Your Admin(s) Takes Care of You -- Take Care of Them!

This is a frequent problem: Most ageplay group administrators aren't tops. There are exceptions, of course, but most of us are bottoms.

When you join a group, especially if you are one of the first members, the administrator is probably playing one or more adults in the group. This is done in order to help to attract people to the group and to keep things moving forward. It is not because the administrator is a top and/or enjoys topping. Chances are very good that your administrator has an inner child of her own who is important to her, and that she would enjoy the opportunity to play that inner kid in the group. Most of the time she won't until there are other adults, and thankfully they tend to come along fairly quickly.

I want you to think about how hard your administrator(s) works to make the group a good place for you. If she takes the time to discipline your inner kid, or if she creates threads for your inner child to play in, or promotes your characters to other group members, or spends hours answering your questions, please express some gratitude for the things that she has chosen to do for you.

After years of doing this job, I've seen it time after time; members join with their needs and their agenda and they push themselves to the head of the line so that the staff team has to pay attention to meeting their needs instead of taking care of their [the staff's] inner kids. 

One of the things that we've tried at Birchwood Isle Family Discipline RPG is having every single member create both a child and an adult character before being allowed to play. While we've since abolished this policy, it may be about to make a comeback.

Most of our members believe that we do this in order to balance the adults with the children, or to offset the potentially large numbers of IKs that come into ageplay groups. However, our reasoning is vastly different; we want our members to know what it is like to feel the strain of incredibly demanding inner kids.

Remember when playing that selfishness is absolutely rampant in this community. There are always going to be players who want to push their own agendas and who wish to go from one spanking to another and on to the next without much of a pause in between. While this is appropriate for some groups, the vast majority aren't favorable to this kind of bratty behavior. Your acceptance and understanding of the needs of the staff who work hard to keep your favorite sites going goes a long way to making you one of the best literate ageplayers that the staff has seen. 

My co-admin and I are fond of saying that we want our members to perform for us. We are much more likely to want to play with members who entertain us, and will always work hard to keep contributors entertained as well. The more you do for the staff of your site, chances are the more they'll do for you!

When There's Not Enough Adult to Go Around

I've been running age play and spanking groups for over fifteen years now. While I've loved every minute of it, the fact is that no matter how well run the group is, at some point there simply are not enough adults to go around. In the year and a half that Birchwood Isle has been open, I've learned a lot about the strain that is placed on group managers to provide the number of adults necessary to maintain a group while still keeping up with a high level of role play and quality discipline.

Over the past year and a half that we've been running our group, my co-admin and I have learned to be very reliant on one another. Members come and go, and when it comes to finding long-term placements for long-term kids, we often try to put them with our own adults in order to ensure lasting placements. This means that if we feel that a child character has "staying power" they usually find a quick home in a family that is controlled by one or both of us.

The problem arises when we begin to realize that not only are our own child characters getting flushed out in this process, but that we cannot possibly maintain a high level of quality in our discipline and parenting when we're taking care of dozens of (external) children ourselves. Our goal as admins should never to be to totally avoid the other members of our sites in order to play with one another, but instead to find a balance that allows everyone involved to make the most of their play time and helps the members and the admins to get the most enjoyment out of the game.

Our current solution to this problem is to actively seek adults before we take on any more children. With the two of us running the two children's homes on the island and being in control of roughly two dozen entire families between us, we desperately need help. At the moment our strategy is to put out advertisements looking for adults to fill the roles that we have available and then to accept those applications which look good to us. Hopefully if we can build solid cooperation and a team of people truly willing to work with the kids (and not just who create adults to buy more kids), we will have a group that works together to make this the best experience for everyone involved.

For right now, if you're interested in applying to play an adult character at Birchwood Isle, please click here.

What kinds of solutions do you have to your problems as an admin? Do you have ideas to help solve the problem of too few adults in a group with too many kids?

You've Received a Correction... How You Respond Matters!

As a member of a role playing group, it is very likely that at some point, you will receive correction from the administrator or moderators. When this happens, the way that you respond to the staff is very important to what happens next!

Let us use my example of metagaming, since I've been talking so much about that recently. The administrator of your age play rpg has just come to you in a private message and has asked you to please refrain from characterizing characters you don't own. She cites specific examples of how you are doing this. Maybe you've mentioned that John is a great fisherman or that Sara can't really sew all that well (even though she's been making her own clothes for years).

The conversation might go something like this:

ADMIN: "There have been some complaints about how you said that Sara can't sew very well. It's bothering a few people. This is considered metagaming because you're changing a character without the permission of the person who owns that character."

YOU: "Oh. I hadn't really realized that I was doing that. I'm really sorry. I'll double-check my posts next time."

This is the right way to go about receiving a correction. No feelings need to be hurt in this case, and life goes on.

However, if the conversation goes like this, then you must understand that you are probably lining yourself up for disappointment:

ADMIN: "There have been some complaints about how you said that Sara can't sew very well. It's bothering a few people. This is considered metagaming because you're changing a character without the permission of the person who owns that character."

YOU: "Well Sara messed up that outfit that she made for Patty. So she can't really sew."

ADMIN: "But that isn't really up to you to decide, is it? Would you like it if the person who plays Sara decided that your character Greg was really clumsy? Or a bad basketball player? Or that he couldn't swim?"

YOU: "That's not what I'm doing. Sara messed up that outfit for Patty. Remember?"

ADMIN (getting frustrated): "Yes, I do remember that. But I'm asking you to please stop doing it. Sara's keeper gets to decide what her talents are, not you. She may have improved her sewing ability since then, or it might have been a one time mistake. Stop doing it. I'm asking you to stop doing it."

YOU: "Okay."

