Armageddon MUD

Pandora

@Derp Though a Universal Declaration of Rights would be ridiculous, I do believe that there is a vast majority of people that hold certain OOC behaviours to be reprehensible regardless of what game they're playing on. Not IC behaviours, OOC ones. I'd even go so far as to argue many of these objections are objectively sound - the detestation of stalking and grooming, for instance.

There's so much gray area there that defining these things in any way that could lead to reprimand or accountability would be daunting if not impossible. Behaviors that can look like stalking (messaging someone with incredible frequency, asking them for RP scenes daily, making friends with all of their friends, etc.) might be just a good friend & everything is great - but then they have a falling out and suddenly all these signs of friendship are presented as evidence of stalking, and then what.

faraday

@Derp said in Armageddon MUD:

If I want to run a Dark Sun game where everyone starts as an Arena Slave and then gets to fight their way to freedom, that isn't going to appeal to some people. It doesn't have to. It shouldn't. If you're fresh off of a MLP Mu, it's probably going to seem like the most hideous and abusive thing in the world to you, and a toxic environment that you don't want to be a part of.

While I agree with you that it's ultimately subjective, I think your example misses the mark a bit. As @L-B-Heuschkel points out, you're describing an ICly harsh environment. That says nothing about the OOC atmosphere.

In college I played in a couple PvP type games where everybody was plotting against everyone, even killing them in some cases. But there was no OOC toxicity at all. Everyone was friendly (even if not all of us were "friends"), and when Bob's PC killed Sam's we'd all have a good chuckle about it afterward (including Sam). It's called good sportsmanship, and as @surreality said in the other thread, it's something we all should have learned as children on the playground. That so many adults engaging in what amounts to community theater with virtual dice can't manage it is sad.

Ghost

@faraday I would kind of love an OOCly supportive environment with an IC-PK environment.

It would be like Rollerball.

People placing side-bets on who wins which fight.
That one son of a bitch who lucks out on RNG having this massive target on his back
Cafepress store selling tee shirts, mugs, and underwear with slogans
Records for longest consecutive combat scene "survives" before permadeath...

faraday

@Ghost I think the key is expectations. People have to not take the game (and their characters) so bloody seriously. It's something that HorrorMU and TGG got right. They weren't PVP, but they set the stakes right so that you go into it expecting to die, and when you do it's not a big deal. It's certainly more of a challenge to implement such a thing in a PVP environment with strangers on the internet, but I don't think it's impossible. You just need to set expectations and have a staff willing to enforce them.

L. B. Heuschkel

@faraday said in Armageddon MUD:

@Ghost I think the key is expectations. People have to not take the game (and their characters) so bloody seriously.

This is something that's come up a few times over at our place recently -- not surprisingly since we are now, what, about a month old, and players have started trickling in without actually being somebody's buddy shanghaied over from that other game over there.

Ours is a game of comedy and satire, and hence, finding the balance between slapstick and gimmicks on one side and the sharp and scathing social commentary of Terry Pratchett on the other, takes effort. It does matter, a lot. Characters who are too pie-in-face-harhar end up not contributing to scenes, in fact killing them dead if they just fall silent after they've done whatever their funny thing is. Characters who are all gritty grimdark take themselves so seriously that in Discworld, narrative tropes almost guarantee they don't live long.

Faraday's point is everything. Take your character seriously enough that you contribute to the game and the story, but not so bloody seriously that you confuse it with yourself. And certainly not so seriously that nothing bad can happen to it, that a trauma conga renders it unplayable. Respect not just your fellow players but also yourself enough to not cross that line.

Derp

@faraday said in Armageddon MUD:

While I agree with you that it's ultimately subjective, I think your example misses the mark a bit. As @L-B-Heuschkel points out, you're describing an ICly harsh environment. That says nothing about the OOC atmosphere.

Sorry, maybe I was missing what I was trying to say:

In this instance, the judgment against the players would be OOC because they are embracing one of those uncomfortable topics (slavery/abuse/loss of agency/whatever) that many people like to set up as 'you are a reprehensible person OOC if you support or engage in this behavior, even IC'. Once upon a time, we had very clear lines between the IC and the OOC, but those started to bleed ages and ages.

And thus, there's no clear line on what is or is not objectively terrible or permissible because it's all pretty damn dependent.

Like you replied later, the key is expectations -- letting people know what they're getting into, and getting their agreement.

L. B. Heuschkel

@Derp said in Armageddon MUD:
In this instance, the judgment against the players would be OOC because they are embracing one of those uncomfortable topics (slavery/abuse/loss of agency/whatever) that many people like to set up as 'you are a reprehensible person OOC if you support or engage in this behavior, even IC'.

Oh good lord, no. If it says 'contains sex and violence' on the label, expect it to contain sex and violence.

Pandora

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Armageddon MUD:

Oh good lord, no. If it says 'contains sex and violence' on the label, expect it to contain sex and violence.

I wish. But no, if it contains sex anyone doesn't like, violence that isn't OOCly prearranged and agreed upon by all parties, and heaven forbid it mixes sex & violence together - you are bound to have a shitstorm or two because there really is no line of demarcation between IC action and OOC motive anymore, if MSB is to be taken as any indication of public sentiment.

L. B. Heuschkel

@Pandora said in Armageddon MUD:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Armageddon MUD:

Oh good lord, no. If it says 'contains sex and violence' on the label, expect it to contain sex and violence.

I wish. But no, if it contains sex anyone doesn't like, violence that isn't OOCly prearranged and agreed upon by all parties, and heaven forbid it mixes sex & violence together - you are bound to have a shitstorm or two because there really is no line of demarcation between IC action and OOC motive anymore, if MSB is to be taken as any indication of public sentiment.

This is where I want to argue that the human race has not had a collective lobotomy that I'm aware of, but I know how much effort certain people go to on some MMOs, to obtain screenshots and logs that might in any fashion appear suggestive, and the drama and uproar that follows in the wake of them posting these screenshots in public fora. Won't somebody think of the children, indeed.

I think I will maintain my previous stance. An OOC community and atmosphere intolerant of grooming, stalking, and abuse is a good start. Make it clear that rape jokes, threats of violence, verbal abuse and what have you is not acceptable -- unless it is indeed an IC reference, in which case anything within the game's rating goes.

But that's also all it is, a good start. There's always going to be somebody who thinks that the rules don't apply to them, someone who yells 'free speeeeech!' and thinks it means everyone else is obligated to listen to him, someone who posts a picture of a child posing in a supposedly sexy fashion on a police car.

Game mechanics are not the single answer to this, and neither is community atmosphere. But between them, they're probably the best answer we're going to get, because there is no way to solve this problem permanently and decisively.