Harrassment during RP

Or GM-smacked.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I approve of this post.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

So if i'm rp'ing in anothe pvp zone by ''badging''.... i should petition everyone out there to get me.

I say unto this... "Huh?"

Let me explain. Firstly, I do not subscribe to the view that any activity taken in-game is roleplaying. Roleplaying is a specific set of activities that include (but are not strictly limited to) acting and speaking in-character. That's it. When I'm RPing, my Local and emote chat will be things that my character says and does. If I'm not RPing, or I'm saying something on almost any other channel, then it's me talking.

Castle mentioned that there are "unwritten rules" that govern our conduct and behaviour, and one of those unwritten rules is that if you are in a PvP zone you are fair game for PvP. If I am in a PvP zone, and I am RPing, I accept that other characters may attack mine, and that such attacks may have nothing to do with the RP I'm involved in. Hell, that's happened to me. I did not petition the player involved, because my choosing to take my RP into a PvP zone I made the explicit choice to accept that I may be attacked.

However, when I am in a non-PvP zone, engaged in social discourse, I have made an implicit choice to avoid such a circumstance. Now, people who encounter my character may choose to do a number of things.

1) Join in the RP. This would be my favourite choice, as I welcome anyone who wishes to RP with an open mind.

2) Ignore the RP and enter out-of-character discussion with me. I don't mind this. I will usually take it to /tells, to keep my Local chat clear for the ongoing RP conversation.

3) Ignore the RP and not engage me in conversation. This is fine by me. When RPing, I tend to pay no attention to people who are not RPing - their characters are not there, as far as mine are concerned, and I will only acknowledge them in-character if they choose to act in-character. (Please note, this is not me attempting to force any behaviour on anyone - it is simply the yardstick that I use when determining the sort of interaction I will undertake with others.)

4) They may attempt to interupt the roleplaying through out-of-character means. If this is done, I will politely request that they cease their disruptive behaviour, and if they persist, I will petition them for harassment. It takes an active choice on their part, not mine, to behave in such a fashion, and I have no fear of raising it with the appropriate authorities.

Therefore, if I am in a PvP zone, I have made the active choice to be there, and the consequences of that choice are on my head. I cannot and do not blame others for choosing to enter PvP conflict with me, since it was my choice to be in a place where that was possible.

Thus, the choices of someone encountering me in a PvP zone are different (assuming that I am a valid target for PvP).

1) Join in the RP. See above for my feelings on this.

2) Join in the RP, but also add PvP combat to the mix. This spices things up nicely, and is fine by me as a roleplayer, provided that the conflict follows as a natural part of the RP.

3) Not join in the RP and engage me in conversation. See above.

4) Not join in the RP and ignore my presence. See above.

5) Not join in the RP and engage me in PvP combat. This is the price of doing business in the PvP zones, and I will retaliate to the best of my ability. I will cease RPing for the duration of the fight, and the outcome of the fight will have no bearing on the RP in which I was engaged. I will simply pick back up where I left off, after I've returned from the hospital. Attacking someone in a PvP zone is not harassment in and of itself. It may, under certain circumstances, become harassment, for example should the attacker persist in attacking me at the expense of other potential targets, but in that circumstance I still have the choice to remove myself from the PvP zone, which is my preferred course of action under those circumstances.

Ultimately, in a PvE zone, I should be able to undertake any activity that suits me, provided that the activity I choose does not impinge on the enjoyment of others. In a PvP zone I am explicitly opening myself to combat with other players, and it is I who must amend my behaviour to conform to the game-mechanics reality of the zone.

In further rebuttal of the above-quoted post, I do not consider "badging" to be a roleplaying activity, since it does not fit, in and of itself, within the category of activities that I believe constitutes RPing. Now, that is a matter of personal opinion, and if anyone wishes to /petition for harassment against someone in a PvP zone, then feel free. I strongly suspect that the GMs will agree with me and pretty much just laugh at such.

Snipping the rest, since it's mostly along this same tack.

Yes, you're in a zone where people are going to be doing "winter things." However, most RP tends to be... fairly obvious, even if they're not doing it in local or broadcast. Or at least it's obvious there's "a group doing something." There's also a whole zone full of people doing other things.

Barring seeing someone you know ("Hey, there's Dispari!" - *toss snowball* "Heya!") why not find someone *else* who's lobbing snowballs or otherwise not seemingly preoccupied and engage *them* in this?

Location does not remove your right to ask someone not to interrupt what you're doing. (Barring, as mentioned earlier, "Hey, you're blocking the ski slope/Father Time/NPC/door, could you please move?") Especially when, frankly, those NPCs are in a reasonably nice setting for RP. (I also don't particularly thing the PVP zone example isn't valid in this discussion. There's no reward for throwing a snowball when asked not to, other than irritating the target. Warburg, you could reasonably get a code, you *will* get rep if you win, and you get a chance of a PVP IO drop.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

Actually, that sounded more like a PvP post than any other post in this thread...

