A Guide to Unicorn's Visions for the Uninitiated!
My honesty is always harsh. Let's face it. I feel like a bad field worker for being as critical as I am, like I'm being terribly ethnocentric. This because I come from a radically different internet "culture" than the one I'll be describing. At the end I should just call the forum an ethnical chaos of savagery and barbarism. Just get it done with.
Get back to my theoretical roots, eh?
At the very least, I make no promises that this is professional quality or that any attempt has been made to remove personal or cultural bias. Take what I write with the proverbial grain of salt and understand the limits of my perspective before you take this as gospel.
Guide to Unicorns' Visions for the Uninitiated
<lj-cut text="Cut for length and nerdiness.">
Okay. So some people may be wondering how my venture into the land of
Unicorn's Visions is going.
First of all, I must say that I experienced a good deal of culture shock in entering their forum. RPGWW is largely Communist in political terms. Administrators and moderators hold little power, and really only hold the titles as honorary positions.
Compared to this, UV is administrated by Gaeva Winged Unicorn. She is the site's creator, and her avatar character is the leader of Deep Forest. Despite a council of moderators and an apparent willingness to heed the desires of community members, all decisions come down to only one vote: Gaeva's. This is because UV is arguably her forum, and its members her members.
Applying
On UV, as with many forums, there is a formal application process for each character to go through. As each player can only play three characters without special dispensation from the authorities (after certain conditions have been met), there is a need for assurance that every character played on UV will be there to stay. In other words, they're avoiding drive-by RP spammers.
This application process entails first making a character sheet and placing it in the subforum dedicated to the edge of UV's setting: Deep Forest. At the Edge of the Woods, a character has his/her introduction to the forest RP'd with existing members. This not only serves to ensure that applicants are interested in sticking around, but that applicants will get a chance to play.
Characters can only be accepted through explicit saction from the Edge's moderator. This generally takes the form of a post in the character's Edge thread.
Once the character leave the Edge of the Woods, it is possible for him/her to travel to any number of potential destinations. Once a character is accepted into the community as a whole, he/she must still apply for entrance into a particular geographical subforum. This is done in a similar manner to the first application process, with the character finally being accepted by a moderator of the location in question.
For these reasons, non-player-characters controlled by gamemasters for the purposes of guiding a plot must be restricted to a player's officially-sanctioned characters. Like all rules of UV, this can be overturned by a an appeal to Gaeva. Her permission overrules most regulations.
The Rules
Standard roleplaying forum rules apply. Respect your fellow members, don't attempt to control anyone else's character, don't be excessively vulgar or crude, spend some time and effort on posts and please do use correct English.
Relevant rules that differ from, say, RPGWW appear in both IC and OOC regulations.
OOC Rule number three:
"Please do as the ones in charge ask you to do. This is not an option."
IC Rule number four:
"NO HUMAN CHARACTERS. So if you have a human-looking character, make sure they have visible clues they are NOT. Humans will be chased away. Adaptations of these however are allowed, like a shapeshifter with a human form, or a centaur, or an elf." A friend of mine has submitted an image that I believe expresses something meaningful here.
OOC Rule Ten, the
"most important rule: Don't be afraid to ask questions." This will show up in later analysis, likely in contrast to the enforcement of IC Rule 4.
The Timeline
The timeline on UV is absolute. There are certain subfora (such as the Edge of the Woods joining forum) that are specifically placed outside the timeline, but to preserve continuity, it is generally only possible for one plot to occur at a time. This is presumably to avoid friction between two lines of (potentially) conflicting continuity.
The Syndicate
"Please respect them [the moderators] as their word overrules all others' (except Gaeva's) in any given forum, not just the ones they have been given modship in."
There is a subforum on UV called Deep Forest Council, for Gaeva and her moderators only. Moderators include but are presumably not limited to the following: Barbannis, Silvertone Bluenote, Windra, XxJah LilaxX, Shadowed Illusions, Griatch, FoxDragon, Ourania Dreamchaser, nightwolf714, Silvereyesish, and Roose Hurro.
On many roleplaying fora, there is a forum reserved for discussions among those with formal or informal authority. The difference between these fora and UV is that the Deep Forest Council is not even viewable by the vast majority of members. It's something of a mystery to me at this point what goes on in there, as I see little chance of insinuating myself into the sanctum sanctorum of UV.
It's curious to note that despite the inability of members to view its content, the presence of this forum is not hidden from the average member. Anyone can see that it exists and is being used. It's simply a link that goes nowhere, an overt acknowledgement of the power structure of UV. There is no need to hide that decisions are made by a select few, without the input and, what's more distressing, without the
knowledge of the community itself. Decisions are simply announced by one person speaking for "us" or "the mods."
Gamemasters
I suggested in my previous paper about RPGWW that community participation is an important part of deciding who is a "good" member of a community. Players who play are considered more faithful or diligent than players who fade away, and players who gamemaster are often considered to be stepping above the normal level of participation to provide a sort of civil service.
