[Egil]

Hello!

I think that we all roleplay because it is fun to. Some folks prefer light doses of it alongside PvP while others can spend all day with a virtual family in an ordinary setting without getting bored. That's great! Differences like these promote diversity in character creation, which often leads to interesting and unique IC experiences. However, there is a part of this game that makes it less fun for me. Now, it isn't explicitly written out in stone, but the fact that you can negate many actions (including maim and kill attempts) made against your character just by saying that you won't accept them happening OOC'ly can be gleamed from the implications of certain rules and confirmed by the enforcement of this invisible 'Law of The Land' by GMs. See:

Committing felony-level crimes is considered heinous; violent crimes are considered incredibly heinous. If the offense is grave enough, your character could be facing a death sentence; however, this will be determined by a GM, not a player guard.

To make sure that people are aware: When a character has committed (violent) crimes enough to warrant it, a GM will make clear to them that they are likely to be permanently killed if they continue to commit (violent) crimes. This cannot be ignored; if your character crosses that line, they will be killed off. The GMs will be reasonable about this, but when it happens, it happens.

The two rules listed are from the guard section of the wikia's guidelines, both implying that GMs, not fellow players, can kill you. Chaos elaborates further, and touches up on a key counterargument to the notion of allowing players to kill one another more freely: Random or unwarranted murders will ruin the progress made on many characters without improving or bettering roleplay. This is a valid concern, and that is exactly why I don't want death (which is probably the most extreme consequence a character can face) to be able to happen over poor reasoning or without oversight. However, minor actions (cutting off a finger, kidnapping, robbing, etc) should not be regulated as harshly as something like death- which is the case currently, contrary to popular belief. People are able to godmod themselves into immortality and invulnerability at a whim, and I'd like to see that change.

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Below is some of the criticism I received over my idea when I brought it up in the Discord group, along with my general thoughts on that criticism.

"My character is mine, ultimately. You shouldn't be able to dictate what happens to them."

I'm not trying to make anything happen to any individual character; I just desire a SL2 that does not encourage people to be edgelords and 'all bark but no bite' simply because characters can't hurt eachother without OOC consent. Consequences for one's characters' actions are great for RP. Otherwise, we would not have a need for guards or a prison system that you can only void or argue against if you think that a guard is arresting you over poor reasoning (which, really, is only fine because prison is moreso an OOC punishment than an IC one, but that's an entirely different topic.) Under the right circumstances, negative things happening to the people of Sigrogana moves the plot along and inspires growth. Of course, if you're playing a casual character that stays in its' lane, then you should be safe from having most bad things come your character's way, let alone someone trying to take your character's life. If your character enters a dangerous situation or involves themselves with dangerous people, however, then a clear and significant possibility of tragedy striking should exist.

"We shouldn't change anything over your bloodthirst."

A terribly ironic argument since vampires exist, but I am not out for massive amounts of bloodshed or death. That would be bad for RP. I've only been in situations where I could have killed someone else's character a few times in my entire time of playing SL2, and I was either met with 'no, you cannot kill me' and was forced to omit the rp leading up to the attempted kill since it wouldn't make sense for them to survive, or I didn't try to kill them due to the anticipation that they would say no. These kill attempts had nothing to do with a desire to kill in and of itself, but because of IC circumstances that overwhelmingly justified those attempts. Other attempts that involved less severe acts toward another character were similarly voided simply because they OOC'ly didn't want that to happen to their character and refused to compromise.

"You can just to not roleplay with people that will always void that sort of stuff."

This isn't conductive to community RP, because a large amount of people are like this. They take full advantage of the fact that GMs will back them up on not having bad things happen to their characters for a variety of reasons, and not all of them are necessarily 'bad roleplayers'. Infact, some people that are guilty of this are prominent players that you wouldn't think would go 'oh, you want to kill my character after they went crazy for a second and stabbed your character? nah lol'- but they have before and will again. As it stands now, all someone has to say is 'no, you cannot do x to me' and it simply won't happen. Some folks that I brought this up to have disagreed, but I have personally had this happen to me a plethora of times and it got to the point where the only negative actions I can take against another character without fear of it being voided had to be verbal or within the confines of a legal spar.

I do not want to become an elitist that only roleplays with OOC friends just because the game doesn't support the same basic roleplaying components present in nearly every other BYOND RPG.

"Saw was able to do plenty of terrible things to people without needing GMs to interfere."

Yes, Bloeden was able to do terrible things to people who agreed to those terrible things happening. In many cases, they refused even him- like when fourteen people went to Law's End to kill him and, when in a position to kill them all, Bloeden was unable to because only one person gave OOC consent to death. Now, I'm not making the argument that more death in that situation would have been better, because I wasn't there, but the fact that more death didn't happen not because Saw felt that one death would cement the feeling of dread and despair, but because people didn't want to lose their characters after throwing them into a life-or-death scenario is ridiculous. That makes people not want to be antagonists and not want to stir the pot, which gives you the stale RP that many experience right now.

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The following proposal involves scenarios in which a winning party wishes to perform an act on a losing party and the losing party is unwilling. If consent is given, then a GM does not have to step in at all unless other rules are infringed upon. Others can occur outside of an active conflict.

1. Minor acts of negative interaction is acceptable, and would require rampant abuse in order for a GM to weigh in on a situation.
1a. Minor Theft: Non-equipment items, limited to less than 1 encumbrance
1b. Minor Assault: No life threatening injuries, no attempts made on one's life

2. Major acts of negative interaction are somewhat acceptable without a GM to moderate. You require decent reasoning in order to perform these acts, or else a GM can readily tell you to cease and desist.
2a. Major Theft: Non-equipment items, limited to less than 20 encumbrance
2b. Major Assault: Possibly life threatening injuries, usually involving bloodshed or broken bones
2c. Kidnapping: A single person has their freedom intensely restricted by another player w/o fatal harm (cannot last more than 3 OOC days w/o becoming Deadly)
2d. Impersonation: Using the likeness of another non-guard, non-event character

3. Extreme acts of negative interaction are only acceptable with a GM's permission. You require excellent reasoning in order to perform these acts, or else you're just wasting everyone's time.
3a. Extreme Theft: Equipment items, any amount of stolen items heavier than 20 encumbrance
3b. Extreme Assault: Loss of limb and other forms of disfigurement and maiming
3c. Deadly Kidnapping: When multiple people have their freedom intensely restricted by another player, or a person(s) are taken with the intent to torture/rape/kill/etc, or the period of capture lasts longer than 3 OOC days.
3d. Deadly Impersonation: Using the likeness of a guard or pivotal figure
3e. Home Invasion: Entering a locked player house
3f. Morphism: Forcibly: inducing vampirism/lichdom/etc in another character
3g. Murder: Take another character's life.


This list is merely a rough draft, and can be added onto/reduced/completely reworked as pleased if the general idea is acceptable to Dev and the community at large. I'm seeking discussion and change on something that I'm concerned about, so feel free to go wild and say what you actually feel/think about what I've said-

"Just go elsewhere, where you can enjoy whatever RP you're looking for."

--- Sure. This is a make-it-break-it issue for me, because I'm tired of allowing terrible things to happen to my own characters only for that same standard to not be reciprocated. So, if the status quo remains, where you can negate anything bad from happening to your character regardless of how deserved or invited it is as long as it isn't coming from a guard or GM, then I'll probably see myself out, to the chagrin of no one.