My question is this. When does the discomfort of others on such concepts become a policing factor. Some people are uncomfortable with homosexuality (yes, in this day and age.) and yet should their feelings too be taken into account? I think that if something makes someone uncomfortable than it falls on them to sort of remove themselves from such a situation, why should their discomfort affect possibly everyone around them by deciding what and how someone else should RP with their characters?
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I think context is important when discussing whether a person doing a darker or more mature RP should consider others’ consent in public. I think those contexts narrow down to 1) public/open-air RP and 2) private/small group storylines
1) Public/Open-Air RP
If conducted in public RP spaces with many others around within earshot, it’s considerate to remember that many IRL players are underage. While some ‘mature’ topics are light enough (flirtations, cheating, drunkenness, bullying, etc.) that underage kids see this sort of thing IRL, too…I think that’s fine. However, darker RP (sexual assault, hardcore drug use, straight racism, etc.) is perhaps something that should be engaged in private/small group RP or in /party as the content is arguably too intense to force others to overhear. That’s my opinion.
Of course, people always have the option to walk away from you. But if you’re say…RPing out a sexual assault using /say and /emote in the smack middle of Mage Quarter where everyone gathers…that’s inconsiderate.
2) Private/Small Group Storylines
This I think is the better space for the darker end of the spectrum with ‘mature’ RP. This can be done either in /party chat when in a heavy traffic public space, or in /say and /emote if in a more secluded spot. In this context, the people involved in the small group are all opt-in and are giving implied consent. If at any point they feel it’s going too far, they can either OOC say so or IC make an excuse to leave the scenario (according to their own preferences).
That’s my 2 cents on the issue, anyway. ![:wink:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=6" ":wink:")
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While I agree with you that underage individuals are watching public space RP, lets honestly be realistic. One trip to Elwynn will show you exactly what kids are exposed to on the internet already, and if you think they aren’t exposing themselves to such things you’re either deluded, being disingenuous, or woefully ignorant of what kids do when allowed on the internet with little to no supervision ( and lets face it that is the likely state of most minors on the internet.)
Am I saying its right that minors be exposed to it? No. But it -is- happening whether the majority of us like it or not. And in the end game, its the internet. You can almost always walk away, barring psychotic individuals.
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Full disclosure, I haven’t slept in over 30 hours, this may be a bit incoherent.
IC =! OOC and the Golden Rule that is Consent are two very important aspects of roleplay.
IC =! OOC means that if my character is a jerk IC doesn’t mean I’m a jerk OOCly. If my character hates your character ICly that doesn’t mean I hate you OOCly. The idea is that IC actions done in good faith shouldn’t be held as a testament of your IRL self. I’m a Warlock in game, but that doesn’t mean I try and reap souls to summon demons IRL!
Now, the key here is the in good faith. Using the OP’s cheating example; a character ICly cheating on another isn’t inherently a mark against the player OOCly, as a lot of stories spawn from this, as well as it may be in one’s IC character to…well…be a bit promiscuous or perhaps have a misunderstanding of a relationship.
But these are actions that directly affects another player’s character in a potentially severe manner. It’s very much like an attack - but it’s emotional, not physical. Because of this, for this to be in good faith all parties should be informed OOCly about the IC happenings…and one shouldn’t be offended if the other party bows out because they don’t like the way things are heading. This communication keeps everything in good faith, it keeps IC and OOC separate.
Bad faith, however, comes when one either abuses this or can’t separate the two. Abusing this is using the separation to harass other players and hide behind “it’s just IC!”. It’s within everyone’s rights as role players to pick and choose who they RP with, only they have the final say. If you harass someone ICly and they OOCly don’t enjoy this RP? They are well within their rights to ignore you. And if they OOCly ask for the behavior to stop and it doesn’t? It’s witgin their right to report said player. If they don’t value consent - or communicate their potentially divisive IC actions - then OOC is dragged right in and one would be right to put a foot down.
