@Arkandel said in Emotional separation from fictional content:
This might be a case @Thenomain might want to chip in about code solving social problems, but what if we allowed players to privately or publicly list general categories of things they are into or squicked by?
The rule is: "Be very careful when trying to solve social issues with code."
The reason for this is because you can't expect everyone to act in the same way. (MUDs are proving me wrong; there are games that can expect everyone to act in the same way, but I'm not going to get into that right now.)
This is the RP Preferences list, another cue taken from Shang, et al., that works. It works because it doesn't enforce, it informs.
A case of code being used poorly is, "If it's on someone's list and you hit them with it, you can be punished." There is so much wrong with this that I don't know where to start. Another, more code-centric example would be, "At the start of each scene, everyone must enter keywords about what they're going to do in this scene." This may work for events (again, informs), but for every scene that someone might be involved in? No. No. One hundred times no.
Let's say no one can see the 'no' list because some people might not want to announce their blindspots for the whole world to see. So how it'd work is I spot an +event I like and I /signup for it. The ST then (perhaps after a delay so they can't deduce who is who) gets to get a list of all the participants' YES and NO lists, without knowing who's who, and can plan accordingly.
Would that work?
Er, sorry, I got distracted. Yes, it would work, but it would be probably far too easy to social engineer people's "no" lists. Hell, I have people tagging my alts within three poses. If your game culture accepts the 'no' list is kind of an open secret, like how we deal with 'What Race Are You' in WoD/CoD games, then it would work far better. Put the social pressure on people who use events to abuse the system.
I would like to see it tried.