[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.

---

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.

---

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.

[DJScias]

Hello there,

To be honest I actually wasn't aware of that you had to give consent to people. As I've had some of my chars get hurt before and I just went with it because that's RP and I've gotten some pretty good after-effect RP out of it as well.

In my own opinion, I feel that you should only need a GM if both parties can't agree on a fight that would cause a possible death to one party. But I feel like injuries, how major they may be, should be allowed as is. We don't love in a huggy world and we have Guards and other people (see white knights) around to stop it.

The fact that this world is so magical, even if you were to lose a limb or perhaps a part of your body, there's means to stay alive here, perhaps even get better through the use of some clever inventions.

GMs have other things to look at and just being around for every sort of thing to say "yes or no" is going to become a drag, both for the playerbase and them. Your draft is interesting in itself though, but I feel that both 1 and 2 should be acceptable as is.

Number 3 is where I may agree that you'll need GM permissions (read above with possible char death). If at any time a person's char turns into a direction where death is inevitable both parties should discuss this between themselves. If they can't come to an agreement, THEN a GM should be called.

Of course, this is all my own opinion. I've always been a big fighter for things like "perma-death" and "actions equal consequences" in about every platform I've RP'd on.

Good post regardless, I hope having hear different people's opinions on the matter will help for us to get to some sort of decision.

Kind regards,
DJScias

[Sawrock]

When the people went bounty hunting for me, it WAS kind of unfair. They had nothing to lose- their characters only died if they wanted them to. I died if they won. Death permissions, currently, are only forced on a person if they decide to be enough for the empire to want them dead, which isn't exactly the best way to handle them, in my opinion.

[Rendar]

I'm fine with these proposed changes. However, if someone honestly wants to attempt to murder your character... They should know, going into it that, if they fail, the same can be done to them.

If someone is attempting to open up a "HAHA IMMA MURDER JOO", which they need your consent for anyways... They should know that if they fail... They are at your mercy. It's a real and prevalent thing. Just having that would solve the people that attack with the intent on murdering/maiming you and then getting to run off scott free.

[MegaBlues]

I would like for more penalties to become a reality, but usually, what decides who loses an arm or their head?

PvP.

And what's the current state of PvP?

Before any of this can become a reality, the game needs to be heavily modified. There's already enough salt going around due to completely optional OOC sparring; can you imagine what would happen if fights like this were able to dictate a character's development?

Also, for what Sderg said, I've heard that people have attempted to kill others, have failed, and then refused to die themselves. And this was supported by GMs, due to the rule that you aren't allowed to force death upon others, unless you're part of the Empire. I.E. a GM.

[Egil]

Also, for what Sderg said, I've heard that people have attempted to kill others, have failed, and then refused to die themselves. And this was supported by GMs, due to the rule that you aren't allowed to force death upon others, unless you're part of the Empire. I.E. a GM.

This is one of the instances where I tried to kill someone and was told that I couldn't. They tried to kill my character, failed, my character turned it around, but then wasn't able to attempt the kill because they refused to die OOC'ly. I was actually very upset when I realized that the 'rule' could be interpreted that way legitimately, and is another big reason why I push forward these changes.

Thank you, those that have already posted!

[Ranylyn]

I would like to start by saying that I understand and respect where you're coming from. However, there's numerous issues with the whole thing.

1) Impersonation is considered an OOC offense since it can be used to fabricate logs and OOCly frame someone. It could potentially make for some good roleplay, sure, but the cons far outweigh the pros. For example, someone once impersonated Seraphina Isley and tried to make a scene out of a public assault/ attempted murder. Anyone who knew the character could attest that it's something the character was not stupid enough to do. However, not every character is as well known or easy to defend. If impersonation was just considered a minor IC offense, malicious players could simply imitate people they dislike to ruin them. This is actually one big reason why several people, myself included, don't advertise all our charatcers and keys in the way that some other people, like Roxy and Fern do; I actually advertised one of my new characters ONCE as an experiment and an hour later someone was using an inappropriate copy of the playby (basically a bikini instead of proper garments) in mockery of me, and they stopped when I called them out on it, before a GM was online to do anything about it.

2) Unfortunately, our community is hung up on selective metagaming. The equipment tab showing that they have armor instead of a tank top? "omfg get rid of it because it's metagame to be able to tell that." A character who ICly lost a racial feature? "OMFG YOU METAGAMING SHIT HOW DARE YOU TRY TO FOOL PEOPLE BY PRETENDING TO BE HUMAN!" As someone who's ICly lost a few racial features through IC assault PVP (a tail, a horn, both an elf's ears, etc) the backlash when people just so happen to see me in the arena on training day without a racial icon on my character because it's been ICly removed can be stupid, even when I expressly note the injury in the description and keep the original race emphasized. Until people get over this, I don't think people refusing IC consequences will ever change; no one wants to be ostracized.