Using the cheating example again, if the cheater communicated to all parties and they agreed? Then good. If one RP partner isn’t okay with it? Then everyone knows it wasn’t personal and it’s time to discuss the next course of action - or at the very least, end the IC story amicably. IF the cheating character is both ICly and OOCly behind the other player’s back, no communication whatsoever? They have every right to be upset - they’ve been OOCly deceived and are suddenly put on the spotlight for a RP they may not want to be involved in.
I had more to say, but I think I’m about to finally crash…shrug
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In a situation like this, I think I wasn’t being clear enough about what I mean. If two people, completely unrelated, are sitting in a room together, not interacting, and your character is doing drugs, and they whisper you that they’re not comfortable with it, then yes- I would agree with your assertion. It’s on the person who is uncomfortable to remove themselves from the situation, not on the person performing the action to cease.
The case I’m on would involve two players in a private situation, working with one another. It’s a very different story when the interaction isn’t random. Hopefully that clears up what I mean!
Ya know… I don’t necessarily want to open up that can of worms, but I do occasionally ask myself if players creating homophobic characters are themselves homophobic, or if they’ve just made a very poor choice of “fatal flaw”. More often than not, at least in my experience, the character is driven by someone who just wants an excuse to use homophobic/racist/ etc slurs and hide behind “IC =/ OOC” when the players around them are rightfully offended by it.
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Oh I understand that completely. A lot of times people do tend to foist their own flaws onto their PC as an excuse to sort of be a dick in game. I’m just saying that if someone is uncomfortable, where is the line drawn on who needs to get over what ah? Its a conversation worth having as we are currently in the debate of IC=/=OOC. Yes? In the same sense that Homophobia does not have the same religious stigmas in game as it does IRL, racism doesn’t seem like it would either barring you know, between actual races like elves, orcs, trolls, and every other one. I am damn sure racism is a thing in wow considering we’re in what amounts to be a war divided along racial lines with a very wide gray area available for races of even opposing factions to work together.
I think these are character traits, that like any other sort of RP can be done poorly, but I’m not going to condemn someone OOC for in character choices myself as I tend to at least try and get to know those I RP with on the regular outside of their IC persona and realize that a grand majority of the time the character of the player behind the character is normally an alright individual. (Of course I’ve been wrong there sometimes too.)
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The same could be said for people that choose to play overly flamboyant homosexual characters.
It doesn’t mean you’re homophobic if you simply aren’t comfortable with being approached with overly homosexual RP. It’s pretty ignorant to label someone for just not being OK with being confronted with that sort of engagement and asking that it stop. If someone is uncomfortable, they are uncomfortable and have every right to voice their discomfort without being zinged as a bigot or hateful individual.
I personally have no issue with LGBTQ, but I can assure you (and it has happened several times to me) that there are plenty of homosexual characters being RPd out there that violate peoples’ space and comfort zone on the regular in the same fashion that folks playing zealots/homophobic characters do.
Again, two way street. OP is coming across as extremely partisan.
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I did say “this is a discussion” and not “you have to agree with me”, so I don’t know where you’ve gotten this from. It’s okay to have a different opinion. I’m getting an aggressive vibe off of you and I’m not sure what I’ve done to cause it.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing here. I think both of you are mistaken in thinking that I’m trying to push some sort of agenda- I’m not. This is a discussion, not a debate that has a winner. Where do you feel the line should be drawn, if there was to be a line at all?
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You made a thread essentially berating folks as being insensitive for RPing minor character darkness. Your tune has since changed but the point still stands that the OP was nothing short of a ‘call out’ which put more than one person here on the defensive.
Furthermore, you went on to say that characters with homophobic traits were players OOC with a ‘fatal flaw’, something that is A. borderline offensive and B. contrary to your original argument.
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Personally I think the line should be drawn at forced inclusion. If I, OOC feel uncomfortable with something and I let whoever it is I feel uncomfortable with know that I am uncomfortable, I expect them to be polite enough to not go -out- of their way to push it into my face.
