Today's long overdue topic is on Imprisonment, enslavement, forced bed-rest, and other such situations. The Question(s): Are these situations necessary, or useful for roleplay? What issues do they have? How can we fix them? Essentially, imprisonment is a time at which a character is, for crimes or other reasons, incarcerated by a group (usually a military/sovereign faction). Often times these are temporary, a few days locked in a cell IC. There's also enslavement, which is when your character is forcefully enslaved by another character, or willfully enters into indentured servitude. In these cases, characters often enter situations where they are forced to serve or partake in manual labor. Finally, forced bed-rest is when a character falls ill for any reason, or is wounded, and as a result is forced to take time to recover. However, due to circumstances, they are confined to a bed, or quarantine area. Our questions today focus on whether these situations are any good for an environment like Antares. What issues they cause, and how to fix them. Primarily, discussion will be on literal incarceration. The Opinion: Read on. Incarceration, the imprisonment of a character for crimes committed, or perceived crimes, or even simply due to police corruption/abuse. There are a lot of issues that come up when incarceration happens. The primary ones are: Isolation and Time. Isolation is when a character is imprisoned, and then left alone for extended periods of time. They can't interact with anyone, there are no guards to speak to, they are simply left in a cell and forgotten. Rarely are there other prisoners to interact with. This is the number one issue that is usually complained about. A person who is isolated has nothing to do, and if they wish to play that character, isolation is a pretty serious issue. They have no one to interact with but themselves. Time. The second most complained about issue. Part of isolation, and a factor that exaggerates the issue. Leaving prisoners locked up for days to weeks becomes a serious problem for them, because it's a damn fine way to kill a character. Not literally, but if they're stuck for long enough, they become disconnected from the rest of their crowd, and the flow of plot. I've seen characters who are simply lost by the time they get out of prison. That should never happen. How do we solve this? Simple. This is less an IC issue as it is an OOC issue. Events in Antares happen faster than in real life, because that's the nature of an RP server. As such, people want to be part of those, and any amount of time spent locked in a cell is wasted unless there's character building or interaction involved. If you imprison someone, consensual or otherwise, you have an obligation to interact with them, or get them out of the way quickly. No one wants to rot in a cell for two weeks while the galaxy spins on. (I know, I stopped playing a character because of it.) Alternatively, give them options. Plea bargains, escape attempts, what-have-you. If you lock someone up, give them something to do. Don't tell them they can't leave and then refuse to interact with them. Edit: Look at that! We can still make threads that aren't on the bandwagon. C-c-c-combo breaker.
In my personal experience, imprisonment as an IC punishment is something I tend to avoid because it's so tedious to set up. It's better to use punishments such as fining, community service, exile or w/e instead.
I couldn't have said it better, really. Just make sure to interact with those persons. However, when done right, it can lead to some very good RP +1 and a cookie for you,
A char I had, Alanada, sat in prison for Iike 3 weeks, then just got killed at the end of it. It was truly a riveting rp experience.
*Takes his cookie.* Spoiler Exile, community service and fines are great alternatives, if rarely used. I suppose the problem is that there are two types of punishment in the world these days. Imprison someone for extended periods of time, or hurt/kill them directly.
Fines, community service and exile aren't useful for showing off your badassery, after all, while imprisonment and hurting/killing people is.
Imprisonment. As a long standing roleplayer of law enforcement groups on previous games, arrests and imprisonment happened all the time in the organizations under me. The nature of these events doesnt really differ in Starbound, so I will apply my past experiences here. Dealing with capture/imprisonment is a two way street. There are a wealth of things to consider at the time of an incident. What was the crime? What does local law say about this? Was anyone hurt? Weapons involved? Did the offending parties resist or surrender? Past offenses? These things should generally have a direct effect on the amount of time or punishment a player should be asked to face. If a player and their character are well behaved, accommodations should be made to speed the release process up, again, depending on the crime. It is a good idea to take into account if the player also has alts or if you are locking down their only character. We would open times keep players for a short time, and allow them to pay fines for minor offenses. For longer stays, guards would interact with the prisoner. If there were no other prisoners for the prisoner to roleplay with, one of us would log on a character that was permajailed just to provide the jailed party roleplay. Large crimes were given full player run trials with a third party judge outside of our guild. These were loose, fun events more along the lines of Phoenix Wright then a legitimate trial. This allowed for others to get involved. We often worked with the prisoner in the event they were found guilty for escapes to happen, while some simply accepted greater punishments ranging from forced community/military service, exile, or death. It is important that negative actions should have consequences if you are caught. This lends to more interesting planning and risk when committing a crime. I partially disagree with Felonious when it comes to the length in which you should be made to go for a prisoner. As I said above, if the player in question is being reasonable they should be fully provided for. However, if you as a prisoner make no effort to even ICly work with your captor, what reason do they have to treat to well? Its okay to bend IC a bit for the benefit of a player sometimes, but we have a serious issue here, as do many roleplay communities, with players taking ooc courtesies and rules (consent) and abusing them because they know they cannot be punished further unless they give the okay. Forced Bedrest I believe in roleplaying injuries over a length of time. I try to avoid complete bedrest, but I've had to roleplay it twice now on this server. What you do with it depends on your company. There is plenty of fun character building things you can do when on bedrest. Recovery time is there to give weight to choices. If more people treated injuries as terrible as they were, you'd find alot of people less likely to solve minor encounters with violence as a first response. Enslavement I talked about this far more indepth on the old enslavement discussion, so I will only touch on this minorly. It has potential, but must be handled maturely. There is alot of growth to be had from a character having everything they know turned upside down and being stripped of freedoms. We are a creative bunch with good imaginations. Old ideas can be made fresh. Bad ideas can be turned into something interesting. There is no one right way, just a bunch of side paths to get from point a to b. What makes it all easier is talking to people about it, which is a huge part of making this topic work.
