Character Approvals

Almost all characters on Star Army are approved by Game Masters of the plots they are headed toward. This has basically eliminated the need for a character approval team that we used to have back in the day. So the old "character approver" group (which had the yellow title banner) has now been eliminated. In the case where a character needs to be approved and there is no applicable GM, a site staff member or relevant faction manager (e.g. Kyle for a Neshaten character) can approve the character.

 

[Aendri]

I'm not sure this is the best idea, to be honest, especially with the shift towards younger, newer GMs who just flat out don't know the site or the history as well. The reason the group remained after we shifted to GM approvals was specifically to make sure we were catching things that the GMs might've missed, or just didn't even know they should be looking for.

 

[Kyle]

This is a bad idea, many GM's - espically our newer ones - do not know what to look for when reviewing a character and run the risk of approving one that is either Mary Sue - or otherwise has issues that go against the canon established for the faction. This is why the character approval group exists, and it should be brought back.

 

[Wes]

Giving GMs approval power happened quite some time ago and this change hasn't affected that at all.

It only affects the "non-plot" characters, of which there are very few of them. Our staff members - Doshii, me, Nashoba, and Kyle, are some of the site's most knowledgeable people and can handle those characters with no problems.

The character approval group hasn't been able to approve characters for people's plots in years and the reasons for that were:

1. no one knows what fits better in a plot than its GM.
2. characters approvers were approving characters for plots that didn't want them
   
3. character approvers were taking too long to respond which kept both GMs and players waiting

FMs were considered but found to be not reliably speedy enough to approve characters for their factions and would have had the same issues as other non-GMs.

 

[Aendri]

The question isn't whether or not GMs should have approval power, Wes. The problem is that the Character Mods were a safety net for that system, there to catch characters that had legitimate issues or questions that the GMs didn't know they should be asking. If a character mod stepped in, it was because they were concerned a problem wasn't being addressed, not because they didn't think GMs could approve characters.

 

[Koenig808]

So there's still a core group of people approving characters?

Why did you even remove the Character Approval group in the first place when you're going to just rely on Staff Members anyway?

 

[paladinrpg]

I have to agree I like the safety net that a character approval team provides. They should remain in some form to be a second stage QA that has to sign off on the final approval for all canon characters, for exactly the reasons users like @Kyle and @Aendri have stated.

 

[Wes]

To be frank, character mods stepping into a player's character thread was often seen as harmful interference. If someone wants to step into a thread to say, "hey, Nekovalkyrja can't have scars," it should probably be the faction manager anyway.

So there's still a core group of people approving characters?

Why did you even remove the Character Approval group in the first place when you're going to just rely on Staff Members anyway?

We moved character approval into the GMs' hands a while back and it's been working pretty well. The Character Approvers group was a relic from the time before that, which had lost its purpose and only came into play when a character had no GM. The amount of non-GM characters is so small that it can be handled by the staff (4 of the 5 character approvers were staff members anyway so these are almost the same set of people). Also now we're officially letting FMs get involved more, which is new.

tl;dr eliminated the user group because it was redundant

 

[Aendri]

The FMs have been allowed to approve their faction's characters from the beginning, that's nothing new. And if you're going to phrase it like that, lets just go ahead and throw it out there that I'm the one non-staff approval mod there was. And apparently, I do nothing but harm, since I'm also the only one of that group that was consistently active, unless I specifically went and asked one of the others to take something over because I didn't feel like I could be impartial.

If your goal is to remove my ability to have any sway over character approvals, Wes, just say it and get it over with.

edit: Just as a reminder, I've offered to join the staff more than once, specifically to help take a load off of everyone, and been rejected every time.

 

[Nashoba]

The only thing I will say on this subject, is that without a uniform standard for characters. That the quality between plots will and does vary. I remember when we first made that decision and some of the characters were marginal at best. But as I control the quality of the ones for my plot. I'll just continue to enforce quality.

 

[Wes]

The FMs have been allowed to approve their faction's characters from the beginning, that's nothing new.

For NPCs only until now.

