[Jupiter_Storm]

I am very excited about the First Draft of this system. The way that it's been constructed as well as subtle points such as - 'If the conflict is started in town or other area where NPCs are likely to be, this rule does not apply.' - really demonstrates that Devourer of Souls is really keeping in touch with the Common Issues presented by a range of parties who still want to see active involvement from the (Factional) Guard, as well as those who would like to see more freedom for adventurers to handle conflict themselves.

So many nitpicky points that I otherwise would have had are very clearly and repeatedly addressed by the oldest rule of thumb in the book - both interacting parties are the ones ultimately in control of how the roleplay pans out.

'Consent cannot be forced in conflict between two player characters. -- If both players agree to RP the scenario instead of PVP, that is perfectly acceptable -- If all participants agree to waive this rule, they may do so. -- All parties should apply basic logic, however.'

What this means for the First Draft of this rule-set is that none of these rules are mandatory if both parties agree to play a different way. You have to understand that the purpose of these rules is not to stifle Roleplay, but instead to provide players (and more importantly, Staff) a clear base-line to fall back upon if both sides have a different idea of how the conflict should be resolved.

Again, this proves that Devourer of Souls is listening and taking steps to act upon issues that are frequently raised by the community.

I am especially happy to see the new rules for Immortal characters and Suicide - both for the reason that it has, in the past, led to some very cheesy and nonsensical roleplay AND because it detracts from the sheer seriousness of such an act (for characters, and IRL). Let's not forget that we all know at least one person who's had those kind of thoughts, and considering the younger audience of this game I absolutely agree that we should not hand-wave suicide as a 'way to escape consequences', REGARDLESS of whether it is just 'roleplay' or not.

The only change I would personally like to see to this rule-set is to support the motion for making Maiming (Level 3) require explicit consent. As Fern has stated, for some characters this is a very life-changing experience that can occasionally make a character 'feel' unplayable - or otherwise 'dead'. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel - Such as the approval for Limb Regrowth during rituals performed by certain characters.

It's important to note that these 'additional' levels of consent already stack on top of the very first 'initial' consent a character gives by responding to, and interacting with the antagonist in question.

First off, these conflict rules seem to be making SL2 more like a daycare for toddlers than before.

As a final point, I would like to address the two gentle-folk above.

I understand that in the real-world, conflict is not avoidable as a concept - however this is a game, played by a community and these rules are designed for a broader spread of individuals who play it for very different reasons. If you force a character into an interaction they do not want to do, for which they are not required to give consent, the only person who is going to be enjoying that encounter is you. At which point it's essentially the same as interacting with an NPC, because you will not obtain satisfying responses or active, interested involvement from the other party.

The consent rule does not necessary imply that you can simply be ignored with an LOOC: 'Sorry don't feel like it' - Consider this. You want to make a name for yourself as an Antagonist, and these same rules (as well as notable changes that have been proposed for the Factional Guard) enable adventurers to resolve issues rather than the authorities - outside of town environments. If a player does not give consent to be attacked, why not continue the roleplay and see if they are willing to be intimidated into fleeing from you (and perhaps telling someone about you)? This sets an ideal precedent for further narrative development with your 'Nemesis(es)' who WILL be interested in multiple scenes of conflict.

That, to me, is a far more satisfying outcome than robbing some poor person who isn't keen on fighting and then being forgotten.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

SL2 has been needing this for years, but there's a couple of issues that need to be addressed before these rules are implemented.

As far as I understood the draft, if you're playing a villain, and you decide to gank someone, and win, there's nothing stopping you from simply putting your character into hibernation whenever someone tries to find you, resulting in an effectively immortal goon. This is particularly bad in the events guards need to come looking, because slapping on an OOC-tag grants you immunity to any form of repercussion you might incur.

We already see this with many of the supposedly big, scary terrorist organizations, where they'll peek out to bushwhack something, and then vanish off the face of the planet, leaving a majority of players without any form of retaliation unless they happen to be in with the group running against said organizations in their events. I have no faith that this won't happen on a smaller scale, even if the community tends to be fairly behaved.

In my opinion, there needs to be a safety net in case someone games the rules, because from experience, it will happen. Furthermore, as a guard, and a long-time one at that, it certainly wouldn't be the first time we've searched for someone who just gave us the response: "Sorry, I'm OOC right now." whenever we'd try to bag them. I would have suggested that only people with OOC in their name/alias could be given that kind of benefit, but that makes it awkward, given you'd need to run to Dormeho every time you wanted your tag on, or pay out five bucks for instant immunity.

I can offer no immediate solution to this, but it's something I wanted to bring to attention, because no one else has, yet.

