CLOK BBS

I've thought a lot about what this post was going to look like, for most of the day. Many iterations passed through my head, but I've ultimately settled on telling a simple truth, and thanking the people who have been awesome along the way.

I quit the game today.

I don't intend to return (or play any future Contrarium games) for a very simple reason, and I don't think I can give out the advice I often do, if I don't follow it myself. Lysse was killed in a CvC incident by Coanid, which didn't have any RP lead up to it, during what I thought was a fun little scene where I was getting to deliver a Dunwyr Warning to someone who will remain unnamed, by someone who didn't initiate RP, didn't deliver a warning, didn't take the time to even speak - simply killed my character in a single shot, to the head from stealth. Coanid then proceeded to follow the person who was trying to recover Lysse's body, and kill them too.

And this is why I can't play anymore - Coanid was given a temporary 5 day ban, for multiple, simultaneous breeches of policy. I can't say for certain who on the Staff's decision it was to be so lenient with someone with (from what I've heard, seeing as I don't know if Lysse and Coanid have ever spoken to one another, they certainly haven't interacted in the last 6 months) a track record of flagrantly disregarding game policy, but my last piece of hope that Clok Staff will Do The Right Thing when it comes to problematic players who don't take the rules seriously, and who aren't interested in building a healthy, kind community, and who simply want to make the game less fun for other people is gone.

When people talk to me about games, about problems they have, the advice I give out the most often, regarding games, is - do not play on a game, if you don't trust the staff. Since that last bit of trust with staff that I had was broken, so too have I shelved my characters, deleted my connection information, am leaving any Clok-adjacent spaces (special shout out to the Circle of Twrgadarn discord server, for being a pretty cool group even after the end of Cogg), and I have no intention of returning due to this.

This was a simple decision, but not an easy one. I started playing Clok as the Udemi Kian, a very long time ago. I kept up with the game, took breaks, came back, "quit" publicly once, quietly left the second time I decided Clok wasn't the place for me, playtested the Somnium project, playtested Early Cogg, and even in my absences and breaks I've generally kept an eye on the forums.

There have been a lot of cool people, over there years, that I've gotten to interact with. Too many to shout out individually. To the people who were good sports, who enjoyed the conflict, and kept things interesting without meta or power gaming: you all rock, and the game would have been a lot more boring without folks like you to fight and argue and RP with.

To the people who reached out to me today in private to reassure me that there's a place for me here if I return - while I know there's a place for me in scenes with folks like y'all, it's become obvious over the months that there is no place for me on the game itself. But I appreciate those kinds words more than I can say.

To the people who found the role I played bothersome: I hope you continue to enjoy the game, and I never wished ill of any of the people OOCly that Lysse came into conflict with, trying to do her job.

I'm going to log off of the forums after I press the submit button, and I have no idea how the staff are going to react to this post - I hope I get at least a fraction of the grace that the disruptive, aggressive, problematic players have been given in the past, and that they leave this post untouched, and I hope folks don't use this thread to argue and bicker (if you want to do that, I'd ask you to start your own thread). But I won't read anything posted here, and I won't read any PMs that are sent to me.

I'm not going to post my discord handle here, but to anyone that wants to reach out to me is welcome to ask around, there's a few people that have it. I simply ask folks don't post my handle in public spaces.




Now, I think I shall take a little time to remember the fond memories, to mourn the cool interactions I never got a chance to have, and then I shall
take my own advice, and look for a better way to spend my free time.

And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvF31-2bVNE

While I have Lysse on Discord, I do want to post here that at least I will miss Lysse. In my 15+ years of roleplaying, I have learned it is hard to be the "villain". It is hard to hold yourself to standards and be held to standards in games where it's so easy for others not to do the same -- be that through griefing, interrupting RP with no RP, cheating by leveling things through bugs without reporting those bugs or simply being unpleasant for no reason other than they can. Perhaps in the absence of Lysse's player, who has been here since the early times, people can take a minute to look at their actions and consider if what they are doing is conducive to a healthy game where people enjoy each other.

I considered leaving because of this, but I'm not going to because I do believe that there is a possibility that the game will not go the way of older versions of CLOK, or Cogg when it became less focused on community. Bad actors suck. Bad actors will always exist. It can be hard to be an admin dealing with bad actors. But I do hope that we don't lose more people over incidents like this, where RP was ruined by an instance of someone having no RP to add and only a negative to give.

So I will miss Lysse. I hope others will too.