@Roz said in "My Guy Syndrome":

i really don’t think anyone was likely intending citing this to mean they think everyone should literally be saying yes to everything every single time

I was challenging it even as a general rule / starting point. “Yes, and…” is a perfectly valid improv technique, but that’s not the framework that most TTRPGs (and by proxy many MUs, which have one foot in their TTRPG roots) operate within.

It’s not: “My character wants to shoot the Cylon.” “Yes, and…”

More often it’s “roll for it” or even “no that isn’t going to work.”

Again, I’m not saying you can’t approach things that way, I just don’t think most MUSHers do.

That aside, I think @Trashcan raises an important point that “No, but…” is an equally valid improv response.

@chorus said in "My Guy Syndrome":

Just in general, MUSH RP is a “yes, and” medium.

It’s totally fine if a game sets that as an expectation, but that has NOT been my experience with MUSH RP in general. And as a staffer, I’ve seen entirely too many nonsensical, theme-breaking, logic-breaking requests for me to ever approach a game that way.

Collaboration doesn’t mean always saying “yes” to everything. It means trying your best to find a mutually-fun solution, but also recognizing that sometimes people want opposite things and someone’s not going to get their idea of fun.

@Roadspike said in "My Guy Syndrome":

I often like to think, “No, normally my character wouldn’t be caught dead in that biker bar where the RP is happening, so why is my character there?”

Yeah, that can be fun - but I still think there’s nothing wrong with politely bowing out of a scene where your character just doesn’t fit.

@Ashkuri said in "My Guy Syndrome":

I think in MUSH we see a lot of things like:

But a lot of those things aren’t inherently bad. If your character wouldn’t think the planet is safe, and it’s really important to you to honor that, I don’t think it’s a cardinal sin to politely sit a scene out. Same for RPing out an IC grudge, or some of the other things you listed.

“My guy syndrome”, for me, is all about attitude.

“Hey, want to RP at the spaceport?”
“Nah, my guy wouldn’t go do that part of town.” vs “Well, my guy has a thing against spaceports, but I’d be happy to RP with you at the marketplace.”

“We’re going down to the planet for the plot.”
“I’m not leaving - my guy wouldn’t think it’s safe.” vs. “Have fun! I’m going to sit this one out because my guy wouldn’t want to go down there.”

There’s nothing wrong with being true to your character, as long as you’re not a jerk about it OOCly.

@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:

just clearly delineate IC vs OOC.

If someone is having trouble delineating IC vs OOC when bad things happen to their character, I don’t think changing the letters is going to help.

@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:

For some people PvP bears the distinction that indeed the player of the character wishes to end the fun of other players.

But sometimes they literally do. It’d be nice if we all lived in an ideal world where there was never any OOC bleed and everyone was a perfectly good sports, but that’s just not the case. Many people like PVP over PVE precisely because of the other P in the equation. It really IS about going up against other players and winning. That doesn’t mean it’s malicious, just competitive.

Good sportsmanship is more about playing by the rules and not being an a-hole than it is about making sure the other person/team “has fun”. (Especially when your idea of fun is “I win” and so is theirs.)

@Juniper I do not understand the meaning of your cat.

@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:

But you cropped out half the definition. It doesn’t make sense without the second half:

No, I read the second half. I consider “agreeing to fight but then refusing to fight back” to be in line with “being part of a high-conflict group and avoiding conflict”.

Of course it’s better when players can cooperate and find a mutually-agreeable solution. But when it comes to PVP (or even CVC) that’s just not always the case. Sometimes people want opposite things and there really is no reasonable compromise.

As long as the person is OOCly handling it well, I don’t really consider it to be “poor sportsmanship” (as someone else cited) if their character has sour grapes. Some characters are annoying ICly. Avoiding them has always worked well for me.

@Juniper said in Non-toxic PvP:

if I’m in the Pirate faction being a menace on the seven seas, I don’t want to be constantly having arguments with another pirate who believes a REAL pirate never takes another person’s property without permission, and I’m making life hard for pirates by giving them a bad name.

OK, but… why are you constantly having that argument? Why aren’t you like “pfft whatever” to that guy? Why isn’t he being ostracized by the other pirates? For that matter, why is the captain even keeping him on board the ship?

I don’t fundamentally have any objection to a PC going around saying that pirating is bad actually. But it seems to me that there are a million ways to deal with this issue ICly.

