The following rules have been added to the General Rules section: Slavery is not permitted unless explicitly permitted by Staff and the players involved as slaves have consented OOCly to participate as slaves. Roleplay that depicts obscene abuse, violence, or torture may not be done on server in any fashion, including onboard a ship. While it may be canon, it must be approved, understood, and accepted by the player(s) involved. The events may not be described on the server directly and may only be alluded, implied, or inferred.
Roleplay is meant to be dynamic. If there are so many rules that require people to OOCly pre-plan and consent everything that isn't sunshine and rainbows, then it might as well not be rp, just a collaboration to write a novel.
Hohkay! Last thing I want to do is make anyone awkward. It's 1 30 am and my brain is derp mode. Just to make it fully 100% clear with no mistakes: -If the player whose being enslaved OOCly consents, then does it require actual admin permission? -Can I have a detailed description of obscene abuse, violence, or torture? Are we allowed to (With the OOC consent of the other player of course!) break arms, bruise, and beat? I assume the obscene violence/torture/abuse means nothing super intense like detailed eye gouging, removal of limbs, or 'precision' torture. (No you don't want to know.) Understand that I came from a community of RPers that had very little restraint in terms of violence and lacked OOC consent on many things (Including character death) entirely. The game actually had stat nerfs for people who lost limbs in dungeons or through combat etc etc.. Torture on there could get gruesome and graphic and cringe worthy. Which, I'm avoiding on here! Albeit, as a Floran Rper, (Albeit a special snowflakey smurt floran, whose still savage), I'd like to be able to post, if Baileaf ever got a slave, the beatings and aggression to an extent. I won't go as far as I did in the other community. It helps build a character to either totally break down from the abuse, or eventually grow and beat down the slave driver/owner.
I am a bit flustered that this is an issue..! Wouldn't the above issues be considered PvP to start with and thus fall under the notify first/consent now rules? That is how it feels in my opinion at least. EDIT: To further clarify where I am coming from... in my opinion any hostile act on another character is PvP-related and should fall under the notify/consent rule.
I totally agree with Wreth, it should be dynamic and it would be awkward to keep constantly asking staff for permission. Just out of all honesty if the player agrees on being slaver then thats all the permission is needed really. And it kinda ruine the roleplay if you keep asking staff for permits to do stuff to them, if the player would agree so be it? THIS IS JUST MY OPINION.
Well, there is a way for Roleplay to continue being dynamic without the need to pre-plan.. and that is simply acquiring the person's consent, and setting a 'cap' to what happens; such as 'do not amputate or kill'. Like with Aegis.. I consent to anything on the basis that it does not kill my character (not because I do not want him to die, but because I want to see him develop from his experiences and change.. to me that is the most enjoyable part of RP!)- however when it comes to combat my consent is also based on the acceptance of a d20 roll off instead of 'who has the bigger stick'. It keeps combat dynamic, and you never can tell what might happen. (Edit: It also removes bias entirely.) Really in the end, the system is only there to protect people from being trolled or thrown into traps that they cannot get out of.. which is unfortunately a common occurrence on Roleplay servers.
For those of you who weren't there in the IRC when I said this, slavery has not offered anything positive to this server regarding dynamics, or in my opinion, even quality. There has maybe been one instance I can think of since I've been here (Since April) where the slavery did not go as such: 1. Slave is captured 2. Slave is offered for sale; this results in a public forum post that is somehow untraceable and also clutters up galaxy chat with 2-3 people all yelling at each other for about an hour. 3. Someone comes along with a life saving's worth of pixels and buys slave only to set them free. Not only is it repetitive and redundant, but it serves to bring in some powergaming roleplay in the form of "ass-pulling" funds. That's just my thought on the matter, though I believe it's pretty valid.
What Avid said. Last few days when I've been on the server there has been someone trying to sell another person in the chat, which is fun and all but kinda boring and uncreative when it becomes a daily event. Im not sure about contacting staff all the time if someone want to kidnap another, but of course ask first via whisper (This would not have been an issue and could've been done in a more spontaneous way if it weren't such a usual event. which is kinda sad.)
