@Shygaming said:

I want a game where the world, the mechanics and other characters can impose outcomes on you that you didn’t choose.

Okay but you are avoiding the question of how you as a game runner think you are going to actualize this ideal on your game?

Given that any RP at all can only be accomplished by the OOC consent of the players involved (the act of RPing alone indicates the fact of consent): how would you police the inevitable scenario of someone who didn’t want SA as part of their character’s history simply choosing the FTB option and thereafter just refusing to acknowledge that anything happened - effectively retconning it for themselves and others?

@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?

Was Haven the game that forced you to specify tit size and had code-timed menstruation?

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

@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.

@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”!

@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.

Did the great famine in the 7th age lead to the toppling of the monarchy or are we still lords and ladies-ing it up?

@Artemis because of the story itself or because the other player is being toxic?

@Roz Yeah - I didn’t want to go on the “good vs. bad policy” side quest, because the policy really isn’t any part of the issue in this scenario.

For, you see, “Pat” also broke the rule with players who were willing to break the rule. Or who at the very least weren’t looking to verify with an obviously new character that they weren’t breaking the rule.

But “Pat” wasn’t satisfied and couldn’t be happy limiting themself to just those players who were fine with being complicit.

“Pat” just had to also pursue players who were actively trying to follow the rule, and manipulate them.

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.

@helvetica Kind of beside the point because the gripe is lying OOC to obtain consent where it would not have otherwise been given.

@catzilla Blatantly lied OOC about compliance with a game policy others were trying to enforce to convince them it was okay to fuck.

Yeah.

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

Okay?

@Wuff Underrated actor who was fantastic in both of my two favorite childhood movies: Jurassic Park and Hunt For Red October.

@Juniper Arx was lore rich for people who wanted to delve with an active grid that had something for anyone and more than enough social RP for anyone who didn’t necessarily want to deep dive into all the fantastical things.

Arx also had a secret system that tied most into some aspect of the metaplot or history, giving every character something they could pursue out the gate that was more or less “theirs” and could hook in to wider story arcs.

Arx 2 is probably going to be a completely different setting and I don’t know what - if any - of the lore will remain the same. But I do know the way magic is meant to work is pretty fucking cool.

So I think the biggest selling point of Arx 2 (without knowing anything about it except the outline of magic we played around with at the end of Arx’s run) is going to be that magic system as a core part of the game, a new immersive lore, and a cool grid with diverse RP options.

@InkGolem said in Arx:

Will this game use Evennia, Ares, or a Secret Third Thing?

Evennia

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.

<.<

@BurnNotice why are you attacking Silent Heaven like this?

If it wasn’t for the mid-scene “oh shit!” skill raise, my XP would never be spent.

@Ashkuri Oh. I’ve usually experienced this in contexts where I wasn’t even questioning the would-doingness of the character in the first place….

…not until the player themself brought it up, that is…