[Orion]

I'd prefer to take a backseat and allow players the freedom to take their plots where they like, whether they're suspected of metagaming or not. If they're proven to be metagaming, I'd stop them, but interfering in plots can lead people to not be bothered roleplaying.

I'll give an example:

A character was trying to take control of a village. He already has some support from PC's, but the staff decided to make the NPC population of the village form a mob and drive him out of town, allowing another PC who they preferred to be in power to take control.

Up until the point where the character was driven out, my character was assisting him, and the RP was getting really interesting.

I can think of numerous examples like this, where staff have appeared to favour one player over another, and staff can come up with literally anything as a means to support one character while leaving another high and dry.

The player who had their character driven out was obviously quite angry after this, and any attempt by my character to get us to form any other plans were met with apathy on the part of his character - because his player couldn't be bothered anymore. I can't say I blamed him.

I might be straying into a different topic. My view is though, whether a player is suspected of metagaming or not, I'd rather not go there.

Where a plot or event is staff run, and wasn't brought about by the players, it makes sense for the staff to have an active role in shaping what goes on. That at least gives players the chance to have their own independent plots running, and also to play along with the staff's ideas - so it gives them a bit of both.

If they feel powerless to go against what the staff intend all the time then they're merely playing along all the time, and that will lead to a dependency on the staff to create and maintain plots due to player apathy.