Faction leaders need better rule-compliance tools

[Amateur Hour]

I asked earlier about who bears responsibility for ensuring that players don't use factions to cross-stream; I received the answer that faction leaders do have responsibility for ensuring their faction members are not cross-streaming through the faction.

However, we currently have woefully inadequate tools for dealing with this in large factions (e.g. settlement militaries). There were tangible cases which prompted me to ask this question; in one case another player happened to mention to me in completely unrelated context that the characters were played by the same player, and in another I happened to notice extremely similar emote styles. Note that these players are using different usernames for their different characters; if it weren't for these coincidental things, I would have not known that I was failing in my responsibility to "[make] sure the faction members have clean noses".

The only ways currently available to me to ensure I fulfill my responsibility as a faction leader, as far as I can determine, are also rule-breaks or against the spirit of Arelith: not allowing anyone into the faction unless they give me their forum name, not allowing anyone into the faction unless I take time to establish in Discord that they are not playing other characters in the faction, etc. If we are truly to be held to this expectation, there needs to be some level of mechanical prevention so we cannot add multiple characters of the same player to the same faction.

[CNS]

If you know or think a player is cross streaming surely you can just drop a note to DMs and let them have a conversation.

I don't think it's the responsibility of a player, even a faction leader, to police the game or coach other players.

As a faction leader you should be keeping an eye out for stuff happening in your faction and not encouraging it, absolutely, but really the correct course of action is to notify dms and allow them to resolve any issues rather than feeling the burden falls on you.

[Amateur Hour]

As a faction leader you should be keeping an eye out for stuff happening in your faction and not encouraging it, absolutely, but really the correct course of action is to notify dms and allow them to resolve any issues rather than feeling the burden falls on you.

The issue here is that I can only notify DMs of issues I notice. In a small faction I'm sure you'd notice if someone was double-dipping on multiple characters, but that's far harder to do in a faction with over 20 members, like a settlement military. It's still a rule-break even if the faction leader doesn't notice, and I did just receive clarification that it is faction leader responsibility to ensure this does not happen.

[Anomandaris]

Do keep in mind it would appear you haven't gotten an "official" team response on your question yet. I doubt they're asking you to police the playerbase, just not enable any explicit rulebreaks you're aware of.

[Sincra]

I asked earlier about who bears responsibility for ensuring that players don't use factions to cross-stream; I received the answer that faction leaders do have responsibility for ensuring their faction members are not cross-streaming through the faction.

The best way to deal with this is reporting the issue yourself. If you are obligated as a faction leader to be responsible, this is how.
Also, this:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=21795&start=75#p314428

[Amateur Hour]

The best way to deal with this is reporting the issue yourself.

As I said earlier, I know I can report it (and have), but the issue is that I can only report it if I notice. It would seem from the response I received that I am responsible for ensuring it does not happen on my watch, but I do not have tools for noticing it happening on my watch unless I get very lucky. It feels unreasonable that faction leaders should have to be on alert for players misspelling the same words all the time, structuring their descriptions in similar ways, etc. to be able to notice these things to submit reports every time it happens.

[DM Monkey]

Please just let DMs know via a PM to "Active DMs" if you suspect someone is crossing streams. That's all you need to do. If you're friends with the other player, you can also let them know that they can't have more than one character in the faction and let them choose which one they want to continue with.

Players don't need tools to police other players.

[Kythana]

Can it not be something like a check on the CD-key when a character joins a faction?

Like say I make a Fighter and join the Cordor city guard. I get invited to the faction on that character.

I then make a Wizard and also try to join the Cordor city guard. When I get the invite for this faction, the leader of said faction would get some sort of generalized error message about how the Wizard cannot join because another character on the account belongs to the same faction.

No specific information on who it is, but seeing that message would be enough for a faction leader to send in a report.

Or if that's too much information to be given to a player, couldn't it just send straight to the DMs? I'm not sure if all of this is technically possible, but just an idea.

[Sincra]

Can it not be something like a check on the CD-key when a character joins a faction?

Like say I make a Fighter and join the Cordor city guard. I get invited to the faction on that character.

I then make a Wizard and also try to join the Cordor city guard. When I get the invite for this faction, the leader of said faction would get some sort of generalized error message about how the Wizard cannot join because another character on the account belongs to the same faction.

No specific information on who it is, but seeing that message would be enough for a faction leader to send in a report.

Or if that's too much information to be given to a player, couldn't it just send straight to the DMs? I'm not sure if all of this is technically possible, but just an idea.

We have logs and factions to my knowledge can be checked for this.

It definitely would not be something we give to players as it's just a whole other issue of metagaming from a new angle, especially as faction additions do not require consent.

[Eira]

As I said in my response, if you find out about it, you should do something about it. I did not mean to imply that you should be hounding every character in your faction to ensure this is not so.

It is similar to any rule break. If you are aware of it, you should report it or speak with them. If you are not aware of it, it's not as if we expect you to be a DM too.

[Curve]

I play with -notells on and only turn it off if there is a specific consent based conversation that needs to take place. One of the reasons I play like this is because when I started here a decade ago I would occasionally get misinformed by other players about the rules. I now have a policy of only listening to DMs about such matters as these. There are very good reasons why it’s been said for so long ‘it is not players job to police other players’.

(If you have some ooc trust with the player in question this may not apply)

I am glad that DMs are so much more available now and willing to answer questions on the forums where everyone can read them.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

The best way to deal with this is reporting the issue yourself.

As I said earlier, I know I can report it (and have), but the issue is that I can only report it if I notice. It would seem from the response I received that I am responsible for ensuring it does not happen on my watch, but I do not have tools for noticing it happening on my watch unless I get very lucky. It feels unreasonable that faction leaders should have to be on alert for players misspelling the same words all the time, structuring their descriptions in similar ways, etc. to be able to notice these things to submit reports every time it happens.

Yo my dude live and let live. You can't be responsible for every player in your group.

It is an unreasonable assertion for anyone (DMs included) to think that you gotta have the name and number of everyone in your Banite Gang #213. No one should hold you to that.

It's not your job to be the faction police.

edit: also, like Curve, if folks -notell you can't do anything anyways. Often that's a sign of a good player anyways, but still. You gotta let things go ... and usually metagamey players metagame, regardless of their factions cross-play.

[Wrips]

Faction leaders already have a lot on their hands, they don't need to add policing other players to the list.

Players don't need tools to police other players.

Also this, too. Let the DMs deal with it and report it if you feel there's something unusual going on.

[The GrumpyCat]

Can it not be something like a check on the CD-key when a character joins a faction?

Like say I make a Fighter and join the Cordor city guard. I get invited to the faction on that character.

I then make a Wizard and also try to join the Cordor city guard. When I get the invite for this faction, the leader of said faction would get some sort of generalized error message about how the Wizard cannot join because another character on the account belongs to the same faction.

No specific information on who it is, but seeing that message would be enough for a faction leader to send in a report.

Or if that's too much information to be given to a player, couldn't it just send straight to the DMs? I'm not sure if all of this is technically possible, but just an idea.

We have logs and factions to my knowledge can be checked for this.

It definitely would not be something we give to players as it's just a whole other issue of metagaming from a new angle, especially as faction additions do not require consent.

No worry my friend, we have tools to do this for you already, so we tend to know if someone has two pcs in one faction.

If someone is somehow being super cunning and nasty and getting around this? And you find out? Please report it. If you don't know? Then how can we expect you to report it?

Just report it if you think it's happening. If you don't? No worries. We don't expect players to be reporting things they're unawear of.