Consent flag / command.

[Harmless]

A lot of debate has gone on about consent and scenes that require it.

Although as it stands, we can OOC and all that to ask for consent, it is clunky and clumsy. It is a locally produced say and it probably doesn't stand out to the imms any more than any other ooc would. If neither party in a scene uses the WISH command then it creates a lot of work later for imms who have to grep logs and whatnot to see what happened post-hoc if there is a dispute/complaint.

I think it'd be more streamlined if we can take the concept of consent and make a command for it.

Here are my ideas:

Idea 1: Simple flag.

command is 'consent [yes|no|off]'. If you type consent yes, and you've put a flag on yourself (imms can see this on your sdesc in logs) that you currently are in a consenting state. You're reminded of your consent status if you type status. If you type consent no, then you've put a flag on yourself (that EVERYONE can see in the room) that states you are not currently consenting. It looks like this:

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Amos is here.
Talia (DOES NOT CONSENT) is here.



This will also force its way into your prompt to remind you about it so that you can be sure to turn it off.

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Talia's normal prompt:

<100/100hp 100st 100mv>

Talia's prompt if her consent is set to 'no':

<NOT CONSENTING> <100/100hp 100st 100mv>



it'll be in the logs, etc so that everyone knows that what happened while Talia had that flag on was non-consensual.  And then finally, consent off just turns the flag off. That's it.


Idea 2: Consent to all players in room with a whole lot of control and clunk and yadda yadda.

I'll try to illustrate it with examples.

Amos is here, about to torture Talia.
Talia is here, subdued by Amos.
*a hidden person is also in the room, unseen by both Amos and Talia.*

Amos types: >consent scene of torture

All three in the room see: "Consent has been requested by someone in the room for 'scene of torture.' You are currently flagged as (MID-CONSENTING) until you select yes or no. You are free to use OOC to ask for clarification or WISH to consult the staff. Do you consent to this scene?

Staff sees: Player Amos has requested consent in (room name, room ID etc) for 'scene of torture.' And they are notified.

Amos and Talia both type 'yes.' Their (MID-CONSENTING) flags are gone now, and they go on as normal.

The hidden person also types 'yes' and watches as well. Since he was hidden, Amos and Talia never saw him with a flag, but imms would have seen that.

Let's go through cases of 'no.'

Scenario 1: Nonconsenting second party. Same as above, up until Amos types 'yes.' Talia is unsure and has questions (rightfully). She begins asking questions in OOC or something. This might be how this looks:

Talia (MID-CONSENTING) says out of character: "Please clarify if there will be sexual content in the torture, in which case I do not consent."

Amos says out of character: "There may be. I want to see where it goes." (amos is being a douche by not answering yes or no, btw, VERY bad form for consenting!!!. Talia picks up on this and gets the creeps.

Talia then types no.

Everyone in the room is Beeped, and sent this message since Talia is visible: "Player Talia does not consent to 'scene of torture.' Any staff that are online have been notified. Everyone involved in the current scene is advised to change course of the scene or 'fade to black,' and consult "help consent" immediately or face storage or ban."

Meanwhile, hidden guy eats popcorn and typed "yes" ages ago, but is now disappointed now that he may not get the show he thought he would. (he also gets the 'creeper' flag put on him... just kidding.)

Scenario 2: Hidden guy doesn't consent. In this case, Amos and Talia don't see the long message above, but the imms would. Then, the hidden guy has to do whatever it is hidden people who don't consent to seeing a scene do, which is, I don't know, quit OOC or something.

Welcoming comments, but in the interest of civil discussion, I will not personally tolerate any ad-hominem commentary in this thread, and there really isn't any need to reference the recently locked thread in general discussion. At all. This is a discussion of how to enhance consenting procedures. Please suggest your own ideas as well, because this is how my brain works but maybe someone else has a pet idea they've been thinking of.

[Barsook]

There was another thread on this a while back...but I like what you have added to the idea.

[Harmless]

There was another thread on this a while back...but I like what you have added to the idea.

Edited: I found a thread suggesting an idea. Was it this one?

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,44115.0.html

In quickly reading it, the reason behind the command suggested above is TOTALLY different from mine. The OP there wanted a command to remove ooc chatter. I am suggesting a command that is more powerful and more likely to result in happy participants. Two very different goals, two very different ideas... so, if you were thinking of another thread, please let me know.

