On PvP and permanent injuries

[Apos]

I have complex feelings about it. Most of the games I play on my own are PVP games, and one of my earliest RP experiences developed organically from PVP on a game, and it was good and memorable enough it sold me on online RP to begin with. And then even before I started MUs, antagonistic tension in stories made for some of my favorite character dynamics of all time.

But man, for all the good times I’ve had personally in those dynamics going perfectly, I’ve seen them happen in just god awful ways to other people dozens of times more often.

For one thing, I think trying to achieve the balance that a competitive environment requires more often than not stands in tension with a strong narrative atmosphere. Fairness is always a good goal, but you can rapidly approach the point where unless everyone gets exactly equal storytelling, regardless of how excruciating they are to RP with and how miserable they are for GMs to attempt to entertain, the field gets unplayable in terms of balance. It can be extremely corrosive, and that’s why a lot of the games that allow PVP in close to unrestricted ways don’t really care about that kind of balance which creates enormous OOC toxicity and resentment.

In other words, competitive PVP needs a balanced field but in narrative games, but people are just not equally fun to RP with and not equally good storytellers.

And in more limited and restricted PVP, you are usually trying to avoid two separate poles and creating an enormous amount of effort in avoiding them. The first and most obvious, just bullying and people feeling they can push around characters weaker than they are without consequence, and without regard to whether the other player is having a good time. And the other, some character that really merits consequences, but it would be absolutely miserable for anyone to inflict it on them, so they are being incredibly obnoxious and a drag for everyone else to deal with, while trying to pressure other people into being the bad guy in a way that would be zero fun for them.

You can make a pvp game that addresses all those but the amount of time and effort involved is just hard to justify to me, when I could do other things that aren’t possible in a PVP environment that I think are generally better for story. Like you can make entirely collaborative systems without having to always worry about, ‘but what if the players are in opposition’. It skews the whole design, and you can’t ignore it.

[Third Eye]

I’m another who’s kinda struck by the focus on physical consequences like maiming as the seemingly implicit only example of a PvP consequence. I think losing status/getting fired/losing access to IC benefits is also a consequence for behavior but idk if players think of it as meaningful unless it’s attached to a +sheet’d demerit.

[sao]

@Third-Eye it depends on the game. I’ve definitely gotten loads of ooc and ic shit for firing people or demoting them. IC status can mean a lot to people particularly if it’s a consequence they’re getting for something that they, the player, believe their character was not wrong about.

[Pavel]

@Third-Eye said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

I’m another who’s kinda struck by the focus on physical consequences like maiming as the seemingly implicit only example of a PvP consequence

This partly stems from, at least historically, the tendency for certain kinds of confrontational players to go ‘all out’.

An insult? Fight to the death.
An attack on my assets set to weaken or undermine my influence? Fight to the death.
Not wanting to split the bill on this date? Fight to the death.
Didn’t watch the youtube video I sent them but still said ‘haha yeah’? Fight to the death.

For a long time this kind of person was pervasive enough that dealing consequences that weren’t physical was seen as pointless, because they’d come bnack with “nuh uh, we fight now… to the death.”

[Jumpscare]

@watno said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

It can be fairly and easily assumed that all IC conflict is IC and consequence are kept IC and aside from OOC “you cool?” check ins (which are rarely needed because we have consent sheets). That said, you never know in SH what is happening on the other side of the line. So you might be fine, but the other player still might be OOC mad. But if they are, there’s really no avenue to turn it OOC toxic for the whole group.

I’d like to partially contest this statement, haha.

Players on Silent Heaven do check in OOC with each other fairly often, and I encourage it. If someone is having a problem with a conflict, be it physical or social or [redacted], I absolutely encourage players to say something like this:

OOC Hey, this isn’t working for me. Can we resolve this now? Or FtB?

And it should be honored. Nobody should feel like they need to RP something they don’t want to RP. Silent Heaven is all about putting our characters into spooky and dangerous situations because we want to have fun doing it.

If you’re not having fun, talk to the players, and they’ll help find a resolution. There’s also no shame in moving to a lower conflict faction that better suits a less involved playstyle.

The Faithful, Guides, and Misfits are moderate-to-high conflict, Pallia and the Quills are low-to-moderate conflict, and the Hopefuls and Moonlighters are little-to-no conflict. There are also optional [redacted] with their own intermingling levels of conflict, on a different level of play.

[Rinel]

@Jumpscare

Yeah, I do think part of the reason the experience went well was that I checked in pretty frequently OOCly with folks re: Jocelyn being as horrible as she is, and I also expressed active willingness to have someone beat the crap out of her (wanted that as a catalyst for her to get properly scared about the place). I don’t know if it would have gone as well otherwise. But I also think that all games should have high levels of OOC candor and openness.

[Juniper]

Any time you design guidelines surrounding conflict to ensure everyone is playing nicely together, there’s going to be people who engage in a game of “I’m not touching you!” while trying their hardest to ruin the other person’s day.

Sometimes you just have to feel the vibes and know when to tell people to stop being a shit.