[Mr.SmileGod]

As just a very, very brief rebuttal to Jupiter above on the concept of consent-- One of the main issues the original 'what can we do better' post was general stagnation of the game, and I feel like this would compound on that issue further. You'd be stuck, again, doing your antagonistic things with a select group of consenting people. That's the same problem we already have-- a thing people already do with the system we have, while the people that don't consent can just sit and have their slice-of-life RP and not allow for anything else.

I feel like it'd make the game more stagnant than it already is, simply put.

[Neus]

Most people seem to agree that level 3 should also require explicit consent, so I'll edit the post to change that.

I understand the concern of people being snide and obnoxious through the protection of consent. That is a thing that happens. I'm not sure what could be done about that beyond adding an extra line saying that 'persisting in aggressive behavior, including taunting or insulting someone, you are consenting to conflict'.

The rule of consent is basically an already understood thing in the game. I understand how it might seem like it makes people too 'safe' but look at it from the perspective of where it doesn't exist. Do I have to engage in roleplay I'm not comfortable with to satisfy the desires of someone else, simply because they decided I had to? In situations like this, where there's an initiator, you want to be conservative and allow the 'victim' some basic defense against poorly RP'd or otherwise undesirable people.

It doesn't really correlate with the perceived stagnation that people see, in my opinion, because that's an issue with the world and not any individual. Someone can correct me if they feel I'm wrong on this, but I feel that people do not really shy away from conflict as it is, in most cases, even though the rule of consent already exists, just not in as clearly defined terms as the draft has.

I think Walrus has some good concerns too but those will probably have to wait until I do a once-over of the RP rules to include things like people being 'OOC', especially for the purposes of avoiding consequences. This isn't meant to solve everything, only to give us a good and clear conflict ruleset.

[Shujin]

I think rules like this are certainly a step in the right direction.

From experience with dealing with truly annoying people in the past that draw every card in their disposal to get away with their bullshit, I have to sadly disagree with Jupiter, even though I WISH he was right. Its simply not how it works cause people will rule shark/play to win/Hide behind rules. here are some of the Top annoying things that happend to me in the RP:

1. Suiciding Vampires that keep coming back to attack you. In one specific case, that someone took to the extreme was back then where I was active in Laws End pre-GR even. He always came, was super annoying ICly, trolling us to the point where we decided to pseudo kill him first (cause he was very obvious about being a vampire too) fight->He lost-> He imminently posts suiciding. The next day he is there again and repeats this for like 2 weeks, him slowly trying to swap classes around to specifically counter me. He eventually gave up (thank god) but that was probably mostly because back then, changing your build? was lots of work, so people would less "grief rebuild"...That protection we no longer have cause swapping your whole build 180° is as easy as getting a fruit. Trust me. That's an Issue. 
   
2. People that sit behind the protection of OOC rules (ICly hiding inside Cellsvich is fine.) to make their character actively antagonize someone, insult them, provoke them (the best of which, which also have a Guard Alt/friend having them on the ready on discord) to the point where the other character for IC reasons can't even ignore it anymore and is about to hit them for it, either get denied (and then also powerplayed in the RP) and oh so suddenly a guard appears in the place where they usually never show up!...What a coincidence! then you get bagged and soft banned for attempted assault. How is that fun for anyone but the one actively griefing you there and their freind circle. Cause trust me...people play to win, not to enjoy good RP. As sad as that is.
   
3. This thing happend relatively recently, right before I quit the game again (Which certainly was also a huge factor in it). A scene unfolded in the Arena, with two characters having a bit of a history so they began to speak with obvious tension between each other. After a bit of back and forth they both decided to leave the area and settle things between them in a more private space, more accurately the home of my character. One guy (again a Vampire) decided to follow. He was ICly as well as OOCly informed that if he follows through with this and enters my home he is automatically consenting to possible character death. He agreed, things unfolded, he was a massive douchebag ICly and no matter how hard I tried to NOT kill him, he actively forced my hand...Pvp->He lost->I RP making sure to freeze him up to a point where he can't move his mouth (I am experienced with suicide vampires at this point)->....He still bites off his tongue and logs out.
   
   I was lucky cause I informed Chaos about those vampire situations I keep running into before and he told me specifically to tell him (big shout out to chaos here, big thanks). I gave him the log explained the situation and he went and "solved" it in a relatively satisfying way. The conclusion was, he survived but was forced to be afraid of my character (or something like that to prevent him trying again) so he can't really use any of that as fuel against me. Its semi satisfying if only for the fact that I do not have to deal with another replay of 1.) in a system that supports this and is currently EXTREMELY broken and pro Tank (which obviously he was, I won because my place had people there. so it wasn't a 1v1). So if Chaos didn't "Save" me there(mostly my sanity), I am sure he would have eventually just killed me after whatever many attempts. Cause eventually you brute force your way through, especially against people that use IC-builds.
   