3) I'd rather not go into details involving item theft, but TLDR version: An entire stack of raremetal is still just 1 encumberance. And, if multiple characters share a home (such as a family or whatnot) the item storage can't be locked to owner only, for obvious reasons. If even one careless person forgets to lock the door, some asshole can just waltz in and empty EVERYTHING out, with NO WAY of proving who did it. Honestly, entering others' houses without permission should be an OOC offense just because of how dumb it is to monitor and enforce.

4) Rather than make forced lich morphism an IC offense, let's just ban it from happening at all with liches, shall we? "Muahahaha, I will force my enemy to become a lich and acquire the power they need to destroy me, it is a foolproof plan!" Listen, no, I'm sorry. Anyone who claims they were forced to change needs to be brutally slapped with all kinds of non lethal weaponry, like floppy foam dildo bats, because that is the stupidest shit and people still think anyone with a second brain cell to rub against their first could ever consider it to be a remotely viable excuse for why their lich wants to be a social butterfly. Special little snowflake victim martyrs can get the fuck out. In fact, arrest them IRL for brain cell genocide. This counts as assault with a deadly weapon when the stupidity is THAT stupid.

There COULD be an argument to be made for vampires. COULD. While 6 existing vampires wouldn't get together to forcibly make food become non-food, it's not impossible for someone to acquire the blood of 6 vampires and trick someone into drinking it for less moral purposes, like a parent who never wants to see their child grow up, or other, even less moral, purposes. I think my favorite was a vampire hunter who unknowingly dated someone who was actually a vampire, and then got tricked into turning out of spite for their profession. See, this is neat. It's IC and encourages a character arc; how does one cope when becoming what they've dedicated their life to destroying? But, and this is a big but, these defensible examples are few and far between, and would be ICly impossible to prove anyways. *shrug*


So yeah. Just my two cents about the issues I see with your post. I know you said it's a rough draft and all, so I'm not knocking your efforts or motivations.

[Slydria]

It's always hard to rule how these things should go. It's pretty much dependant on the situation:

I do agree to some point that it's a gip to get to the point when you want someone dead ICly (emphasis on IC), confront them, get into a fight, beat them down to 0HP and then as you go in for the killing blow, they just have to say "No, I'm not allowing you to kill my character."

And the whole thing is ruined. How anti-climatic, what was the point?

And then there's things like what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if you lost and he kills your character but he never intended to die from the start regardless?

This sort of thing is just not fair.


But on the other hand, the rule exists for good reason. Let's say you have an OOC reason to want the character dead, then the whole situation gets shady and can be seen as an IC attack for an OOC grudge which is straight-up against the rules.

Then there's people trying to kill each other for weak reasons. Nobody wants to just die for something so minor like petty insults or because you just don't like them, to me, that's bad roleplay and I agree to people saying "No." to this kind of crap.


What I'd prefer is people making the stakes clear beforehand. Both players should accept to equal levels of punishment, as long as the situation is fair play (e.g. it's not OOC or otherwise done for poor reasons).

You won't die? Well, then you don't get to kill me.
You won't lose an arm? Then you don't get to cut out my eye.
You aren't willing to get captured? Then you can't capture me either.

It's not perfect but there's some etiquette to this. Honestly though, this is just common sense to me.

As for GM intervention, mostly when a disagreement happens to IC circumstance, you'd call in a GM anyway. And I feel like most of the time this kind of thing gets away with it, it's because GMs aren't available at the time.


TL;DR - "Roleplaying isn't a contest." Please communicate better with each other to avoid these disagreements, make your intent known beforehand and strike a fair deal for those involved.

If people can't be reasoned with, then that's when you call it off or if it's already happened, that's when GM intervention is required.

[Rendar]

I would like to start by saying that I understand and respect where you're coming from. However, there's numerous issues with the whole thing.

1) Impersonation is considered an OOC offense since it can be used to fabricate logs and OOCly frame someone. It could potentially make for some good roleplay, sure, but the cons far outweigh the pros. For example, someone once impersonated Seraphina Isley and tried to make a scene out of a public assault/ attempted murder. Anyone who knew the character could attest that it's something the character was not stupid enough to do. However, not every character is as well known or easy to defend. If impersonation was just considered a minor IC offense, malicious players could simply imitate people they dislike to ruin them. This is actually one big reason why several people, myself included, don't advertise all our charatcers and keys in the way that some other people, like Roxy and Fern do; I actually advertised one of my new characters ONCE as an experiment and an hour later someone was using an inappropriate copy of the playby (basically a bikini instead of proper garments) in mockery of me, and they stopped when I called them out on it, before a GM was online to do anything about it.

