Ah, a topic near and dear to my heart, this! (So to speak.)
I am happy to hear that the policy is not to create permanent logs of player interactions. If nothing else, centralized/global logs have a tendancy to become accidentally misplaced, especially if machines are decommissioned and not completely wiped after (though there are certainly other reasons as to why logs are disadvantageous). It is, in my opinion, simply a far safer default position to not create them unless there is a specific justified need to do so.
As to the prime topic of the thread...
While I am still very much a newcomer here (and still retaining simply lurker status thus far), and thus you may take my opinion with the degree of salt that you deem appropriate given such, I tend to come out in favor of axing the ever-nebulous PG-13.
The reason I dislike claims to PG-13-ness in RP scenarios involving a non-trivial group of individuals is that, at least in my experience, what is 'acceptable' has a tendancy to become increasingly arbitrary and capricious as the group expands; everyone tends to have their own view on what's really "PG-13". I think that this tends to have a somewhat chilling effect in terms of RP getting papered-over in some respects, in the attempt to satisfy a nebulous sense of what is actually acceptable. RP is by nature a very creative beast, and a spontaneous one without the benefit of an editor to hash over what's going on and provide a second opinion before you go to press and so forth. For me, this has often resulted in a tendancy to overly-temper my RP (not speaking of ALFA from personal experience, merely in general) to be on the 'safe' side. This, I personally find distasteful, as it seems to be an artifical constraint on what may otherwise be legitimate creativity (should the content be acceptable to parties involved).
I think that it could also be argued that, assuming everyone were to, expressly for the sake of argument, agree that PG-13 is the definition for age appropriate content for individuals (if you subscribe to such a belief), that the quality of RP from an individual that young is increasingly unlikely to be up to snuff as to ALFA standards simply from a lack of a breadth of life experience and not having fully developed to adulthood.
That being said, Killthorne captured the essence of my thoughts here:
Killthorne wrote:I think we all know players who enjoy adult-themed, consenting role-play. I am not so much defending their interests, as I am defending everyone's pursuits in enjoying ALFA as they see fit without fear of having some DM pulling up logs, or logging in to kick them out/ban them for content that the DM is disinterested in, or dislikes. If you don't like cyb0r, fine, you don't have to. If you don't like torture scenes, that's good, you are entitled. However, the door should swing both ways.
(Emphasis added by me.)
Particularly if I were to play an evil character, I would certainly not want to have to stop and wonder, "Am I being
too evil? Will I get pulled over and get a ticket for it, or worse?", more often than not[1]. Should the community rules take a relaxed view of the subject, it simply remains up to one to, if they want to be certain, ask other parties involved OOCly first, and that is all there is to it -- rather than an uncertainty that the one's actions may be, while acceptable to parties involved, not so to the nature that the community aspires to. This seems (to me) to be much more conducive to a smooth flowing play experience than a continual, lingering seed of uncertainty.
(To be absolutely clear here, the intent of the above is not to make a judgement or statement on community handling of these situations if such situations are actually brought to the attention of a DM/admin, but rather to hightlight that the uncertainty itself is undesirable.)
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P.S. Killthorne's remarks on depictions of violenence being considered more or less immortal than sexual related depictions also reverbate with my opinions; I find it difficult to believe that one could prove that the latter has a more negative psychological impact to
voluntarily[2] read about in a fantasy setting than the former, especially in cases where one is apprised of the possibility of said content ahead of time. At the risk of getting onto a philosophical soap box, however, I'll just stop there as the thread should not be derailed.
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[1] Speaking of my personal opinions here, certainly others are likely to have more specific beliefs and experiences involving ALFA specifically than a lurker as me. For what it is worth, simply from reading the Library forums, it seems that there are several who are quite successful at this.
[2] With a stated assumption that our hypothetical reader is sufficiently developed to comprehend the circumstances and consequences of what they are reading. This seems increasingly likely for an average ALFA-aged individual based on the poll that has been going on given standards in nearly any place you might find on Earth.
).