   Why am I sharing this? Because Jupiter is speaking of an ideal community and ideal situations. I absolutely agree with him, that what he is saying is better/more satisfying. But he simply doesn't have the experience (from what I can tell at least. I know he usually RPs more Neutral/Good characters and is certainly one of the better RPers around) from an more antagonistic perspective and people try harding to snag their wins. I am not even going to point out the try hards that make entirely new characters just for this purpose, so even if they lose and die they lose nothing.
   

@Walrus I definitely agree with that. I do not know how much that changed with more eventmins I haven't played the game in a while. The thing is why people usually "Drop out" is...Because the alternatives aren't satisfying. Mostly the Soft-bans, those make no one really happy in any RP context. Thats why many people retreat to private RP at the moment. While of course, it makes IC sense its just an alternative "Drop Out" and pause to the RP, just one that you can't manually stop. And considering with how stacked the odds are most probably rather avoid that. My own plot is stagnant since 3+ OOC years in its still in phase 1 maybe beginning of  2. One I used to be invested in is like 5-6 years old by now and still nowhere near the end (Ferns Peter Eustis eventline). And its not possible to interact with any of that unless the event creator cares to continue. Its rather unsatisfying but I also can't really say what should be done to fix it expect encouraging people to not build multiple plot lines parallel to each other and be more focused on one at a time. I just hope that a more fair ruleset/alternative punishments would eventually encourage people to leave their comfort zones.


@Dev I know why you want consent to be given,  but mayhaps an addition that works opposite to "populated cities" would be a bit less frustrating. For example Player homes that are somewhere in the nowhere or ICly dangerous places like Laws End have automatically a higher Danger level, with automated consent given?
Cause I am pretty damm sure if you talk shit to a gang in Laws End, they ain't just giving you a slap on the wrist and it would prevent stuff like my case 1. where people do not give consent to character death and come back to literally haunt you.

I feel this would also further enhance the Immersive feel of those places truly being dangerous. For player houses, maybe having an entry message ala "Hey, this place is XY. Its dangerous, by RPIng here you automatically consent to Danger Level X". I know many people won't abuse that, but at the same time it gives people that come there to grief less incentive to play unrealistically suicidal.

Another line I would suggest to clarify, upon vampire suicide with tools is, that they can't instantly use their sword, after losing a PVP encounter to end themselves, for example. To give the winner the chance to disarm them first or something along those lines.

[RoboCat]

Hi. So before I throw some suggestions for it I want to say that I was really satisfied with the responses. It really feels like the situations and suggestions to help mitigate the displeasure in dealing with them can be treated like a coin. The middle area seems really tough to properly place things on, but with both sides of this idea of player on player conflict can really put too much in people's hands. That said, there's some stuff I feel like could also be worked on in this draft, not in the forms of what's already stated though. I'll post that after.

I wouldn't really call this side of the things too deep, but there's nothing set in the case of a person who actually manages to escape the person they're fighting mechanically in battle. I can't even begin to think on how that might work out, but I do think it'll have to be something that gets covered in the topic.

One thing that caught my eye was Shujin's post. I do think player-owned areas should be in a sense treated like Law's end to the discretion of the owner ofcourse. While yeah that might keep some players out of some specific player formed areas out of some idea of fear, I think it'd really drive the point home about the cheesy 'antagonists' that take every crumb they can use without consideration for the people they're antagonizing. I normally play on other byond games and this sort-of goes back to the coin thing. In most cases, roleplaying games are just balls to the wall in one direction or the other, either nobody dies and everyone skips around happily with no conflict or there's no representation or real consideration for that part of a system at-all outside of stuff like balancing combat abilities.

That said, reading through the ideas and whatnot made me think that imposing a limitation on a given individual's ability to deny the result of an IC conflict would make their choice to do that or not do that mean more and eventually bottleneck a person who's into cheesing their way through villainy or some comeuppance. Eventually, they'd either have to double down and not play that character or put themselves at risk.
 
(v What i mentioned at the end of that opening statement v)
I also kind-of feel like if there was going to be a specified time space where two parties in a conflict, it'd have to be really strict on who would have rights to being somewhere based on the results of the situation that caused the conflict-cooldown to begin with. The idea of the Rule Of Avoidance is the only one of the general ideas that I'd have a big problem with, mostly because it removes some idea of player agency and might make would-be organic conflicts deflate unorganically.

[levianaught]

I feel these rules are the necessary change needed. Bravo.