Non-toxic PvP
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One of the issues which hasn’t been brought up yet is “who is involved”.
Because, honestly, I’ve had more problems in IC conflict from people who weren’t involved but now are sticking their oars in without anyone requesting their “help” than I have from straight conflict. Two characters have a bar fight or an argument, and both players are fine with it, but suddenly five other characters all want to jump in and make it a much Bigger Thing than it needed to be, and usually they’re nowhere near as respectful of other players as the original conflict-folks were.
That’s where a lot of PvP resentment and clusterfucks come from, in my experience, and neither of the original folks have any control over what those players do, even when it pretty much ruins what WAS a fun, rich conflict plot.
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One system I’ve been thinking about which I’d like some feedback on:
Would you play a game where:
- Ordinarily, character death requires consent. Your character can get into serious fights and someone can even try to assassinate them in theory, but the setting’s magic prevents them from falling into the red without prior staff discussion/approval from both parties.
- Players can permanently toggle a setting that makes their characters killable when they roll in; the flag is publicly visible and is intended as an “I’m up for anything do your worst” signal. In exchange they enjoy slightly accelerated XP gains (think in the realm of 10%), but obviously it means staff won’t rescue them from open PK unless there’s a very obvious/overt sign of OOC-motivated abuse.
I’m mainly interested in how people who wouldn’t turn it on would feel about this sort of system. Would it make you feel like a kind of second-class citizen that some people are getting more XP by being more willing to risk their characters? Would you feel pressured to turn it on even if the idea of open PK makes you uncomfortable? Do you think it would create a toxic subculture within the game’s wider community?
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@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:
I think that the more immersed you are with your character, the more likely there is to be bleed and OOC competitiveness.
This is very true. It’s a difficult balance for both players and staff to feel immersed while managing bleed and OOC competitiveness.
For me, I think bleed is just going to happen, it’s how we as players and staff work together to deal with it in a healthy fashion that’s important.
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I know it doesn’t apply for a MU, but one LARP I was in had a particularly fun way to deal with bleed. Ice cream socials. After every session of the LARP, we would all gather in the main room we were using for the LARP and break out ice creams of various flavors and an assortment of toppings. We would sit around eating ice cream and discussing stuff that gave us bleed, making sure to point out positive instances and negative. Usually everybody would go home feeling good about it, and over the year of the LARP’s storyline, OOC drama only sparked up twice, and in both cases because of external events to the LARP.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:
One system I’ve been thinking about which I’d like some feedback on:
Would you play a game where:
- Ordinarily, character death requires consent. Your character can get into serious fights and someone can even try to assassinate them in theory, but the setting’s magic prevents them from falling into the red without prior staff discussion/approval from both parties.
- Players can permanently toggle a setting that makes their characters killable when they roll in; the flag is publicly visible and is intended as an “I’m up for anything do your worst” signal. In exchange they enjoy slightly accelerated XP gains (think in the realm of 10%), but obviously it means staff won’t rescue them from open PK unless there’s a very obvious/overt sign of OOC-motivated abuse.
I’m mainly interested in how people who wouldn’t turn it on would feel about this sort of system. Would it make you feel like a kind of second-class citizen that some people are getting more XP by being more willing to risk their characters? Would you feel pressured to turn it on even if the idea of open PK makes you uncomfortable? Do you think it would create a toxic subculture within the game’s wider community?
I wouldn’t turn it on. I’m the kind of player who is up for basically anything except death. I’d definitely be interested in some kind of flag to encourage people to enjoy some conflict with me, but the story abruptly ending because ganked ain’t it.
On staff side I immediately foresee people turning it on for XP gains, insisting they are cool with it, but then being so unpleasant when targeted that everyone steers clear and they essentially get that +10% xp for free.
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@Juniper This was exactly what I anticipated.
I also think that some people might turn it on thinking they are okay with conflict & want to present as ready for anything but then shit gets real and they are not as together as they think.
