Reflections

[Lotion]

The consent rule isn't meant to protect characters from the environment or each other, it's meant to protect players from each other. If you walk into the wild and get attacked by a Carru the messages that appear are very game-ish. The Carru hits you in the leg and it really hurts. A player who breaks your character's leg might send text onto your screen that you find very disturbing and would live a happier life if you never read it. Yes, players can fade to black but in a consent less arm players would have to preemptively fade to black in a situation where they thing they might be violated to avoid it in the first place. Fading to black after already having been violated means the damage has already been done.

[triste]

Me:

Tell you what IS for female players- listening to their feedback.

Guy not 5 minutes later:

stop posting these weird thinly veiled rape fetish request threads.

I'm not saying it doesn't take 10 minutes to demonstrate it's a culture problem but...

Right? Completely fucking nauseating.

I don't give two fucks about what some cisguy thinks about female characters getting raped, but I'm glad you shared your opinion. Yet even when you share opinions that pertain to your group some paternalist is going to condescend to decide what the "right" opinion for you to have is.

Dudes need to stop it. I almost quit because of this shit yet it keeps happening.

[Lizzie]

Armageddon is not the real world. I don't want it to be the real world.

While I agree with RL insults and racial slurs being removed in place of locale-appropriate insults and slurs, I have no desire to see world-appropriate racial prejudices removed from the game. Consent is bad enough: when I started playing this game, "consent" was assumed because you were warned about the adult nature of this game before you logged in.

Then people started being offended by things they had been warned about before they logged in. And we changed, and we had multiple layers of consent and content-watering-down. And maybe that was alright, but I can't pretend I like it.

We're in the midst of a moment in RL where we might manage to effect some real change in the way some racial things are handled, and I pray to God we don't waste it. I am happy that issues are being addressed in RL. I do not want that to happen to Armageddon, though, when it comes to softening the world even more.

I know people are soft these days, and more culturally aware and sensitive and such, and that's great, but Armageddon isn't supposed to reflect the real world. Armageddon is supposed to be a NC-17 horror show, not a PG-13 fright-flick.

Incidentally, I say this as a 41 year-old black man.

Thanks D. I've felt exactly as you do, but didn't feel comfortable posting since - I'm a 59-year-old white woman   All of this "sensitivity training" stuff is watering down the game and making it less attractive.

[triste]

Armageddon is not the real world. I don't want it to be the real world.

While I agree with RL insults and racial slurs being removed in place of locale-appropriate insults and slurs, I have no desire to see world-appropriate racial prejudices removed from the game. Consent is bad enough: when I started playing this game, "consent" was assumed because you were warned about the adult nature of this game before you logged in.

Then people started being offended by things they had been warned about before they logged in. And we changed, and we had multiple layers of consent and content-watering-down. And maybe that was alright, but I can't pretend I like it.

We're in the midst of a moment in RL where we might manage to effect some real change in the way some racial things are handled, and I pray to God we don't waste it. I am happy that issues are being addressed in RL. I do not want that to happen to Armageddon, though, when it comes to softening the world even more.

I know people are soft these days, and more culturally aware and sensitive and such, and that's great, but Armageddon isn't supposed to reflect the real world. Armageddon is supposed to be a NC-17 horror show, not a PG-13 fright-flick.

Incidentally, I say this as a 41 year-old black man.

Thanks D. I've felt exactly as you do, but didn't feel comfortable posting since - I'm a 59-year-old white woman   All of this "sensitivity training" stuff is watering down the game and making it less attractive.

Hell fucking yes, +1 to team Chicks-With-Backbone

[Lizzie]

Me:

Tell you what IS for female players- listening to their feedback.

Guy not 5 minutes later:

stop posting these weird thinly veiled rape fetish request threads.

I'm not saying it doesn't take 10 minutes to demonstrate it's a culture problem but...

Last time I checked, I was a female. I checked - just now. Yup, still female. I have never experienced what you're describing in your previous post. I play female characters - played 1 male, sucked at it, never tried again. Most of my characters are played as sexually ambivalent. Meaning - just not really interested one way or another. I have had characters in relationships, a couple of them were interesting, the rest not so much. But I still haven't ever experienced what you describe.

As a female who's been playing since 2002. So maybe you and I just play differently. Maybe your style of roleplay attracts the freaks and mine doesn't? I dunno what to tell ya. But it hasn't ever been a "thing" - not even when I played the kalan-breasted woman.