[Tenua]

Of those, I like option 2. Mainly because it would take me out of the game is I saw a consent tag after people's sdescs. And not everyone has the typical prompt. Mine doesn't show on the screen, but along a little bar at the bottom of my client. Not sure how that would mess with my prompt or if it would just make lots of spam, which I like to avoid as much as possible.

Frankly, I wish things like this weren't necessary, and I find it sad that they are.

[Barsook]

There was another thread on this a while back...but I like what you have added to the idea.

Edited: I found a thread suggesting an idea. Was it this one?

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,44115.0.html

In quickly reading it, the reason behind the command suggested above is TOTALLY different from mine. The OP there wanted a command to remove ooc chatter. I am suggesting a command that is more powerful and more likely to result in happy participants. Two very different goals, two very different ideas... so, if you were thinking of another thread, please let me know.

Oh, sorry about that.

[ShaLeah]

Searching the forum is win.

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,39180.0.html - 2010 thread about pretty much the same thing.
http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,35237.0.html - 2009 thread about the same thing.
http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,15484.0.html - 2005 thread about the same thing.

EDIT: http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15105 - and even older one, it seems...

There's a couple others that returned, but were mostly just about needing consent to rape...

**(Directions: Advance Search link from main gdb page, search for words "consent assess" (no quotation marks) set to match all words, only have checked the boards for general, roleplaying, code, ask the staff, and ask the players.)

I have long thought a consent flag would be appropriate to prevent the flow of the scene from unraveling. I think there should be five categories:

Graphic violence - for those who are up for anything gory and detailed in the bloodshed department
Graphic sexual situations - for those who are up for anything gory and detailed in the sexual department
Graphic violence and sex - for those who are up for anything, at all times, no matter who or what
Consent required - for those who choose their consent comfort level on a case by case basis, in other words, I wanna be asked for consent in every situation.
Consent denied - for those who'd rather fade to black every situation that might be graphic

I think most of us would choose the last one since we're all used to that and choosing the other two would make it a "suck it up you had open consent for everything so you can't come bitching now." I think these should be able to be toggled and that we shouldn't get an echo if someone is checking our consent flag. I do NOT wanna see it as I enter the room. I want it like the sniff message.

>consent towering
He does NOT consent to any graphic roleplay, consent denied. Please fade to black.

>consent curvaceous
She wishes to be asked ooc consent before each situation. Please use the ooc command to do so.

>consent gypsy
She consents to graphic violence and sexual situations being roleplayed. Have a party!

>consent templar
He ONLY consents to graphic violence being roleplayed.

>consent mul
He ONLY consents to graphic sexual situations being roleplayed.

* ShaLeah shruggles.

[TheWanderer]

That's something I can get behind.

[26 dollars]

You need to rename it to Shaleah, though.

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shaleah human
He consents to deep, descriptive mudsex, go get it, sistah.

shaleah dwarf
He can't even spell consent, buzz off.

shaleah beef.cake
This guy consents to everything, and he's -such- a stud.  Omg, where is my fucking lip gloss?!

[Barsook]

I dig ShaLeah's suggestion.

[ShaLeah]

You need to rename it to Shaleah, though.

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shaleah human
He consents to deep, descriptive mudsex, go get it, sistah.

shaleah dwarf
He can't even spell consent, buzz off.

shaleah beef.cake
This guy consents to everything, and he's -such- a stud.  Omg, where is my fucking lip gloss?!

I can get behind this in total Gortok style.  I'd only tweak like so:

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shaleah human
He consents to deep, descriptive dominant mudsex, go get it, sistah.

shaleah dwarf
He can't even spell consent, did you read his description and are you that hard up to get some kind of rocks off? Your choice dude.

shaleah beef.cake
This guy consents to everything, and he's -such- a stud.  Omg, where is your fucking jar of scented ointment and my khol?!
[/quote]

I dig ShaLeah's suggestion.

Awww yeahhhhhhh.

[Barsook]

Awww yeahhhhhhh.

Really, it allows players to choose and that choice is key in a game like ArmMUD.

[26 dollars]

Really, it allows players to choose and that choice is key in a game like ArmMUD.

I jest with ShaLeah in good fun, but when I read this quote, I can't help but feel like this is an invitation to a stratification of the playerbase that is not conducive to the kind of fluid storylines that Arm allows.  You wanna take the meat out of my stew, amigos!