Usually Slavery ends up like this. [Tony places the shock/bomb collar mix on the PC] "[Flanged] Aight, now we can make some money, start advertisin." [Advertisement goes here.] [Literally the entire universe out-bids eachother until the enslaved person is bought and freed.]
Nah, we never gave it to those kinda people. We'd let them onto our ship, then enslave em too. We weren't really trust-worthy slavers.
I suppose the main issue with all of them is when the jailing faction becomes uninvolved. I actually support longer recovery times, because we're in a state of 'healing takes a day, automatically know how to use advanced cybernetics, but dig the scars.' There just need to be people to interact with. Otherwise, it all becomes tedious for the immobile.
Not talking about you, just in general when it comes to RP communities. I've learned that players just can't be trusted with slavery. Anyway, the problem with imprisonment RP is that it's really hard to make interesting; often not worth the effort when there are more attractive, less tedious options available. Community service is a good one, but I've only seen it used once on this server (on Liberty Mills).
I remember Petal was once imprisoned an entire day at Marathon, and I was actually online for the whole time. The highlight of my day was when Sanguine logged and we found out we apparently shared a cell. Cue shared smuggled ham sandwiches. [it makes sense in context] I agree in the fact that, if you imprison or enslave someone, it is YOUR duty to make the entire experience engaging for your prisoner/slave. Examples being, try to make sure there are other prisoners to interact with, even if it is an alt used for that purpose, or several. Or if enslaved, think up things beyond being a fetch monkey, but below the severe no-no line of course. In my opinion, things like enslavement, if done right,has great potential for character development, especially for the slave, as they are forced to serve and contemplate escape. And NEVER EVER forget your prisoners. Little is worse than being incarcerated and then forgotten until it's over. It's basically along the lines of saying, you're stuck in the cell for 2 days, and we will NOT interact with you! This just leads to a character basically being locked out for 2 days, and leads the prisoner to simply play an alt instead, and makes the whole experience meaningless.
Some of the best RP I've had with Captain was his discussion he had with Remy while both of them where in jail, it was a slow paced and somber RP with real feeling behind the words as both men were (and one literally) caged birds. Personally, I love it.
I stand behind the RA methods for PCs. Flogging or Fining or Both, and Deportation. The only PC case I dealt with on Tarl, was an RA soldier guy played by [guy i cant remember with planet-side carbon-copies]. He busted up some guys house on LM while in uniform, and cut a floran, and lopped off a glitches limb or something. He got the whole "trial" bit the victims speaking up etcetera. In the end, he got stripped of everything, and subjected to a [consented] flogging via baton, from the former squadmates. Near death, he was deported back to LibertyMills. Imprisonment is only good if you can afford to spend time with the pc's. I remember Stanza being in bord jail at LM. He hadnt had interaction in awhile. So I hopped on Kroka and did the whole zealot is a dick to a heretic gig, while talking etc. Kroka having other bords help him de-feather Stanza, and hold the ink as he tattoo'd disgraceful stuff like rabbits, and symbols denoting Stanza as a heretic and outside of Kluex's Love. Then I heard it went back to a little boredom again until people got motivated to do stuff again. Imprisonment can be fun if there is REGULAR interaction. But fits and spurts, can suck unless you have an enjoyable alt. :/
Okay, like Jack used to say, let do it in parts: Imprisonment, isolation and time Those are tied together. Imprisoning anyone because they goofed up it's even necessary if the crime can't simply be shrugged off or dealt with the grunts online at the time, then isolation and time enters in scene. Twitch brought up good ways to keep them busy, which requires people (bords couldn't do mostly for a lack of players at a point, keep them busy and keeping watch isn't easy). Problem is, a lot of times someone gets imprisoned and dealing with fine/penalty were dealt in another session. Problem? More than often there's a lack of communication, guards/jailed doesn't show up, sometimes creating a circle which bores the jailed to even try. Chronicle brought up a point more than once which the jailers have to make sure to speak of possibilities to the jailed one in form of releasing (absolutely right, Chron. Thank you.). What happens when that cannot be done because, as said, a link fails at next session? Before the guards/jailed logs off, make always sure to swap forum names for PM's. We had at least two (possibly more) cases which couldn't be done because no one knew who the hell did they jail. And thanks to that policy, at least two cases could be solved through that communication. If guards do their best to contact arrested party, but doesn't answer, fault is theirs for not contacting back. Even having that tool, there's another one which should be widely used by any faction who wants to keep some law and order using jails. Starting a conversation with several faction members, including leaders and high ranks as priorities aknowledging what happened, why the PC was jailed, etc. Sometimes it's a delicate matter or a offense serious enough which needs their attention and judgement to at least report what should be done. Skype more than often gets cluttered in a mountain of messages, Steam needs user to be connected, etc. Forum conversations don't. I even made a txt file to keep track of imprisoned PC's and their offenses. Recommended to do, too. Enslavement. A delicate matter, as there have been different ways reegarding conditions around it, and more than a few players must remember yet the days we had tons of parties around, won't go in-depth in that topic. If that's actually a possibility, obligations and possibility of freedom must be decided beforehand, it's something that can't simply be made as it goes, you are stripping freedom off a PC, which is very serious. Forced bed-rest has the same answer than long imprisonements. Make sure to roll characters around to interact with someone.