[Gashlycrumb]

Back in the early aughts we had The Blackhats Club where we’d sometimes meet and @mail on OGR or someplace. It was a handful of people who played antagonist PCs and talked about making it fun for other players. Both IC stuff to do and OOC measures like directly saying, “I want you to love to hate my character, not hate me or feel threatened, am I succeeding?”

This was fun. And is probably not PvP as we think of it.

We all had troubles from time to time with the bully types who would run up and try to immediately make it fatal, like, hop out of chargen with a new-minted combat-based character and immediately try to knife the Blackhat guile-based character and be the hero who killed the baddie. That seems like the kind of PvP that’s usually meant.

Sadly, I’ve seen abundant PvP the last few years but it’s overwhelmingly, “you pissed me off and I want to punish you, IC and OOC both,” or “I wanna be evil” but without the Blackhat consideration of if it’s any fun to anybody else, or it functions as plot/playgroup gatekeeping.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Juniper said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

Any time you design guidelines surrounding conflict to ensure everyone is playing nicely together, there’s going to be people who engage in a game of “I’m not touching you!” while trying their hardest to ruin the other person’s day.

Sometimes you just have to feel the vibes and know when to tell people to stop being a shit.

Somebody reminded me that I would say, “Pretend this is a tabletop game and all of us are sitting around the battlemat in my living room. We may not all be friends but we are all gonna be friendly, because it’s my fucking living room, okay?”

Seemed to work.

[Kestrel]

My opinion on this topic is fairly moderate, but I’m going to advocate for side B because I’m not seeing it represented here so far.

There are a few problems with games which discourage or heavily restrict PvP:

1. I think that the definition of PvP is broader than what most people mean when they use the term, and games which claim to eliminate/discourage PvP merely relegate it to shadier, passive-aggressive and OOC forms which are harder to deal with.

2. Not having PvP means that any sense of stakes/consequences for character fuckups are relegated to staff responsibility; since they’re often spread too thin to deal with every instance, it leads to a lot of obnoxious and immersion-breaking behaviour where people can talk shit, but not get hit.

3. It is my opinion that all stories require conflict to be engaging. In the absence of player conflict, staff or the game mechanics must be responsible for delivering conflict instead. Although on the whole staff’s intentions are going to be more trustworthy than those of other players with a stake in said conflict, it’s also more work for them to spoonfeed, which means there’ll usually be less of it, and PvE opponents can be a lot less challenging for players who enjoy the sort of long-term chess-match rivalries. It also incentivises unhealthy social dynamics in pursuit of staff attention.

4. Games which discourage conflict, and therefore minimise loss, are better at protecting player sensitivities concerning positive OOC self-image through their character’s positive image. This means characters are more likely to be self-inserts, which can feed into unhealthy attachment and blurred IC/OOC boundaries. In my opinion, this also results in less interesting storytelling, because I prefer to interact with flawed characters dreamed up by versatile players. YMMV on this one. It’s why I avoid L&L and Superhero games, and lean more towards gritty settings.

The ideal unicorn game for me would be one which allows for PvP, but where:

• The rewards for engaging in PvP (if they exist at all) do not create a zero-sum game between opponents.
• The community is strongly story-oriented, and conflict is therefore not driven by the desire for mechanical gain.
• Strict policies govern healthy communication between players, and are enforced by staff.

My favourite players are ones who love to play-wrassle.

[spiriferida]

The colloquial definition of PvP is broader, but when it comes to game classification PvP is a genre description in my experience, one that usually denotes a formalized faction system where the main draw is combat and warfare against other player groups. As such, games that classify themselves as non-PvP or PvE are drawing a distinction on their playstyle, not forbidding all degrees of player conflict, whether that’s combat or interpersonal conflict.

With regards to the colloquial definition, Ive spent basically all of my RP time in PvE environments. I’ve been on an RP game where the setting was a closed environment (a scifi spaceship crew) where the premise required explicit opt-in from characters. There were thematic tensions in the background between groups, but the premise was that everyone had agreed to the rules to be there, which included cooperation with their former enemies. I’ve been in other games where the setting was much more loose and cooperation was much more ad-hoc happenstance, and had a pretty sandboxy approach to storytelling.

I’ve engaged in the colloquial definition of PvP - IC conflict and opposition- in both of those settings, and had a blast with it. To my mind, the ability to engage in fruitful “PvP” in PvE settings just requires having enthusiastic consent on both sides, and an agreement on the stakes of the conflict. And PvE games can facilitate that in different ways.

[Faraday]

@Kestrel said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

This means characters are more likely to be self-inserts, which can feed into unhealthy attachment and blurred IC/OOC boundaries.

My experience is that the likelihood of characters being self-inserts is high regardless of whether you encourage/allow PVP or not. The drama just gets higher when those avatars come into high-stakes conflict with one another.

But I agree with you that conflict is essential for good storytelling, and some degree of PVP is unavoidable. Heck, I’ve seen players get really bent out of shape over who destroyed more robotic NPCs in a battle scene, when there are no other stakes beyond IC bragging rights!