UV, near as I can tell, has two people who run plots. One is Barbannis, the officially-titled "master plotter," and who has reported to me that he is the only one allowed to create plot-related NPCs for his own use without first applying for their use at the Edge. Gaeva may also run plots, but I have little data on her activities. I feel safe in assuming that since nothing in Deep Forest happens away from the scrutiny of its unicorn guardians (played by the forum's OOC guardian), that Gaeva is at least passively involved in every event on this forum.
"The RP at Unicorn's Visions is frequently enlivened by story plots created to entertain the players. This is usually done by either Gaeva or Barbannis, though others can of course plan something new as well. They are however the only two members at UV who are allowed to start a RP plot of any size with any possible consequences to the Forest and it's inhabitants without previous permission given from the rest of the staff.
If you have come up with a grand scale plotline that will affect numerous inhabitants and/or Deep Forest itself (or the unicorns in charge) in any way, you must present this to Gaeva first. This is done to first judge your course of action, and whether it will be appropriate and feasible to carry out. And second this is done to prevent several plots popping up at the same time and not only creating chaos, but interfering with each other."
These regulations, combined with the stringency of regulations regarding character creation/use, combined with the rigidity of the setting's timeline, make it nigh-impossible for more than one major plot to occur at a time. With an officially-annointed "Master Plotter," it is easy to see that the efforts of this one member are likely to prevent any other member from gamemastering.
A structural-functionalist analysis suggests to me that the rules are not created to facilitate gamemastering. So, if the rules are set up to prevent most members from running plots, what are they set up to do? What need do they serve?
Near as I can tell, there is very little value placed on gamemastering. As a result, there are few considerations for gamemasters other than Barbannis built into the rules.
My conclusion from this is that there is simply no need for plots on UV. When they occur, they are strictly regulated, seemingly to prevent them from interfering with activities of slightly-higher priority. These activities include such noble pursuits as character development, which preferably occur without the influence (interference?) of plotted events.
Positionality
When I entered this forum, it was with the intent of seeking out new RPers and making diplomatic contacts with other internet communities. RPGWW suffers from a minor case of isolationism, and perhaps new blood and new ways would be a positive addition.
Coming from a forum in which no one has formal power to allow or forbid anything, it was unusual to me that I was unable to question the political workings of UV the way people criticize RPGWW. I did not realize until afterward why such inquiry is so poorly-received.
Because UV is centrally-regulated and every decision is made either actively or passively by one person, questioning or criticism of any sort is viewed as a personal attack on the judgement of that person.
This bleeds over into the priveleged members, the moderators. See the following conversation in which a moderator leapt to the defense of her comrades when I questioned the secrecy in which decisions were made on UV.
I didn't cut out anything she said or anything I said. Hopefully this will offer some indication of what a conversation with the powerbase of this forum looks like.
Kai: *awaits the ruling of the secret moderator council*
Silvertone Bluenote: What are you talking about Kai?
Silvertone Bluenote: Kai, what do you mean?
Kai: Loki had some questions about Dawn, so I'm attempting to answer them as best I can.
Kai: Though I don't think it was "Loki" so much as "the mods," which presented amusing images of the Syndicate from the X-Files watching over the Edge forum.
Kai: I giggled a little.
Silvertone Bluenote: M'kay, but that remark was rather snide.
Kai: It was. Most of my remarks are.
Silvertone Bluenote: For crying out loud >.<; You DO realize that the MODS are -also- following certain rules Right?!
Kai: Especially when I'm addressed on behalf of some secret body that I never knew existed. I don't mind. I'm just entertained.
Anonymous (Windra?): HEY
Kai: The mods can do their job. If I had a problem, I wouldn't try so hard to make sure I answered their questions.
Silvertone Bluenote: Back off Kai. [Note from the editor: You can see from my response that this is where I got particularly confused. This is just as random as it looks.]
Kai: ...
Anonymous (Windra?): Easy, children.
Anonymous (Windra?): Let's not go at each other's throats.
Kai: I cracked a joke. Blue freaked. I explained. Blue continued to freak?
Sithrazer: *gets out the water spritzer*
Silvertone Bluenote: I 'freaked' because I don't care for snide comments towards my fellow mods. I hate that kind of thing.
There is one notable exception to this rule, and out of respect I feel I should mention him specifically. The moderator Griatch has shown much more level-headedness in the face of my questioning, and has given me (seemingly) accurate information about when I was being reasonable and when perhaps I am going too far in my cynical assessment of UV's politics.
It is my hope that my analysis will not alienate me from him, as he is largely the reason I am remaining on this forum. I have had conversations with few other members that suggest I have any future here, but I press on for the sake of attempting to maintain an acquaintance with this member.
More to come as I learn the outcome of the above conversation. Perhaps there is more information to be gathered. <p>-------------------------
<span style="font-size:xx-small;">
I've always followed my father's advice: he told me, first to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddamn sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble. --John Wayne</span></p>