Time of Unparalleled Darkness

Aurelia Haeryn wrote: ↑Tue Aug 29, 2023 2:18 pm I'm not really sure if that also covers MPC stuff in terms of behaviour, stuff like near exclusively constantly dropping on the same players to the point they can't really functionally do anything because a group of MPCs are treating it like Fallout Online.

That part would be covered in MPC rules anyway about not just harrasing One PC constantly. Give them time to breath, Even if they are your main target for plot reasons.

And yeah Warning of stuff like Lycanthropism/Shapechanger being a risk is something that should be done with the DM in charge before the plot starts if that's going to be a risk. Though a general warning of all this stuff again never hurts.

Aurelia Haeryn wrote: ↑Tue Aug 29, 2023 2:18 pm 2) Especially seems like if it's allowed and people want that, it's done in some limited capacity and not torture porn that gets pushed on an entire area.

I think we can have a list of stuff that's like "get affirmative consent for it" - for which graphic torture would be one.

I would also add for things like that that fade-to-black/leaving/skipping over graphic stuff that's above and beyond the server's general "rating" or whatever, should always be an option.

If people are using that to get out of consequences, we can deal with that with saying that people whom are disruptive to RP will face consequences (and starting stuff to just run away in an OOC fashion when there's consequences is disruptive)

3) I guess would be good for it to be known ahead of time if there were risks of that, even if it's in vague terms to not spoil things entirely.

I'm not really sure if that also covers MPC stuff in terms of behaviour, stuff like near exclusively constantly dropping on the same players to the point they can't really functionally do anything because a group of MPCs are treating it like Fallout Online.

I should clarify, becoming an MPC should always be an "opt-in" in my opinion, but for instance, fighting a vampire if you're hunting them then you might come across them feeding on someone, or turning them, etc, so that should probably be touched on.

Also the griefing is a good point. It's one thing to keep returning to a consistent good roleplayer as long as you're on good terms, it's entirely another to not be able to get anything done because someone keeps rolling up on you. I'm well familiar with the latter from playing Emma elsewhere and I'd entirely agree that's no fun. I think we can count this as a clearcut example of griefing.

One thing that I think can be helpful is pointing to modern media that matches the tone you're after. For example, BG3 has plenty of racism in it, but it doesn't touch real life racism. It's a good example of showing how the themes of prejudice can be explored without touching on people's actual burdens.

I also think a 'behind closed doors' policy is good, because if the game is designed for adult players then there should be an element of freedom there. However once outside that environment it'd be incumbent on those players not to 'bring that rp out' with them, I think.

Talis wrote: ↑Tue Aug 29, 2023 4:17 pm I also think a 'behind closed doors' policy is good, because if the game is designed for adult players then there should be an element of freedom there. However once outside that environment it'd be incumbent on those players not to 'bring that rp out' with them, I think.

Absolutely. In general I think the line should be if you want to go above and beyond the generally-accepted stuff we're fine with in public, you should have:

1. Affirmative consent of the active participants
2. A private or at least private-ish venue to do it in (there's inn rooms that'll be in the first area for example, they're seperate areas)

The question becomes what we think should be kept to private, and what potentially objectionable stuff truly is "just deal with it" - that is to say, it's part of our baseline of acceptable for the Ravenloft setting.

Fantasy racism is a good example of that, to some degree - I'd still caution people against going hard on that, personally - but what other things come to mind?

Starting from the top then on the big hot button topics;



Racism/sexism/cultural discrimination/bigotry/whatever other descriptors for excluding groups of people based on varying traits

This one is annoying because on the one hand, all of these things are historically and tonally accurate. It's arguably impossible to separate out Lovecraft's gibbering insanity from it's racially motivated undertones. In opposition to this; in a fantasy world where all the many races of people are given so many other targets to hate one-another for, such as discriminating against Elves and Dwarves on the basis of their race, it's tenuous at best to assume that people will still have the mental energy to discriminate against people of their own race for things such as sexual orientation or other nebulous traits.

I trust people to generally be able to recognise when someone is just lampshading their underlying motives behind a roleplay veneer; playing a hunchbacked Jewish man abducted by the Mists, named 'Schlomo Goldberg', playing a Falkovnian that goes around constantly screaming 'Untermenschen' at everyone that isn't Falkovnian and numerous other examples stand as testament that these people aren't engaging honestly with the setting anyway. All of the above being considered I'm inclined to just shitcan the allowances made for forms of discrimination that can plausibly have overlap with real life issues, which is the wording I would choose to employ when making the rule.

