Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries

[surreality]

Wait, when did the notion of these commands being 'use is required in place of direct communication' come up? Because I haven't seen a single person suggest anything of the kind.

[Auspice]

@Ganymede said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Auspice said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

tbh, for casual RP between two players? I wouldn't want any sort of special commands.

We're adults. I'd like to treat my players as adults who can communicate between one another what they're comfortable with.

To pull the conversation back to where we started, though, I thought we were mulling over commands that may assist people in communicating the breach or existence of a personal boundary.

I will admit to being lackadaisical in following this discussion.

Call me uncaring but I think if we need an entire structure of commands to negate communication then we're fostering an environment of distrust vs care.

Relying on commands to tell someone if you want to proceed with rp or not basically signals that you don't trust them enough to have a conversation in which case.....why rp with them to begin with?

I'm as anxious as they come. IRL I find it hard to even speak up sometimes. I will hover at the edges of conversation at a party I want to leave for an hour just hoping the host notices me so that I can say farewell....because I'm both too afraid to interrupt and to be seen as rude if I just leave.

I am one of the most shy people ever IRL

Once I relax around you, sure, I'm really outgoing. But around people I don't know / don't know well? Nope.

If I can have conversations and communicate with people, I have every confidence everyone else can, too. If it's someone I feel unsafe communicating with... I reach out to a friend for advice and/or don't interact with that person.

But considering a lot of this has surrounded 'input your consent to TS' type stuff... Holy shit people that is something you need to be comfortable talking about. You are gonna invite ten times more drama, avoidance, and other issues if you become someone who can't even say 'I prefer ftb' or 'I'd like to rp this out'.

[Derp]

@Ganymede said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

What's the default level of play?

This is why I make the default level of play gamewide, and players have to opt-in before playing.

Which is why I normally, repeatedly, say 'it is right there on the tin'.

I do not have the time or the resources (or really the desire) to adjudicate the levels of every player and come to an individualized assessment. I put the things that you should be likely to expect right up front.

Beyond that, short of some kind of extreme situation, you (at least should have) read the rules, and you definitely signed the paper acknowledging that you read the rules. Everyone should be on the same page.

[Lotherio]

@Ganymede said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

To pull the conversation back to where we started, though, I thought we were mulling over commands that may assist people in communicating the breach or existence of a personal boundary.

I will admit to being lackadaisical in following this discussion.

I'll double down with this. I like to assume everyone is capable but accept them the comfort level of some folks can by-pass the opt in, or clicking the I accept to play here. I accept no level of policy, simple or complex, is enough to cover what could happen and I don't want 12 pages of detailed policy to cover every potential. It was about potential code and some of the players who don't feel comfortable opting-in/out with other players for their own reasons concurred potential code might help bridge the gap for them.

[surreality]

Experience has shown me, also, that having staff eyes on a potential area of OOC conflict from the jump is not a bad idea.

I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have communicated with one or more players in a straightforward, honest, and unambiguous fashion and come to friendly agreement all parties seem entirely comfortable with only to find it ignored, pushed anyway, characterized as gods-know-what nonsense, or otherwise turned on its head by a dishonest broker.

[Ganymede]

@Auspice said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Relying on commands to tell someone if you want to proceed with rp or not basically signals that you don't trust them enough to have a conversation in which case.....why rp with them to begin with?

I understand, but --

@Pandora said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

With a fairly regular frequency, it comes up that people either don't know their boundaries until they've been crossed, have trouble standing up for themselves, are stressed out by the idea of initiating push-back against uncomfortable IC interactions, and so on.

(Emphasis added.)

I know that topics drift but I feel as if we've wandered away from "what we can do for people who have trouble with or are stressed by telling people off" to a conversation about "people ought to be communicating about their boundaries rather than relying on commands to communicate the same." And I say this because I'd like to discuss more of the former than the latter because: (1) I have no problem with telling people off; but (2) I know that others aren't like me and I want to help them if I can.

[surreality]

@Ganymede Hey, at least we haven't overtly have someone say 'clearly these people are not actual adults' or 'these people don't belong in the hobby' despite various people insinuating either or both. I'm counting us lucky there.

[Ghost]

Honestly. I dont see why this is so difficult.

Implement +xcard=<string>, a command that anonymously states (but informs staff with identity) that "A player in this scene has pressed the X-Card. Please either FTB, end the scene, or continue without the following element(s): <string>"

Then pair it with the following policy.

X-CARD POLICY: The +xcard command can be used to anonymously flag specific content as uncomfortable. We at SOANDSO-BY-NIGHT support the X-Card system and expect all players to adhere to the following rules when presented with the press of an X-Card.

1. Asking players to explain their personal reasons for why they ran the +xcard command is prohibited.
   If the player feels the need to discuss their reasons, they are encouraged to so, but they must initiate the conversation. If you feel that it was improper, staff are available to discuss, but are not to be expected to disclose or negotiate any personal reasons why it was pressed. Staff will oversee fair play, but not personal differences.
2. If presented with an +xcard situation, players may choose to Fade To Black (FTB), change the content of the scene based on the reason for the press, end the scene, or pose their own characters out of the scene. We would love to see players working together, but if a player chooses for their character to exit a scene after an +xcard is pressed and does so politely it will not be held against them.
3. Personal jabs, gossip, or other forms of negativity held against players who pressed the +xcard will not be tolerated.
4. We encourage players to use existing staff kudos, @mailed praise, or other forms of communication to share instances of where the +xcard helped in a scene, as well as acknowledge players who made you feel comfortable when you chose to press the +xcard
5. Have fun, and play fair!

