Rules
1. You cannot puppet NPCs for your own character.
2. You cannot puppet NPCs in situations that deal with your character.
3. You need to have another GM take over or make up a reason to end a puppet or change the subject if your character is brought up in a way that may lead to IC information about your character or plotting for/against your character.
4. You cannot perma-kill other characters (unless with permission from Senior Admin and for a very very good reason. This basically never occurs). You always need to find / try every other possible thing first, and even then, you don't really get to do it. To much room for accusations of abuse from players.
5. You don't read notes about your character.
6. You don't get a choice or a vote in things that happen to your character from the staff side. You are not privvy to any plotting going on on the staff side, in relation to your character.
7. You don't get very much GM attention, unless it's negative.
GMs basically ignore your character (unless they do something like kill someone or someones and we have to send Judges or Gangers or hitmen after them and fuck up your day) because non-GM characters take precedence over alts.
You have to make your own RP when you play your character and not rely on NPCs because you'll almost never get a puppet.
GM alts may find themselves in positions of power IE: judge, high level corporate person, and that is because A. they are trusted as players and B. they can be told they can or cannot do things that a player might be allowed to do, because it would cause too much harm / be bad for RP.
Being a GM and playing a character is like playing Sindome on HARD MODE. You get very little support, you have tons of extra checks and balances in place, your RP is scrutinized by players and staff alike, and at any moment a senior admin might tell you that you can't do something that may be perfectly viable for a regular player.
However it is important to note that no GM alt characters are in positions of power ICly that a regular player could not attain.
I think it's important for all of you folks to know that this stuff is regularly checked and policed. We monitor each other, we ask each other why something was done, what the reasoning was, and much much more. And we keep detailed notes on everything that happens.
In fact, the lack of a note is likely to start a full fledged audit if a GM took an action and didn't record it-- even by accident.
Please keep these things in mind when you worry about GMs abusing their power. The player (and their character) behind the GM has earned any status that they have in the game ICly and they are most likely filling a niche that the game needs, even if you don't see it that way.
Much of the time our hands are tied when it comes to even revealing to a player what is really going on when they have an issue, complaint or conspiracy theory about how they are being wronged.
Most of the time that I've seen blame laid at the feet of one admin or another, their character wasn't even involved, or has shifted their attention away from the situation, often purposefully (from an OOC standpoint) to give players or characters breathing room.
We all want the game to be fun. That doesn't mean that when going up against NPCs you are guaranteed a win. That is 100% not the case. It doesn't mean when going up against an admin-alt that you are guaranteed a win or that the alt is going to pull their punches.
We like playing the game for the same reasons you do-- and we like coming out on top just as much as the next person. However, coming out on top isn't really coming out on top when unless you are using ONLY the tools available to everyone else. It is certainly not as satisfying.
Let me give an example:
I have a python script I wrote for fun that has collected every pokemon in Pokemon Go, and leveled the account up to 27 in only 3 days. The fact that I can create this script and that it allows me to do this, does not mean I have won at Pokemon Go. I might show the script off to friends and be like 'look what I made' but it isn't the same feeling I get when I rush to where my friends say they spotted a Charmander and actually capture it with my phone.
Sure, I could have pointed my script to that location and teleported my fake account over there to capture it-- but what's the fun in that? The GMs could totally kill every player in the game with uber NPCs and unlimited guns and armor when a character messes with their alt, but what is the fun in that?
Hopefully, you all understand where I'm coming from and the point I'm trying to get across. Being a GM is super hard and we do it anyway. When we stop GMing for a bit to grab some RP for ourselves, the last thing we want is for it to be easy, or to augment our RP with wallhax from the GM-side. We want the game to be hard for us, because hard is rewarding.
We rebel against any IC info we got through OOC means, we put our characters in dangerous situations we aren't sure we can escape from just to get the blood pumping. We thread the needle and we don't always survive. That's what makes Sindome so awesome and so fun. The fact that it is so challenging.
Questions?
-- S