That specific wording neatly curtails all of the worst scenarios I can imagine when inevitably someone decides to tug the tiger's tail in pursuit of their jollies. In that way we also ensure that whatever forms of discrimination do take place are contextually correct to the setting; hating Elves and Dwarves, etc. This seems the cleanest method to me to nip it all in the bud; admittedly we will lose out on 'faithful' portrayals of period-appropriate racism, sexism, etc, but engineering sufficiently worded rules to permit that while also curtailing people just walking around dropping modern day racial slurs etc sounds like a headache I'm not inclined to attempt right now, to say nothing of the further headache when one of these people tries to argue the rules with the staff as to why they should be allowed to say these things in-character.

There's plenty of other subject matter for in-character discrimination to pursue meaningfully in my opinion, but I'm not averse to trying to make something work in regards to retaining narrative integrity.



In-character conduct/themes/subject matter

Define two or three categories of subject matter and where they exist within the public access sphere and then develop broadly along those lines. Examples being;

Within Public

In-character xenophobia, discrimination, coarse language, depictions of violence (Wording matters on these; for a Garda execution having the emote within public eyes should be worded broadly, such as 'The trapdoor opens and the unfortunate John Ravenloft suffers a mercifully quick death by hanging.')

Within Private

Elevated language on all of the above, with permission from all those present. More graphic depictions of violence, possible sexual content, etc. An example of elevated language on the prior example; 'John Ravenloft struggles violently as they are strangulated by the noose, the coarse fibers of the hempen rope biting into their neck leaving a vivid mark; their eyes bulge from the sockets and turn red, their face steadily darkening in colour as death draws nearer. As they draw their final, tortured breath, their body weakly twitches with the remnants of their fleeing life.'

Within DM Events

Advance disclosure by the DM of possible themes, subject matter and content likely to be experienced by involved players. Discretion per DM as to whether players may bow out once subject matter presents itself that they object to, in regards to consequences thereof. More specifically this is a pre-emptive measure to stop people jumping into DM events, saying 'yes I agree' to all of the nasty shit and then saying 'I object and I log out' in bad faith. If a DM believes they're not engaging with the system in good faith they can either just blacklist them from future attendance/involvement, or state that their character did remain for the consequences of the event and just apply an appropriate malus as a result (A new grisly scar or something meaningfully detrimental).



On more specific subjects; I'm inclined to let people do whatever they want behind closed doors with other consenting adults. Whether that's sexual or violence motivated or whatever else; as long as they're aware that there will be logs showing what they're doing and that if they don't care for that, they can take it off-server through other avenues of communication. Also with the boilerplate statement that all participants present can take screenshots and submit them as well, if there's rulebreaking going on.

Tangentially related; stealthing. Just ban stealthing in prohibited locations without DM oversight or the owner's permission. Without OOC confirmation that they're allowed to make the attempted unauthorised entry, being present is a reportable offense. I am also personally inclined to state that if someone breaks this rule and uncovers a rulebreak in the process, we take the 'water from the poisoned well' approach and simply punish the stealthing player. But that's my own personal inclination. This curtails people 'fishing' for rulebreaks.

If someone does have OOC permission to attempt to enter a home undetected then I'd say they implicitly agree to whatever material takes place within, to a certain degree. This is where things get tricky; if John Ravenloft discovers Stealthy McGee in his home and then attempts to strangle him to death, I'm just going to nod and say 'yeah that fits'. However there's the absolutely insane scenarios possible such as John Ravenloft subduing Stealthy McGee and then attempting a field castration, sexual abuse or any number of other horrific things that aren't really defensible.

I leave it to other people to determine what is a 'reasonable degree' of implicitly agreed-upon content. But someone being caught trying to break into someone else's home might well warrant lethal force in response, I don't think it permits any of the more horrific examples mentioned above.



On Harassment

The point has been raised that there exists the potential for parties to prey upon specific people repeatedly, to their detriment. The simple solution to this is to simply state a blanket 24 hour cooldown time between players engaging in PvP, which may be waived at DM discretion or through OOC agreement by all parties; if the local MPC Fangs McGillycuddy decides to attack John Ravenloft out in the streets, regardless of the outcome both players are prohibited from further PvP unless either all involved parties give clear OOC consent, or a DM waives this cooldown period at their discretion.

