OK, I actually don’t know what the weather was like. I’m not in this story yet, I just know what happened there from others who described it.
For the last decade or more, SFMagic has hosted unsanctioned drafts at Kennedy’s on Wednesday nights. The City’s real estate market is famously expensive, and retailers trying to make a living while hosting any appreciable tournament space have a very difficult time succeeding at it. That’s changed in the last couple years, with new stores popping up and established ones taking on organized play more seriously, but through all that time, the anarcho-libertarian Magic collective at Kennedy’s has been a beacon for SF’s Magic-playing denizens to pick up a draft beyond their tiny kitchen tables.
The words “anarcho-libertarian Magic collective” might be taken as satire, but really it’s not far off:
- Draft product is distributed among participants in a purposefully laissez faire method. Bring them or buy them at cost from whoever brought them this time.
- Leadership and organizer duties default to the players who have been around the group longest, but not through any formal means.
- The servers and bartender know what’s going on, and they expect the back room to be full of gamers all night, but they don’t monitor what goes on or take a fee at the door. They expect you to buy a meal or a couple beers, and most folks do.
- Draft pods are organized by ranking within an old-school ELO system run off the smartphones of a few regulars.
- Typically it’s “current set draft” but off-beat formats also pop up from time to time (original Mirrodin block draft for $10, anyone?).
- It’s diverse for a Magic crew. A typical night can draw in 40 drafters from all walks of life. College students, artists, musicians, writers, nurses, tech-savvy programmers, retirees. Buttoned-up FiDi MBAs rub the tattooed elbows of unshaven hipsters from across the Bay Bridge.
- The group’s regulars include frequent PTQ top 8ers, competitive players, casual gamers, new players, and a couple local Judges (though none of the Judges leads, again, leadership is purposefully deferential).
None of this is DCI sanctioned. It can’t be, really. Kennedy’s isn’t a WPN retailer and there’s a fairly bright line that’s crossed when sanctioning and alcohol mix. And that’s fine. The players keep coming and the packs keep cracking.
[shadowy film noir voiceover] But one night this summer, for just one evening, it all went sideways. [/shadowy film noir voiceover]Midway through the night, Aaron is collecting match results for his draft pod. He approaches the last match, where Ben is one of the players. He sits down next to them and asks what game they’re on. Ben is mid-tank in a tense play, neither player immediately answers. Aaron asks again, and both players deflect him and just focus on their game. When the match ends and Aaron pairs the next round, he reminds the pod of the importance of reporting their matches to him. He also warns Ben, “Don’t piss me off or I’ll kick your ass.” Ben laughs this off with mild derision.
Aaron doesn’t take it well. He feels offended and disrespected, and he lashes out. He stands up, picks up the wooden chair next to him, and swings it at Ben. Another player in the event, David, sees the situation falling apart and intervenes. David takes the brunt of the chair’s force on his arm, but it also strikes Ben. David wrests the chair from Aaron’s hands and some of the long-time de facto leaders of the group step in to break it up. Aaron and anyone who looks like he might throw a punch is momentarily restrained. Heated words are thrown in many directions, and then the moment passes.
If this is a sanctioned event, what happens next is fairly obvious. Aaron gets DQ’d for aggressive behavior. He’s removed from the venue by the organizer. Maybe the police get involved. The head judge takes a couple statements for the Investigations Committee to review. Everyone cools down for a minute, and eventually the tournament resumes.
However, for this unsanctioned group and its leadership, this incident puts them in uncharted territory. They’re not prepared to deal with it, and the on-site resolution is…poor. Otto, the group’s informal organizer, insists the players finish their match. Over the objections of several present, play resumes. Otto does not ask Aaron to leave. In fact, Aaron and David are paired against one another in the final match of their draft pod.
As the evening winds down, Otto discusses the incident with Ben, David, a few of other veterans, and a pair of judges who are fairly new to the group. He asks Ben and David whether they would like to call the police or press charges against Aaron. They decline, but David is still pretty upset, especially with Otto and how the incident was (not) resolved. At some point in the conversation, someone mentions that David carries a knife, and asks him to show it to them. David does, and says the incident could have been much more serious. More harsh words are exchanged as David leaves.
This adds a new level of complexity. While David hasn’t directly threatened Otto, and later made this explicitly clear, Otto still feels threatened. Ben and the others there all have a hand in calming the situation, but it’s still complicated.
As people get home from the event and discuss it, the incident blows up the group’s Facebook page, and several judges in the area alert me to it. Because it’s an unsanctioned event, however, there is no formal interest in it from the Judge Program’s perspective. Reading the threads, though, it becomes clear that this impacts the Magic-playing community and it needs some guidance toward resolution.
Here’s where I join the action already in progress. I contact Otto and the other administrators of the group, introduce myself, and offer to help. The sense of relief is palpable. Ultimate responsibility for the group still lies with its leaders, not me, but it’s clear that they needed an outsider to step in, mediate, and recommend a resolution.
Note that there are a number of factors which make this different from a typical investigation for a sanctioned event. Nothing in this situation is normal.
With the help of an assembled “Obzedat”, I gathered statements from Aaron, Ben, David, Otto, and several others over the next few days. The Obzedat considered my findings and arrived at a decision for the two incidents (the knife and the chair). I was not a “voting member” because I wasn’t really involved with the group prior to this incident, and I made that clear in my approach. Enforcement of any suspension or ban, and communication of those penalties needed to come from within SFMagic’s leadership rather than from me. This was an opportunity for the informal, de facto leadership in the group to step up.
