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Why I Am Stepping Away From BattleMaster - posted on Thu Mar 3 at 21:13:34 by Ethan Lee Vita

For the last couple years, the game has begun to shift more and more in a direction I do not recognize as BattleMaster. I think Gildre was the first to see this shift in values away from the values that once attracted us to this game and community, but its taken myself longer to recognize the same. He wrote of too much of the game being in discord, not liking that metaplay, missing ingame surprises instead of being seen discussed on discord, and feeling like he was part of an old boys club, that he tried to remedy these, but found "stone walled resistance", which reinforced his decision to go.

I didn't realize it until I was writing this message, reviewing notes I'd made of various thoughts these last few weeks, but my experience echoes his. Over that time, several volunteers and I have tried to address those issues and more, to no avail. The last few months I've recognized a deep burnout within myself after November. There comes a time when one asks oneself how much energy and stress should go into a hobbyist community game for little result. For most of the last decade, BattleMaster has been my escape from stress, but it was recently I recognize that BattleMaster had become the stress.

I love this game and community dearly, it has been regular part of my life for a significant portion of my life. More than half of my life. I grew up with this game and grew as a person because of Tom and many other players here. Out of respect for this game and its community, I do not want to get into the dirty laundry of specific issues, and there are aspects of concern I don't address here because I didn't feel capable of balancing the measure of my words, but I also think the community needs to know why volunteers and players are becoming disillusioned and not have it swept under the rug; navigating this line seems like trying to thread a heavy chain through the eye of a needle.

The game has shifted from being one where your hand was not held, there were consequences for ones ingame actions, a sandbox to play within, spontaneity of roleplay, dynamic wars to one of handholding, insulated from consequences, metaplay, preconceived roleplays, and war declaration rules-lawyering bureaucracy. Gildre spoke of an 'old boys club' when he left, and I struggled with that one, still do even, but at the same time, I have begun to see how some players have been given more opportunity and leniency than other players, sometimes even the opposite standard, and that is not right. I can no longer in good conscience claim that discord moderation is applied consistently and fairly, be okay with having secret developers because they want to avoid players who don't like them knowing they are developing code (or having developers with a history of moderation issues), or represent what BattleMaster has become and is becoming.

I do not plan to become entirely absent, though I will probably maintain a distance for some time. I will still be around the Lemuria Community, but I cannot in good conscience stand by and be part of what is happening. This isn't about the wider community, but about that part of the community involving the game.

Please, if you're going to raise these topics for discussion, do so from a position of love for this community, not being right. You are responsible for the community you create.