My experience with romance and TS has, by and large, been fairly free of creepers or manipulators. I think I might project a certain amount of online RBF that might discourage people, as I just don't have any patience or tolerance for certain tactics. I am happy to talk about stuff OOC to an extent, but it takes a while of proven sanity before I'd give out my Discord.
I had the experience a year or two ago of my PC starting to get involved with a character played by someone I didn't know at all. We had some OOC contact via pages, but not extensive by any means: we'd ping each other to ask for RP, occasional minor chatting, etc. We talked little about the actual IC relationship developing between our characters apart from occasional brief reactions to scenes. One of the things I took as a green flag is that the other player never mentioned anyone else his character was seeing (while it was known that they were seeing other people, just as my character was) and, most importantly, never asked or tried to hint in a way to get information about what my character was doing outside of our scenes. We talked more OOC in general as time went on and we just became friendlier, because we got on well, but I think we both still retain a certain care in how we discuss -- or don't discuss -- what our characters are up to. We do share more nowadays, because the characters are practically married and sometimes we just drop minor updates on each other when we don't have the time or whim to RP everything.
I have had the experience of someone making borderline OOC comments or slightly over-the-line questions about my PC and, after some eye-narrowing (and, actually, a surprising hesitation that I was SO SURE would NEVER HAPPEN TO ME because I am MS BOUNDARIES) I was just like "Okay no more of that if you want to RP with me." He responded by pretty much shutting up and never contacting me again -- except when he hit up my PC on a different alt a couple weeks later. (Yeah, don't worry, all reported to staff.) In my view, this was a pretty mild occurrence. I can be slow to pick up on regular OOC chatter with new people, so I think that, for people who are more deliberate in behaving in a crummy way, I'm probably not identified as a good target. I am not FRIENDLY AND WELCOMING ENOUGH.
In any case, I guess there are actual questions here!
@Arkandel said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:
Which parts of being in IC relationships, be they romantic and/or sexual or even otherwise, bind the players as well as the characters? For example...
- If your PC is going to cheat IC on another character do you feel obligated to let your partner's player know?
I've actually never quite been in this situation, although I have been close at times. I have a PC who is pretty capable of it, and it did come up in the course of idle chatter that she'd probably be capable of it, and it did end up fairly clear that there weren't OOC issues with that if it didn't happen. So I wasn't purposefully vetting the idea, but I guess I did get the info for if the story did go that way.
- Do you think you are responsible for a character whose roleplay is related to yours if your paths are to separate? In other words do you feel guilty someone else's PC might become quote/unquote unplayable because of your IC choices?
It depends! I could certainly feel bad in certain situations. There is definitely a way to RP in which you are just reckless with anyone else's enjoyment and only really focused on your own, and I think that's not great. I can be thoughtless as much as anyone else, and if I really did just kind of totally cause a mess for someone because I wasn't really being thoughtful about my RP and the story, I'd feel bad. There have certainly been instances of this in my time. But that doesn't mean that any time someone says that PC A's choices ruined their character, that Player A actually did something wrong. There are a lot of levels here.
- Very closely related to the above, what if the choice that takes a PC mostly off the table is OOC? For instance if you stop being active on my PC's spouse to play an alt with Theno's PC. Do I have the moral high ground to get pissed off?
If the player is communicative about what's going on, it can suck (in terms of losing out on fun RP) but it's fine. If someone is just kind of -- ghosting a person, that's pretty lame, and I'd be annoyed. But that's the sort of situation where there's not much to really do aside from voicing, "Hey, if you want to close up this RP thread please just tell me, ghosting on it doesn't feel great."
- When it comes to TS what's the correct way to suggest it? Do you let the RP become more explicit until the big words come out or you get told no? Do you page the other player first and explicitly ask if they want to do it? Something else?
Honestly I tend to just try and read the room. I'll play the dance of both parties kind of nudging up to the line and then -- well, generally it's pretty clear when people are on the same page, IMO. Sometimes one party will do a check-in about HOW EXPLICIT IS OKAY, but not always, or even the majority of the time. Honestly I haven't had any issues with this approach. I try to just mirror how explicit my partner is posing.
(I call this the "Cock Line" where two parties who are down to TS slowly edge up to Saying The Explicit Words. Because I find it funny.)
- Assuming OOC consent between adult players is there anything in an IC relationship, including TS, that you consider unethical? No, I'm not going to give examples since I'm keeping this classy! But you can.
I tend to think that players can do what they like behind closed doors if they're in agreement OOC. I don't like people spilling it out to others where they have to deal with it. (Arx eventually banned incest themes altogether, not because of staff objecting to people getting their rocks off with the taboo, but because with some players it would inevitably come out in a way where their head of house would have to deal with it and honestly that's just not a cool thing to make people have to deal with. On the other hand, I'm sure there were and still are people RPing behind closed doors without anything spilling out, and I sure don't care about that, and I don't think staff cares.)
@mietze said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:
I do find that saying outright that you will not be making monogamous promises IC, nor do you wish the other person to, and that you will not (and do not want from them) exclusivity in RP play/time spent will kind of make you a hell of a lot less interesting to the most problematic people.
Yeah, definitely this. When a player is problematic in the fashion that they want to exert control on others, being told that the other person doesn't care what they do with others is a TURN-OFF for them.