I feel, as a person who has felt no control over the situation in his various characters inevitable murders, the consent rule should be changed to what you DON'T consent on, so after someone says "I'm going to enter the bar and attack you, can your character die?" the other person can either say "I dont give any consent to death, yet injury is allowed" or "Its fine, just be sure I put up a good fight, ICly my characters a pretty powerful." And also, while we're at it, add some mystery! Just because someone allowed a character death doesn't mean their friend has to sit there and do nothing! Another thing, fighting should not mean death. Plenty of people get in fights. But do all fights end in dead people and bloodstains? No! So that should be changed to something that permits injury. (Also, the second chance rule, although nice, doesn't exactly work. Are you saying we can somehow superman recover from being riddled with bullets?) On the issue of slavery, although it could work and be a good RP tool. Thing is, in order for slavery to exist, there only needs to be few people on the server who dont approve it, or else it wouldn't be on the radio ICly anyhow, otherwise, Slavery is either private and behind closed doors, or gone all together. And I do agree that the slaves should have consent to be so.
Roleplay is meant to be dynamic indeed, and the creative freedom of a player is very important in this. But when you're talking about a server on which there are plenty of roleplayers who don't have enough experience to see that roleplay isn't all about murder, bamfs, and fights, it's better to have rules around said subjects. I'm all in for a roleplay server with minimal rules surrounding creativity on the subject of characters and their actions. But if that results into there being more bandits, slavers, and gunslingers than actual people, I absolutely prefer a long list of things that need to be accepted by the moderators before being allowed.
I'm fine with rule number one, but with rule number two.. My favorite race to play as is Florans. Florans are gonna be pretty dull now. Oh god Wreth, well said. I agree with this 100%!
I'm kind of at odds with these rules. Firstly, I agree with the stance that slavery doesn't exactly bring good RP to the server, and instead brings about arguing, asspulling money, and then a freed slave. Its less like slavery, and more like a galactic hostage. I don't know if it should be altogether against the rules, but neither do I think it should required admin consent. Requiring consent in that way would halt RP majorly, as admins are not always on. I don't know a correct solution to this problem however, aside from banning slavery completely. For the torture, I don't know. It's kind of one of those givens on the frontier or in this rough "area" that there are going to be some wack jobs. Back when we had....whatever-his-name-was that did the torture "videos", I felt like that was done well. Nowadays, people are so eager to prove themselves dark, insane lords-de-l'edge, that they just capture people and mutilate them. I feel this rule should be more for mutilation. If both parties agree to an injury, that should be allowed, but torture consent should be more like multiple days of injuries, because your character wont be the same after its over. I don't really have any solutions, but those are just my thoughts. It's a tough problem. Theres my ramblings for today. With these log of posts I tend to forget what I was going to type and then it sounds all shoved together.
I don't really have a problem with this rule but I had a really big story I was planning on writing up for lunar news and posting that was about the slavers and the slave trade from both sides of the coin. Is it still alright if I do this or should I not?
Slavery RP on the server every day can be a bit dull, but it adds another side to the roleplay that I think is mostly unexplored. That said, I think having to request the admins to allow a certain section of roleplay is also dull, people would be asking every hour of the day; "can i b slaver plz??? i pay u 4 truble?". I feel like it would only annoy the admins and give them more unnecessary work to do.
