Trial 2 Postmortem

[faentasy]

Hello everyone! This week, one of the cases in Once Upon has ended in a scapegoat result. As this is a scapegoating game, we do expect this as a possibility for any case, but upon reflection, we do feel that we as mods have contributed to this result in the way we have mishandled certain situations during the course of the trial and investigation.

For example, there were multiple points where we had given out evidence incorrectly, which affected how certain parts of the case would be interpreted. Due to that, you guys lost precious time for discussion since you needed to wait for corrections. Furthermore, we understand that the instructions for voting were confusing and alarming to hear particularly at the end of the trial, which made an already stressful situation worse. Lastly, we also acknowledge that we as a moderating team have the responsibility of making sure that all cases are fair for all players and that ultimately, the buck stops at us. The moderator team of Once Upon apologizes profusely for our mistakes and will take measures to avoid making those same mistakes in the future.

We also want to make it clear and reassure players that due to the issues mentioned above, all the abstains were specifically counted for SQ, as having Yeager scaped for this case would be unfair. In future cases, we will be moving forward with a simple 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. majority to decide voting results and not counting abstains.

In addition, we would also like to leave this space as a place for feedback about the cases so far. Please feel free to discuss with us any concerns and thoughts that you may have, because we want to make this game an enjoyable experience for everyone. Please don't hesitate to be honest, especially if it helps the game improve. We as a mod team are here to listen and take into account your feedback.

By default the incoming comments are screened, however, if you'd like your comment to be unscreened please feel free to note it in your post and we will get it done right away.

Thank you very much for your time, and thank you for playing in Once Upon.

Comments

[amortristis]

I think moving forward there should probably be a bit more of a push to keep the trial discussion mostly IC - I think a large part of the issue also stemmed from OOCly falling down the rabbit hole of what hand did what in what direction, which I think also ate a considerable amount of time for something that, in my experience, hasn’t really helped decide a culprit beyond splitting hairs. So I definitely think a push for things to go IC or a "hey this is super inconsequential" like Luna suggested would probably help a bunch.

The fact that this all was on Discord too runs the risk of alienating players - not everyone is constantly present enough, or has the stress of trying to juggle their own case with several different platforms, and it makes it seem more integral to knowing what's going on in the game than has been explicitly stated prior.

Thank you guys for your hard work so far! This has been a good time. Feel free to unscreen.

[faentasy]

Hello Pom, and thank you for your feedback! We definitely agree on the whole "discussion should be done IC" thing instead of on Discord or through OOC channels because like you said, it does leave some players out of the loop. We'll be more vigilant about this happening from now on and we'll gently nudge players to theorize more ICly instead of in chat.