The way imprisonment worked with me: 1) find a way to contact jailers ooc 2) figure out what time we're both willing to invest in imprisonment, plan from there 3) bullet point current things character is able to consider/do while imprisoned, and choose several for them to 'act' upon when imprisoned, so character movement exists even if it's not directly rp'd 4) Rp out jail arc, taking a break from server/making another character and muck about on them until the arc is resolved. There's no need to rush good stories or rush the future, there are so many avenues to explore. At least on my end, running a new character (even if they're to die quickly after their inception) is awfully fun, the time limit doubly so -- trying to create a fully-formed personality with depth and breadth before you get your main back is an engaging challenge. But that's just my two cents.
I'd like to extend the belief that having a character imprisoned requires a matter of consent. I've had encounters where people capture or subdue my character without consent and expect me to roleplay with it, which I'd beg to differ. It'd be similar to the powergaming principle, but instead of people attempting to kill your character, they're essentially reigning control on what happens with your character. I wish people wouldn't response aggressively or with attitude when a matter of consent is mention in this respect, but understand that if they plan to capture a character that they should be open to the same consent of having their own characters captured. Your idea seems like a good method to roleplay imprisonment roleplay, as a matter of common courtesy and better communication, and I like that.
FUCK.CONSENT. ((Edit: Blasted filters....I guess I'm going to start legging it too)) If you are overpowered and put into prison, congratulations you are in prison. Doesn't matter if the law did it for no reason, they are the law (and it is also a thing that spacecops do just 'cause). Feel like you were wrongly imprisoned? Well then do something about it IC. That being said, it is a good show for said spacecops to make the imprisonment meaningful. Examples have been poured over above. Red got arrested once for...doing something at Mattis after he was already banned. Probably being stubborn about something. Either way, I put myself in that situation. When they came out of the gates to nab me, I couldn't just OOC and say ((Sorry, but I can't be arsed to do the prison thing right now, kbai)). Long story short, Josh is a douchecannon that wanted to send me to arctic superjail and I had to fight for my rights for a fair decision (thanks Eleven, wherever you are). Prison is a bad time, and although the objective here is to have fun...well prison is a bad time. People with IC power are allowed to IC abuse it, and you can't get out of every situation. That being said...again, when said situation is a crapshoot of monotony where no one actually bothers to make that prison time worth anything, you are at the liberty of defining it yourself. Guards totally OOC tell you that no one is going to so much as look at you? Go outside, take a walk, and come back and out of jail you go. IC time is poorly defined, and taking a break is honestly something none of us do often enough. My opinions on some of this, is all. Will I defend them? Sure, but are they absolutes? Nope, you do you and I'll do me.
My only reasoning, is if you're overpowered, can people kill your character without consent? The rules state no, and while there are people who are okay more or less with surprise plots resulting in their character dying, that doesn't mean that everyone agrees. Hell, what if someone roleplays horribly, gets a bunch of friends to form a quick and sudden hit team and dedicates time to hunting your character down to be captured with absolutely no reasoning or previous development in the plot? Should you speak up about it and correct roleplay behavior? Or should you 'go with the flow' as several peoople mention when they want situations such as these to continue, regardless at how powergamy it might be? Being on a colony and being in a risk of being captured because of a faction is understandable, but I think consent and communication would be good regardless to facilitate good roleplay. I run a slaver group where we'd corner people at gun point, even at the highest point of tension, I try to ask for consent for capture, or if they fight back, death.