[Cutthroat]

Those are interesting ideas, but one advantage that the current method of using the OOC command is that it is easy to revoke consent and clear to everyone in the room that you are doing so. That is an important feature if a scene is dragging on or otherwise getting to a point that a player doesn't want to see it anymore. I also assume that OOC messages show up in the staff's runlogs for easy review anyway.

[ShaLeah]

Those are interesting ideas, but one advantage that the current method of using the OOC command is that it is easy to revoke consent and clear to everyone in the room that you are doing so. That is an important feature if a scene is dragging on or otherwise getting to a point that a player doesn't want to see it anymore. I also assume that OOC messages show up in the staff's runlogs for easy review anyway.

Nothing is stopping you from revoking consent and using the OOC command to stop something you're not comfortable with that you didn't think about. I'd also suggest the consent toggle be logged for staff.

[Tenua]

I -really- dig ShaLeah's suggestion.

[Lizzie]

I'd just gag the text [CONSENT] and [NON-CONSENT] or whatever text you get forced to see every time you "look" in a room, and ask for consent. I would also *expect* that people ask ME for consent, every single time they want to know if I consent or not. Depending on the situation, I might not know until the moment it's asked, and it's not my responsibility to type in a toggle seconds before-hand. It's your responsibility to ask. I want to keep it that way.

[Fujikoma]

I like the idea.

[Delirium]

Definitely dislike the idea of a visible flag, sorry. I also hated it when I saw them in other games. Very jarring.

Personally I think OOC works well for this purpose.

[FantasyWriter]

I seem to remember one of the arguments in the other thread against something like this was the possibility of people making RP decisions based off what other people would and would not consent to.

[Riev]

I seem to remember one of the arguments in the other thread against something like this was the possibility of people making RP decisions based off what other people would and would not consent to.

Unfortunately, this is very true. If someone were to know, out the gate, that Talia is not consenting to anything, they very well may change their behavior and not include her on their plots, because she's a prude that doesn't put out in text.

At least with the OOCing of consent, its up to Talia's player to go along with walking to someone's apartment, going inside, and going through the motions before they OOC "No consent, Fade the scene". Then she is still involved, and everything still happens.

[Timetwister]

Whats funny to me is that 90% of people will leave their consent flag on everything. There is a very small minority that actually don't want to be involved in some kind of certain RP from my experience.

[ShaLeah]

Whats funny to me is that 90% of people will leave their consent flag on everything. There is a very small minority that actually don't want to be involved in some kind of certain RP from my experience.

Me too but I still think that people would set the "ask me" consent flag primarily, not the "anything, anywhere" flag.

[Scarecrow]

I don't like the idea of having the flag up, it would be jarring to immersion and seem very gamey. If that makes sense.
I am not really fussed either way on the other ideas.

[AreteX]

I would rather not have people have the ability to see if I consent or anyone consents to whatever they decide to consent to...

For one this will cause people to pick and choose their RP partners based on that flag.

Secondly, consent is not based on what you're USUALLY up for consenting to witnessing, it is asked on a PER CONSENT BASIS.  Maybe one day I don't want to be involved in a torture scene and I would rather fade and another day I don't really mind.  It depends on the scene, the comfort level and the characters involved.

I don't see why there is a need for this sort of thing?  Do people really have that big of a problem with OOC asking for consent?  I never find it all that jarring or clunky.

[Harmless]

I'm in agreement with you, Aretex. I don't like the idea of typing us with permanent switches for what we do or don't do, either. Anyway, it seems from this thread that those of ya'll who don't like permanent flags are fine with players free-form using OOC to ask for consent, which does work when mature, experienced players are using that. I guess I was trying to think of ways that consenting can be more informative in case people weren't Shaleah-style with their OOCs (basically, codifying Shaleah's typical OOC messages into the game, because I thought they were really good).

I was basing my idea in this thread and my other consent TOS thread on the possibility that people were doing it wrong, asking for consent incorrectly, or assuming consent and all that jazz. i.e., Amos oocs, "lol okay, so this part is where we consent blah blah. Okay?" Amosette oocs, feeling not very reassured, "uh, okay... I guess I do." Then comes the rape gory sex scene she didn't want.

Also, I wanted there to be bigassed alarm bells going off every time there was any doubt about consent.

Anyway, it's all good. I trust this community. Mostly.