Open comment period, proposed changes to ALFA's CvC policy:

[jmecha]

I support the change to the CvC Policy on account that I rather see the change made and CvC kept, then the alternative.

After reading over the policy it appears to boil down to a very simple rule:

CvC requires DM oversight and DMs are not required in anyway to provide such oversight if they would rather invest their time elsewhere.
The only exception to this rule is when Players agree to consensual CvC without DM oversight, and in such cases there is no appeal for what may come of such CvC.

I believe this new policy should make CvC far less of a burden upon our DMs then it currently is and that to me is good news on account that will free up their time to pursue other interests such as building, scripting, or even DMing.

CvC and our rules about such have never been the problem in my personal opinion. We the player base and how poorly we respond to CvC has always been what causes trouble both before and after CvC. The new policy will be laying the bulk of the burden of CvC upon us the player base, which is where it should have always been in my opinion.

Some suspect that with this change in CvC Policy, that CvC will become almost nonexistent on account that DM's will not be volunteering their time to over see such, and almost no one in the player base will be willing to agree to CvC unless their character has the clear advantage. I personally think that this is an added bonus in that the DMs will be free to do as they please and CvC will more or less be limited to players willing to put the integrity of role play above their character's continued existence, which in my opinion is who CvC should be limited to.

CvC should never be about killing off some other Player's Character.

CvC should be about a conflict between two or more Characters in which they are willing to risk their lives to end the lives of the others.

I like the idea that this new policy will severely limit actual CvC to Players who are willing to accept the risks of CvC without appeal, because Players willing to accept such risks in the pursuit of keeping In Character are the only sorts of players I think are mature enough to be engaging in CvC.

Now then as to some of the other fears and concerns expressed:

Well what if Player A's Sharran takes a crap on the Selunite Temple steps while giving all of the Selunites the middle finger? and then refuses to accept CvC?

The problem there is not ALFA's CvC policy. The problem there is the player, and no Rule is going to stop a Player from being a turd burglar. Only we the Players can choose if we will or will not be Turd Burglars, and if we will or will not play with people who are Turd Burglars.

[Swift]

Dont see how this lowers the work on DM.

The difference would be that the DM had more power to decide whether to be involved in any CvC, whereas now DMs get dragged into them whether they want to or not.

CvC was proving to be a drain on DM time and motivation. That needed to be fixed. Nothing you have suggested fixes that.

This gives them the choice. The can choose not to allow CvC if they don't see a real reason for it.

If we wanted chaos, we have the old rule.

Fixed it for you

[kid]

DMs were never forced to oversee or do anything in regards to CvC.
And if you claim this rule would do better...

Then please... make it less vague.
I dont mind the change... Not at all.
Just make a clearer ruling than...

"What if one wants to CvC and the otehr doesnt?"
"Uhm... dunno. then something"

Thats likely to problems as well.
Just clarity please if you may?

Otherwise you'll still have chaos, only impotent chaos. (the worst kind!)

[kid]

The problem there is not ALFA's CvC policy. The problem there is the player, and no Rule is going to stop a Player from being a turd burglar. Only we the Players can choose if we will or will not be Turd Burglars, and if we will or will not play with people who are Turd Burglars.

Possibly. Though we'd have different definitions to what that might be?

Dont be a douche is a good rule in general.
But I often think others are douches and other think the same of me.
By that principle you dont need any rules, but evidently we do.
So... *Shrugs* Would rather have that cleared in our new and shiny CvC rule and make sure that corner is covered. Don't think its that hard. Though I could be wrong.

[Zelknolf]

For all of the complaining about how rules are just trying to bring us down, let's keep in mind that rules are the "don't be a douchebag" contract. Solid rules say "We know that you think that all of the stuff you're doing is reasonable, but not everyone feels that way. So here's your unambiguous list of things we expect from you, which we're providing ahead of time so you have a fair chance to understand it and follow it, and an unambiguous list of things you can expect from us if it doesn't happen that way." -- and we don't even need any 'turd burglars' for this to break. If the first part is vague or missing, entirely well-intentioned people will do wrong by others out of shortsightedness or ignorance; if the second part is vague or missing, people will do wrong by others for lack of feedback-- said needs being why I'm very unhappy with the notion of arbitrary exceptions granted without oversight or the notion of protection from CvC being written as intentionally asymmetrical.

[Swift]

So... *Shrugs* Would rather have that cleared in our new and shiny CvC rule and make sure that corner is covered. Don't think its that hard. Though I could be wrong.

