Game Master policy

This document is meant to serve as a baseline of expectations for Game Masters and Trial Game Masters within the Sector Umbra project. It is intentionally broad, and will change over time as the needs of the community change.

General concepts

Any member of any of the teams of Sector Umbra is considered to be a direct extension of Project Management. Their actions represent Project Management as a whole, and they are authorised in such a way on the behalf of Project Management. For this reason, we define the following core values:

Continuous learning: As a member of the Umbra team, it is important to consider that everyone is a volunteer who is doing their best. It is therefore important to acknowledge that mistakes can happen, and it is even more important to take these moments as opportunities to learn for the future. The Project Managers do not consider a genuine mistake by an Umbra team member to be a mistake of the member, rather it is a mistake of the Project Managers in teaching this member that needs to be corrected.
Transparency & accountability: It is important for members of the Game Master team as well as other team members to be transparent and accountable about their actions. This builds further on accepting mistakes as a possibility that could happen to anyone at any time. For every action taken, we expect our Game Masters to be accountable, ensuring every step is warranted.
Professionalism & welcoming attitude: Sector Umbra aims to be an ~~oepn~~open and accepting platform for people to be who they want to be within reason. As one will be interacting with members of the GM team the most, we expect them to be welcoming and professional. Helpful and open. It's important for us to consider that the GM team is not just made up of yet another admin team, rather we imagine the role of the GM team as facilitators.
Privacy: As a member of the GM team, one gains access to a lot of information that is considered private. This ranges from private lore discussion about future events, to moderation records. From internal rule discussions, to whitelist background checking. This information is considered sensitive, and it should never be shared outside its intended target audience. Doing so in a major way, or doing so repeatedly, is grounds for removal.

Additionally, certain types of information such as IP addresses, hardware ID's, ... have additional legal restrictions imposed on them. This information is only ever processed in accordance with our privacy policy. Violations of this are grounds for immediate removal.

In-game actions

General expectations:

Game Masters who choose to play during a shift are not considered Game Masters for the duration of that shift and must de-admin via the deadmin command.
Events, which have their own more specific section as well, must be conducted correctly. This means that testing things live which could have unexpected effects are generally strongly discouraged.

Rulebreaking behavior:

Above all, situations where a Game Master needs to handle a case which they themselves were a part of as a player must be avoided.
In general, due to the nature of our server, rulebreaking behavior does not occur often. However, it is still part of the primary duties of a Game Master to deal with conduct that goes against community expectations and standards.
When it is possible to deal with rulebreaking behavior via an in-character action, and the undesired behavior is considered to be minor enough to warrant this, the in-character action is preferred. This could range anywhere from sending a fax or announcement about a certain sensors scan to draw attention to someone's conduct from the required department, to ahelping someone on that department directly and giving them the in-character information they need to handle something correctly. Logging this is at the Game Master's discretion, and these actions do not count as an event.
If an in-character action is achieved via a disruptive method (i.e. ahelping another player, ...), the player who caused this must be informed via ahelp as well. It is the task of the handling game master to log this correctly.
When an out-of-character handling is required, it is the task of the handling game master to log this correctly via the admin notes system.

Punishments:

Bans and rolebans, dewhitelistings, ... are very rarely necessary, and are determined on a case-by-case basis. It is recommended that the handling Game Master seeks contact with Project Management to advise on the case.

Event policy:

An event is defined as a major Game Master intervention in the round with the purpose of making the round unique. This may or may not be tied to a player's prior request.
Events should generally be restricted to scheduled play sessions, however permission for deviations from this can be requested on a case-by-case basis if the event is deemed to be unsuitable for a scheduled session, but remains suitable for an unscheduled time.
Game Masters can however use the server during off-time (outside of announced unscheduled sessions) to test event ideas out, and develop the necessary techniques to run intricate things which interact on a deep level with the game's systems.
During scheduled sessions, events must be pre-planned and approved by the primary Game Master for the session. A pre-planned event needs to have been considered in terms of the following things: Start condition, end condition, projected departmental impact and mechanics (up to a technical level if necessary).
At most one unplanned event is permitted if the primary Game Master for the session approves of it being ran during the session. These events should be limited to impact at most 6 players in a major way, though this is not an absolute limit and the final discretion on how something should be conducted is reserved to the primary Game Master.
Trial Game Masters cannot approve events, planned or unplanned.

Limited or restricted actions

Certain actions are generally undesirable. This lists those actions, such that it is known these should be avoided.

It is undesirable for ceremonies, court cases or other events to be held on central command which request high attendance, and these should be kept to on-station scenarios during scheduled sessions or unscheduled sessions. This is justified as follows:
- These events (trials, promotions, awards, ...) will place a subset of the players in the spotlight, and will cause other players to feel left out for various reasons, be that inability to attend, not having received the same gesture when they made a similar achievement, or other reasons.
- In the universe of the Umbra Sector, NanoTrasen is a competitive megacorporation and everything NanoTrasen does for its employees has some sort of competitive reasoning behind it. Generally, hosting events like this on Central Command cannot be justified correctly. In a sense, Central Command does not care.
- Events where maximum attendance is invited are generally drawn out long and may be experienced as genuinely boring by players not in the spotlight at the time. Sector Umbra is an open platform focused on allowing the players to explore their own capabilities, and being forced to attend something they may not want to, but must for reasons of social pressure, is not something we consider to fit in that ethos.
It is expected from Game Masters to identify these events before they happen, and to prevent them from happening, explaining to the player why this choice was made.