What To Do When You've Made A Mistake

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Melissa
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What To Do When You've Made A Mistake

Post by Melissa »

A number of situations in the last year plus talking to some friends from a different LARP have had me reflecting on various poor RP choices I have seen, experienced directly, or committed myself over the years.

So experienced LARPers here, let's talk about being uncomfortable. Let's talk about how to make things right when you've done something that was Very Not Fun for someone else, and it has been pointed out to you. We're all going to make mistakes sometime, we are all human and communication is imperfect. I would love to hear everyone's tips here. I have my own thoughts, but I'll put those in a post rather than the OP.

How do you apologize? How do you address the problem? What are some steps to take? How to form an agreement or better yet, an ongoing communication to keep it from happening again? What do you do when you think your actions were legitimate, but they're upset regardless? How do you deal with two people remembering a scene differently? Human memory is deeply fallible and there may be no way to confirm what actually happened.

Thoughts?
I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

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Melissa
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Re: What To Do When You've Made A Mistake

Post by Melissa »

So, now I've got some time to sit down and write a bit.

The first step, for me, is to determine how badly I have fucked up. Is it a minor point correctable with an apology? Is it big enough that I should have staff be a go-between because they don't want to talk to me at all? Is it contentious enough that it should be settled in person with a mediator?

That determines the path forward. But, for most things, the playbook for me is pretty simple. Note: This is something I have arrived at mostly by trial and error and NOT following the steps below. This method works okay, but it won't work in all scenarios. This works best for IC actions that were not fun for the other person.

1. Determine I have done something that may not be fun for someone else.

2. Ask them if it was fun or not, make it clear I am interested in knowing their honest answer. It's best to give options here so they know that I'm willing to change outcomes depending on their answer, such as "would you prefer we work out a way to drop this conflict?" or "Would you like me to avoid RPing with you for a while/until you tell me otherwise?"

3. Listen. Then, apologize if necessary, and say "what would you like to have happen moving forward?"

4. Figure out if their answer is workable for you. Sometimes it won't be. See if you can compromise, or negotiate. If they are adamant and you are also adamant, it may be time to bring in staff to help mediate a compromise. But very often, this scenario can be resolved with "Please drop aggressive RP and avoid me for a while", which is reasonable in almost every scenario.

5. Discuss what they want from the game. What are they interested in? What are they NOT interested in? How can we avoid this happening in the future? Are there concrete steps that can be taken to keep this from happening?

6. Jointly log the resolution with staff. They can keep plots from throwing you together if that was part of your decision and it also provides recourse should something go wrong.

Sometimes, the conflict is such that it's driven by a misunderstanding OOC that needs to be addressed. Sometimes huge arguments can blow up IC because two players had very different ideas of a point of setting that both characters would absolutely know. Those aren't really anyone's fault, and those misunderstandings should be communicated to staff both for a ruling on which person is correct in this game, AND to include the clarification in the wiki or on the forums. If one person is misunderstanding something, there are likely more.

My take on it is this: the rules provide basic resolution techniques. They outline clear standards of cheating and interactions of powers. But a whole lot of not fun or antisocial behaviors just aren't covered by the rules. Just because there isn't a rule about it doesn't mean the behavior is right or okay. It is reasonable and normal for people to have emotional bleed and feel negative emotions about things that happened in character. It is reasonable and normal for people to sometimes want to keep the situations that caused those emotions from happening again.

There are going to be gray areas. There are going to be places where both people are subjectively right. There are going to be places where two people walk away from a negotiation unsatisfied. There are also going to be times when there is no gray area, and someone has truly fucked up in a very direct and clear way.
I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

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Ted
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Re: What To Do When You've Made A Mistake

Post by Ted »

One time, in the days of SCM around 2005 or so, I made a huge mistake.

Game was in Campbell at that point and I was playing the Ventrue Primogen, and in general I kind of kept the Ventrue domain at the time private, with a few guests at a time. One time, it got very crowded, so my Primogen got nervous at the crowd and declared the domain was shut down to guests and kicked out all non-Ventrue.

Then someone who got kicked out said, "Ted, you just kicked everyone out into the rain." It was the only game gathering spot that had roof covering. I hadn't even considered it until he'd said it. I was barely aware it was raining.

I felt awful. I announced an apology after game and made sure not to do it again.

I didn't break any in-game or out-of-game rules. I did it because it was in-character for my character, my character had the authority to do it, et cetera. It was still a total dick move, though very inadvertent.

There wasn't really a fix, except to apologize (once, clearly, without trying to make people take care of me about it) and sincerely avoid it in the future.
Qerans Seadie (3BR). Creature - Zombie Shaman. 1BBB, T, Sacrifice a player: Put a +1/+1 counter on one of that land is trandor.

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