[triste]

I've seen what PointyBoi described happen sadly. But it kind of gets at OP and other people's points -- why do we arbitrarily require an awkward invocation of the ooc command for some horrible things but not others.

[Sidathe Silverdawn]

Not sure if I am allowed to post on this but here is my take: I wish bad behavior didn't have to have the OOC message to break the immersion - coming from someone who has had to ask how to do something with an OOC message. Pardon my hypocrisy.

I mostly wish the rules weren't broken. If the game states: rape is not to be RPed out, then it should be obvious what needs to happen. If there is a sexual scene that is playing out, and one participant objects, can't they then RP out of it? And if they can't then isn't the rape rule being broken?

I don't know. I guess I am naive.

[triste]

Not sure if I am allowed to post on this but here is my take: I wish bad behavior didn't have to have the OOC message to break the immersion - coming from someone who has had to ask how to do something with an OOC message. Pardon my hypocrisy.

I mostly wish the rules weren't broken. If the game states: rape is not to be RPed out, then it should be obvious what needs to happen. If there is a sexual scene that is playing out, and one participant objects, can't they then RP out of it? And if they can't then isn't the rape rule being broken?

I don't know. I guess I am naive.

Rape is a messy domain of law IRL, and it should have never been introduced as a concept we have rules around in Armageddon. Human beings can hardly litigate sensibly around rape IRL, so who on earth thought it was a good idea to litigate around rape in a game.

[triste]

Not sure if I am allowed to post on this but here is my take: I wish bad behavior didn't have to have the OOC message to break the immersion - coming from someone who has had to ask how to do something with an OOC message. Pardon my hypocrisy.

I mostly wish the rules weren't broken. If the game states: rape is not to be RPed out, then it should be obvious what needs to happen. If there is a sexual scene that is playing out, and one participant objects, can't they then RP out of it? And if they can't then isn't the rape rule being broken?

I don't know. I guess I am naive.

Rape is a messy domain of law IRL, and it should have never been introduced as a concept we have rules around in Armageddon. Human beings can hardly litigate sensibly around rape IRL, so who on earth thought it was a good idea to litigate around rape in a game.

I mean seriously, in what way, shape or form has this rule ever been a good idea.

I don't want volunteer game administrators to grep through my sexy-time logs to police them. A character threatened to rape mine a year and a half ago and I didn't report them because I don't fucking care. My OOC reaction to his threat was to laugh at how impotent it is. And again, I was molested as a kid and violently raped recently. You would think, according to the script, that I should be offended and need to flee to a safe space as soon as someone typed such horrible, wicked, outrageous, anti-christian words at me. But I am a grown ass adult who can separate fact from fiction and values freedom and privacy more than whatever volunteer admins grepping through sexy-time logs to police for "rape" gets me.

Again, I have god damn been pushed down and raped. I know what violation feels like. Staff policing sexy-time logs to enforce thought-police rules is violating. A lack of creepy sex-rules and a lack of thought-policing is not violating. Remove the creepy rules. I won't shame the first woman to prove me wrong, but I've literally not heard one woman say she's in favor of these creepy, paternalistic rules.

[Cendell]

The no rape rule came in due to a very shitty time in the game. It was everywhere, all the time. People weaponized it. People put player complaints in. People whined on the GDB. People quit, and people argued. It was a nightmare to be in any sort of authority position at the time. And it was exhausting to deal with, both in and out of game.

Staff banned it and everything about it as the solution.

And I still agree with that. I'm not wading into anything else here.

[triste]

This is often the story, "some players went overboard and now it's banned."

It's so strange for players who didn't witness that, and have simply come back to a whitewashed game (OP's lament).

You know what I would love as a rape victim? The opportunity to get quick revenge on my own against a rapist in game, or be able to fight off someone who tried to do that in a way I couldn't IRL.

I understand that "that time period" was bad, but every time I hear it come up I am just like, man, I wish I played then so I could have been a vigilante.

But now the content is just gone, redacted. Plots can't organically form. My dream of being the Zalanthan Lisbeth Salander will never be realized.

Ah well. At least movie producers and novelists aren't as cowardly as whoever imposed these rules on this game.

To reiterate OP's point -- fuck censorship and watering down. I don't want it, the majority of women speaking up here don't want it.

[Is Friday]

This is often the story, "some players went overboard and now it's banned."

It's so strange for players who didn't witness that, and have simply come back to a whitewashed game (OP's lament).

