Leader Courtesy

Being a Faction Head sucks. That's the conventional wisdom of many, many players in MU games, and the burnout rate for leaders of factions tends to be pretty extreme. We all want to make it suck less for them, and also make it fun for everyone below them, so here's a few things for both faction heads and anyone under a leader of an @organization to keep in mind.

1. OOCly inactive leaders should never be RP'd as a bad leader. There's a huge, world of difference between someone that intentionally declines to get involved in anything, says why they won't get involved, and someone that just doesn't have time for it. We never, ever want any leader chided, ICly or OOCly, for being busy or even just being inactive. Yes, it's wonderful if they are active. We really hope they are. But the way to get people to play pretendy fun times and enjoy themselves more and want to be here is not to tell them that they suck because they aren't. Do not do this. And especially do not imply a leader needs to be replaced because of this, that's what voices are for.

2. Voices need to be used. Leaders of any org -must- have them, and ICly, they need to be treated with the same respect and deference of the leader. These aren't thematically just respected advisors- they are plenipotentiaries who have the full authority to make any decision the leader could, save the appointing of new voices and the like. Otherwise, unless someone needs to have a scene about an issue with the voice themselves or potentially the leader, there should never be a time when a player is saying, 'No, I don't want to speak to a voice, I need to speak to a leader'. That artificially increases the work load of a player and overwhelms them, and thematically there's no reason to do that when a voice is empowered with the full authority of the rank 1 of an organization.

3. Excessive criticism and gossip. The lack of empathy shown for players running leader characters can be a little mindboggling. There's a very rare player that might enjoy logging into seeing 30 messengers about how they are the worst human being that's ever been a leader because of some trivial detail they barely had something to do with. That shit burns out leaders incredibly fast, so please don't. If there's a clear grievance that prevents a story from moving forward, sure, fine. But if it's just wanting to snark about some random far reaching decision and try to ruin their fun, just don't. It doesn't make for good rp basically ever.

4. Unreasonable expectations that a leader is there to entertain them. Like a leader should never stand in the way of RP or a story, unless the reason is pretty damned compelling. But they also don't really carry a responsibility to make sure everyone below them is involved in the story. If they do this we are ecstatic, but it's not really their job. Someone is not a bad leader just because they aren't relentlessly pursuing someone and making sure they having fun, and it shouldn't be RP'd that way.

Now, on the flip side, for leaders:

1. Never block someone's RP without an extremely compelling reason. It shouldn't just be, 'maybe we'll possibly get a better deal, in some vague, undefined future and this is why you can't do that story you really wanna do.' That is dumb. Never, ever stand in the way of someone's stories unless they would clearly bring harm to the rest of the org in a very clearly defined way that can be justified to the playres.

2. Don't tell anyone who they can't RP with. Just don't. I don't care if they are the enemy, unless they are actively plotting against you, this is a horrible precedent.

3. All characters below must be given reasonable support. Never take away anything's fun without an extremely compelling reason. The Sword of the House is mostly inactive and not RPing that much? Can't take away the position, same reason we can't have faction heads called bad leaders for being inactive. It's great if they are involved, but unless someone is falling into the range of where we'd yank a character for anyone, we rp around them, we don't punish them, assuming their characters are being very useful offscreen.

It's pretty simple guys, if the answer to, 'Would this piss me off if I was in their shoes oocly' is 'yes', then please don't do it.