And if you're going to phrase it like that, lets just go ahead and throw it out there that I'm the one non-staff approval mod there was. And apparently, I do nothing but harm, since I'm also the only one of that group that was consistently active, unless I specifically went and asked one of the others to take something over because I didn't feel like I could be impartial.

Your approval privileges were limited only to non-plot characters though, and it was confusing for new people when you'd come into For-GM-approval threads to help with a"character approver" banner under your name but the characters were approved by the GM, who didn't have a banner that said that. So the character approval group was obsolete and confusing and had to go. It was just a leftover from prior to GM approvals. I wanted to be more clear to the players who is actually able to approve the characters - having "character approver" titles on the people who only approved like 5% of the characters (since GMs approve most) made no sense.

You're still welcome, as is everyone here, to help people perfect their characters in their submission threads as you've been doing.

The only thing I will say on this subject, is that without a uniform standard for characters. That the quality between plots will and does vary. I remember when we first made that decision and some of the characters were marginal at best. But as I control the quality of the ones for my plot. I'll just continue to enforce quality.

Yeah, I have been thinking about some sort of FM overview step for faction plausibility but I'm not sure all the FMs are currently online frequently enough to take that on. And we shouldn't overdo it on the red tape. I just have to trust in my GMs and pick good ones.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Aendri, your recent stepping in to a character review was positive.

I wouldn't have encouraged you otherwise.

It's the holding-it-up part that was done away with a long time ago. That's why I stopped reviewing chars or calling myself "chief char mod."

Your recently stepping in on a char prompted this. You were the only one to retain the title while not being staff. I don't know why we even had the banners anymore; you, me and the other pure char reviewers lost the authority behind those banners at least a year ago.

It ain't personal, man. Wes was a little swift with the fix, but your voice still has value in the char process, especially as a longtime reviewer and veteran. Don't stop doing what you do; just know you can't hold up the game like we used to.

 

[Aendri]

The characters that need the work the most typically come from, no offense intended to these players, but the players least likely to listen to "advice". That's why the mantle was still needed, to give the air of authority to reviews. I've continued this whole time to operate just like a traditional character mod, but only on characters where I thought it was really needed, instead of all of them, and I thought we'd been getting pretty positive feedback on the whole. The idea of just pretending there was (and is) no point to having people there with that extra experience and knowledge with the authority is just silly to me.

If this is really the direction you want to take character reviews, Wes, then I am done. It's not worth the effort when you so clearly don't want the effort of quality to be enforced anymore.

 

[Doshii Jun]

The effort is enforced by GMs -- and vets, as much as we can enforce it without having the ability to hold things up ourselves.

Your effort isn't worth any less than it was, Aendri. You didn't have the authority to stop reviews before the banner went away, and leaning on false authority, instead of true influence, isn't the way we want to get it done around here, is it?

I regularly seek advice from others on tech submissions. Talk to GMs about some of these chars, bring up points to them, and you'll see your influence bloom with effectiveness that the old banner never gave you.

 

[Semjax]

The GM's normally do not enforce quality, and will ignore aspects that make a good character. If there is not a character approver such as aendri who will enforce quality, I believe there should be a standard of quality in general that Gm's must abide by before the appliers can even be approved. Having characters that have single sentence descriptions, that are approved by GM's for whatever reason should not be allowed. And there have been characters with such afflictions. In fact, a majority of characters don't even follow the whole 'Have a description an artist could draw vividly' rule. Then there are GM's who approve without caring about history, but unless the mods buckle down, nobody will notice.

Mods have been known to approve characters who have known issues in their history, while Aendri and others were trying to help the person change and understand it because they thought Aendri was 'bullying' them, which wasn't the case. I believe Aendri's standards of quality should be what this website strives for, but experience and about two years of watching show that without Aendri, chances are that will not happen. So if the Character Mods are gone, then the normal Mod's and Admins need to buckle down and do what needs to be done. Not what satisfies new players.

