Evil.

[zanzibar]

But you admit that Shakespearian and Tolienesque evil is substantially more toned down than "doing a realistic job", by saying that real-world evil is "hazardous, mean-spirited and a bad idea", but the other stuff isn't.

Shakespearian and Tolkienesque evil is not toned down - it's fundamentally different.

Shakespearian has shadow enough for anyone.  It's both surreal and superreal at the same time.

So... your saying that Shakespearian evil is just as bad as brutal real-life rapings and such, but in a different way?

I don't follow... I've never been that disturbed by anything in Shakespeare...
At least not as much as when reading 'A Clockwork Orange'.

I said that Shakespearian violence is fundamentally different than real world evil.  You can't compare the two - it's wrong to ask which is worse, because they're apples and oranges.  One is real life suffering.  The other is fictional, albeit a superreal reflection of real life, dealing with ideals.

Well here are more examples of Evil(both in ideas and in actions) that do not involve rape and alike and are truly medieval:

Actually, witches were routinely raped, as were women who were arrested by the Inquisition.  The vast majority of torture devices were invented for the Inquisition - and the vast majority of the devices were for women.

"Power" is just one paradigm among many to frame evil.

[lordraleigh]

Just an important notice: no one should be banned because of a private RP in /group with 18+ people, with the fully consent and knowledge of everyone involved on it that is not known by the whole community. I do not want to pull that discussion again. But I think that the way it is, realistically all that could happen publically to keep the PG rating is not the Shakespearian or Tolkienesque one, but the DISNEY concept of "Evil". 

It is ironic how no one cares about violence, slaughter and such but when anything related to sexual content is mentioned:

The Nuisance Known as **** was banished to Another Realm by Laanx.
Let this be a Lesson to All!

This makes me willing to watch South Park Movie again  , to laugh on the way this movie mock these Ratings again, that are fully based on certain unilateral values

[zanzibar]

Just an important notice: no one should be banned because of a private RP in /group with 18+ people, with the fully consent and knowledge of everyone involved on it that is not known by the whole community.

I disagree.  How can you know that everyone involved is 18+?  How can you know that full consent was given?  Further, it encourages others to act similarly - and they might not be as responsible with it.  Further, it encourages people to seperate themselves from the rest of the community.

[Narure]

OMG you killed Kenny. Now thats evil.

If nobody except the people involved knew the rp happened how does that encourage anyone to do anything?

[zanzibar]

OMG you killed Kenny. Now thats evil.

If nobody except the people involved knew the rp happened how does that encourage anyone to do anything?

If no one except the people involved know, then obviously the GMs can't take action because the GMs aren't aware that it's going on.

However, there is no realistic way for the Planeshift GM team to monitor and control such potentially explicit storylines, and there's no way to guarantee that it's being "contained".  Along side the other reasons I gave, and taking into account that Planeshift should protect its image, I think you can only conclude that as soon as GMs become aware of such activities they need to take actions to stop them.

[lordraleigh]

Well Zanzibar, you just gave me inspiration for a very unique definition of evil:

"A team of GMs hunting and banning immediately anyone that mentions privately any PG-18 rated content or coarse languange, that runs for 24 hours a program in the server to detect certain keywords and watches mercilessly all chats in private channels"

Yes and of course... let the LEET pwnz with their mediocre roleplaying while if a roleplayer decides to make something in private that contains coarse language BAN HIM IMMEDIATELY!

That would be scary...

Of course I would gladly leave Planeshift if the GM Team is supposed to work this way.

[zanzibar]

i. Planeshift is supposed to be PG13, so PG18 is way out of line.  Anything PG14 or worse must go.

ii.  Banning a player is not the first or only thing you can do.  Wiping their inventory works too, and there's also talking it over.

iii.  You don't have to use swear words in order to have good roleplay.  In fact, I would argue that not swearing forces you to be more creative, and that's a good thing.

iv.  Personally, I don't see Tolkien or Shakespeare as mediocre.  That's just me though.

v.  I feel that you ignored the points I made in my previous posts.

[lordraleigh]

What I meant is that a GM Team should not behave the way you are suggesting to, like some kind of online secret police searching through private channels for anything that goes above whatever PG Planeshift is supposed to be.

There is a large amount of adult players inside Planeshift, and I think the best word to describe what you are suggesting, is fascism.

So suddenly hunting people that are making a private and small roleplay with some bits of mature content is more important than encouraging roleplay and hosting GM Events? I think this is not only completely absurd, but also enough of a reason for many people to leave. I believe that such rules should be enforced only in the public channels of chat while on the rest it should depend on the players. Whatever happen in /group and /tell, as long as it is not the use of coarse language to disregard and offend someone, is a private matter. If you think that people that putted some more mature elements in their RP deserve to be punished while the "This game sux!" types run around spoiling immersion, go right ahead and turn this game into another Runescape by banishing everyone that already talked about mature things in /tells or /groups, you can be sure many roleplayers will be gone.

It is not a question of the concept of Evil what are you meaning now, but a question of whether Planeshift should be a virtual police state on this PG thing or not.

I - Planeshift is supposed to be PG - free from what I heard, so if we wish to enforce this kind of rating, well lets use the Disney concept of evil as I mentioned before.

II - Still the way you put it before, it seemed that there should be a "no mercy" policy against RPs with mature content in private channels

III - I meant not only swear words, but also mature content, and mature does  not necessarily means sex(Extreme violence for example, genocide is another mature topic, I wonder why only the "sex" part of the PG-18 bothers).