Clearly

[jmecha]

"What if one wants to CvC and the other doesn't?"

According to the new proposed Policy, CvC requires consent from the others involved or DM approval and Oversight.

So....I would imagine there would be no CvC, unless a DM tells you otherwise.

[Castano]

If a PC abuses these rules to antagonize others while hiding behind the CvC rules by not consenting, report them to the DM team, because under these rules, that would now likely be considered griefing.

No this is when the DM team decides the abusing merits allowing CvC despite no consent and the abusive player gets PWND, by either subdual for your typical bar fight insults and lethal for more menacing acts. That's why we wrote that into the rule. The issue of griefy lowbies was discussed a lot.

[Castano]

Well what if Player A's Sharran takes a crap on the Selunite Temple steps while giving all of the Selunites the middle finger? and then refuses to accept CvC?

We call this bad RP, and metagaming the fact NPCs will not respond. Same reason you don't RP peeing on the BG town guards everytime you pass the gate. Perhaps such players belong elsewhere?

[Magile]

If this has been addressed, then I apologize in advance; however, that being said...

Has a situation arise recently that has warranted a specific and precise ruling on CvC, along with manners that can completely nullify any CvC to begin with, or is this a work in motion from the past few months? I haven't come across many scenarios of CvC in ALFA 2.0, and those that I have had been rather tame and, thankfully, drama free.

[Ronan]

CvC requires DM oversight and DMs are not required in anyway to provide such oversight if they would rather invest their time elsewhere.
The only exception to this rule is when Players agree to consensual CvC without DM oversight, and in such cases there is no appeal for what may come of such CvC.

I would support this wording, with the wording in the OP (or an improved version) presented as guidelines on when CvC is generally considered acceptable, and when it is not. This was always my intent, but the wording in the OP was more meant as guidelines or rules for DMs to follow when granting CvC permissions.

Kid, under our prior rules PCs could CvC whenever they wished and leave the mess for the DMs to clean up. Sure DMs were not physically forced to do anything, but they have to unless they want their server going to hell.

For all of the complaining about how rules are just trying to bring us down, let's keep in mind that rules are the "don't be a douchebag" contract. Solid rules say "We know that you think that all of the stuff you're doing is reasonable, but not everyone feels that way. So here's your unambiguous list of things we expect from you, which we're providing ahead of time so you have a fair chance to understand it and follow it, and an unambiguous list of things you can expect from us if it doesn't happen that way." -- and we don't even need any 'turd burglars' for this to break. If the first part is vague or missing, entirely well-intentioned people will do wrong by others out of shortsightedness or ignorance; if the second part is vague or missing, people will do wrong by others for lack of feedback-- said needs being why I'm very unhappy with the notion of arbitrary exceptions granted without oversight or the notion of protection from CvC being written as intentionally asymmetrical.

The problem is that creating an unambiguous rules which can be easily understood by a large variety of very different people is extremely difficult or impossible (no government's managed it yet I don't think). ALFA is not large enough to support a professional judiciary, and we don't have the money to outsource arbitration. Oversight could be added, and HDM oversight is already implicit. Of course you'd need DMs, Admin, ARs, etc. who are willing do deal with it. We don't have many (any?) of those currently. If there comes a time when DMs and Admin want to support a more open CvC policy, or we come up with better rules, it could be re-adopted.

The guidelines are asymmetrical largely because PC power in D&D is absurdly asymmetrical. Laws don't exist to protect the powerful from the powerless, though in real life power is obviously much more situational. The only way for a PC to harm a significantly higher-level one is by exploiting invisibility, many Bigby spells, the old Word of Faith, or simply attacking AFK or distracted players (the strategy used by the Trade Way's h-orc PKers). Explicitly banning the use of broken mechanics aside from invisibility is probably a good idea.

Then of course I've argued elsewhere that highbies initiating conflicts with lowbies should generally be treated as OOC (and thus PKing), for many of the same reasons we say a highbie jumping into a lowbie plot is also often OOC. We accept that a level 12 paladin should not investigate every little crime which comes his way, because he probably has larger problems which keep him busy. It shouldn't matter if this crime was caused by a PC or NPC; good RP requires we do not distinguish between these.

I agree with Castano that if possible it is better to just treat silly behaviors as bad RP, and coach/rollback as necessary. That sort of thing is just much easier to deal with than CvC. At some point you might get to a DM saying "you need to stop doing X, or I'm going to let this PC cut your head off", which is the precise scenario where we need non-consensual CvC.