Edit: My gut tells me that a system like this would help staff keep an eye on how prevalent specific triggers are xcarded on their games. It would SUGGEST an environment of cooperation. It could preempt explosions to a degree. It would also help curb the pushy motherfuckers who try to force scenes on uncomfortable players by making it a matter of game policy not to try to force players into something they're not comfortable with. It would also anonymously allow players with fears of confrontation a way to speak up.

[Auspice]

@Ghost
How would you propose to handle situations wherein someone was uncomfortable and too scared to even use the command, but once they finally do, they express that they want to retcon the entire scene?

[Derp]

Or situations in which you suspect that this command is being used for abusive purposes if you can't ask them what their motivation for using it in the first place was?

Nah. Pass.

[Ghost]

@Auspice said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Ghost
How would you propose to handle situations wherein someone was uncomfortable and too scared to even use the command, but once they finally do, they express that they want to retcon the entire scene?

Add into the policy that the +xcard has to be pressed during the scene. The xcard is designed to stop content going-forward, not retroactively. All ret-conning has to go through staff, anyway, so it should not be used as an unmoderated retcon device.

By the time a player wants to retcon the whole scene, staff are gonna have to get involved anyway. +xcard is a tool designed to give players agency DURING those scenes and it should be reinforced during said retcon request that the xcard is their tool for doing so when the content presents itself.

Proceed with likely exhausting retcon conversation as normal. Which is why in my policy suggestion I wrote it as a PRESENT TENSE PRESS tool

[Apos]

@Ganymede said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Auspice said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Make an opt-in. Make people running scenes, plots, writing shit for the game, etc., label their stuff clearly.

What's the default level of play?

If you have an opt-in, there has to be some expectation of baseline play. What is that baseline? What if baseline RP naturally progresses into a kind of RP that requires an opt-in, but the players involved forget about using the right command and barrel on in?

The easiest one honestly would be everything logged and public facing with an expectation of PG rating community standards in logged public scenes, and if they want to move a scene private without public facing logging for adult content, that's the cutoff point for opt-in. There's plenty of people that would not be on board with that for a number of reasons, but it would counter the largest Creeper Avoiding Public Scrutiny usecase by forcing consent at the point they are most likely to try to exploit.

[Ghost]

@Derp said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Or situations in which you suspect that this command is being used for abusive purposes if you can't ask them what their motivation for using it in the first place was?

Nah. Pass.

Take it up with staff.

In my suggested policy, it says that if you felt it was improper to discuss with staff.

CHARACTER IS PLAYING A GANG MEMBER AND USED XCARD DURING GANG SCENE CITING NOT LIKING GUNS. Is totally valid for players to question staff on. Besides, taking shit like that up with the players themselves is always a pain in the ass anyway.

Staff should be well within their right to determine if people regularly hitting the xcard are doing so reasonably and not as some kind of weird scene control tactic.

[Derp]

@Ghost said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

CITING NOT LIKING GUNS

Except that this concept does not require citing a reason. No questions asked, remember?

[surreality]

If (generic) you see no value in any of this, don't employ any of it.

There's no reason to keep repeating how much you don't like it at this point; nothing new is being added with each repetition. It's unnecessary to the extent that it's starting to seem like an attempt to silence folks who do have an interest in the discussion, and it's getting irritating.

It is not making the case for 'respectful communication between well-intentioned individuals is the best way to work things out and reach a positive outcome', that's for dang sure.

[Ghost]

@Derp said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Ghost said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

CITING NOT LIKING GUNS

Except that this concept does not require citing a reason. No questions asked, remember?

no, I put xcard=<string>. You put the content in but dont have to disclose why. No one should have to explain their trauma, but the point of the xcard is to press it in a way/timing that makes it clear what content is responsible for the press.

ALSO, this is why I wrote the "if you exit the scene politely it won't be held against you" piece. If you and 4 people are RPing as a gang and someone xcards being triggered by guns, then exiting the scene by means of the people using guns move off on their own to another location to RP together in a scene that involves guns is kosher.

[surreality]

@Derp said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

@Ghost said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

CITING NOT LIKING GUNS

Except that this concept does not require citing a reason. No questions asked, remember?

A minority of example ideas do this. Many more have been suggested that do not, so this is really disingenuous, man, you're better than this. Come on already with this nonsense.

[Derp]

@surreality said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Come on already with this nonsense.

Which is exactly how I feel about this entire topic.

But cool. You're right. Discuss amongst yourselves. I will absolutely not be implementing this, and I advise others to do the same. I don't have much more to add here.

[Ghost]

Ideally, if 4 people are all enjoying their scene, they should enjoy their scene. If a 5th joins as says "nope nope nope" then they are more than welcome to, but those 4 aren't required to accommodate that person. They SHOULD BE expected to be polite.

Encouraged? Yes. Required? No.

But you can set a decent bar as to how players voice their xcard and the expectation of behavior towards players who are not comfortable.

[surreality]

@Derp said in Personal Agency for Personal Boundaries:

Which is exactly how I feel about this entire topic.

Then stop participating in it.

What this topic is about is right there on the tin, after all. Why are you here discussing it if it's not for you?

Is the complexity of the problem becoming clearer to you?