions. If you like the idea of having a system for providing player feedback, please upvote here: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1252838/player-a" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1252838/player-a</a>...

Never going to happen. The devs have already said so.

I understand their position, just hoping a real-life example of not having consequences and being anonymous will open up the dialog on the subject.

It won't. Too many risks of the system being abused.

age old argument of whether to err on the side of letting guilty get away with abuse vs. preventing a innocent person from being wrongly convicted. I think conquerclub has a very good system.

Its the same on both sides of the coin though david...As a DM you can put more time and money into the game (typically) than the players do combined...what roll 20 really allows for DMs is the ability to be super picky as there are more DM's than there are players. I have had to kick players and it wasn't an easy choice. I feel bad for your experince, and hope that your next group will be better.

"Member since 10/07/14 / GM of 0 campaigns / 20 Hours Played..." Maybe we give it a bit more time... what do you say?

I think the potential to cause offense, abuse and misunderstanding between GMs and players, or to create small cliques, is a very real reason that a karma system is a dangerous tool to implement. I am really sorry to hear about your experience, but hopefully your investment in the hobby won't go to waste and you'll find a stable group who would talk first rather than drop you out without so much an explanation. In some ways they did you a small mercy by showing you that this probably wasn't a group for you right from the start. Sometimes that "fit" of DM and players can take a while to find and if it's discovered too late into a campaign can actually be far more frustrating. I hope you'll dust yourself off, hit up another group and get back into a game soon. While there are disadvantages to VTT gaming that allow this sort of thing to occur, there's the huge bonus that groups are far easier to find, so take advantage of that and I wish you the best of luck.

@David, it often takes a lot of effort to find a group that's a good fit for you. The search & journey can be rewarding. Take it in a positive light. Enjoy the rulebooks you bought & the character concepts you're coming up with. Keep refining your application and keep narrowing down what you are looking for, until you find a good game for you. A few days of looking & applying for 1 group is usually not enough to make a match that lasts for a long time. It can take at least a couple weeks if not a couple months of searching like that, to eventually find a group of people with a gamestyle that's enjoyable for you and the others. If you get exasperated, say the final "FU" reply that you said you wrote to the guy on skype --- that won't help your progress though. Try to take a positive view, promote yourself, refine your skills and knowledge, be persistent, be upbeat, look around widely, cast your net widely, be attentive, listen to the GM's requirements, abide.

It is much different on Roll20 than IRL. I always thought of it like a big gaming con. You have thousands of people, and you have to find 4-6 of them that you can mesh with. Personally, it sounds like the DM should have been more accessible and made sure that the communication was clear. When i GM a game on here, i am picky as a gm. As other posters have pointed it, it is a GM's market on here, and depending on the type of game and level of effort in advertising it, games can fill in a matter of minutes. One thing i focus on is age. I am in my early 30's and try to keep my players 25 or older. I have a family, and work full time plus, so I look for players that truly understand what that is, and avoid younger age people who do not have those responsibilities or maturity level. Some people have nothing better to do than game constantly, or they are manic about it. My hobby time is limited, so i have a strict "old school" policy. When i was a teenager playing IRL, we had waiting lists a page long for games, and you would almost pray for someone to get mad and blow up on a GM for something silly, so he would get booted and another one of us could jump in. VTT is very similar in some aspects. As far as the final FU, i know it feels better in the moment, but it is too easy for someone to block you for a pissing match to have any real effectiveness. Sounds like you are invested in the hobby, and just keep plugging away until you find a good fit. A good GM will appreciate a dedicated, and passionate player who invests time in energy in making a real character. Just as there are "bad" players, there are "bad" gm's as well. Some of them liek the power trip, me, i like a good story and entertainment. Being a control freak doesn't entertain me, so I know i cant game with those types. Try and figure out what type of gamer you really are, and use that as you basis. VTT is the speed dating of rpgs lol

