Person B can still be doing everything inside everything inside the OOC rules set by the Admin.

And I said nothing about administrative punishment.

But if Person B is doing everything inside the OOC rules, then you are penalizing them based on IC actions - no matter how much you dislike them, they are completely in-character. And in this case, what I said applies.

I don't believe you have a right to declare their roleplay choices invalid no matter what they do or how they change, nor to withhold from them hardcoded mechanics that are designed to support (with significant hardcoded penalty) character changes.


Edit: As a (somewhat extreme) example, imagine if the game administrators begin an event where a god is utterly transformed - body and soul - to a completely antithetical form to what he or she was before. The intent being to help guide an organization which up until now had been the target of said gods attacks. What if that organization had just said, "No, sorry, you hurt us too much before. You're never getting in. Welcome to permaenemy."

While I realize gods have a little more oomph in their RP decision than the average mortal, the principle is still there. If you shut down reasonable RP attempts out of hand, you not only miss out on the interesting results, you diminish the consequences of roleplaying and make the world less immersive. Having to consider how to oocly coerce a government into letting you in because ICly they have no incentive to is not fun, believe me.

How destructive is this attitude in the long run? An attitude where interesting twists or turns are rejected, and your past actions endlessly restrict your future choices, rather than shaping them. It's a problem inherent in the enormous influence that IRE games give to players, I realize, but there should always be limits on how players can negatively impact the game's evolution. Any community-based game that encourages fragmentation into static and increasingly isolated factions is headed for disaster. Especially when that also means player evolution is restricted so that near to end-game your involvement in the game is locked into an unalterable pattern.

What right does a group of players have to dictate what another single player is able to do?

All the right in the world. Its a community game. If the community does not agree with you on something, then you must pay the consequences of that disagreement. Sometimes that disagreement is what fuels the fun of the game, sometimes that disagreement is a direct reaction to your actions and is cause for pause and reassessment.

You don't get it. It's not declaring their roleplay choices invalid, it's acting out the in-character consequences of them. You seem to be under the illusion that no IC action should ever have any consequences, in which case Verithrax should never have been zapped. Ever.

Then that would be good roleplay and the admin should know better than try to push their schemes on people by doing an event which is, essentially, a very half-arsed and infuriating (To both the organisation losing a god and the one gaining one) of doing what could be accomplished by killing or retiring a god in one place, and creating a new one or reactivating him elsewhere. Not to mention that the example is moot; it is my understanding that the admin simply do not do that.

If you ignore previous RP decisions just to support new ones made for what is most likely totally OOC reasons, then you are killing the consequences of roleplay and making the world less immersive. You're right it's not fun. That's why it should stay in-character. Not everybody's in-character life can be made of sunshine, lollipops, and everyone bending over to do what you want.


How negative? Not very much. Shamarah was able to join Glomdoring and then Magnagora easily. Simply because he's not an asshat, and he was willing to treat his new org with respect like a what he is - a newcomer to that organisation. People have defected to opposing orgs very often. It's just that some people, including the one we're trying real hard now not to name, are difficult to accept because of their IC abrasive, unpleasant, and damaging chracter, as well as their irritating tendency to just leave again. The game is a community game. Your complaints are akin to complaining, in a game of Nomic, about a rule that excludes you from game play.

As with all things, a balance must be struck. An organization run by players, the way the players wish to be seen and played, should have the right to say "No, because of the actions you've done, it's going to be harder to enjoy the game with this particular group. You have to work for it".

And anyone who acts the way that Rika's player B has acted is going to have a much harder time. You can raid a place, IC, and have a crushing victory without being a real jerk. Acting immature is a sure way to turn yourself off to everyone else in the game. And those will be the players who I think would whine the most about not being able to play the game the way they want to (and to clarify, I am accusing -nobody- in this thread of being like that).

But, I also do not agree with perma- anything (except perma-shrubbing). Say Daedalion (to give Daevos a break) decides he wants to switch sides and join the Serenwilde. It would be unreasonable to assume that he could just say "I want to switch sides" and the next thing you know he's in. There would be a lot of resistance from a lot of people-- Champions who had to defend their younger members from him, people who IC are furious that he kills the Centaur colts almost every month. He would have to work for it. But, if Daedalion really does want to switch sides, and the RP has moved in that direction for some time, then he should be allowed to. Unless he's been engaging in "lol u suxor" kind of stuff, in which case, boot him (just kiddin).

Balance.

Elryn's none of the above, and it sounds to me like he's complaining that no one was willing to play along with his very serious, earnest and long-term attempt at conversion RP. Do you think he doesn't have a legitimate complaint?


This is quickly becoming the Universally Applicable Example That Proves Every Point. Like Kevin's dead dog in VALIS.

No, I think that in-character decisions and attitudes should supersede OOC interests in this case. Because IC/OOC separation goes both ways; it doesn't just keep people out of organisations for IC actions which can be considered unforgivable, it keeps them able to join orgs even when they are not OOCly wanted. It may be that the leaders of the organisation are being too harsh on Elryn, but 1) that is their prerogative, and 2) Elryn is not the case that sparked this discussion, and much of what has been said does not apply to him. And of course, 3) Elryn is most likely an isolated incident.

Find me another example of a moment in which IC actions had grievous, powerful consequences to a character. I may go as far as arguing that the sum total of (Arguably deserved) divine harassment suffered by Verithrax is somewhat akin to the perceived damage of not being able to get into an organisation (At one point, my ability to role-play at all was completely shut down, for example). I would very much like to be able to think of a similar case; perhaps the fact that Yrael spent a lot of time being hunted in-game.