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I would turn it on and immediately request to staff that I not be given the bonus XP for doing so. I have no interest in incentives of that kind and also have no problem with my PCs dying or being permanently maimed or whatever as long as it makes good story and the Staff and other Players are all dedicated to making whatever happens the best story possible.
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@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:
After every session of the LARP, we would all gather in the main room we were using for the LARP and break out ice creams of various flavors and an assortment of toppings. We would sit around eating ice cream and discussing stuff that gave us bleed, making sure to point out positive instances and negative.
I think that’s great, but also an example of what I mean about systems not being scalable. Ice cream socials, debriefs, etc. work great for managing bleed with small groups of friends and/or modestly sized LARP groups. I think it would be virtually impossible to do that for a mid-sized MU with players scattered across a dozen different schedules and timezones.
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@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:
- Ordinarily, character death requires consent. Your character can get into serious fights and someone can even try to assassinate them in theory, but the setting’s magic prevents them from falling into the red without prior staff discussion/approval from both parties.
I think this should be the standard. Non-consensual character death is the least fun and most toxic outcome.
- Players can permanently toggle a setting that makes their characters killable when they roll in; the flag is publicly visible and is intended as an “I’m up for anything do your worst” signal. In exchange they enjoy slightly accelerated XP gains (think in the realm of 10%), but obviously it means staff won’t rescue them from open PK unless there’s a very obvious/overt sign of OOC-motivated abuse.
I think that’s a setting I’d only be comfortable turning on some months in to my character when I feel like I’ve played out their story completely. I also think it should only be allowable by other characters who have also turned the flag on, for fairness. Turning it on during character creation sounds like a recipe for toxic players to be predators.
Early on in Silent Heaven’s development, I played with the concept of allowing only specific characters to kill your character. Ultimately, I scrapped it and decided that character death can only happen in dangerous zones that are only accessible through Storyteller involvement.
Game-runner of Silent Heaven, a small-town horror MU.
https://silentheaven.org -
@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:
I think that’s great, but also an example of what I mean about systems not being scalable. Ice cream socials, debriefs, etc. work great for managing bleed with small groups of friends and/or modestly sized LARP groups.
We did it with 55 players at our largest session. A few of the players would stop playing early to set up the ice cream buffet and we made sure to let everybody have a voice during the debrief. I could see it definitely being an issue in larger games though I would also compartmentalize the debriefs into smaller subgroups in that situation.
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@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:
Non-consensual character death is the least fun and most toxic outcome.
I think this differs player by player. There’s a small subsection of players that are fully okay with non-consensual character death because they (myself included) chose to allow that as a potential for their PC’s plot line. Death requiring consent should be the standard, but with the ability to opt out if one chooses.
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Honestly any RP result that takes a character permanently out of play is one that I don’t want to have to be the one to do to someone else & will bend over backwards regardless of IC logic in order to avoid so doing. Consent should be required both for dying and making me kill you.
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Ima big care bear, I wanna PvE.
If anything has to be PvP, I’d rather it be fun IC drama like, “Oh my gods can you believe Davion wore white after Labor Day” or something dumb like that. I would rather focus on making my character go through their own issues/face their own demons than have to worry PvP.
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@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:
Another thing that you need to have zero tolerance for is what I’ll call the pacifist. The pacifist is a player archetype who will join a moderate or high conflict group, then do as much as they can for their faction without engaging in the central conflict. Then, when they get backed into a position where they’re called upon to resolve a conflict by fighting it out, they’ll agree to the fight but refuse to fight back, letting the opposing side win, in order to give the other players the most unsatisfying resolution possible. The two most notable offenders on Silent Heaven had to be removed from the game for their un-collaborative behavior.
Can you please clarify this and maybe give it an example? It doesn’t seem inherently toxic to either play a non-combat character in a conflict org or to refuse to give Mr. Big Fighty their ego ups in beating on a weaker character. I can actually think of several ways this would be intriguing.
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Can you please clarify this and maybe give it an example? It doesn’t seem inherently toxic to either play a non-combat character in a conflict org or to refuse to give Mr. Big Fighty their ego ups in beating on a weaker character. I can actually think of several ways this would be intriguing.