IV- You misreaded it, I said about "mediocre roleplayers" referring to the "leets" that sometimes are seen around. In my opinion Shakespeare is not  bad, neither is Tolkien... but the latter is a little overused in roleplay games.

V- This was a somewhat offtopic reply about isolated RPs with mature elements in private channels.

Just one thing I forgot to mention: Just because the witches were raped in RW history, it does not mean that if there is some kind of evil based on it in PS, is necessary to include such thing as well.

[zanzibar]

What I meant is that a GM Team should not behave the way you are suggesting to, like some kind of online secret police searching through private channels for anything that goes above whatever PG Planeshift is supposed to be.

When did I suggest that?

There is a large amount of adult players inside Planeshift, and I think the best word to describe what you are suggesting, is fascism.

How would you suggest that GMs react to inappropriate, unwelcomed, or unwanted behaviours?

So suddenly hunting people that are making a private and small roleplay with some bits of mature content is more important than encouraging roleplay and hosting GM Events?

It's not a matter of mature content.  The example given was akin to rapists in a very real world sense with the potential for explicit and graphic communications.  Also, if people are being isolationalist, I think that has a tendency to hurt the roleplaying atmosphere.  It's bad enough that people have group chats infront of Harnquist and then they whine when others wonder what they're talking about.

I think this is not only completely absurd, but also enough of a reason for many people to leave.

If people want to roleplay with others in ways which are very sexual, violent, and explicit, then perhaps it's best that they leave Planeshift.  Everything I've read by the game's developers points to the conclusion that Planeshift is not intended for such things.  Since young children play this game, it's asking for trouble to allow such behaviours in game.

I believe that such rules should be enforced only in the public channels of chat while on the rest it should depend on the players.

It's not a matter of allowing it.  If people do it and keep it to themselves, then GMs won't be able to do anything about it because they won't know about it.  However, the instant someone complains, GMs should take action.

If you think that people that putted some more mature elements in their RP deserve to be punished while the "This game sux!" types run around spoiling immersion, go right ahead and turn this game into another Runescape by banishing everyone that already talked about mature things in /tells or /groups, you can be sure many roleplayers will be gone.

Why is it so difficult to roleplay effectively without explicit language and subject matter?  Anyway, while comments like "This game sux!" can be annoying, they're in a different category than text which is pornographic in nature or triggering.

Just because the witches were raped in RW history, it does not mean that if there is some kind of evil based on it in PS, is necessary to include such thing as well.

My statement about women being raped during the Inquisitions etc. was for the sake of historical accuracy.

[emeraldfool]

Interesting argument. You both have decent points, though I'm inclined to agree with Lordy in that the level of explicitness should be determined by all those involved in an RP, not a pre-defined set of rules. Rules are set in place to protect us, not screw us over.

Usually, explicit content doesn't come up that much with me - except for swearing, but that's heavily censored anyway (you can't even say 'damn' for fudge-brownie's sake... ) - but when I do feel that it would fit, artistically, it's easy enough to just say '[anyone here opposed to a bit of explicit content?]'


There's just one little thing: This has nothing to do with my thread

[zanzibar]

Rules are set in place to protect us, not screw us over.

Rules are also set in place to protect the Planeshift project.  If the rules are permissive, and a minor is subjected to improper communications, then the project could be liable to a civil lawsuit.

[emeraldfool]

Rules are set in place to protect us, not screw us over.

Rules are also set in place to protect the Planeshift project.  If the rules are permissive, and a minor is subjected to improper communications, then the project could be liable to a civil lawsuit.

I'm not saying remove the rules, I'm saying that if every single person involved in the RP gives their consent to be 'subjected to improper communications', and the RP is still censored simply because "those are the rules", then who are the rules protecting, exactly? Their enforcement would be completely unnecessary to begin with.

And that's not even going into the fact that if a 'minor' is even on the internet, it's only a matter of time before they're exposed to things far worse than mere words... 

[zanzibar]

I'm not saying remove the rules, I'm saying that if every single person involved in the RP gives their consent to be 'subjected to improper communications', and the RP is still censored simply because "those are the rules", then who are the rules protecting, exactly? Their enforcement would be completely unnecessary to begin with.

And that's not even going into the fact that if a 'minor' is even on the internet, it's only a matter of time before they're exposed to things far worse than mere words... 

It's next to impossible for the staff to make sure that everyone affected gives consent and that everyone involved is old enough.

[Black_rose]

Anything taking the rights away from an unwilling and undeserving person is Evil, Censorship is evil. Murder is evil. Smoking laws are evil. Drug laws are evil. Gun laws are evil. slavery is evil. And of course....... Genocide is evil


Look at Darfur, noone gives a care about them because people seem to only care about what is fashionable to care about so in other words.... Society and Humanity is evil because we seem to not care about rights taken away from others.

[zanzibar]

Anything taking the rights away from an unwilling and undeserving person is Evil, Censorship is evil. Murder is evil. Smoking laws are evil. Drug laws are evil. Gun laws are evil. slavery is evil. And of course....... Genocide is evil


Look at Darfur, noone gives a care about them because people seem to only care about what is fashionable to care about so in other words.... Society and Humanity is evil because we seem to not care about rights taken away from others.

I have the right not to breath in toxic gasses against my will.

I do not have the right to yell "Fire" in a crowded movie theatre if there is no actual danger.

As far as gun laws are concerned, I don't see why any civilian needs a wall of fully automatic machine guns.  Of course, a lot of people are racist on this point:  They're fine with Billy-Bob and Cleetus having weapons, but it's out of the question for Abdul and Nabighah.