Now does this mean they can’t have their characters act naturally around mine? Of course not. (unless its for the sake of RP which is totally understandable when agreed upon by both authors ooc.) I feel its a matter of beind adults and realizing that not everyone is going to have the same hang ups you ( or I or anyone) have about particular subjects and allowing for the fact that if it makes you uncomfortable, you can at least tolerate it for the sake of those around you, or in the extreme cases, remove yourself from it so that you personally don’t bother anyone else. I feel that to be the most adult way of going about it, along with a healthy dose of not pushing your own ooc and ic preferences on someone to the point where you make them uncomfortable enough ooc to be forced to have to leave.
A good measure of tolerance goes a long away, and if you feel uncomfortable, say something and talk about it like adults and in the end, if you can’t come to a solution, agree to not be around each other and let each other have their own space and not deliberately try to force each other out of public spaces, nor try to control public spaces by proxy by being a mean sort of git and following someone to try and get them to the point where they feel as if they can’t RP anywhere without said uncomfortable IC stances and issues coming up. The worlds a big place, and /say and /e only go so far. Lets all try and inhabit it without purposefully trying to be offended or offending other people.
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I think perhaps you’re reading too much into their comment on said usage of the words ‘fatal flaw’. They said that in their own experience oft times it is an ooc issue being thrown IC. in the same sense that you ‘Flamboyantly Gay’ flaw is an issue to you. Both can be discomfitting and the point of the matter is to exist in the same space without inciting hatred oocly, yes?
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Ya know, the more I sit in here and think about stuff, the more questions I end up with. Because I think entirely too much for it to be healthy. That summer job can’t start soon enough.
So, why not lighten up the conversation a little!
Let’s talk norms.
Quite a few of us have role-played in different formats before we came to WoW. Forums, DnD, other games… for the most part the general rules and accepted norms are the same. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t metagame. Don’t Godmod.
In your experiences, which rules/norms have changed between games? Which role-playing “norms” did other games have that you wish WoW had, or vice versa?
(And if there’s more to add to the current discussion, by all means, go for it!)
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This is almost completely unrelated to the current discussion, but I used to RP in Livejournal communities where you would pick and play a fictional character from some media, usually in a Heroes of the Storm-style setting where characters from different universes were plucked up and tossed together through different circumstances, for different purposes. I can’t remember off the top of my head what we used to call the typical setting…a haunted sandbox, I want to say. Something like that. You’d have to apply to the game by writing up an application with a writing sample and a discussion of the character, to show that you understood them enough to play them. And then people would post back and forth to each other in discussion threads, or write out prose scenes.
What really made it sharply different from WoW was that if you were playing an OC, you were generally regarded as trying to ruin things with your weird self-insert Mary Sue of a character, which makes it the exact opposite of the MMO-style RP setting, where if you noticeably transpose a recognizable character from other media you’re largely seen as a joke. Like, you’d be much more likely to get into a game playing actual Jaina, Sylvanas or Thrall than playing your Warcraft OC, which might be either banned outright or gone over with a fine-toothed comb for signs of self-insertion.
I’ve always thought it was funny that RP rules and norms that are so taboo in one setting can be completely normal in another.
Another thing that made it a lot different was that there were no OOC secrets. There couldn’t be. Every interaction was 100% visible to everyone in the community. Can you imagine if everything anyone ever said or did in the game was visible to literally anyone else who wanted to look it up? 
Curiously, do you feel that this was an improvement over how things currently are? This was the question I was going to ask if I didn’t talk about norms instead, so… ah what the hell. Flyin’ off the handle, here we go. I don’t know if I’m just imagining it, but I feel like I talked a lot less in OOC a few years ago than I do now- in fact, it feels like most people talked a lot less in OOC than they do now.
Was playing in Wildstar some time ago, and each time a character said something mean or… really anything at all, the players would be talking OOC justifying the character’s actions to one another, as if fearful that the actions would be misconstrued in some way. It threw me off, because it’s not something I’d ever seen before… but I see it all the time now.
