Communal NPC Account

[gabriel]

Proposal:

We create an account for the purpose of playing the more important, longer lasting NPC characters. This account would be communal and the password would be made available to the registered members of AE.

[Suji]

I don't think this is a good idea. Or at least, I don't think there is much payoff for the possible and likely headache that will ensue. For example, even if everyone is trusted to play nicely and fairly with the NPC account, two people might accidentally try to log-in or post at the same time. It can take some time to post sometimes and while usually Proboards is pretty stable so that you can hit the "back" button and be fine, it seems like it would be a problem that we'd be more likely to run into than not.

And, that's assuming that everyone plays nicely. I'm opposed to having the actually "admin" account being open to whoever gets voted as Administrator, and this just seems to be a worse extension of that. At least it's pretty clear that someone deemed "trustworthy" (I'd doubt if anyone other than Gabriel was ever chosen, for example) will always have that account info. In this case, any person that registers on AE could have the ability to delete posts by NPCs.

I don't think most people would do that, but given this site's history (or rather, the history that spawned it), I don't think it's outside the realm of consideration if and when people get into arguments, drama-battles, whatever. Especially considering that anyone can register and create an account (it's not exactly like you can do an Internet-forum background check on people), it's impossible to tell if someone that could be accepted as a general member can also be trusted to behave when they have access to communal site property, and, in that sense, the ability to erase or alter content written by a wide range of other people on the site.

Personally, just because I might not mind playing with someone doesn't mean I'd want them to have the ability to screw with any of my hardwork. In fact, a communal NPC account that everyone had access to would be something I would avoid using, and if it was mandatory, would probably deter me from using lasting NPCs (rather than just drafting them as characters or something). It's not even about whether or not I think people would mess with my writing now -- but people recruited in the future could, and there is no way to hedge your bets against that, other than to not participate.

Lastly, I'm not quite sure what problem this would alleviate. I'm of the mind that if something can be made better it should, but I don't know if there is actually a problem with the current NPC situation. Furthermore, I don't know if any problem with the NPC situation would warrant the risk in the probable event of frustrating though non-malicious issues (trying to post at the same time), let alone the less probable but certainly more unsettling prospect of the havoc that someone could cause with a communal account -- someone that isn't elected, voted on, etc.

I guess this is supposed to address PC post counts raising for NPC use? In which case, we could just have every "long-running" NPC have their own account, to be clearly stated as an NPC from the start (or PCs that become NPCs are switched). Then it would be up to anyone who originally created them to give out the password to people they don't mind playing the NPC, deciding if they are communal, or private. The downside here would be inflating the members list without really representing that many members, though I'm not sure if that's actually a problem -- members lists always felt like arbitrary ways to measure sites anyway. On the other hand, that adds another level of bureaucracy to everything.

[Dean]

I'm with Suji. The post that are made as NPC's are important (Otherwize, why have NPC's?) and granting access to anyone is a big risk. Plus, as far as the NPC's that I'm in the prosess of making goes, I alreasy know how, why, and what they react to, and I dont really want anyone else to be able to post as them without asking or me knowing.