Proposal - DM Management/Communication Tools

[Blaze]

A few days ago there was an event at Bridgefort hosted by DM Honk, if it wasn't for discord we would never have been able to do it, especially with two different factions involved.

Tarina is handling that discord perfectly, with a page dedicated to the important things where players can't spam like a random chat. I'll add that it is possible to schedule events with date and time, which has already been used by Summerbreeze in the DM Screen Discord.

The problem is to automatically deny any approach other than forum, which I find wrong and in a few days the evil/DH team apparently seems to have organized itself thanks to discord, not forum. The forum is useful as a large library where to have knowledge, information, scheduling is clearly superior on discord, without doubts

[Rask]

On another note:
Please remember that the DMs are not your DMs. Nor are they your team. DMs and all of staff are here for the players and server first and foremost. Your statement smells of absolutism, and is exactly the kind of thing that also cause burnout among both players and staff. If staff collectively decides they want to make use of time management tools, then that is their decision. You don't get to, as you put it, force staff to go with one option or another or none at all.

Hello Zhazz,

I am following this discussion and I just wanted to clarify something about this bit. I'll give you my impression as a fresh ADM, under no circumstance I felt like the HDM wanted to force anything on me nor the others of the team, on the contrary, HDM Ghost wants us to be as free and independent as possible in what we do.

I'd rather not have him depicted as some sort of hyper controlling and harsh boss, he is not, he is always great with all of us.

I'm fine with players giving their feedback and offering their ideas on what could be done to make things better, I just wanted to make you all know that the HDM has never made us feel forced to do or not do anything.

Just going to chime in here as former HDM who worked along side ghost as well.

Ghost is one of the most hardworking DM's on the team, and there is A LOT on the plate of an HDM that not everyone sees, speaking from experience.

Ghost and I were both the hands-off type, we put through a LOT of changes on the back end that players dont see that went a long ways toward making DM's way more independent and allowing them to make a lot of their own decisions without constantly needing HDM oversight. Ghost is not in any way the controlling type and I have no idea where the idea that he is comes from. We both were very much of the same mind on these things. If we cant trust a DM on the team, then they shouldn't be on the team. Trust until we are given a reason not to trust is the best way to go about it.

As for the other parts of this topic:

As the DM/HDM that originally came up with, and put together the DM Screen Discord which Rhifox then jumped in and helped a TON with, and now has taken over, it was always considered OPTIONAL. It is not something we ever wanted to force anyone to use. I agree that it is super helpful for DM's and I used it all the time for many of the reasons stated in this very thread as well, but we must understand every DM/HDM are different in what they are comfortable with doing and using for communication. It is just easier to make the forum the "official" communication device, but it doesn't mean we cant post stuff on the forum, then use the discord to also announce an event. There is an announcement and planning tool built into the bot in the DM Screen that works really well for this, and it is also open for players to use, not just DM's.

The forums are far better for record keeping of events though, so I would not really see going from one thing, to another. It's far better to have both, with the forum as the main record keeping platform.

Our DM team is a group of the most fun, competent people I have had the pleasure of dealing with. I count each and every one of them some of my absolute favourite people in this community. They gained their positions for a reason. It is always good to remember and keep in mind the all DM's are giving their valuable time to this place for free, with no payment at all. It is voluntary completely, and if people are not friendly to them, they will all burn out eventually. Constructive criticism with suggestions for a solution are valuable, but I cannot say I disagree with Ghost. The constant barrage of negativity is a real thing that DM's see and deal with on a regular basis and it can range from frustrating, to straight up heartbreaking when someone puts a lot of effort, time and work into something only to receive negativity as a response. I love all of ya but please please send some positivity the teams way once and a while too.