Time of Unparalleled Darkness

So, something to be touched on we didn't in the previous discussion here, so far as I saw:

What do we want to set the expectation of privacy for?

I should preface this with the statement that *everything* is going in the logs, but the people who have access are going to be people whom are vetted.

One example of contrasts though: The Cormyr and Dalelands server has a staunch policy of DMs being not generally permitted to eavesdrop on players in private areas. In Prisoners of the Mists, this has personally happened to me a handful of times I know about, and probably several I don't.

There's merits to both: the former values player comfort as first, the latter allows DMs to generate roleplay out of these things; at the risks of the potential for metagaming.

Personally, I think a good compromise here is for there to be OOC notice if the DM is monitoring something. If the players are doing something they'd rather not have watched, they can ask for them not to and that's fine (unless there's an overruling concern like a report to investigate). If they're fine with it, it's a non-issue.

Thoughts?

Default stance of assured privacy, only infringed upon either by invitation of one or more of the involved parties, seems the easiest and generally most morally acceptable ruleset to enforce. If people are running a private scene and want a DM to intervene, they can ask, but otherwise assume they'd prefer it to be private.

The sole reason I can think for not using this method is the niche scenario of players doing highly evil bullshit behind closed doors that would provoke a Dark Powers check, but in that case they should be seeking a DM for the scene anyway. Logs for everything is fine, archive them and dust them off if/when someone requests it, in the case of a report lodged for some sort of offense.

The possibility of generating spontaneous roleplay is a very distantly appealing subject, but I'm of the opinion that if people are seeking roleplay behind closed doors, they aren't currently looking for that spontaneous roleplay aspect at that point in time.

Ouroboros wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 2:28 pm Default stance of assured privacy, only infringed upon either by invitation of one or more of the involved parties, seems the easiest and generally most morally acceptable ruleset to enforce. If people are running a private scene and want a DM to intervene, they can ask, but otherwise assume they'd prefer it to be private.

The sole reason I can think for not using this method is the niche scenario of players doing highly evil bullshit behind closed doors that would provoke a Dark Powers check, but in that case they should be seeking a DM for the scene anyway. Logs for everything is fine, archive them and dust them off if/when someone requests it, in the case of a report lodged for some sort of offense.

The possibility of generating spontaneous roleplay is a very distantly appealing subject, but I'm of the opinion that if people are seeking roleplay behind closed doors, they aren't currently looking for that spontaneous roleplay aspect at that point in time.

To me personally, there's three situations whereby I'd contemplate broaching the privacy:

1] If the players are doing highly evil stuff, as you say, trying to hide it behind closed doors to avoid OOC consequences like dark powers checks. This would be a rulebreak anyways I'd say, under the general principle of "be a good sport and don't try to cheese out of dealing with the consequences of your actions".

2] If one or more of the players has been reported for questionable content or similar and a DM wants to see if there's any veracity behind the report.

3] If the players have invited the DM (or a DM in general) to participate (in which case I'd argue there's no expectation of privacy to begin with.)

It does arise the question of "what do we do when one participant wants a DM around and the other doesn't" - probably a context-dependent judgement call, then.