I assume at this point that you can see how an administrator might be frustrated with this conversation, and might be telling themselves in the back of their mind that they need to watch this person for metagaming in the future, because it could be an ongoing problem and the player may need to be more forcefully (physically) corrected with a temporary ban or moderated posts if they are available.

Interestingly, in the first case I, as an admin, would be more likely to give the person more chances than in the first case, because it's obvious that they understand that they did something wrong and they are going to try to correct it. We currently have a member at Foster Forest who consistently does this, and this person is a pleasure to have around and is not at risk of further discipline at all because they are genuinely trying to work with us.

Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that the member in the second example will often continue to exhibit the same behavior with whatever the original problem was. In one case we had someone who was bratting in the extreme, and we had to correct them. This person's response to correction was so bad that their response itself got them banned.

The key factor here is to be gracious. The administrators of your group work their tail ends off to bring you the best group they can. That means keeping negativity and drama out of the group whenever possible. It means taking care of fairly large numbers of sensitive people, and trying to do so diplomatically. It means doing unpleasant things, like handling the correction of adults who should know that following the rules is a requirement of the game.

Show the staff of your group respect. This is imperative. Respecting the staff of your group may make the difference between receiving a private and a public correction (because sometimes having "witnesses" is a good thing) and it might make the difference in whether or not you find yourself getting banned.

Accept correction gracefully. If you don't understand what you're being corrected for, ask. If you're still confused, ask for another person to explain it to you. Most groups have more than one staff member and we all communicate differently. There is no shame in asking!

Metagaming is about PEOPLE, not THINGS

You cannot metagame an object; you can only metagame a person. If you have made actions for or changed the personality of a character not of your own creation, then you are metagaming. At Foster Forest Family Role Play, this could result in a ban.

The reason I'm bringing this up today is because one of our members asked the question of whether or not it is considered metagaming to find scrap around the community compound.

Obviously the simple answer is that "no," it is not, because in order to be metagaming, one would have to be acting on behalf of, or characterizing, a character not belonging to them. Since the objects have no ability to act independently and have no personality, this is not metagaming.

In the case of my specific example (which I gave yesterday in my article about metagaming), the individual who was causing the problems adjusted the personality of at least two entire families to reflect their own needs so that their thread would work.

Metagaming is never okay, and the majority of groups have some kind of a policy against it. However, object placement for convenience may be a different story, depending on the group that you are in.

In the case of Foster Forest, we allow limited object placement. For example, one new member changed the entire structure of the main house at Foster Forest (and was asked to redo their arrival thread as a result). This type of behavior is not okay. However, getting into the scrap wood pile (which does exist) and digging out some boards is acceptable.

The important thing here is this: When in doubt, ask. If you are visiting the Williams house and you need to use the clothes line, why don't you ask first if there is one instead of making an assumption that could be upsetting to the person who lives in that home? It might take a bit longer, but you are virtually guaranteed not to get into trouble over it!

The Admin Said I Metagamed! Wait... What?

So the admin of your favorite role playing site has told you that you've metagamed, and you've been given a warning that if you do it again, you could be banned! But what is metagaming, and why is it such a bad thing? How do you know if you've metagamed? What should you do if you realize that you've done it?

Metagaming refers to one member writing for a character that they are not logged into or, more importantly, do not play.

If you are new to role playing, or if you've been in the ageplay role playing community for a while, you might not know what metagaming is. It's not a word used outside of the role playing community, and the term most often used in the ageplay community is "power play" (which is incorrect and which I will address in a later post).

Here is an example: I play Peter Grisson at Foster Forest Family Role Play. He is an artistic type, often brooding, not always thinking through everything that he says or does. He loves women. Lots and lots of women. He is fastidiously tidy, health conscious and a great cook. He gets totally absorbed in his work when he's painting, but he is a wonderful and loving father.

Two members of Foster Forest decided that Peter was pretty stupid, mainly because he's always lost in his own world and doesn't always remember names particularly well. They played the game of continually poking at his intelligence until one of them finally got bored. But the other found that it was humorous, and continued to do this for a very long time (to the point that it was annoying not only to me but to other members). Later on, this same member made a post suggesting that Peter had chosen to leave an area of his home untidy enough that there were usable items left outside the house (on the porch or lawn). Peter would never, ever do this. This is a clear example of metagaming.

The previous paragraph is a true example of something that happened recently on Foster Forest. A temporary ban was implemented as a result of this behavior due to the fact that the member was a persistent metagamer who had been corrected on several occasions.


So why is metagaming bad? You have a story that you want to tell, and you need a specific situation in order to make that story happen. Why can't you use somebody else's character as a vehicle to make your story happen, as in the example above?

The answer is pretty simple: Because you don't know that character as well as the person who created them.

Returning to my previous example, Peter wasn't as stupid as he was coming across to other members. This might have been poor writing on my part, or it could be that his apparent absentmindedness was a vehicle that I was using for his own character. I know my characters better than anybody else does. I know what they would do. I know who can cook, who's a bad driver, which ones are strict, which ones are pushovers. Just as you know your own characters best, I know mine best.

The golden rule applies here: Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. If you prefer not to have someone else decide how your character thinks and acts, don't metagame somebody else's character!

Is metagaming ever okay?

Yes, sometimes. If I am logged into Peter's account and I need for Toby to make a small action, I might metagame Toby. If I am playing Peter and he is in an argument with Kevin, I can ask Kevin's keeper if it's okay with her if I make a minor action for Kevin.

Let me make it clear that this only pertains to Foster Forest. If you are in another role playing group, their metagaming rules might be entirely different. However, I would like to point out that metagaming is always seriously frowned upon in role play circles.

Metagaming is when you post actions for another character other than the one you are playing yourself. It is generally frowned upon and at Foster Forest, it may get you banned. 

If you need more help understanding metagaming, you can also view this post.