Yeah.

Let’s not lie OOC in order to convince people to fuck us IC.

Okay?

@Kestrel Yes! A list of similarly immersion breaking peeves! Like when characters act extremely blasé about the setting no matter how horrific/creepy/suspenseful…nothing affects them ever. They’ve “seen it all”!

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.

Alright alright alright.

I just didn’t want this to turn into a discussion about policy when it’s not a matter of the policy involved but of obtaining consent under false pretenses.

There is a prohibition on relationship roleplay with characters that have been in the game for less than two weeks. The rule applies even to returning players playing a new character.

“Pat” violated this policy multiple times. Fine. But in at least two of those times, “Pat” also provably lied about how long their character had been in game (when directly asked by the other players involved) in order to obtain their consent. In both, “Pat” significantly exaggerated their character’s time in the game.

“Pat” knew the rule. A character’s creation date as well as their number of days in the game are spelled out on their sheet, which “Pat” knows. It wasn’t a matter of forgetfulness or plain uncertainty.

“Pat” was caught and removed from the game.

@Shygaming said:

The middle ground where it is technically possible but only if the victim OOCly opts into it turns it into CNC fetish play almost by definition. At that point the “evil rapist” isn’t actually imposing something horrible on another character. The two players have negotiated a rape fantasy together.

Point not exactly made. It just turns it into a collaborative story effort.

I have RPed several things things that I have no fantasies for or inclination toward. OOC consent doesn’t usually mean “wants that” it just means “is willing to experience reading / writing about that”.

The obvious question is why would you WANT to RP an SA scene, or inflict an IC SA scenario, on another player who would not opt in?

You say an OOC opt-in is ‘negotiating a rape fantasy’. Ok… So what do we call deliberately imposing SA on a player who didn’t agree to it?

And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.

It starts functioning as a … game? Entertainment. Holy shit. How awful! Literally putting the ‘G’ in RPG.

That also doesn’t mean someone has to sit there and explicitly RP an assault they don’t want to write. Fade to black exists.

But they can’t retcon it or act like it never happened moving forward, I’m guessing? How exactly are you going to police that?

Player A decides their character SA Player B’s character. Player B doesn’t consent OOC and fades the scene. Afterward, Player B decides to simply declines to acknowledge it moving forward. Now what?

Is staff going to come in and force the SA as canonical and compel Player B to incorporate it into their RP or get a ban?

I completely understand the argument for banning SA outright. I think that is a coherent policy. I also understand allowing it as part of a setting where players know what they are signing up for.

I just think “SA is allowed but only when everyone involved wants SA RP” produces something very different from either of those things.

Yeah. It produces consensual collaborative story telling about non-consensual fictional events. Which is how we handle a large amount of RP already.

I think we’re just looking for different things from RP. I don’t want wish fulfillment where everyone gets the scenes and outcomes they were hoping for. I want uncertainty, conflict and consequences. That lack of control is part of what makes the story feel real to me. This is probably not something I’m going to change anyone’s mind on. I think we’re starting from fundamentally different ideas of what RP should be.

Consenting to RP about subjects and scenarios doesn’t mean you get the scenes and outcomes you hope for. It just means you get players who want to play that aspect of the game. The rest will either just not play the game, or will FTB and then ignore it ever happened and won’t talk about it on screen, or will subsequently quit the game and disappear randomly from the grid in a most “unreal” fashion.

“Lack of control making the story feel real” doesn’t exist in what you are arguing for. People who don’t want to RP that scenario are just going to FTB. In which case, there is no story produced for you to “feel real” at all.

Just because you didn’t acquire OOC consent, doesn’t mean you don’t need OOC consent. You can’t ever force the person on the other end of the line to type a single pose or even a “fuck you”. The more I think about it, the more it seems this conversation is pointless. You can’t get the content you want without consent whether that’s clearly stated or implied by the fact that it’s being RPed at all.

So if the fact is that it’s only the people who do consent OOC that will stick around to RP it in any form, why not just save a ton of headaches by identifying them up front?

So I’ve been keeping an eye on the GitHub for a bit and was >this< close to opening a thread yesterday about Arx seeming a way out but coming along pretty neat! Very interested to see what you’ve got cooked up.

@Nelly said:

Particularly, I’ve been struggling with how my character is supposed to react to this blasé character in question. Another difficult topic are the characters who have quippy one-liners or otherwise unserious comments in serious scenes. Big scary dragon that’s wiped out three kingdoms is now approaching its fourth along with all its brood of whelps, and a character just blurts out how they want to adopt one as they’re rampaging through the farmlands.

