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Pax Republica - Discussion
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I can tell you that there are a lot of Star Wars nerds in here, Star Wars nerds that would probably be predisposed to at least taking a look at a viable-looking new game.
But most are simply giving your game a hard pass because we’ve experienced the reality of <18 players/characters in these Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre games: they very easily skew into Shang/Pen territory if the walls aren’t guarded.
I’d encourage you to take what’s been said above seriously. Some really great SW mushers are simply going to hard pass a game that facilitates sketchy player behavior, however unintentionally it may be.
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I don’t have a horse in the Star Wars MU* race, but I do have a very vested interest in not hearing after the fact about how underage porn happened on a MU*.
(And yes, I do consider it EXTREMELY LIKELY TO OCCUR when underage characters and players are permitted on a MU* with an R-rating.)
You are setting yourself up for potentially serious consequences. So let me make it clear:
DO NOT ALLOW UNDERAGE ANYTHING
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The game’s policies appear to have been updated so 16 years old is now the minimum (which doesn’t seem to really solve the problem) and also to entirely ban TS, which is a choice.
https://paxrepublica.net/index.php?title=General_Policy
Go with God on enforcing this stuff, I guess.
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Please note that what will happen if you ban the existence of any TS on a game while allowing underage players is that there will be people who target the underage players to involve them in sexual stuff and then put them in a position where they can’t go to staff about it without the fear of being banned. That is: you make it more difficult to report.
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It’s perfectly possible to have a PG-13 content level for a game and still have an 18+ player / character policy. Not sure how that’s confusing to some people.
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It’s not just about the sex. Don’t understand why this is so hard to grasp. And banning ts means that kids will just be afraid to report someone starting to make them feel unsafe/pressured esp if they did engage in it. Predators know this. They know how to use it, and situations ALWAYS happen like this on games that ban TS.
Predators don’t have to use graphic erotic play to groom and lure.
Please for the love of whatever educate yourselves on this!! Don’t advertise that you welcome and support teens being on your game. And if for some reason you think that star wars fans are more likely to be teen boys than girls you are wrong but also /teen boys are groomed and lured frequently and with devastating consequences/ in the role-playing community and have been the entire time I’ve been here!
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Banning TS is like making drugs illegal. It’ll still happen, people just won’t report abuse. Same old song and dance, tale as old as time.
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This has gone from sketchy as hell, to absolute comedy. You can’t ban TS. You can’t. People are gonna do it. They’re gonna hide, but they’re gonna do it. This is a horny hobby.
Also, lol lmao, why fight so hard for underage PCs? It makes no sense. All y’all needed to do was go ‘No Players or characters under the age of 18’, and you’d have had half this forum in cgen already.
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@Roz said in Pax Republica - Discussion:
Please note that what will happen if you ban the existence of any TS on a game while allowing underage players is that there will be people who target the underage players to involve them in sexual stuff and then put them in a position where they can’t go to staff about it without the fear of being banned. That is: you make it more difficult to report.
Yeah. That change just makes me even less inclined to think this is going to be a good place. We all know TS is going to happen, it always does and you’re unlikely to ever stop it entirely. Especially with manipulative and predatory sorts, of which there are an abundance in this hobby.
I really hope they read this and take what’s being said to heart, because otherwise they’re going to see an influx of bad actors showing up.
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At this point I can’t help but suspect the player age thing is to allow a specific person to play. A relative, or the game runner personally.
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@Zephyr They’re going to have bad actors show up whatever they do. What they’re doing now is enabling/empower them. So when things go bad they will be in a weak spot.
I wonder if this is a case of ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ or if it’s a case of ‘the call is coming from inside the staff lounge.’
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I wonder if this is a case of ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ or if it’s a case of ‘the call is coming from inside the staff lounge.’
By how stuff is phrased on the website and how the person has interacted here (even if limited), I’m inclined to believe it is good intentions than anything else.
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@Jax said in Pax Republica - Discussion:
I wonder if this is a case of ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’ or if it’s a case of ‘the call is coming from inside the staff lounge.’
I tend to opt for the adage of cock-up over conspiracy with things like these until proven otherwise. Though I think it’s genuine cluelessness, or perhaps there are young people in the circle of staff. Or both.
