God-mode

I rarely ban people. Normally I'll either:

• Let them realise no one wants to rp with someone like that.
• Try to talk to them about it.

 

As a site owner, I try my best to curb this before it starts, by having rules in place about it, and when that fails as it normally does lol, I try to moderate the application process to again discourage this sort of situation. Sadly though, neither is fool proof and when both fail. I will most often try to write with the person to show them what balance means and how good it can be. If all else fails and OOC talks don't garner results, the ban hammer comes out.

 

Ah, good ol' god-moding. I've experienced this issue a lot over the 17 years that I've been roleplaying, and I've dealt with them in several ways. If it's extreme, repeated, and the player tries to justify it, I am more likely to take admin actions against it. If that's not applicable, I will usually counter with my character and write them out of the situation (I learned my lesson the hard way with allowing the god-moding to continue). I think what irks me most is an RP character with absolutely no background (i.e. they were just created on a whim) being more powerful than a character with years of logged RP behind them.

 

Character Sheets and Game Managers. As long as you have provided the guide lines and the restrictions, those two things are more than enough to settle most any and all issues with God Modding, and you rarely have to do anything about it.

When it comes to the charactersheets, I don't care what about the fluff. What can your character do? What kind of connections do they have? What kind of skills do they have? What do I need to know on a system level to understand how your character operates. One of the most interesting lessons I ever learned was that I needed to stop looking at how and why the character had something, and start just caring about what the character had. Once I had that, it became a breeze.

Game Managers. These guys do most of the work for you. Imagine little mini yous running Dungeon and Dragon Campaigns themed around your website, only, you aren't using dice ((Unless y'all want too)) and these guys are actually the ones approving your sites characters, for their plots. It's perfect! Each character is custom tailored for a plot, which means they have the best chance of making a lasting impression and having a major impact on the story. They also aren't in control of what happens around them. The Game Master is. Which means it doesn't matter what you say your character is doing. The GM makes the decision if it actually happens that way.


When it comes to people with characters that have no long term growth, I usually just let them keep going. I just don't unclude them in my plot. "Sorry but your character just doesn't work for this plot, maybe another plot will take you," and that will usually start a dialogue where you can really get something done.

 

I've dealt with this a few times over the years. So here are just a few things I've done:

1) Don't let the rules be open enough where it can happen to begin with. In the past I've confronted a few god-moding and quite often the response I got was "But it's not against the rules to do XYZ". There are just some people that are very good at finding loopholes, so you need to cover it in the very basics of the site.

2) Require weaknesses/negatives. This is something we do a lot on my current site. If an application is only positives and things the character is good at, we'll respond asking they give us some weaknesses and things they suck at. We'll make them recognize the character's flaws at the beginning, before they get anywhere near god moding.

3) In character consequences. I've had to implement a staff run IC consequences before in the past when god-moding was getting really bad. What we did was when we saw a god-moding situation we'd immediately message the member, saying the thread has been marked for an IC consequence due to their actions, what actions caused it, and give them a certain amount of time to change it before the IC consequence hits. This is definitely a more extreme way to handle god-moding, but when you have repeat offenders sometimes the best thing to do is take control of the situation.

 

I, personally, created and implemented a "decay" factor. You don't just naturally stay strong af, without effort. You WILL get weaker, that's one of the things I have always implemented in my RPG's. Yes, you can get strong beyond measure but if you settle there and don't do anything, I add the realistic factor of what I call "Power Decay" if you stay stagnant for too long.

 

I think for a while, a site I was on that was focused on supernatural creatures, other than having a rule against god-mod, made a kind of ranking system for powers. You needed to reach a certain amount of posts or attend certain plots and events etc. to unlock parts of their powers that would be considered more 'overpowered.' I think while it limited a bit of creativity (aka you had to start from the beginning) they were kind of reachable targets too, and it was pretty open with just, you don't leave any permanent damage unless you've discussed it beforehand, etc, and I think most RPers on the site were mature enough to know whether powers are on the border of god-mod, and we always just chatted about it and how we can also add limitations and drawbacks from it.

 

Now that I think about it, I probably don't like superhero sites cause people like Batman thrive on metagaming cause they seem to know everything...

To the point!
As an owner of a site, I've dealt with godmoding a few times. It's not necessarily controlling another character that people have problems with. It's just certain people never want their characters hurt or will do impossible things in a real life situation because they think their character is the bee's knees. I have experienced mostly easygoing conversations if you point it out. I've gotten more "I didn't realize it wasn't allowed" more than "but my character can" logic. I think generally, most people who roleplay want to stay within the scope of the world but sometimes forget things in an attempt to look cool or something of the sort.

 

Mod them. It's shitty that you have to do it and you might lose the player but if their character is too much for the setting they need to be told that and if they don't back down you don't either. It just serves to make the setting weaker if characters like that exist.

 

I work with the player. I want that player to feel involved, and lets face it, everyone wants to be the star of the story. Usually when working with the player we can come up with some compromises and good plots to explain them, which brings more to the story than just slamming the ole ban hammer.

 

As someone who has been a small victim of an admin god-moding/powerplaying/whatever the phrase is (lol), it's something I try to take seriously. It can kill a site when someone is taking advantage of other players and their characters just because they want to be 'better'. Patience is something I try to foster. Someone else mentioned above that people often do not realize they are doing it, and often a small tap for clarification is really all that's needed. I haven't encountered someone who has pushed back PAST that small tap, and I'm a little afraid of that day.

I also, like others have said, try to be really harsh on myself and my own character in hopes that it sets an example, and also so others do not feel the same way I did in the past. I will purposely write my characters extra 'dumb' at times (if it makes sense to the plot) to let others navigate the story as they want. We are all here to have fun!

Overall, I am extremely grateful for my friends/fellow rp admin who work really hard to collaborate when there is an issue, and to ensure no admin/mod/player is lording over anyone else.

We all work hard to keep one another accountable.

 

This is Chef's kiss. One million percent. Let character's feel powerful but scaling the world to feel just as powerful is always the answer. It typically comes around quickly for people to realize that it's more fun when you're playing at a smaller scope.