Feedback on Two Recent GM Interactions

[EveK]

So Game Master Dorxenore followed up on the second issue (no idea if he was the one that copy/pasted the first two responses or not). While I'm glad that I at least had someone speak to me about it, I admit I still feel the situation merits some additional review. Mind you, I don't know any of the parties involved. It's just weird that something like this is being mishandled; I find myself wondering how many very similar incidents elsewhere are similarly mishandled and think that perhaps this presents a significant training opportunity when it comes to GM policies/procedures.

The two completely separate issues that happened to happen on the same day for comparison were basically identical. Different people, different channels. But the crux of the matter was the same: a troll was being inexcusably verbally abusive. In both cases, there was a specific person the troll was speaking to at that moment but the hate speech that followed in each case was in a public channel with a large audience.

I feel like Elrindonar correctly identifies the situation as language inexcusable in a public channel, regardless of who specifically they theoretically intend to speak to or which particular giant portion of the world's population they direct their bigotry/hatred towards.

Dorxenore, on the other hand - again, with all due respect - rather fervently interpreted the activity as unactionable solely because the report was coming from someone in the channel other than the one most directly attacked. This would only make sense to me if the harrassment exclusively insulted that one person. In both of these cases, though, the hate speech had the added bonus of also being derogatory towards an entire race (in one case) and gender (in the other). Not to mention blatantly violating any remotely reasonable standard on obscenity (and most definitely one for a game rated for ages 13 and up).

I mean, if a hateful statement is made against a specific religion, for instance, do I need to specifically round up a member of that religion and say "You, sir! You must personally report this because YOU are the one they're talking about." Of course not. Likewise if a gender, race, lifestyle, whatever is being attacked. The entire fundamental point of this policy is that we are one species of humans and that it is fundamentally wrong to be hateful towards humans, no matter what crazy criteria a bigot decides stratifies us.

[Kaze3434]

snip
Not to mention blatantly violating any remotely reasonable standard on obscenity (and most definitely one for a game rated for ages 13 and up).

while i agree with pretty much everything you are saying, this point has no bearing on anything, as the game itself is rated teen, but the interactions with other people are not rated at all. just about all games that have online interactions with other people have somewhere in game, or on box that says online interactions are not rated by ESRB.