"Alien"

Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades The way you play changes your IO slotting..

No, all that because I disagree with your point of view regarding the situation, such as your belief that anyone who disagrees with you on this disagrees with you on everything. If I disagree with you that spaghetti isn't the best pasta dish of all time (clearly, chicken or shrimp fettuccine alfredo is), that doesn't mean I disagree with you that cats are cute. *idly scratches Zell's tummy, illiciting a purr and content kitty face as she flops from her leopard print cat bed on his bed to lay across his mouse arm to try and make sure her daddy pays attention to her*

I never said I dislike roleplaying. I'd be quite the hypocrite or had a very souring experience in my past to go from spending 5-6 years roleplaying on AOL and IRC where I met my ex-fiancee, to suddenly hating roleplaying as completely as you seem to think I do.

If anything, I was half tempted to ask if people's powers or emotes were bothering you or disrupting your roleplaying because you need to do it in local and use the emotes for the visual cues. Had you said yes, then I would've been half tempted again to say you're quite honestly not doing a good enough job putting forth the literary imagery through your roleplaying. Or as they say on the intrawebs, "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG."

They can, and they can also get banned for it, because it's a breach of conduct, which you agree to every time you log in.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

"I was just playing my character" is never an excuse for griefing.

RP Griefing is definitely harassment, and should be reported. Once reported, the griefer should be ignored. They feed on attention and the only way to truly get rid of them is to starve them out. Give them nothing to feed on and they'll get bored and go away.

Refuse to acknowledge their existence and you'll find they will quickly go looking for prey elsewhere who give them the attention that they crave.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

This is almost impossible though. Someone will ALWAYS feel that they need to laugh at or talk down to the person and tell them how pathetic they are. Unfortunately, that's exactly what they want you to do, and ensures they won't leave you alone. As soon as someone feels they need to "put them in their place" by telling them how sad they are, the griefer gets the okay to proceed.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Then you just need to make sure it isn't you. They'll go where they get their cookie from, and if it's not from you, they'll get bored and move along to someone who will oblige them.

If someone you're playing with does this, send them a tell informing them they should just ignore this person or you'll never be rid of them. If they insist on engaging the griefer, then you should probably find something else to do, because that person just encouraged the griefer to make some popcorn and settle in.

It's unfortunately true that someone will always feed the troll. Just don't be an attractive target, it's the best you can do. I always keep my /ignore stick warmed up and use it with abandon.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

Ah, so you mean Westley's a troll?

Great, I get to try out the ignore feature for this forum.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Translation: Westley always blames the victim! They asked for it just by standing there and looking harrassable, afterall!

*Sigh*

And this is why there will ALWAYS be trolls and griefers, because people cannot just simply ignore them.

It works on the forums as well as in the game: Don't Feed the Troll.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

No, he is a social commentator with tendency for comedy and ironic observations.


And a sociopath according to Mod8, but we all knew that

Fixed.

I've never witnessed it on the US servers either, actually.

You know, the horror stories are just that to be honest. I play on Virtue, and, I have not once ran into a situation where the public based RP has gone into the "adult" realm. Perhaps more than PG13, as there are a number of people that will swear and such.

However, an explicit scene that continues in local? I have not seen it yet. I have been on Virtue for about three years now straight, prior to that I was on various breaks and I originally started on Guardian. Now, there are two things that I have seen happen, a) Mistell into public (either broadcast or local) followed by the group heading to a different zone, or logging all together but the scene did not continue and b) Griefers assuming that a group is undertaking ERP, start saying so in broadcast, or even global channels without any proof of it actually happening.

Situation B has actually happened to me once, I laughed about it as the person who was griefing us was talking about in one of the globals I'm in, and I defended myself without the person even knowing I was part of that group. None of us reacted to him, and eventually he got bored. I sometimes wonder if the horror stories about explicit scenes being RP'd publicly are instead fabricated stories that arrive from situations like this. I've even gone to 'investigate' such situations, to see if there are people that really do explicit scenes in public channels, and every single time I find that it's a griefer (or two) making it all up solely because the group in question is RP'ing in team, and say "MRP" or "All RP" tags in their bio which could mean anything. Such as taking characters who would swear excessively out of public channels, since public channels are supposed to be PG13 after all.

At this point, I think I've started to ramble, but I'll shuddup now Just felt that I should relay my own experience with regards to the US RP Server.

False. It worked on FIDONet, and it worked on USENET, and it'll work here.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

That's probably true, but you have to admit, some of those mis-tells are EPIC.
They can fuel the rumor mill for months after.

I'll never forget the one where an MM was describing how she used her robots' "attachments" on her partner... I'm sorry, but there's just some places high speed rotory action should NOT be applied.

And that one was dropped in broadcast, too.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

I grant you 5 points for evoking memories of the old BBS days. Just imagine a text based CoH MUD.......