 

[Syaoran]

If we're going to get rid of the character mods group then we honestly need a much better rule set for character creation. Because I've seen GMs try to approve characters that just weren't good, because they needed players or it was enough to get into their plot. And there needs to be some penalties for GMs that do frequently approve characters that break rules. Like approving characters that literally are impossible for their race, but because the GM is new they don't know, and they don't bother to check.

In all honesty GMs are the worst people to approve characters objectively speaking, because GMs kinda have an invested interest in the character getting approved. Yeah the GM might know what does and doesn't go in their plot, but that doesn't mean they know what wont break the setting. So if you want speed, then I say make a better rule set, and then a check list GMs have to go through to make sure -all- characters are quality.

Edit: Having GMs punished for frequent infractions would also encourage them to actually -ask- people for info on things they don't know about instead of just going "Oh well".

 

[Wes]

Thank you for your feedback, @Syaoran and @Semjax : You guys bring up some interesting points.

The GM's normally do not enforce quality, and will ignore aspects that make a good character.

I don't agree with this, and I think it's demonstrably false because since 2013, hundreds of characters have been approved by a wide variety of GMs and I don't see a concerning drop in quality of character bios actually materialize as you claim. The risk is there but when we've caught problematic things we've successfully dealt with them on a case-by-case basis. I think we need to empower the GMs and trust them. If we can trust a GM to run a story that affects a bunch of players' characters, surely we can trust them to say if those characters are good enough to join their story.

I believe there should be a standard of quality in general that Gm's must abide by before the appliers can even be approved. Having characters that have single sentence descriptions, that are approved by GM's for whatever reason should not be allowed. And there have been characters with such afflictions.

GMs may have different needs for their plots, Some GMs may want a lot of detail, but others might not care so much. Putting the power in GM hands gave them freedom to set their own standards, at least to some extent.

If we're going to get rid of the character mods group then we honestly need a much better rule set for character creation. Because I've seen GMs try to approve characters that just weren't good, because they needed players or it was enough to get into their plot. And there needs to be some penalties for GMs that do frequently approve characters that break rules. Like approving characters that literally are impossible for their race, but because the GM is new they don't know, and they don't bother to check.

What would you suggest as rules (and why), and how would they need to be enforced? What about "if a character seems questionable, summon the FM for his approval?" Or a dedicated "timeline moderator" who basically checks the bios' biggest stumbling block, the history section (maybe Aendri would like that job)?

 

[Syaoran]

The first and biggest rule should be FMs are informed of all characters going into their faction, and do have a right to say 'nay' to things. They can't 'approve' the character but they can pause the approval for faction inconsistencies. In the last year I've seen instance of someone evade the FM and try to make a character for a faction they were banned from, and I've also seen someone make a character for a role in a faction that literally says on the character creation page "Speak to the FM before taking this role" without speaking to the FM. Both of these are just plain unacceptable.

Most of the rules though would be quality control rules, and steps the GM needs to follow when checking the character over. Like ensuring physical description of player characters is more than just a single sentence for each line. We don't need master works of literature there, but as has been said frequently "The description needs to be enough that someone drawing your character can get a pretty good idea of what they look like only using that."

As for enforcement that would be a bit more difficult, but generally it would be when people find characters that were approved without following these rules, they can inform someone and the staff can do something about it. Granted the punishments would have to be very tactfully done cause we don't want the players in the plot to suffer because the GM is lazy, but be don't want the GM to not care about the rules either. Maybe things like temporarily closing the plot to new members, increasing the frequency of their plot reviews for a time, having them have to go through a 'test' to make sure they do know the rules, things like that.

Also just an add on, I would like to point out that a huge chunk of the problems that have appeared with characters since I was here were caught by Aendri, and a lot (I wouldn't say most cause I don't know the numbers exactly) wouldn't have been fixed if it was not perceived that as a character approver he had a higher veto power than the GM. So that Character Approve banner was doing -something-.

 

[Wes]

After listening to stuff people had to say, I was thinking about a compromise: How about I designate Aendri as SARP's official "Character Quality Control" guy and give him a unique banner that says that? I mean, he's really good at that and we should channel that productively.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Splendid idea. I'd like to see him and the newer GMs work together.