Apologies, but I think you went into this a bit too far on the naive side - please don't take this as an insult, I myself and I am sure others as well know this feeling of excitment all too well... still yes, you did make a few mistakes that may become obvious given time and you will learn from this experience. I do find it a bit funny that you list your time and money investment - no one forced you to support roll20 with a sub (although its cool that you did, of course!) - most GMs, however, need to buy a sub if they want to use immersion-enhancing and make-our-lifes-easier options like dynamic lighting, the API (very much necessary imo for anything more complex systems like f.e. d&d), custom character sheets (maybe your game isn't there yet or its buggy or you want additional stuff in it), moving maps etc. from one campaign to another (gods, so useful) etc. etc. I am also not sure why you felt the need to buy a tokenpack (though again, I am sure the artist appreciates it. Honestly, good on you :) ) as you can just make your own rather simply (look up tokentool). Same with the actual books, I would never, seriously, -never- buy the books for a group that I have just joined. What if I don't like the system, the group falls apart, allthethings? Again, however, as a GM you are usually the one buying the books... especially in real life in case you have never played at a table. Very common practice there though of course there the GM at least usually gets free food :) In any case, I really think you buying stuff (while very generous of you and generally a good sign in a player), was really a bit premature. Sad for you for wasting a lot of your money, but I fear the only thing you can do from that is learn from it. The time investment you wrote is just... well, its laughable for any GM, really. Its not special, believe me. Even with lowprep campaigns a GM needs to establish the cornerstones of the world/universe (races, relations, countries, deities...) and every session builds on that, needs notetaking and consistency work.. GM-Moves to determine what happened in the meantime in X that the players haven't visited for Y time... I am not saying GMs are superstars and you should never question them, just trying to give you a comparison to your 'time investment' - its ridiculous to compare, especially since this is supposed to be a hobby. And no matter how much time one invests, there can still be issues with the player, the GM, a character, the system or any number of things. As for how you were rebuffed. Was it polite? No, but you don't know that it was that '19' in your stat or whathaveyou and apparently the GM wanted to just postpone playing with you, at the very least he wanted to talk about what exactky the issues were exactly. If I were in his shoes, I would have told you earlier, yes... but had I gotten a response like you wrote (f* you, really?) as well as naming the participants which honestly is just a he said she said at this point... That just shows your immaturity. Were I to see a post like this I would never risk interviewing you. Yes, I know, you wouldn't want to play with a b* like me anyway or something, thats not my point. My point is, dust yourself off, move on, learn from this and behave better in the future. You can't change their behavior (whether it was justified or not and honestly I lean more towards the GM's side usually), but your current one isn't gaining you much favor either I would imagine. I also don't think you (general you) can really compare the auditioning process in online roleplaying to face-to-face, in real life people that game with each other usually know each other beforehand, be it from other games or work or whathaveyou... there simply and generally just isn't a need for an audition in the first place, so of course there aren't going to be instant turn-aways... though I have thrown people out sometimes at a real table. Its rare, but it happens.

I have a 2E game that is running every Friday & Saturday at 19:00 EDT(GMT-4) and some Wednesdays at 17:00 EDT(GMT-4) There is a roll-up and a 1 hour session zero that are mandatory. We use Roll-20 & Skype for audio (no video, we are all too ugly) Pm me if you would like to discuss. I use a different roll-up system, but, due to the fact that you have been abused by a nasty group I would spot you the numbers. 18,17,16,12,12,10, 9,9 (pick 6 of 8 ) This kind of kerfuffle is exactly why I have a session zero with every character, you need to work out any issues privately with each player without blowing them off. I have been running D&D games since the crappy little pamphlets were released, about 35 years and I try to never do something like letting a player do all of the work and then rule against them. I prefer to work with the players for a few hours and have their entry into my world go well, then I kill them once they are lulled into a false sense of security. .. al:^)

Thanks all that read the post and commented! I hear all the points being said, and agree with most, with the exception of Mouse ;) Mouse, I would totally agree with you if they hadn't deleted my char sheet before talking to me , up to that point I figured it was something we could work out; I was totally willing to make adjustments to suit the specific game. Maybe my char wound up being too powerful, and needed to be dialed back, all things I would have been happy to discuss. But to make an arrangement/appointment for a 5-6 hours gaming session and then cut me loose on a whim and delete my char sheet was a bridge too far. Also, I don't think it was the DM calling the shots I think it was Victor B, who was "the guy who came up with the game" that didn't like my char, and forced the issue. And please don't get me wrong, I think Roll20 is awesome, I am not rage quitting. Maybe I was too naive to spend that much time in that campaign before knowing who I was playing with, but that is really my point. I think that there should be a way that I can see if other people are (on average) having a positive or negative experience with the community to better match given so much effort has to go into starting a new char or even more for the GMs inviting people into their world.

The problem with a rating system is that there are about 72,000 people who are interested in AD&D2E and about 300 GMs running the game. on any given day. That would at best put 34 players in every game session, so buying a beer would take about 2 hours to role play. The developers don't want to discourage the GMs for two reasons, without them they have nobody to play, and GMs are far and away the most common owners of paid subscriptions, and when they pay their server bills having paying customers is a big help. Just like in the real world there are people who are easy to get along with and there are people who are impossible to get along with, most fall somewhere in the middle. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start over.

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