I do find it funny that my character actually mentioned the whole issue with 'people getting enslaved, only to be immediately sold and freed'. (Note: Just a portion of the IC post.) Mind you, my character isn't excused from this sort of action either. Albeit, the person she bought was Novakid. To her, a Novakid is a person, along with a Glitch. Whereas the rest of them are workable/cattle/etc. But even THEN, she forced the Novakid to wear a metallic device to keep up airs that said 'Property of Baileaf'. And said that the Novakid needs to listen to her if they ever bump into one another in public to 'keep up airs' since the last thing Baileaf wants to do is look like someone who frees slaves when she may want to dabble more in that business. So far, I've oocly noticed that Slavery hasn't really bought too much to the table. If Slavery remains as a thing as long as theres OOC consent, and if my character ever gets into buying or trading slaves, I plan to hopefully at least add something more. Ex: Not selling to people she knows will just set them free, most likely taking everything the slave has and forcing them to wear rags/rusty gear. Dropping them off into her meat pit or the trap area in her ship (No you don't want to know but it should be a traumatizing experience) and most likely some form of mental and physical abuse. This, would -only- be done with the other players OOC consent to avoid making them feel uncomfortable. As for asspulling pixels, I'll never go above 45k pixels. Baileaf may collect shiny things, but most of the items, technology, and equipment on her ship is salvaged and it shows. The defense turrets have Floran needlers in them (More meant to look threatening then actually -do- anything), the doors are old worn out airlocks, the hatches are rusted, the majority of the blocks used are rusted, plant, or junk tech blocks. She's by no means rich. Unless 45k pixels is considered rich.. I'm not sure about the money system. Edit: I feel that I should note, that any mental or physical harm, if I or the admin team believes is going too far even with the players consent to post on the server, will be taken to a different chat to avoid confrontations. Blackscreening a traumatizing experience is something I just cannot do. Be it if it's happening to my character, or if my character is committing the atrocious act. I hope that's alright!
The entire purpose of the rule is to ensure that everyone involved is enjoying the experience. Roleplay on Antares is about having fun and enjoying your time. It's something we do because want to tell stories and enjoy telling them. Certainly, stories can have their hardships, but never should they be had at the expense of a player's good time. When people have to OOCly worry about what might potentially jeopardize the story they want to tell with their character, they start becoming defensive and having stress. Antares is not about stress. In the old community I roleplayed for years in, slave characters were made to be slave characters. Someone's main character being enslaved just never happened, and it rightfully shouldn't. If someone wants slave roleplay, then they can create a new character with the purpose of being a slave - give them a backstory, an identity, and develop them through the hardship of their slavery which could lead to interesting roleplay - all without compromising their main character. It still leads to a potential good story, memories, and valid character interaction. Just because a character is an alt doesn't mean the roleplay is suddenly worthless - that's subjective. I'll say it again. Our rules are made to ensure that people are enjoying their time here. When folks have to start worrying OOCly about bad things happening to them, it doesn't make for good entertainment, they don't want to be there, they don't want to participate, and the cooperation element simply isn't there and as such the potential for a good story is diminished significantly. Compromise, folks. Cooperation. Just because a concept exists in our reality doesn't mean we have to explore those concepts in our roleplay. There are plenty of things that we can do in our roleplay that I'm certain others would be interested in participating in that don't involve kidnapping, slavery, robbery, or killing their characters. I admit that sometimes things can be a bit dull, and yes, it's easy to immediately jump to conflict as a good conflict can be the meat of a good story - but when the conflict isn't good (and it often isn't), the story is often soured and plagued with OOC complaints. Finding people who do want this conflict and are willing to roleplay it out with you is critical to doing it correctly, especially in Starbound, where we innately lack any form of mechanical conflict resolution device. Try and think outside the box. Slavery is only one concept for roleplay, there's plenty more that you have a creative license to experiment with. There's an entire universe out there, with all sorts of creatures and aliens, as well as a futuristic setting that just asks for more psuedo-science to be invented and explored. That said, you have to be careful not to go overboard, but that's why Staff is here. We're not going to step all over your roleplay, but we will try to work with you if we think that a concept diminishes or worsens other player's experiences. Our priorities are providing fun, memories worth cherishing, and an experience that sticks with you and that you truly enjoy. Is Antares perfect? No, and it never will be. There will always be room for improvement. There's a lot that needs work and I wish I could do more to see that it gets done, but it will get done. We will improve, and we'll keep trying to make Antares a great place to have fun while telling stories. It's gonna take time and not every change is going to be a popular one. Many good changes come through experience and trial, and that's what I'm doing with some of my new rule additions. Remember: the Antares administration is a reactive one. We create, remove, and change rules as circumstances change and in response to feedback. That's my thoughts on the matter, anyway. PvP rules apply.