For me, it’s just about the tone and boundaries for the conflict.

[mietze]

I started out on PvWhateverThe FuckTheyWantIncludingOtherPCs games. This did not curtail ooc sniping/passive aggressiveness nor did it keep theme drift from happening.

I don’t believe it’s this kind of thing that creates a healthy game so much (either way) and there’s simply no way around staff responsibility for quality control.

The games that have had staff quality control, whether that is a pretty swift and arguably heavy handedness in removing any player that even gives a peep of a problem as far as personality, how they treat other players/staff, refusal to follow theme/imposing stuff on others and then claiming ignorance of theme, ect–they can do PvP or PvE and people are having fun because the people who are not interested in the setting/theme/atmosphere aren’t there to constantly test boundaries and complain.

The ones that set up ANY system, either self-care (by being able to kill/harm the org of/do a social or property hit, ect) between players when there is an IC dispute, or a denial of any conflict without consent (making players work with each other OOC to negotiate, in theory) but do not have staff on top of theme and quality control are going to spin out a lot of frustration. There are some players that have a great eye for systems, and thus can build a sheet or an org that is very efficient and on the powerful end. That’s great especially if they really like it! The problem is if they are more focused on that rather than the theme of the game or feel like they can ignore that stuff and will actually face minimal consequences themselves. Or if you have a PC that is relatively weak, but still must be negotiated with even if they are being totally a brat towards more powerful PCs and can gum up the works of any kind of plot advancement or stories by flinging themselves into it and then throwing a tantrum. And various shades inbetween.

Having been around both PvP and PvE with both great staff oversight and attention and more hands off, I just think it’s less style and structure of a game as far as who you can start fights or turf wars with and more what staff will tolerate OOCly.

Give me a staff that gives a shit about the game culture (OOC, IC, or preferably both) that they have the vision for and are excited about, and that’s pretty much where I want to play. I’m not crazy about rando PvP games just because of who they sometimes attract (specific people I’ve known for awhile, depending on the genre) and at least on a PvE or consent based game I can utilize noping out even though I tend to prefer non- or limited-consent.

But if I trust staff, and they are managing things nicely, then that’s what seems to keep player behavior and immersion in theme under control the most IMO. I’d rather play on a PvP heavy game with staff I trust (even if I would have to reroll a new PC every few weeks or deal with constant attacks/taking of my PC’s stuff) over one where I can literally control everything that happens to my PC but is going to be full of people ignoring theme and being obnoxious to others OOC.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Faraday said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

@Kestrel said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

This means characters are more likely to be self-inserts, which can feed into unhealthy attachment and blurred IC/OOC boundaries.

My experience is that the likelihood of characters being self-inserts is high regardless of whether you encourage/allow PVP or not.

I think “self-insert” and “Mary Sue” are a phenomenon you are bound to run into from time to time.

But more often than an actual self-insert PC, you’ll find the accusation used as one of our Traditional Community Bludgeons.

Annoyed because somebody stole all the horses from the livery stable while you were offline, in spite of your declaring thast your PC sleeps in there cuddled up with her favourite mule? “You just want to win.”

Frustrated because somebody keeps scheduling scenes and not showing up? “You don’t respect that other people have lives.”

Trying to join in the scene in the park, where the bandstand is on fire and an alien probe just came screaming out of the sky at 200 decibels and all this is happening about thirty yards from your PCs bedroom window? “You want to do everything.”

Pissed off that your carefully crafted character’s story turned out to be: shows up, rents and decorates an apartment, gets murdered by Abelard, who’s just flexing to show Bridget and Camille how good he is at murder? “Self insert, blurred boundaries, unhealthy attachment.”

There are players who do all these things, but I think we jump to those interpretations far too soon.

And, eeh, maybe them folks who really love PvP are displaying self insert, blurred boundaries and unhealthy attachment. To power fantasy where they can inspire fear, perhaps. It’s been a heck of a long time since I played Werewolf, but the self-insert bully was a staple shifter character back when.

[Warma Sheen]

The problem is people.

[Faraday]

@Gashlycrumb said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

There are players who do all these things, but I think we jump to those interpretations far too soon.

I disagree. I’ve seen an inordinate number of players exhibiting blurred boundaries and unhealthy attachment. I also think it’s more charitable to assume that they are just unhealthily attached to their characters rather than assume they are a jerk, bully, or poor sport.

But YMMV - as someone who is usually game staff and forced to mediate these shenanigans, it colors my perspective.

I certainly don’t think that players who enjoy PVP are any more disposed to these behaviors than players who don’t; I just think games that allow PVP tend to have more of these issues due to the nature of the conflicts.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Warma-Sheen said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

The problem is people.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Faraday Oh, I mean that they are responding to an incident of jerkery, bullying or unsportingness, or a mistake that resembles it, not that they are jerks. Normal reactions, like not wanting your PC to be murdered in a way that has nothing to do with your story, being characterized as overattachment.

[Pavel]

@Warma-Sheen said in On PvP and permanent injuries:

The problem is people.

It’s true. My code always works until people start touching it.