[Sergeytov]

Brody covered a few things a non-RPI MU* can do.

And if your concern is knowledge: First of all you have a matter of IM. If I am in a community long enough, or recruit friends to a community, then I could likely have IM names for all my regular RP partners. The information an administrative staff might have that could be abused is not substantially more influential than this.

Secondly, as Brody keeps saying, you have the matter of what admin characters tend to do. I think he's a bit conservative on the point for purposes of this discussion, myself. Let us say I, as the admin, am coordinating the establishment of a group of mercenaries, and the group is quite new. I could have any number of problems from heavy PC infighting at first to just the PCs lacking a role model for the org. Would I make a character that had more experience and was better skilled than most of them for the early phases? You bet. I am sure a few would object to this practice, but I see it as better in the long term, especially since once establishment is made I could run an event with the retirement/loss/death of the leader and let a PC take over.

Third, you seem to define the difference between 'NPC' and 'Admin PC' as 'does it have a character object?' So, provided my read on your definitions is accurate, what does it matter if and Admin PC is doing NPC things? If Brody's Admin PCs play desk/world bound types so the players can save the day, how is that different from if he runs an NPC to do the exact same task?

Fourth, you have a matter of staff morale. Last I checked game staff weren't automatons.

Have I seen abuse of staff powers before? Yes. Am I reasonably sure I could point fingers at a staffer on a game I'm on and detail a perceived abuse? Yes. Are more than a few of these perceived abuses quite possibly the result of staff playing characters? I could argue for that point. However, even with all that, this is what good policing and ethics is for, and the safety net. Generally speaking, the safety net works.