At the end of it all, I came to the conclusions and recommendations below. This is taken more or less directly from my summary to the Obzedat, with minor edits for length and clarity.
On the chair incident:
Aaron acted completely outside the bounds of behavior that any organized group can consider acceptable. He acted with an intent to harm another person in a significant way, his actions resulted in physical harm to another member of the group, and he has shown extremely poor judgement in his choices in the moment and after the fact. He apologized at first, but has since refused to understand the gravity of his actions or show appropriate maturity in resolving the situation.
If this happened in a sanctioned setting, I would expect Aaron to receive a very long ban from sanctioned play, and I would expect the local community of organizers to treat him as a persona non grata.
However, the Judge Program’s approach and scope is different from SFMagic’s. The Judge Program is involved in sanctioned play around the world, across many cultural differences. It also covers situations where children may be part of the environment, and there is an incumbent and broader responsibility related to brand image and reputation for the game. A suspension or ban is also intended to protect other communities from an individual who may move among or between different groups.
SFMagic does not share these responsibilities or this scope. As such, a lifetime ban is probably going too far. I recommend a suspension of at least 3 and no more than 5 years. This will likely be permanent in effect, but it does give Aaron an opportunity to re-integrate in the long term if he makes the right choices.
Some members have expressed an interest in working with Aaron as mentors to moderate his behavior and help him improve. While this may be a constructive way to reintroduce Aaron to the group down the road, I recommend this only after Aaron completes his suspension, and that it must be accompanied by a sincere apology directly to those involved in the incident (specifically Ben and David, and the apology of course would be better sooner rather than later).
On the knife incident:
I collected perspectives from David, Otto, Ben, and others. I believe there was a severe misunderstanding in the moment, and that there are much better ways to resolve this than by suspending David. SFMagic operates in a bar late at night in an urban setting. All of this adds leniency to this situation.
Again, the Judge Program would likely approach this incident differently, as there are much broader considerations at work. We DQ a player for Aggressive Behavior when there is harm threatened or carried out against another individual. When it’s against a judge we err on the side of protecting the judge’s safety. In a sense, Otto was acting as a judge in this event.
However, after collecting statements from the involved parties, I do not believe the display of the knife was intended as an explicit or implicit threat toward anyone. In the moment and given the high tension of the evening generally, it was part of a series of miscommunications which both preceded and followed it.
I do not believe David intended to make any threat toward Otto or anyone else. I believe he and others were verbally blowing off some tension and expressing their dissatisfaction with the way the event was handled. When another person in the conversation mentioned David’s knife, he produced it, but it wasn’t with any intention it would actually be used or threatened for any purpose. This was poor communication. While this came across as confrontational toward Otto, its intention was the opposite. David was explicit at the venue and after the fact that he did not intend to threaten Otto.
In investigations and follow-up after incidents at sanctioned events, we do have a “no action” sometimes. It’s rare, occurring most often when the Investigations Committee believes a judge has improperly DQ’d a player. I have also seen it when communication with a judge unintentionally escalates to unsporting conduct. I believe this is a similar situation. We want players and judges both to be able to vent frustration, and if the communication is poorly executed on their part, we want to base our decisions on their intentions rather than their poorly chosen words in the moment.
My recommendation is that David and Otto sit down in a safe setting and discuss this to resolve their feelings. David was frustrated that Aaron was not ejected from the venue immediately. Otto wants to have the group run in peace and with mutual respect. Both of these perspectives are valid, and they’re actually based on the same ethical value. There’s common ground here and I think both David and Otto are capable of coming to that resolution of mutual respect, with the additional understanding that David should not show the knife again in any context.
General additional recommendations for SFMagic:
There should be some agreement on basic conduct within the group or governing that conduct should be deferred to the venue. In any case, in the future, any incident of violence or the threat of violence should result in the ejection of the individual and a cool-down. Members should also be encouraged to provide their feedback to the organizers directly.
So, what can we take away from this incident?
- It’s an example of a conflict resolving all wrong in the moment, and we can learn from it. Think of all the decision points each person had. Each one is a point where they could have taken a different route to a different outcome. Not all of those routes avoid the violence and anger, but many do. The next time you find yourself managing a conflict, think about your decision points. Plan them. Make the outcome one you’ve consciously chosen rather than reactively defaulted into. React with self-discipline.
- It’s also much more than an incident and investigation. This is an example of how Judges can collaborate with and improve their communities beyond sanctioned Magic. An effective Judge can serve as an example to his community, and be trusted beyond events alone.
- The uniform comes off, but the community still knows who you are. Once you’re known as a leader, your community will have some expectations of you. Be prepared to step up when the moment calls for it.
- Social media has a way of amplifying the drama rather than resolving it. It certainly did here. The incident itself was severe by any measure, but it wasn’t going to be resolved on a Facebook thread. When it was over, members of the SFMagic and myself had exchanged more than one hundred pieces of communication in the course of this resolution. Almost none of it happened on Facebook.
In the end, the resolution went about as perfectly as I could have hoped. The Obzedat arrived at its decision before the next Wednesday’s draft. Aaron was suspended. Otto and David sat down and found common ground, surrounded by friends, all with a common goal for SFMagic’s future. A generous local store owner (Dean Kao of Eudemonia) stopped by and bought several pitchers for the assembled masses. We drafted.
And at the end of the night, one member of the group handed me this:
Thanks to Ralph Colby for the paint job and to Arthur Edmund for arranging it!
– Sean
(PS: Of course, names have been changed, but the details are based on very real statements and interactions.)