In good non-toxic PvP environments, the game is designed with a lot of built in conflict invitation flags so players can signal to other players what they want. The health of the environment absolutely depends on players using these flags accurately.
Someone who joins a high-conflict faction is signalling that they want to participate in that conflict and should not do that if they can’t OOCly handle it. Pacifists don’t just sit out, they tend to belittle everyone participating and take a revisionist approach to the faction’s raison d’être. Just hope they weren’t given a high value macguffin to protect, they might just hand it over because fighting is wrong.
If your game has an area called Murder Alley and it’s well known that going there signals that you are interested in being mugged… sometimes pacifists will wander up and down and snap OOCly at anyone who steps in front of them, and eventually it stops being a reliable signal to find RP.
It’s absolutely infuriating for everybody trying to participate in the game’s design as intended. It would be SO easy for the pacifist to join the kittens and hugs faction and avoid Murder Alley.
Not to mention that standing there condemning violence while someone punches you in the face is something only video game characters can do. Please… don’t.
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@Juniper I dunno, that sounds like wrongfunning someone for playing the game differently. Pacifists literally do exist, and a pacifist trapped in a high-conflict faction could be an interesting character concept if done well.
Of course there should be IC consequences. Beyond the immediate butt-kicking, maybe they get in trouble, get kicked out of the faction, etc. But if there’s a reason for it, who cares? It’s still a story. I can’t see how the opposing character is harmed just because the scene didn’t go the way they wanted.
Now there’s certainly a line where what you describe can become trolling. If they are violating established rules on the game (like if it says you MUST fight) or if staff have told them they can’t play a pacifist - that’s different. But a blanket prohibition against pacifist chars seems weird to me.
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I don’t know the situation @Jumpscare was alluding to, but I immediately assumed — along, I think, with @Juniper — that the issue being described was actually a player who wrongfuns other people for engaging in the established conflict theme, rather than the other way around.
I’ve dealt with this type of player and it’s incredibly frustrating to have someone treat you like you’re a bad mean person OOCly for, say, trying to rob people while being a member of the Thieves’ Guild, lurking in a shifty alley no one is forced to go to. Especially when you’re being compared to other members of the Thieves’ Guild who don’t steal because stealing is wrong, and they just joined to vibe with their friends, but now everyone is treating them like established representatives of the Thieves’ Guild and saying no one is forcing you to be the kind who steals, that’s just you being a jerk. Expecting people to uphold the theme they signed up for isn’t wrongfun, IMO.
I thought @Jumpscare’s suggestions were pretty useful and I ended up making some notes: have clear expectations for how factions engage, and I think I might even write up an OOC newbie guide on “which faction should you join” that spells stuff out like, if you don’t like combat then Engineers or Cooks’ Guild is a good fit, and if you aren’t comfortable with high risk then don’t join the Militia.
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@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:
Expecting people to uphold the theme they signed up for isn’t wrongfun, IMO.
To a point, I agree, but defining that line can be tricky. Like I agree that wrongfunning the cutthroat thief is wrong, but so is wrongfunning the thief who just got pressured into it by their friends and is actually conflicted about it. BOTH are playing within the theme, they’re just playing differently.
If staff doesn’t want a conflicted thief because it isn’t in line with their vision of the theme, they shouldn’t approve that character in the first place. Similarly if they’re worried about the hard edge of the Thieves Guild being diluted by too many “exceptions”, they can control that too.
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Yeah if the intended message was “people who OOCly wrongfun players for following the literal theme and are a tax on staff with their complaints about how the murder guild murders people and won’t reform” that makes way more sense.
But if you’re a mousey accountant for the murder guild and all you do is launder money and you don’t want to be murdering people but the cops come and don’t have enough fun shooting you in the face because you just lay down and die, I don’t see a problem.
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@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:
Pacifists literally do exist, and a pacifist trapped in a high-conflict faction could be an interesting character concept if done well.
There’s a difference between being an IC pacifist and being an OOC pacifist that prefers everyone be pacifist, which I think is the version @Juniper was commenting about.