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

With that said, and with the explicit caveat that I don’t see outliers as inherently problematic, it can and often does become a problem when the outlier ethos gets normalised in the setting it’s supposed to be pushing back against.

For sure, outliers taken to extreme CAN skew theme. I also recall being on The 100, and being a bit peeved because my PC (who was trying to stick to the established theme) was constantly being undermined by the outliers.

In such a circumstance, staff has two choices: limit/control the outliers, or allow theme to drift organically from what was originally established. Neither is right or wrong, but the stance should be made clear so all players are on the same page.

@NotSanni said in Non-toxic PvP:

People seem to be largely ignoring the brunt of the argument (that is, "there is a specific brand of OOC troll that weaponizes pacifism in a game designed and built around conflict and violence), so that they can instead fixate on an argument that isn’t being made by anyone as far as I can tell (that “pacifist PCs shouldn’t be allowed in PvP games”).

Because I didn’t see that as the core of the argument. I’m sorry if there was a misunderstanding, but it genuinely seemed that it was about these outlier characters (as @Kestrel alludes to) rather than a specific brand of OOC trolling. Especially when every post about the specific example just kept talking about IC Behavior. Like people keep saying “oh they were weaponizing their pacifism” and whatnot. Maybe they were - I don’t know them from Adam - but I just don’t see that from the facts presented here.

@Roadspike said in Non-toxic PvP:

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.

This is what I’m reacting to. It’s not just someone who is OOCly trolling, which is an entirely different matter. It is someone whose very existence is predicated on being part of a moderate to high-conflict group and then avoiding conflict. Some of the previous examples cited bore this out (like the person in the Murderer’s Guild who was only there reluctantly or whatever).

The discussion took this broad, general archetype and then kept moving the goalposts to talk about a highly specific situation on one particular game, which may or may not have been out of theme.

I fundamentally don’t have a problem with somebody bad-mouthing the Murderer’s Guild for doing murder. Yes, it might be annoying to some of the murderers. So? That’s the IC consequences for the faction you chose and the actions you took. Being annoying ICly is different from trolling OOCly, though there can be overlap between the two.

Again, I’m not judging any specific game from putting rules in place that suit them, I’m responding to painting things with an overbroad brush.

To use BSG as an example, it’s completely valid to say:

“I want this game to be about fighting cylons, so I don’t want to deal with the headaches of non-combatant characters.”

Fine, cool, you do you.

But that’s very different than:

“There should be a zero-tolerance policy against non-combatant characters on all combat games ever.” Especially if it seems predicated on an assumption that all such players will engage in OOC trolling. That’s just… not the case.

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

No one is saying you can’t play a pacifist, pacifists ruin PvP games

That was literally the statement that kicked off this entire tangent. A proposed zero-tolerance policy towards pacifist characters in high-conflict factions.

Yeah I mean… overall it seems like we’ve gone from a general “there should be a zero-tolerance policy for pacifists who join a high-conflict faction and don’t engage with the conflict” to arguing over THIS ONE SPECIFIC PERSON from this ONE SPECIFIC GAME with these VERY SPECIFIC PVP RULES. Was that person acting like a troll? I dunno, maybe - but I think it largely depends on their OOC actions, and everything that’s been described here has focused on their IC actions.

@Wizz said in Non-toxic PvP:

it’s just someone who comes into every scene until the end of time and makes it about this and will never shut the fuck up about it or move on because their OOC ego was hurt that everyone didn’t choose their solution instead.

Sure, that sounds annoying. See also: why I don’t think that PVP with rando strangers is a good idea.

My point is simply that you could get that same outcome EVEN IF both PCs pummeled each other in open conflict. It has nothing to do with one of them being a pacifist. That’s why I think a zero-tolerance policy to pacifist characters is kind of silly. But if someone wants to do it on their game, obviously that’s their prerogative.

@howyadoin said in Non-toxic PvP:

On SH, you can collab offscreen resolution.

I have no idea what game SH is. I thought we were speaking in generalities. There are certainly places where offscreen resolution isn’t always an option.

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

But actually, they are both engaging in PvP. PP is using social tools, MH physical ones.

Oh absolutely. They were both in direct conflict over what should happen with the mcguffin.

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

And if he’s giving signals of, “I don’t really want to fight you, however I will have to per my role if you keep trying to sneak past the barrier” that is an attempt at conflict deescalation; ignoring it, and then socially persecuting him afterwards, is the same type of unsolicited ahole behaviour as trying to start a fight with a low xp cafe worker.