Yeah this gets me most when it is their entire contribution to the scene.

Who doesn’t love a great mid-action, or mid-horror, quip when it integrates well and is incorporated into an overall fitting reaction?

The stand alone quipster though who is otherwise completely unaffected by what’s going down? Big peeve as a player, but even bigger peeve if I’m the ST.

@Faraday Not really, because PP didn’t HAVE TO get beaten up in the danger pit.

On SH, you can collab offscreen resolution.

Here, PP manipulated MH into an onscreen solution that was theme appropriate for MH, and theme-bendy for PP, that MH wanted to avoid actually. This was not satisfying to MH. (Fine - who cares. I agree this is whatever).

But now PP takes this as some opt-in to a long term, unresolvable grudge which MH actually tried to avoid, that PP uses to shit on anything further MH wants to do that is theme appropriate.

This essentially preys on the OOC empathies of other players which now come into play and start diluting the theme - requiring staff to come in and constantly assure the community that MH is acting in accordance with the theme of Faction X, so please stop DMing each other on discord about what an asshole he is and please stop messaging powerful NPCs to get rid of him.

What were some memorable scenes you’ve had over the years? Silly, emotional, outrageously boring, frustrating beyond all reason - I dunno. All of it and more!

Give a little synopsis of what went down and then say a few words about what made it memorable for you.

@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:

What about you? What pace do you like and why?

Nothing beats live RP momentum and immediate character reaction.

I struggle with the yo-yo effect of Async and ultimately find I can’t get back into the scene mentally. It takes the spontaneous nature of RP out of the equation and I feel like that spontaneity is part and parcel in what makes RP special for me.

Also, acting “as” the character is important for me in RP. I can’t do that with async where I’m the character for a pose a day, or whatever the pacing is.

And maybe that’s the actual distinction: I RP to “act”, not to “write”.

@Roz not to mention the disruption to my eyes from rolling so hard at the inevitable max cringe attempts of returning players to struggle-bus their old characters through amnesia.

I tend to exit scene upon hearing the pitter patter of little NPC feet.

Oh no my what about my hog pit nostalgia

@MisterBoring Silent Heaven already exists

ETA: joke

@bear_necessities said in Does Anyone Even Care?:

What’s stopping you from being a stay to the end person? Or, alternatively, what makes/made you a stay to the end person?

I am a “stay until it stops being fun person”.

When the something-other-than-fun to fun ratio tips to a certain amount, I leave.

There are a million factors involved in that, and honestly a game runner couldn’t hope to manage them all. I don’t expect them to try.

Just run a good game, try to keep it as interesting as you can, and if you need help, find smart people of proven skill to help you keep the players engaged. Have a clearly defined code of conduct for your game and be fair, public and predictable in how you enforce it.

Beyond that, there’s not much you can do. Of the games I’ve left, few were because I didn’t like how the game was run or the community. I lose interest in playing my own character and that’s mostly on me and my willingness and/or availability to breathe life into an idea that is only entertaining and not otherwise contributive to my existence on this planet.

@Roz said in Scenes within Scenes:

@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:

I think that -in general- places code is trying to police a social problem (players having their characters react to things their characters shouldn’t be able to hear) with a code solution (making it so players can’t hear some of what’s said). And I’m generally not in favor of that.

that reasoning has honestly never occurred to me. for me, places/tt has always been about making large scenes more manageable by reducing the overall spam levels.

That reasoning has definitely occurred to me and is fully legitimate as a reasoning because - well - not everyone can control themselves when there’s tea / a great pun opportunity / or a fantastic ‘that’s what she said!’ just hanging there for the taking.

But the real purpose of table talk is to isolate the inane peanut gallery chatter from the actual important shit going on.

And also to make mostly one-way scenes (such as sermons, lectures, ceremonies, giant meetings and concerts) less boring.

You have to walk them through the absurdity of their actions, framing each rung of their decision ladder in the most ridiculous way possible, as a “just double checking…” that’s what their character would actually do.

Server Message of the Day: We will probably be taking down the sandbox soon, to start the conversion of server hosting towards Arx 2 as it goes into alpha testing.

<.<

Bob Weir

My approach as a player has been to try and consider myself a guest in the house of the Head Wiz and be respectful of the staff and try not pester them beyond a gentle, occasional, nudge if warranted.

If I’m doing that and shit there sucks anyway, I feel confident it’s not my fault and I leave.

You will be miserable trying to demand attention from people who either can’t, or don’t want to, give it to you - and you will make them miserable in the process.