Jun 29, 2022, 12:12 PM

A recent debate prompted me to create a new tangent to avoid derailing it.

One of the issues plaguing this hobby since its inception has to do with perceived unfairness - usually by staff. Someone succeeds because of favoritism. another is defeated because one person cheated to get ahead.

Even though these types of allegations will likely never go away, it strikes me that one of their underlying causes is that IC failure is often perceived as OOC failure, too. And I wanted to see if - and how - we can do better systemically to better distinguish between the two and ultimately incentivize conflict more than its resolution.

To get things started I don't think we (as a community) can really rely on "people being mature". Some will be, some won't be, but it's a social problem that neither code nor staff can really solve. I wouldn't spend much time debating that - but y'all can, of course.

Perhaps more interestingly though, why is IC failure so bad? Let's see:

  • You want an IC position. If you don't get it, you don't get the perks of the position.
  • You are in combat. If you don't win your character dies, is maimed, etc so your ability to RP them is similarly hobbled or even removed.
  • You strive for an IC ruling that would affect the game's theme. If your side doesn't prevail you are barred from certain RP directions which are no longer on the table.
  • Your IC opponent(s) succeed in task(s) which offer them access to perks or RP not available to you.

I expect there are more items this list could include but just as some starting questions:

  1. Are any of these issues valid? In other words are these problems to be solved in the first place?
  2. Assuming the answer to (1) is 'yes' for any of those items, how would you - systemically, in a game - address them so that the impact of failure is mitigated, and players don't mind losing as much?

Note that I suspect the OOC ego hit will always be there. But there may be steps to be taken to at least soften the blow if not actively reward good IC 'losers' as much as games naturally incentivize 'winners'.

What do you think?