(MRP) Willing Heretic sacrifices?

[Vekter]

There's already somewhat of a rule against this on LRP given that it's directly assisting an antag, but the rules about that aren't quite as clear-cut on Manuel, so here we are.

As it is right now, I'm not aware of a rule that forbids people from willingly allowing themselves to be sacrificed. I think this is honestly really cringe, there needs to be a REALLY good IC reason for someone to put themselves through that bullshit willingly.

Remember: From an IC standpoint, you're willingly letting someone who's practicing heretical, magical arts sacrifice you to some god, put you in a hell room full of hands trying to kill you, then randomly dropping you somewhere on the station. From an OOC standpoint, you're furthering their goals to help them ascend which will let them just kill literally everyone they want.

I think there's a big difference between either developing an RP reason to do something (either because you manage to convince their character that you're not a heretic/not going to harm them before harming them) or fooling someone into doing it and someone coming up after they know you're a heretic and you going "Hey, lie down on this table and I'll give you 50 credits".

tl;dr Are we okay with crewmembers being willing to be sacrificed on MRP?

[Cheshify]

I'm tentatively okay with it if the roleplay is fucking A-Grade High Quality Premium Rock Solid Top-Of-The-Line Golden World Class and not just helping your metabuddies.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Not an MRP main, but willingly being sacrificed is so cringe it should be banned on LRP as well.

But then again, is the deeper problem that there is no cost to being sacrificed in the first place?

[PanoplyOfTenAndThree]

So since I was one of the "willing" sacrifices in the round that sort of kindled this controversy, I want to chime in here with my $.02.

First, I want to cover the "willing" part, which I'm using quotes for for a reason. Of course, I wouldn't support someone just going "Yes! Sacrifice me!". But then there's "Willing" in the sense of "Someone with a gun to your head can't actually force your motor neurons to fire but it's not exactly what most people would call consensual." To provide a little more context as well, the character I play is a pacifist pushover (and the player behind her isn't any more robust than this would imply), as well as a mute that can't call for help. So if someone's threatening her with violence, can deliver on those threats, and then offers a less harmful way out, I think it's a reasonable negotiation tactic/RP to find a way to minimize the violence.

It might not be world class mind blowing RP, but I think that's a bit much for any RP standard. Effort matters and not everyone's necessarily the greatest RPer but - set standards too high and it's unapproachable.

Also, I want to note that the vast majority of the time - for my character for whom it's never consensual at first - the moment she refuses, the heretic with her as a target has immediately just gone into unga-bunga full attack mode - which also means the end of any RP. And even successfully escaping them tends to leave the character with round-permanent injuries. This includes refusing heretics that have helped her out a bit, though only a bit, because I do think a willing sac is not something to be taken lightly, just in my personal RP. And, incidentally, the controversial round is the first/only time someone cared enough to pursue the RP to that extent with my character.

A change of policy that means the latter case must 100% happen all the time though, I don't think that's necessarily a positive contribution to an RP environment. If someone wants a little more RP, a little less reliance on pure mechanics, I feel that should be open to them, especially on MRP.

But, again, this is not meant to be a defense of "Hey can I sac you?" "Yeah go ahead". As far as I'm concerned, that can DIAF.

--

I just heard this thread was coming so I wanted to put my view in. I probably won't be checking back for specific replies. If I need to be yelled at or something for how I played, then, well, please not here as I may not see it.

Take care.

[Vekter]

-snip-

Hey, I appreciate your input here. I think it's important to get as many sides as possible.

I wouldn't want situations like what you described to be eliminated. It sounds like there was thought put into how it was handled on your end and how your character would react to the situation. What I'm more interested in combating here are low-effort attempts to get your friends to help you ascend, stuff like "oh someone found out that my buddy Stunlocker Weldspace is a heretic, let me go try and let him sacrifice me so he can ascend!". I'm okay with situations where you're being forced (RP-wise) into being sacrificed, but there should definitely be at least some RP behind it, not just "get on the rune" "lol okay".

I'm perfectly fine with situations like what you described, with someone being physically or violently coerced into doing it. That makes sense in an RP situation and I don't want to stifle that. I just don't want situations where a player is offering to be sacrificed or is being coerced into it in a lazy way, ie offering them money to do it or asking nicely.

For the record, most of what I had been given info-wise from that specific round was hearsay and I didn't make this thread explicitly because of those events, but because I'd seen similar situations and discussions before and wanted this codified in the rules one way or another.

[Timberpoes]

This doesn't need a new rule or ruling. It already has one. RP Rule 1.

