Staff & Admin Overview

In our community, it is possible to report players if a rule is broken. As a staff team, we believe transparency is key to a healthy community. Therefore, we have a separate section full of information and rules in how we handle tickets and our expectations of the community when it comes to player reports.

At StrayRP, we have a host of staff and admins available to support the community. Our philosophy is to support the community through fair and consistent enforcement, not rule against it. Each staff member has their own specific focus and role meant to support our players, whether it’s through tickets or through roleplay.

We utilize both external and internal resources to enhance staff quality and our service to our players. While we acknowledge that staff members can make mistakes, like our players, we aim to act in good faith while maintaining accountability.

As a staff team, we strive to maintain a safe community while being consistent. We reserve the right to remove any member who displays toxicity, breaks rules, or consistently causes harm to fellow roleplayers through negative interactions, thereby negatively impacting the community in the long term. Staff also reserves the right to pre-emptively ban and blacklist players who have previously displayed problematic behavior within the roleplay community when supported by clear evidence of prior harmful behavior.

Staff reserve the right to interpret and enforce rules based on context, intent, and impact. Not all situations can be covered explicitly in the rulebook, and staff decisions may account for circumstances beyond written examples.

Our admin & staff team has two primary goals:

• To facilitate roleplay

• To protect roleplayers

  
  

Method & Quick Guidelines

• You cannot be punished twice for the same incident. Once a ticket is resolved and a punishment is served, that specific case is closed. However, your past rule breaks may still be considered when determining severity, not as a separate punishment.

• Staff are expected to stay on-topic and professional when handling tickets.

• Staff must remain neutral, avoid taking sides based on friendships or OOC relationships, and recuse themselves from tickets where they are personally involved in the conflict.

• Both staff and players are expected to be mindful that we are all working on one big story together.

• Staff are expected to focus first on understanding and correcting rule breaks (education, guidance, mediation), not jumping straight to the harshest punishment.

Our Player Report Philosophy

Ticket burnout and OOC bleed are often very real issues in roleplay communities that frequently harm roleplay, stories, and communities. These issues are contributed to by both players and the staff team.

To mitigate the impact of these issues from the player side, StrayRP staff have adopted a “Last Resort” player report philosophy, where players are expected to communicate directly with other players when rule breaks may have occurred before resorting to a player report. Failure to attempt reasonable communication before reporting may result in the report being dismissed.

Staff have outlined our expectations for player reports, as well as a basic approach to resolving roleplay issues with other players. Additionally, behavior such as revenge reporting or lying in player reports will be subject to severe reprimands, with staff having clear requirements for evidence and reporting to discourage such behaviors. Revenge reporting includes situations where a player submits a report primarily to get back at someone for an IC conflict or a past ticket, rather than to address a real rule break.

The other side of the issues of ticket burnout and OOC bleed, of course, is the staff team, with the most pressing contributing factors being intentional and unintentional personal biases, as well as inconsistent application of server rules between different admins. To address these issues, StrayRP has implemented a ticket handling process that aims to mitigate these issues by ensuring no one admin determines rule breaks or punishments and all decisions are reviewed by Management Team for consistency when needed.

Moreover, players are not brought into staff discussions unless it is determined that a rule break has been demonstrated; at that point, they will be allowed to respond. Reported players will get a chance to respond if staff believes there is enough evidence for a rule break.

Once staff determine there is sufficient evidence that a rule break may have occurred, the reported player will be contacted, informed of the concern, and given a chance to explain their perspective before a final decision is made. The final results of tickets that move through the entire ticket handling process will have all player information turned into a transcript through our ticket bot.

Ticket transcripts are visible to staff/management only and are not shared publicly.

Disciplinary Process

StrayRP is all about playing together, not against each other. We strive to build a community that enjoys roleplay while providing the best scenes out of passion and investment in the story, not because of the possibility of being banned.

Punishments, disciplinary, appeals, and educational actions will be decided by the handling staff member, with management review when necessary for consistency. This can range from referrals to our roleplay guides over warnings, up to permanent bans in extreme circumstances. The protection of a fair, safe, and engaging roleplay environment is our top priority.

Concerns regarding staff not handling tickets in a fair and reasonable manner will always be heard. Tickets can always be viewed by Management upon request.

When You Report &
What To Keep In Mind

Please read all of the information provided below before completing the report form.

All player reports must contain supporting evidence and a clear description of a rule break. Player reports that lack evidence or do not clearly demonstrate a rule break may be dismissed without review, so please ensure all relevant information is included in your player report.

When providing evidence, evidence should provide as much context for the roleplay as possible (e.g., clipping as much as possible before and after the rule break). Programs like Medal allow 5 minutes of clipping for free, which is a reasonable amount to include in a staff report. If a player presents a scene inaccurately in an attempt to have another player punished, this will be considered a misuse of the ticket system, and they themselves may receive punitive action.

