[Poruku]

You've the onus to reach out and communicate.  Any consequences that come from a lack of foresight or thought, are on you.

You can see where a lack of communication, clear conveyance of the villain's players desires and a mutual trust come into play?

Well, I think your post describes well how difficult it is to be a bad guy. The responsibility lies mostly upon the antagonist, as both the perpetrator and the manager of any particular encounter. As antags, we must be communicating with everyone involved, we must make everything clear, and give people options and make sure they are comfortable. Even if we offer a way out, some might not even be comfortable with choosing that, and we are in part responsible for that. We are the ones initiating after all.

I am not saying the way that works is wrong. But I think your post is a great demonstration of why it's so tiring. Playing an antagonist "correctly" without hurting or offending anyone is a nigh-impossible task. And to those who would say "it's not hard to communicate", I would respond that it's harder than one might think. SL2 isn't a job, it's a game, and the expectation is that you're having fun. When you spend as much time "communicating" as you're spending time playing, then I feel like it starts to defeat the whole point. Thus, why I've decided to stop trying so hard.

I think this problem could be alleviated with actual systems in place in the actual game. I'm talking like, mechanics that facilitate it. For instance, making prison a mechanical thing. Making robbery, and capture, all mechanically enforced. Making it easier and more organic for bad guys to exist, perhaps in a dedicated area like the runescape wilderness. It's the same problem that korvara conflict had and still has. The fact that everything is in the hand of the players means that there is a massive amount of responsibility on our shoulders, coupled with the problem of disagreement, miscommunication, conflicts of interest, or even worse things like harassment. Much like in other areas, SL2 demands a lot of work from players, because it is not really a game with RP systems. Only RPG mechanics, and a chat.

So Balor, you're totally correct. And therein lies the issue.