1. The roleplay servers have a higher expectation of roleplay.

The purpose of the roleplay servers is to provide a higher quality environment for roleplay. The roleplay rules are intended to promote more interactions between players so more roleplay moments can happen. They are not exhaustive, and admins have a very broad discretion to intervene where behaviours or actions could, if left ignored, contribute to a lower roleplay environment.

Does the interaction contribute to a lower roleplay environment or is the interaction part of the goal of promoting more interactions between players so more roleplay moments can happen?

I am lothe to agree to an extension of MRP policy when what we have is perfectly adequte.

Tangentially, this policy post feels like it comes down to simple RP purity?

...

I think this is honestly really cringe, there needs to be a REALLY good IC reason for someone to put themselves through that bullshit willingly.

Remember: From an IC standpoint, you're willingly letting someone who's practicing heretical, magical arts sacrifice you to some god, put you in a hell room full of hands trying to kill you, then randomly dropping you somewhere on the station. From an OOC standpoint, you're furthering their goals to help them ascend which will let them just kill literally everyone they want.

I think there's a big difference between either developing an RP reason to do something (either because you manage to convince their character that you're not a heretic/not going to harm them before harming them) or fooling someone into doing it and someone coming up after they know you're a heretic and you going "Hey, lie down on this table and I'll give you 50 credits".

...

It feels very "You should not be allowed to roleplay this way. This is sub-optimal, you're helping an antag and you **must** roleplay more optimally and in a more powergamey fashion" to me.

When the golden RP rule contains "... The roleplay rules are intended to promote more interactions between players so more roleplay moments can happen ..." then I don't think a crewmember taking a bribe or feigning ignorance to be killed or sacrificed is bad. Maybe that example is a little artificial as an interaction, but a lot of our IC interactions are fairly artificial. I still think it achieves the goal of promoting more interactions between players so more roleplay moments can happen, and I think it doesn't contribute to a lower roleplay environment.

I think the same logic can be applied to times we allow Cult Book Clubs in the library for example, where RP takes priority over purity of the rules and abhorrent things like consensual conversions happen so that a narrative and story for the shift can be progressed.

[Vekter]

It feels very "You should not be allowed to roleplay this way. This is sub-optimal, you're helping an antag and you **must** roleplay more optimally and in a more powergamey fashion" to me.

When the golden RP rule contains "... The roleplay rules are intended to promote more interactions between players so more roleplay moments can happen ..." then I don't think a crewmember taking a bribe or feigning ignorance to be killed or sacrificed is bad. Maybe that example is a little artificial as an interaction, but a lot of our IC interactions are fairly artificial. I still think it achieves the goal of promoting more interactions between players so more roleplay moments can happen, and I think it doesn't contribute to a lower roleplay environment.

I think the same logic can be applied to times we allow Cult Book Clubs in the library for example, where RP takes priority over purity of the rules and abhorrent things like consensual conversions happen so that a narrative and story for the shift can be progressed.

I think you're misunderstanding my point, so let me try and clarify.

Someone being misled into being sacrificed is fine. I don't much care about that. If you're pretending to be ignorant despite the fact that you OOCly know it's a bad thing, then that's still RP. The situations I want to prevent are:

1) People intentionally letting a friend sacrifice them because they're metafriends and they want them to win.
2) People doing the absolute bare minimum to skirt the rules so they can do #1 without us asking them to stop.

Both situations feel bad because the first involves little to no actual RP and skirts the idea of metacomms enough that it bothers me while the second feels like intentionally dodging the rules to accomplish the same end.

I'm actually thinking that something similar to CULT BOOK CLUB is fine here because it's actually RPing out the situation. What I don't want is George Melons noticing that Stunlocker Weldspeace is a heretic, so he goes to where he knows he is, Stunlocker offers him $5 to sacrifice him, and George accepts. That feels bad and like it's only an interaction for the sake of telling us "Hey! We RPed it out!" when we inevitably ask them to stop.

E: I talked to Timber a bit on Discord and we came to an understanding. The general idea is that issues of poor RP are already handled under RPR 1, but he wanted to stress that we shouldn't be considering matters like what I outlined above as an RP issue but a matter of rule 2 as it toes into using meta relationships to gain an advantage. Most of what I wanted was confirmation that we're okay to be investigating these issues if we think they're worth looking into, which he was perfectly fine with.

So RPing that your character would accept a significant sum of money to be sacrificed is fine, as is fooling people into being sacrificed or finding creative ways to get them to agree. Just letting them sacrifice or clearly half-assing an interaction to try and skirt the rules so you can help your meta buddy ascend is not.