All player reports must be submitted within 72 hours of the rule break. Except in rare cases (e.g. safety concerns), you should not submit a report while you are still on the server and have not yet tried to contact the player directly after the scene. Try to talk first, where reasonable and safe to do so, then report if needed.

Moreover, retaliatory or punitive reports will not be tolerated by staff, and any player determined to be engaging in such behavior may be penalized themselves. While the staff team understands that emotions can run high during role play, we kindly ask that players remember that we are here to tell a story together collaboratively; as such, before you determine a player report is needed, please consider the following:

• Did the broken rule negatively impact the scene or role play for you or others? Did the action meaningfully improve the scene (‘Rule of Cool’)? Was it an easy mistake that the player corrected for or is it something that should be addressed?

• Have you attempted to reach out privately to the player you wish to report and discussed your concerns? Remember our “Last Resort” philosophy.

• Did you/your group do everything within your power to provide good role play and give room to other role players? In other words, did you yourself stay in character and follow the rules?

• Are you submitting a player report with the goal of enhancing the quality of role-play or ensuring the safety of the community? If you have a different motivation, consider if a player report is productive or if some other solution is more appropriate.
  

The staff team strives to resolve all player reports within 72 hours of submission, but may at times take longer to deliberate. Once player reports are resolved, the initial report and the outcome will be posted in our private transcript channel for safekeeping.

We treat all information we collect as confidential. Ticket transcripts are visible to staff and management only and are not shared publicly.

We want our community to be able to talk about their own experiences with staff and punishments, as long as they do not harass, witch-hunt, or share others' private information. If a situation is misrepresented in a way that harms the community, staff may respond with a brief clarification, but we will never publish full transcripts or “expose” players.

Ticket burnout is a very real headache for both staff and players, so let’s work together to ensure player reports are used appropriately and for the betterment of our community.

Staff Roles & Responsibilities

We at StrayRP thrive on transparency, which is why we have outlined and detailed for all our players our staff and admin roles and responsibilities. Please feel free to have a read-through to familiarize yourself with how we organize ourselves as a roleplay server.

Management Team

Each Management member has their own role and responsibilities. Each manager is involved in major server decisions and escalated disciplinary matters. In addition to their individually outlined roles, the Management Team is responsible for planning and conducting regular staff meetings and ensuring that community feedback is collected regularly.

Server Owner

The majority stakeholder in the server. In the event of disagreement among the Management Team, the Server Owner shall make the final decisions regarding the operations and development of the server.

Development Team

The dev team works under the direction of the Management to review, test, modify, and implement scripts.

• Devs: Work on the features of the server such as scripts and bugfixing.

• Testers: Testers are responsible for play and stress testing the server and performing various tasks assigned by the dev team.

Community Manager

Community Managers are responsible with ensuring that the community is heard and brings vital pointers up to the Management Team. They are also responsible for monitoring content of the server, particularly streamers associated with the server, to ensure any content being produced by community members aligns with the philosophy of StrayRP. Community Managers are responsible for generating promotional material either through themselves or reaching out to content creators that wish to collaborate on content for the server.

Administration Team

The Administration Team is responsible for moderation of both the server and Discord community, ensuring the spirit of StrayRP is being preserved both in character and in the wider out of character community.

• Administrators: Admins are responsible for ensuring the rules of the server are being followed as well as for any coaching, mediation, and punitive action where required. Admins are also responsible for spectating the server in real time. Responsible for conducting whitelist approvals. Admins report to the Management Team and are responsible for documenting concerns raised by the community as they arise and reported to the Management Team.

• Moderators: Moderators are responsible for keeping the Discord community safe and in-line with the mission of StrayRP as well as ensuring day to day technical issues are addressed/addressing any in-server issues that arise (e.g. player glitches, teleportation needs, etc), either by helping directly or passing issues on to Admins as necessary. Responsible for screening written whitelist applications. Moderators report to the Management Team.

Lore Writer

The Lore Writer oversees the server’s overarching story and gameplay, working collaboratively with the Events Team to support players in engaging narratives through scripts, in-game assets and narrative support requests. The Lore Writer will also oversee the Events Team with the task of approving/denying submitted player requests and supporting the Events Team in facilitating roleplay for the community where possible.

Events Team

Volunteers from amongst the Admin Team that support and facilitate unique roleplay on the server by filling crucial roles through various means, such as the creation of temporary characters or one-time events to provide something not otherwise possible through current scripts and assets.

Faction Management

These will be the individuals who play key roles in defining and maintaining the direction and standards of each faction on StrayRP from its inception. After the server has launched, these individuals will remain responsible for monitoring faction activity and needs through communication with the admin team as well as collecting feedback from faction members through the recruitment of player volunteers interested in long-term discussions with faction heads. This is to improve player experiences within the faction and support narrative opportunities for the faction within the server.

Below is a list of Factions within StrayRP:

• Law

  • Sheriff’s Office

  • Marshals

• Medical Office

• Civilian

• Criminal

• Native

• Horse Trainer