I played a little MMO called Face of Mankind. It was hot garbage but I loved it. I played in a faction called the Law Enforcement Division (LED), the Solar System’s police force. As part of that group, I joined Internal Affairs and helped run investigations into other LED members. I loved the process of applying rules to cases and investigating situations, applying fines or punishments as needed. The game really didn’t empower much player agency in this regard, but we made it work. And it was an absolute blast.

Two memories stick out that made the game become mythical in my mind. First, was the Tequila Yuen Incident, in which a player changed from the “army” faction to the LED and was accused of murdering another player. As IAD, we had to investigate. During the investigation we determined that the army had faked the evidence to support their claim of murder by dressing another player to look like Yuen and faking a screenshot to imply Yuen admitted to the murder. After that, we uncovered an entire hidden organization within the army and led to a cop/army war.

Second, after a falling out with the LED leadership, I joined the underground “Brotherhood of Shadows” faction. As part of an anti-system government movement, the BoS joined forces with a number of other factions to form a counter government called the Nation of Shadows. As part of that government, we needed to draft establishing documents and I spent a few weeks working with others to draft a NoS constitution and binding agreements for military force commitments and representative government.

I cannot stress enough how little the developers gave us to support any of this nonsense. And yet, it happened regardless.