Is all the OOC that we’re involved now taking away from the gravity of the IC scene? Is it harmful for immersion to be in constant communication even if it wasn’t necessarily needed? I feel like Tammy would probably say “yes”. ![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
There are benefits and drawbacks, for sure. On the one hand, it was aggravating to have everyone up in your business all the time. Say you wanted to play out darker themes, you had to label it all up, and there were still people who were completely not participating in what was going on or related to it, but they still wanted to have a say in if you could do it. You would also get people in your biz nitpicking your writing and your characterization because they could see it all of the time. Most of the games were moderated by people who screened applications and fielded OOC conflicts and complaints - I was one of those people for both of the games I was in. Now…imagine if there were moderators for WoW RP, who could tell you that you weren’t playing your character the right way, or that you had to stop playing some themes, or they’d eject you from the game.
Mass hysteria.
But, on the plus side, 100% forced OOC honesty and transparency was often a plus. We’d all like to think that we are completely honest about our RP because everything is IC, what does it matter? Except I can think of about a hundred examples off the top of my head where people lied OOC about what they were up to IC and it turned into a huge issue, either on a small person-to-person scale or on a larger guild or community level. It often turns into an endless he-said, she-said situation and can tear apart the trust and cooperation.
Overall, though, it’s just…different. There are good aspects and bad aspects.
I think that the OOC hedging and discussion really came about with the rise of “gotcha” culture in general, though, which is a larger societal thing. People are nervous about a screenshot of something getting out and ruining their reputation in the community, since RP servers are the last place where there even is such a thing as a server community anymore. So they get over-anxious to prove that while their character may be terrible, they aren’t.
That having been said, though, I’ve always played in groups where people had a lot of OOC discussion about what was going on, even back in the Vanilla days. Immersion is great and all, but overall I prefer to maintain a friendly, comfortable OOC environment with the people I RP with, sacrificing a little hardcore immersion for the sake of fostering an environment of mutual OOC cooperation.
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I think that roleplay is cooperative storytelling, and that it can’t be good roleplay without the enthusiastic consent of everyone involved. How can I be having fun and telling a good story if my RP partner isn’t having fun telling it with me? And if I’m just here to RP at people, I ought to stop RPing and stick to fanfiction.
I think that communicating with your RP partners is a crucial part of RP. Even if you want to keep the specifics a surprise, you should do what you can to be sure your RP partner isn’t going to feel hurt or blindsided or betrayed by your character’s IC actions. The human beings who are playing this game will always be more important than the RP.
I know that some folks refuse to ever talk OOCly about IC stuff, falling back on IC =/= OOC as a reason, or an excuse, depending on the person. I may RP with them, but I make sure my characters never get too attached to them and I never trust them with any emotionally charted RP.
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You ever play in Theatrical Muse?
Yeah, Livejournal-style RP is very different from WoW, but the same kinds of problems can crop up, and in my experience it’s rarely due to IC actions but rather due to OOC actions that underpin them. Two people have their characters in an IC relationship, they’re enjoying RPing this story together, another person comes along and catches the eye of one of the players, and without warning the other member of that couple is the odd one out, not getting RP, seeing their character’s partner off with someone else, the other player is all “it’s all IC, it’s just IC” except they aren’t RPing with that first player anymore, all their time is spent with the new player and this shiny new relationship, and the first person loses not just their character relationship but their writing partner. It hurts. It just does. And it isn’t because of the IC, it’s because of the OOC.
Communication and honesty are important.
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I generally see it that “IC =/= OOC” as a default should be the given for standard roleplay situations that normally wouldn’t be considered controversial. However, I think OOC communication between the parties to talk about potentially uncomfortable or psychologically triggering situations should be established. Off the top of my head, this would include things like torture, abuse, and any other number of unseemly subjects.
And anything erotic should absolutely involve enthusiastic, proactive OOC consent between all those involved.
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Ill repeat my statement again.
Everyone claims “IC =/= OOC”, but a lot of times…this has never been the case with the community as a whole.
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Since no one has said it yet. You think too damn much, Aran.
That’s all, I’m not one to contribute anything helpful to these kinds of debates/conversations.
I hope I’m posting as the right character this time.
Edit: I did
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