Maybe tweak the rules also so that if additional participants are present, the 24 hour cooldown is reset; put this onus on the larger of the two forces, so that you can't have tag-team combos where one MPC recruits a second MPC to reset the cooldown. This avoids the scenario where Fangs McGillycuddy attacked John Ravenloft 12 hours ago and is looking to neck romance Stealthy McGee, but Stealthy McGee and John Ravenloft are joined at the hip. There's room to adjust this so that we avoid prejudicial mistreatment via PvP, while also avoiding the weird scenarios that fuck with IC narrative and compromise what characters would normally do in a given scenario.





That's all I can think of for now. Might circle back later if people bring up other stuff, or if I think of anything myself.

From this I think I can distill a few principles:

1. Swearing will happen but keep it reasonable. I'd also ask players to keep it to things appropriate to setting, and add that if people get ornery about you swearing so much, just can it.
2. Repeated encounters over a short time will be held to a higher scrutiny than one-offs and the players involved should either be in accord about it happening or they should tread carefully.
3. Racism and similar bigotry should remain specific to the fantasy setting and should not include any allusion to real-world bigotry. I'd probably take sexism off the table entirely because it's going to be too close to anything real world.
4. What happens in public will include the same standard M-rated stuff from NWN vanilla (normal fantasy violence, some blood/gore, sexual themes without explicit sexuality)
5. What happens in private between consenting adults is their own business so long as it's legal and they understand it will all be logged.

Sneaks Im a little on the fence about. On one hand banning them from private places removes the possibility of a lot of spy RP, on the other hand we would likely see people "fishing" for rulebreaks or OOC blackmail material ("lol I got ur erps logs!"). It's probably easiest and cleanest to ban it, but I do kind of chafe at the idea.

My compromise to that would be to say that such sneaking around needs to be overseen by a DM. It limits it to specific instances we can monitor it to make sure they're not doing anything untoward.

Reading through the write up I think that it's a good start, As for stealthing, Perhaps the best solution to that is wait and see. To start with allow people to sneak anywhere with the premise that they may stumble upon things that are outside the remit of public spaces, But at the same time. If it starts to cause friction then we can add a DM overview ruling, I want to belive that the vast majority of people are going to be respectful about this, and if someone does decide to go for OOC Blackmail, Then that In my eyes should be an instant ban.

I think that having it so sneaking in private places needs DM oversight, and in public spaces go nuts, is probably the reasonable approach, personally.

The problem with the wait and see approach is if what we see is a meltdown after someone goes well beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour we're left putting a lot of time and effort into reeling it back in. If it needs a DM watching then, especially since we're small, it basically means they have to actually be doing it to a purpose, like wanting to eavesdrop on a certain secret conversation for instance, and not just looking to sling spicy stuff. And the DM can step in if it gets scuzzy at any point.

From the draft: "On the topics of homophobia or sexism - neither are welcome here."

I'd be even more prescriptive here and list non-fantasy ableism and non-fantasy racism alongside these. It's quite difficult to describe the nuance around this of course - particularly in relation to ableism. There's definitely room for a character's injuries or physical limitations to be relevant in RP, but I think you want to avoid hard Rs getting thrown around for example.

Talis wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:11 am From the draft: "On the topics of homophobia or sexism - neither are welcome here."

I'd be even more prescriptive here and list non-fantasy ableism and non-fantasy racism alongside these. It's quite difficult to describe the nuance around this of course - particularly in relation to ableism. There's definitely room for a character's injuries or physical limitations to be relevant in RP, but I think you want to avoid hard Rs getting thrown around for example.

Oh yeah, bringing real world racism into the game is something I think none of us want, and I was trying to distinguish between fantasy (hur dur elves and dwarves no likey) and the real world stuff. There is something to be said for people projecting real world racism onto fantasy racism (no, orcs aren't black people, stop being silly) - but, at the end of the day, if it infringes on a players comfort, we lose so very little by just dropping it that it's not a hill to die on, and people that make it one aren't welcome.

As to ableism, well that cuts a little close to home - I'm not sure if I told you at some point but I know I have some of the others, but you're talking (writing?) to a woman that is indeed not able-bodied - I have 1.5 legs. So yeah, I can see how that would bother people. Speaking from my own perspective, I haven't really had people give me a hard time about depicted injuries - Livu was sans a forearm for about a month after a plot point I rolled with - but I can also see that while I probably wouldn't find it hurtful as some others might, I would definitely find it annoying as heck if people were pushing an ableist angle which didn't jive with the situation.

In general though, I think this can fall under the general principle of opt-out though: you should always give a player a means to opt out of uncomfortable stuff - and this would definitely qualify, to my mind.