You know what I would love as a rape victim? The opportunity to get quick revenge on my own against a rapist in game, or be able to fight off someone who tried to do that in a way I couldn't IRL.

I understand that "that time period" was bad, but every time I hear it come up I am just like, man, I wish I played then so I could have been a vigilante.

But now the content is just gone, redacted. Whitewashing sucks so much.

There are other games where rape, snuff, murder/rape and fantasies like this can be fulfilled.

ArmageddonMUD is not one of them.

[triste]

This is often the story, "some players went overboard and now it's banned."

It's so strange for players who didn't witness that, and have simply come back to a whitewashed game (OP's lament).

You know what I would love as a rape victim? The opportunity to get quick revenge on my own against a rapist in game, or be able to fight off someone who tried to do that in a way I couldn't IRL.

I understand that "that time period" was bad, but every time I hear it come up I am just like, man, I wish I played then so I could have been a vigilante.

But now the content is just gone, redacted. Whitewashing sucks so much.

There are other games where rape, snuff, murder/rape and fantasies like this can be fulfilled.

ArmageddonMUD is not one of them.

Because ArmageddonMUD is no longer as raw and unique as it once was. It's not the intense, harsh wasteland it purports to be any longer. Well maybe it is, but off screen.

[Malken]

This thread will disappear faster than the karma on my account did.

[Is Friday]

This is often the story, "some players went overboard and now it's banned."

It's so strange for players who didn't witness that, and have simply come back to a whitewashed game (OP's lament).

You know what I would love as a rape victim? The opportunity to get quick revenge on my own against a rapist in game, or be able to fight off someone who tried to do that in a way I couldn't IRL.

I understand that "that time period" was bad, but every time I hear it come up I am just like, man, I wish I played then so I could have been a vigilante.

But now the content is just gone, redacted. Whitewashing sucks so much.

There are other games where rape, snuff, murder/rape and fantasies like this can be fulfilled.

ArmageddonMUD is not one of them.

Because ArmageddonMUD is no longer as raw and unique as it once was. It's not the intense, harsh wasteland it purports to be any longer. Well maybe it is, but off screen.

Correct. The game is meant to be enjoyed by a large number of players, not the incredibly niche players whose rape plots negatively infect the entire area that they play in.

[triste]

This thread will disappear faster than the karma on my account did.

One can hope. If I have to keep seeing males telling females how to feel about a crime that is mostly perpetrated by males against females I might scream.

[triste]

This is often the story, "some players went overboard and now it's banned."

It's so strange for players who didn't witness that, and have simply come back to a whitewashed game (OP's lament).

You know what I would love as a rape victim? The opportunity to get quick revenge on my own against a rapist in game, or be able to fight off someone who tried to do that in a way I couldn't IRL.

I understand that "that time period" was bad, but every time I hear it come up I am just like, man, I wish I played then so I could have been a vigilante.

But now the content is just gone, redacted. Whitewashing sucks so much.

There are other games where rape, snuff, murder/rape and fantasies like this can be fulfilled.

ArmageddonMUD is not one of them.

Because ArmageddonMUD is no longer as raw and unique as it once was. It's not the intense, harsh wasteland it purports to be any longer. Well maybe it is, but off screen.

Correct. The game is meant to be enjoyed by a large number of players, not the incredibly niche players whose rape plots negatively infect the entire area that they play in.

You don't have any data to back your claim up, so whatever. Heade thinks players will return if we get rid of these muddy, useless rules.

While both of you don't have evidence to back up your claim, I am inclined to agree with Heade more than you.

[Is Friday]

This is often the story, "some players went overboard and now it's banned."

It's so strange for players who didn't witness that, and have simply come back to a whitewashed game (OP's lament).

You know what I would love as a rape victim? The opportunity to get quick revenge on my own against a rapist in game, or be able to fight off someone who tried to do that in a way I couldn't IRL.

I understand that "that time period" was bad, but every time I hear it come up I am just like, man, I wish I played then so I could have been a vigilante.

But now the content is just gone, redacted. Whitewashing sucks so much.

There are other games where rape, snuff, murder/rape and fantasies like this can be fulfilled.

ArmageddonMUD is not one of them.

Because ArmageddonMUD is no longer as raw and unique as it once was. It's not the intense, harsh wasteland it purports to be any longer. Well maybe it is, but off screen.

Correct. The game is meant to be enjoyed by a large number of players, not the incredibly niche players whose rape plots negatively infect the entire area that they play in.

