Community Opinion: On the Act of Voiding

Voiding should only be used in situations where a player has to leave a situation due to RL or OOC reasons. However, since those circumstances are hard for us to determine, I believe voiding should be made against the rules.

The only other circumstance I can think of is a situation where events simply aren't plausible or make no sense, as described above. However, in these situations, wouldn't it be more fun to just adapt?

What decent and reputable RP community voids events? It's unheard of, at least to me.
Characters and Players alike should both be accountable for their actions.
This is not a book. It's a community.
Let the magic happen!

EDIT: As for the consent rule, there does need to be change there. It's been suggested to me that consent be implied based on the actions taken by the characters. I'm leaning towards agreeing with this, as shooting someone and simply not giving your consent to be killed is absolutely ludicrous.

 

This is, honestly, the first community I've been a part of in which "Voiding" was even a concept. And I've been RPing for... what, eight or nine years now? Long time. Never heard of it before here.

Voiding, in my opinion, is something that is only useful in very dire circumstances, and I can't think of any off the top of my head. In MOST cases, anything that people feel they want to solve by voiding - whether it be a character death, an inter-character conflict, an inter-faction conflict, or anything else - can also be solved through in-character interaction mixed with some out-of-character negotiation if necessary.

Someone murders another character, but its player doesn't want to go with it? Work to find a way in which that person survives if need be, but be fair on both sides. In-character conflict? Find an in-character solution, and be reasonable out-of-character. In fact, for most all issues I can think of where "voiding" comes up, they could be very easily resolved if both sides involved came up with some in-character solutions that provided an out-of-character compromise. Moderators are useful for this, if a solution can't be found with the people involved on their own.

In contrast, voiding is usually a terrible mess for people. It's kind of like if you go back in time in any sci-fi series, and change a single thing like a death. It has a butterfly effect and affects countless other characters and their actions. Not to mention, it squanders both the original opportunity for roleplay, and any possibility of interesting roleplay to resolve the situation you're voiding.

I cannot think of a single "voidable" situation where no other answer or alternative exists that creates a fair and decent compromise.

To put it bluntly: It seems to me me that voiding is, almost always, the lazy way out.

 

Another situation, which happened to me and even so I didn't void (though later event showed I should have done so), is when some situation happens because of previous misinformation (it happened in two days, and the rper forgot to mention one detail first day, and in consequence, another PC appeared).

Instead full voids, which seems the usual custom, there's also the possibility if there has been some miscommunication to step back a few steps instead voiding it all, and only if it seems completely necessary. If you don't want surprises, talk OOCly before beginning something for possible outcomes.

Today, I witnessed what has probably been the top of an iceberg: A human girl got generally shot, without aiming, and she decided the bullet hit the heart. After a quick patch doc couldn't save her, thus declaring deceased, and having to leave, the girl began to do some emotes as if clinging to life, beginning a tedious OOC tracking of events to see if it made sense or not by a floran who tried OOCly to save her. After a lot of trouble, said floran said it wasn't realistic even the possibility to be alive, and to stop it, he decapitated her, getting killed in the process by her friends. Not the same as voiding, but close enough... considering she chose that path.

If you don't want chars getting killed, avoid doing stupid actions instead of using Voidtm (Registered).

 

Hm. I suppose that would be a valid situation for a void, actually. That being said, it's tedious for everyone involved - and, in fact, something caused by a flaw in the consent rule, as opposed to a normal RP situation.

Perhaps we should re-discuss the consent rule at some point in order to address that similar-but-separate issue. I personally enjoyed the variant I saw a couple of colony owners put in, which was the rule where the first hostility implies consent. AKA: If you shoot at someone, you are consenting to getting shot.

Keycross makes an excellent point, though. Don't intentionally put your characters in certain-death situations unless you want for them to certain-die.

 

I think that the only thing people should void is things that they say, either on accident, or because they misread or missed completely something another character said or did

 

yeah, thats how i use voiding

 

We'll, we've got to be empathetic. I mean, don't get me wrong, I share the same view as Felonious, but we also have to remember that people ( or at least I ) use RP as a form of stress relief. We do it because it's fun.

We've all been in stressful situations on the server, luckily I can say that the fun times vastly overshadow the bad, but still, they're there. And I mean, if you have a way to take the stress out of your stress relief easily and quickly, most people are going to use that way.

 

Spoiler

To the Void with you!
I have nothing real to contribute right now, its freaking 1:40 AM why am I up this late, help.

 

my two cents: voiding minuscule actions like opening a door because it's locked and responding to a message before reading who it's from (someone halfway across the map, happened to me once and i shat myself metaphorically, hoping i didn't literally, i probably blocked the memory though) seems okay in my opinion, but, as was stated earlier, butterfly effect. you void someone hitting you, you done fugged up, now you've voided countless actions, emotions, etc. that people have thrown out there via their characters, and frankly, that's dumb. stop voiding things and live with your choices. i've seen ridiculous cases of voiding, to grab a quote i remember very well from my days of Champions Online RolePlay..