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I agree that this has “gamerunning inexperience” written all over it, at least to my eye. These are very basic lessons in game management the hobby learned a long time ago. Look at how universal these opinions are here, and this is not exactly hobby with a lot of monolithic opinions.
I wonder if the game runner(s) are from the olden days, and are kind of re-engaging with the community with an idea to run their own game (hey, mush mid-life crises are a thing!). I wonder this specifically because there WAS a time when 18+ was rare outside of specifically XXX games, 13/16+ was common, and it wasn’t unusual to not be asked if you are of a certain age at all. The thing is, this time was decades ago. The hobby has learned important lessons, it just seems OP’s staff haven’t quite caught up yet.
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@Xenon said in Pax Republica - Discussion:
These are very basic lessons in game management the hobby learned a long time ago.
Well, these are very basic things this part of the hobby learned a long time ago. We’re not the totality, nor even a majority. We can’t expect everyone out there to know what we know, or to have learned what we’ve learned.
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@Polk That’s roughly my hot take on this, as well. And, as you said earlier, the theme can be adjusted slightly without any significant disruptions to the canon - simply stating there’s a policy that Padawan are at least eighteen years of age can heave this particular dead badger far down the beach and save some kicking. And even then, Jedi Padawan are basically the only age-themed element in play with the SW mythos, yes? It’s totally workable.
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I just went and checked because I thought I remembered it from way back when, and I was right, but the IRE games have a minimum age of 13 to play rule. That definitely surprised me because IRE is definitely the most ‘corporate’ of the text-based games out there, but they are MUDs, which do tend to feel more like a text-based MMO/Video Game in tone than a MUSH, in my opinion.
On the other hand, those games definitely have adult themes and are rife with TS. They also have coded-in IC marriages, so an element of romantic RP is provided for by the game runners.
Looking at this game, they have made a no TS rule, which I assume is in response to this, but honestly, “Kids might do TS” is only the tip of the potential problems. For one, the rule will be as ineffective and unenforceable as anywhere else that has tried it.
I was interested in the premise of this game for sure and would have been excited to play there, but I don’t think I will because as an adult I would be less than comfortable in a game where there might be kids - even though years ago I was one of those kids!
I think it is important to protect the adults as well as the kids in that kind of situation. While I think it would usually become apparent quite quickly if you were playing with someone who was that young, I also do not ever want to run the risk of having to answer the question of why (for example) I have a sixteen-year-old child I don’t know in my discord contacts.
Not that I think that in the year 2023, there is going to be a huge influx of kids putting down the PS5 to come and text-based roleplay as Jedi or whatever, but I have no doubt there would be a couple.
Honestly, if it is the case that one of the staffers is 16 or wants their sixteen-year-old kid to play and that is why they are hell-bent on 16. Just make the rule: “Everyone must be over 18 except this person, who is a special exception because we said so”.
Is it a fair and objective rule? No. But nobody ever said the rules on your MUSH have to be. It’s yours. We just get to read the rules and decide if we can live with them or not to play there. In this case, while the premise is tempting, I am going to give it a miss unless they make it adults only.
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@Pacha said in Pax Republica - Discussion:
But nobody ever said the rules on your MUSH have to be
I mean, we’ve definitely said that, but we’re no authority.
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@Pacha You don’t even need the ‘except this one specific one’… if you’re open about it and like ‘this player is my child/my close relative and I have their parent’s blessing’ … people probably won’t be as mad as if it’s super seekrit.
Back on Shadowrun: Denver, there was a whole house of players, the Dad, two of their upper-teen kids, and I think a fiancé? But they were incredibly vocal about it, the minors’ alts were all openly listed, and there was a strict ‘you lewd with the kids, you are banned’ policy.
… of course Denver was also the place where you could be 16 out the gate from chargen, so like. It gets a little suspicious look anyway.
I, uh… forgot where I was going with this.
Gosh, all this ‘great setting, handwobble mechanics, extremely suspect policies’ is really making me want to load up the virtual machine and try to headbutt that Evennia FFG code into submission again.