You don't have any data to back your claim up, so whatever. Heade thinks players will return if we get rid of these muddy, useless rules.

While both of you don't have evidence to back up your claim, I am inclined to agree with Heade more than you.

Alright. Um. No one here has data about whether or not players want to roleplay being raped. This is a discussion forum.

Normal people don't like to roleplay being raped.

[triste]

This is often the story, "some players went overboard and now it's banned."

It's so strange for players who didn't witness that, and have simply come back to a whitewashed game (OP's lament).

You know what I would love as a rape victim? The opportunity to get quick revenge on my own against a rapist in game, or be able to fight off someone who tried to do that in a way I couldn't IRL.

I understand that "that time period" was bad, but every time I hear it come up I am just like, man, I wish I played then so I could have been a vigilante.

But now the content is just gone, redacted. Whitewashing sucks so much.

There are other games where rape, snuff, murder/rape and fantasies like this can be fulfilled.

ArmageddonMUD is not one of them.

Because ArmageddonMUD is no longer as raw and unique as it once was. It's not the intense, harsh wasteland it purports to be any longer. Well maybe it is, but off screen.

Correct. The game is meant to be enjoyed by a large number of players, not the incredibly niche players whose rape plots negatively infect the entire area that they play in.

You don't have any data to back your claim up, so whatever. Heade thinks players will return if we get rid of these muddy, useless rules.

While both of you don't have evidence to back up your claim, I am inclined to agree with Heade more than you.

Alright. Um. No one here has data about whether or not players want to roleplay being raped. This is a discussion forum.

Normal people don't like to roleplay being raped.

Stop tossing around a word you know nothing about. Again, demeaning the experiences of women and rape victims about a topic that pertains to them is paternalistic and lame.

[Saellyn]

Normal people don't like to roleplay stealing, murdering, maiming, decapitating or dismembering people either. Yet we do.

[triste]

Normal people don't like to roleplay stealing, murdering, maiming, decapitating or dismembering people either. Yet we do.

Literally this. The arguments against OP, such as those by IsFriday, are useless noise. Well he's not arguing against OP... but Cabooze's comment... or something?

There is no logical argument that can defend these rules.
- Argument: Add the rule to protect women.
   Uh... I've seen a bunch of women say they don't want the rule at all.
- Argument: Ban this thing because it's super bad
   Uh... the game allows things that are much worse.
- Argument: Ban this thing because it's been politicized and staff/some players want to be political.
   Uh.... WOW this might be the actual explanation!

[th3kaiser]

Do we seriously have a three page thread that's just turned into a bunch of people arguing for and against rape?

I do not care what you game you people come here to play, I do not play a sexual game. Ever. In any context. I have no interest in being forced into such activities on a text game. Disallowing rape and having consent rules allow me to enjoy this game. I know I'm not alone here. I've no interest in getting involved in your gender politics argument about rape victims and the like. I can only speak for me and if these things changed I would leave.

[LauraMars]

Staff, circa RapeBan A.D.: Omg it's too much work to deal with rape stuff and there are not enough hours in the day and there's 97 complaints about it in the queue and I have 42 character reports about this to respond to and I'm doing this for free.
Staff: LET'S BAN RAPE
Staff: *breathes a collective sigh of relief until they realize the amount of board moderation that will now need to happen regarding everyone complaining about this for the next ever*

^ What probably actually happened.

[Shabago]

No, consent is not changing. At least so far as where I (and likely most/all) of the current team stands. Period.

It exists so players can log in and enjoy a story that doesn't involve one persons (codely possible) power trip. The FTB argument does not have any viable baring upon this. Rape, or any other horrific experience doesn't just magically go away because it was faded over. That character now has to go through the rest of their lives with that mental trauma when they have no interest in playing that trauma. And this should be allowed, /why/? No. 100% absolutely not.

Consent is what it is and will remain as it is.

Using the contentious rape argument in here:

- It completely screws with leadership dynamics.
- It causes _players_ not characters, but OOC players to become affected in ways that have nothing to do with an escapism world.
- It is not a "Story line" to pursue. Anything this supposed lack of consent would encourage or allow can be done, still, now. "I want to be a vile rapist fiend in game!" Why? No. You can have the same story line and infamy by being a mass murderer. There is not one single benefit and a laundry list of reasons as to why it hurts the game, the player population and the community as a whole.

Locked.