[Sidhe]

Then of course I've argued elsewhere that highbies initiating conflicts with lowbies should generally be treated as OOC (and thus PKing), for many of the same reasons we say a highbie jumping into a lowbie plot is also often OOC.

Well said now and well said then.

[Zelknolf]

The guidelines are asymmetrical largely because PC power in D&D is absurdly asymmetrical. Laws don't exist to protect the powerful from the powerless, though in real life power is obviously much more situational. The only way for a PC to harm a significantly higher-level one is by exploiting invisibility, many Bigby spells, the old Word of Faith, or simply attacking AFK or distracted players (the strategy used by the Trade Way's h-orc PKers). Explicitly banning the use of broken mechanics aside from invisibility is probably a good idea.

Two problems, of course:
"Probably a good idea" is a far cry from "done". We've a mighty stack of things in ALFA which are probably a good idea, but which are still problems-- for numerous reasons. You've recently taken point on that topic, too; you know how horrible it is.
Secondly, the asymmetry still means that this policy can protect a character from CvC for a long enough time to change the outcome (not that we don't have that now, but it's not explicitly sanctioned now). I would think that fairness would demand that we should protect characters from the consequences of actions we force them to take: if you're not allowed to handle a problem while you're still able, you shouldn't be forced to deal with it after it's too much to handle.

[t-ice]

Well what if Player A's Sharran takes a crap on the Selunite Temple steps while giving all of the Selunites the middle finger? and then refuses to accept CvC?

It is not the (sole) responsibility of Sharran PCs to enforce the cleanliness of the steps of the Sharran temple. This squarely falls into "if a DM isn't available, don't do RP that cannot make sense without a DM to help the world respond to it". It's the same reason why a PC shouldn't go wantonly slaughtering all the commoner NPCs in a city.

Unfortunately the above argument is classic reductio ad absurdum gone wrong: Taken to an extreme the issue is ridiculous, but it WILL come up in a reasonable scale, because the scale is what matters. PCs who are powerful need to have the IC respect they deserve, and we will make our world a poorer place if we make it impossible to play a menacing PC, reducing them to a butt end of a joke. Unfortunately roleplaying the underdog who is awed and intimidated is hard, and it's almost as hard to play the big dog well. By my experience it is very few players who are readily capable of letting go of their egos, and the reality that they are both equal players with this computer game, on both sides of that equation. (You wouldn't believe how many smart-ass underhand insults PCs in Amn would toss at ruthless shadow thieves in Amn, ones with big and fragile egos who could get you killed and robbed in your sleep the next night just for the f of it...) However, CvC is at the end of the day an awful way to "force the rightful fear into characters". The result is fubar cvc done for the purpose of "respect my authoritaaa!"

But it all does means that there should be a clause stating that the party who refuses CvC must RP so that they cawe out some way. Simplest would be that if I say my PC has had it and attacks yours (and it's fair RP considering circumstance, I'm not just being an asshole to you), then your PC must fight, flee or yield. If your PC flees, it is RPd so that my attacks failed.

Players equipping for CvC is another issue. It is largely meta, because the player knows the PC is much more vulnerable to another PC than to the environment, and thus disproportionately equipping with CvC-power items is abusing the meta-knowledge of the "protagonist effect" PCs enjoy in PvE (and in dnd in general, foremost being the implicit "right" to appropriate-CR encounters). Personally I see very little point in nwn2-engine duels between PCs. Rather if it comes to it, roll opposed dice weighted as determined by the DM team (taking into account raw PC level, but not equipment or abilities), and the loser dies. Then there's no problem with arms races of cvc items. And much less of a problem with the "resolution of issue is delayed by the rules until the tables are turned", which Zelk seems to be concerned of.

[kid]

Yes to both.
Please make a clearer ruling about those points. And one more... Myself and Joe agreed to CvC. I find joe and his buddies jump out from the bushes. Are they approved to CvC as well? how does that work?
One more thing.
Once i've agreed to CvC, then fought and ran off (looked like I was loosing or something) does that mean between myself and Joe there's an open CvC or can we now back out of it whenever we choose?
If joe want's to CvC me now does he still need my consent? or does he have it from previous encounter?
How does this rule relate to loot stealing/pickpocketing/badmouthing(not in the insluting kinda way but in the "i'll ruin your reputation" kinda way)/or other harmful actions one can take against another without it being CvC?
Does this mean we need DM approval for retaliation?
And we agreed that DMs dont wanna be bothered, so does that leave the "hurt" party with no option to do anything other than just take it and purse thier lips?