Sylvester@Narfball attempts to shank Jamal
Jamal@(censored for privacy) is shanked in the stomach, his attempted right hook was entirely halted by the shank.
Tim Jones@(censored for privacy): He steps back in absolute fear, "..Did.. Did that just..." He gets wide-eyed at the situation, realizing that the man he'd started conflict with was prepared to lose everything, if he had something to lose, "..Oh.. Oh my God..."
Sylvester@Narfball stares at Tim Jones, attempting to put a boot on Jamal's chest to push him off the knife.
Jamal@(censored for privacy): (( Wait, can we void me getting shanked? ))
Sylvester@Narfball: (( Absolutely not. Even implying that you can void getting shanked is like me asking if I can void getting murdered after someone reacts. You can't void Tim's action. ))
Tim Jones@(censored): (( Yeah, no, that's not flying with me. ))
Jamal@(censored): (( But I like this character. ))
Sylvester@Narfball: (( Shoulda thought of that before following me into an abandoned hut and letting yourself get stabbed. ))


tl;dr don't be an absolute f*ckwagon and void things because it's inconvenient to you, you inconsiderate prick. :^)

 

Although I also make this sometimes, I don't consider it an act of voiding but just needed information (otherwise it's ignoring something which prevents your action, and from there the situation has a different name).

Mostly everyone follows that example, but when it includes sensible IC information, gunfights, or something considered illegal at a place? That's when The Opinion enters in scene.

And to further what I said of getting characters in risk. A discussion/ small argument is fine, but I.E:

Warning: 'Please vacate the area, you were told to stay away from here'
Danger: 'I didn't do anything wrong, I have rights to be here!'
Warning: 'I'm not going to repeat it. Vacate at once.'
Danger: 'Fuck you, you guys are a band of jerks!'

If after the second loop of sentences you don't do as told and continue arguing in a hotspot, acting like you own the place or even insulting whoever you talk to, (making your own situation even worse) expect consequences depending of PC/faction/IC behaviour. Personally, the only possibility OOC is talking of possible consequences (i.e. you shouldn't get killed for something minor, like arguing with a guard, but you could get: shot, jailed, hit with a baton, tranquilized, etc.). You can't be bossing people around to do your will, much less insult them without finding a PC that will shoot out for your IC attitude, or even walk away saying a lastly badass sentence (In my book, that can also be grounds to get shot. I remember some PC's saying as they leave 'I will let you live today', or other similar wonders threatening or looking down another PC. Please. You are plainly asking to get shot in the back/beated down or, in the very least and depending the place, jailed.)

Relating to recent events, be careful of races interactions as overall and what are you doing. If you are already hated enough ICly for personal issues, faction, or race, situation can go straight down in a breeze, and permanently hide behind 'You need consent for that', you will be most likely earn a well-placed IC ban, or worse, ignored.

 

Can we void this thread? It does not make me feel badass and my colony rules mandate that I have authority to dictate what is voided and what is not.

 

I personally like mutual consent. Like, by initiating an event, both parties agree that they are vulnerable. That way, one party is not invincible, and anything can happen.

 

Communicating ideas at the roleplayer involving a situation should always be a higher priority than voiding almost every time, unless there is a minor misunderstanding about information (i.e. the example given about a door being locked). By that same token, as reiterated by several people; if you get yourself in a position that is painfully obvious will lead to a good probability of death, you only have yourself to blame. Live by the sword, die by the sword, after all.

 

Something to think about with voiding, as weird as it sounds, is this: By voiding something, you are effectively undoing the past. Personally, I'm very much against voiding unless it's absolutely necessary as stated by others (RL/OOC reason or similar). You also have to take into account the number of players who were involved in the incident and how world shaking the incident was. By voiding something that included a large number of players, it's generally impossible to just void it. At that point it becomes something that could easily be misinterpreted due to a communication issue. A number of the players involved might have logged off before the void was announced, and therefore would only know of it by being told by others who were around. While that sounds easy on paper, it's honestly far from it. I've personally been in such situations where I was stating a change (not my change) to players for weeks as they would log back on (this being on NWN).

So, putting aside the fact that voiding is horrible for the narrative of something going on, it can easily trigger a butterfly effect and/or cause a number of stories, all about the same situation, that differ due to miscommunication.

(On a totally unrelated note, why the heck does my browser not recognize "miscommunication" as a real word? @_@)

 

Can I come into this thread a little late? Yes? Excellent. Wonderful.

There's a time and place where voiding is appropriate, and I think that's been covered already in this thread. If you do something that isn't possible (for example, opening a locked door, calling a character by a name that you wouldn't know, etc) then that's an excellent, minor, and acceptable void. I think most everything else that isn't MINOR like that is asking for trouble. It IS a rippling effect that affects way more people than the voider generally takes into consideration. And that's a problem.

Voiding actually contributed to my activity petering off to nothing on this server. Most everything (and that was precious little at the time) that I'd been up to essentially got erased, and that does a lot to kill somebody's drive, you know? I find it's better to talk about a better solution, rather than just make things go away. Just my two cents.