I don’t agree. Imagine if PP did fight back, and then lost. I don’t think people would be judging them for then acting pissy (ICly) with MH afterward. There was a conflict and now there’s some IC bad blood. All seems completely expected to me.

I can imagine this exact scenario played out with me and a buddy and it would all be completely fine if we just kept it IC. My PC beat up theirs at the danger pit, then theirs badmouths mine about how things went down, then mine concocts some way to get back at them, etc. etc. Maybe they end up mortal enemies, maybe they find some common ground, who knows. The IC drama itself isn’t the problem, which is why I have a hard time faulting PP in this situation.

@howyadoin said in Non-toxic PvP:

Okay I think -this- is the actual crux of the issue, then, and I agree it is very not okay.

Why? Isn’t it entirely appropriate that PP would be grumbling (again, ICly) about getting beaten up at the danger pit when all they wanted to do was find a better solution for the mcguffin? Isn’t it an entirely legitimate beef that they have with MH over a clash of IC goals?

It’s being portrayed like MH was somehow baited into something that is now being used agains them, but MH didn’t need to fight PP in the first place. There were a zillion other ways that conflict could have gone. All I see here is MH getting bent out of shape because it didn’t go the way they wanted.

This whole thing, by the way, is emblematic of why I don’t think PVP can ever be done in a constructive way among strangers on the internet. We can’t even agree on what’s appropriate behavior in a purely hypothetical scenario where nobody has any actual skin in the game.

@Jumpscare I mean, maybe we come from different gameplay styles or something, but as a storyteller I wouldn’t have any problem with that. It sounds like PP had raised objections to the plan originally, was clear about their goals and intentions, and presented an obstacle that MH had to overcome. Seems like a fine story to me.

That’s assuming the flak MH is getting is IC and not OOC. Like it’s fine for PP to ICly grumble about getting beaten up at the danger pit, but they can’t OOCly go around trashing MH’s player for playing in-theme.

All you’ve described is just two players having different ideas of what is “fun” for them. Staff is certainly within their rights to say “no” to the PP type of character, but IF they are approved, it seems like fair drama.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:

For me, I’ve seen fully cerebral Jesper Lynd / James Bond style conflicts go rather well even in a fully transparent situation.

Same. It’s valid to want that kind of immersive experience where you don’t know any more than your character, but it’s still possible to tell a compelling story when everybody has all their cards on the table. After all, that’s what the writers of the original Lynd/Bond storyline did. The writers, the actors, the directors, etc. were all operating with full transparency.

I think that the more immersed you are with your character, the more likely there is to be bleed and OOC competitiveness. Transparency and communication can help combat that, but they’re not a magic cure-all.

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

To be honest, I think that even games which claim not to be PvP or CvC games tend to have elements of PvP that people don’t like to think about, which means they should always also be accounting for these same issues. You can never fully prevent them, because of what @Faraday says here.

Oh absolutely. My last several games were all PvE, but there absolutely were players competing directly. Whether it was who was atop the NPC “kill” leaderboard, or who got the medal/promotion, or who got the guy/girl, or whatever. You can’t escape human nature, you can only manage it.

@KDraygo said in Non-toxic PvP:

Character vs Character is a much more accurate designation to use in my opinion.

I personally like the CvC designation, but I think it’s wallpapering over the fact that for a lot of people, it really IS the PvP that attracts them. They view the game like a game of chess, or a game of tennis or whatever, where it really is about “winners” and losers, being “the best”, etc. The fact that it’s another player involved is what elevates the stakes/conflict to a level they don’t get when it’s player characters versus non-player characters (which really when you think about it is also literally CvC).

You can call it what you want, but it’s not going to change their fundamental outlook, and that outlook is what causes a lot of drama on PvP games. (The other large chunk of drama is poor bleed management, and I really don’t know how you address that with a big group of internet strangers.)

I genuinely don’t think it’s possible to do healthy PVP en masse in a game of strangers on the internet. Among friends? Sure. One of my favorite TTRPGs was a cutthroat game of Amber diceless where everyone was plotting against each other. With the right people in isolation? Absolutely. There are MU players I would trust with an antagonistic IC relationship. It just doesn’t scale.

But to attempt to constructively answer your question - if I were going to try it, I would do:

• OOC transparency to foster trust
• Strict enforcement action against poor sportsmanship
• Make conflict more give-and-take so it doesn’t feel like a zero-sum game (like in comics - Batman can win the day, but Joker doesn’t die; that lets the conflict go on)