2) Unfortunately, our community is hung up on selective metagaming. The equipment tab showing that they have armor instead of a tank top? "omfg get rid of it because it's metagame to be able to tell that." A character who ICly lost a racial feature? "OMFG YOU METAGAMING SHIT HOW DARE YOU TRY TO FOOL PEOPLE BY PRETENDING TO BE HUMAN!" As someone who's ICly lost a few racial features through IC assault PVP (a tail, a horn, both an elf's ears, etc) the backlash when people just so happen to see me in the arena on training day without a racial icon on my character because it's been ICly removed can be stupid, even when I expressly note the injury in the description and keep the original race emphasized. Until people get over this, I don't think people refusing IC consequences will ever change; no one wants to be ostracized.

3) I'd rather not go into details involving item theft, but TLDR version: An entire stack of raremetal is still just 1 encumberance. And, if multiple characters share a home (such as a family or whatnot) the item storage can't be locked to owner only, for obvious reasons. If even one careless person forgets to lock the door, some asshole can just waltz in and empty EVERYTHING out, with NO WAY of proving who did it. Honestly, entering others' houses without permission should be an OOC offense just because of how dumb it is to monitor and enforce.

4) Rather than make forced lich morphism an IC offense, let's just ban it from happening at all with liches, shall we? "Muahahaha, I will force my enemy to become a lich and acquire the power they need to destroy me, it is a foolproof plan!" Listen, no, I'm sorry. Anyone who claims they were forced to change needs to be brutally slapped with all kinds of non lethal weaponry, like floppy foam dildo bats, because that is the stupidest shit and people still think anyone with a second brain cell to rub against their first could ever consider it to be a remotely viable excuse for why their lich wants to be a social butterfly. Special little snowflake victim martyrs can get the fuck out. In fact, arrest them IRL for brain cell genocide. This counts as assault with a deadly weapon when the stupidity is THAT stupid.

There COULD be an argument to be made for vampires. COULD. While 6 existing vampires wouldn't get together to forcibly make food become non-food, it's not impossible for someone to acquire the blood of 6 vampires and trick someone into drinking it for less moral purposes, like a parent who never wants to see their child grow up, or other, even less moral, purposes. I think my favorite was a vampire hunter who unknowingly dated someone who was actually a vampire, and then got tricked into turning out of spite for their profession. See, this is neat. It's IC and encourages a character arc; how does one cope when becoming what they've dedicated their life to destroying? But, and this is a big but, these defensible examples are few and far between, and would be ICly impossible to prove anyways. *shrug*


So yeah. Just my two cents about the issues I see with your post. I know you said it's a rough draft and all, so I'm not knocking your efforts or motivations.

1) IC impersonation can be good if done right. It'd require a GM to moderate it and what not due to #Reasons. Tada. Issue is solved with the stupidity behind this.

2) What??? people backlashed upon you for... not having your races features??? I literally see a fucking redtail without a tail, and a number of other races without their features 24/7. I think we're fine in the regard.

3) How to fix this: Make it 1 item = 1 encumbrance for the purpose of this rule. TADA! It's fixed.

4) I just. Want to quote my favorite thing out of here.

Special little snowflake victim martyrs can get the fuck out. In fact, arrest them IRL for brain cell genocide. This counts as assault with a deadly weapon when the stupidity is THAT stupid.

That aside. People becoming a lich unwillingly has, as far as I can remember, been denied by Dev because it isn't a simplistic ritual. IE: It's actually impossible to have this happen 'accidentally' or have it happen with an 'unwilling' subject.

[Zakizo]

I think reciprocation rules would be better than jumping straight to GM enforcement (and GM enforcement for when that fails).

Examples...

You surrender your right to your character's safety from general harm if you do any of the following:
- Commit assault.
- Commit theft.
- Blatantly antagonize a person to the point where they might be expected to respond aggressively (See: Repeatedly poking someone after they've told you to stop might get your arm broken).

The idea here is that a casual player should not expect to stray too heavily from "safe" behavior and keep their immunity from harm. Naturally, anyone who retaliates invites the same consequences. If you don't want to risk something bad befalling your character, don't try to be a badass. Call the guards.

To expand...

You surrender the right to your character's life if you:
- commit murder.
- willingly engage a dangerous individual.
- investigate a dangerous individual (obviously they might want this to stop).
- knowingly involve yourself with a dangerous 'plot'.
- attack someone with the intent to kill.

Intent to kill must be expressed beforehand. If player A intends to kill player B and player B does not agree to a fight to the death (they forfeit their right to refuse if they've done any of the previous five things), then player B also cannot attempt force death on player A. Any of these rules can be made flexible with the prior consent of both parties, but without that consent you are where you are. If you've committed murder and the other person isn't giving prior agreement to your safety, you can't hide behind the "but it's my character" shield.

That's my take on it, but I'm sure there are numerous ways to tackle this so that it's fair on both sides. This is just the only way I could think of that doesn't put unnecessary additional stress on the GM team. I'm fine with anything that balances things out for people like Saw, since how it is currently just isn't cutting it. Casual players have no business deliberately throwing their characters into dangerous or life-threatening situations and feeling entitled to their complete safety.