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

[Regas]

Hello all,

When we rolled out the new 2 player policy for ALFA I noted we would be making a change to our current CvC policy. Bellow is the finial draft of the policy that I'm posting here for comment by members before it's formalize. This policy has been reviewed and formed with the help of all admin, the HDMs, EDMs and select ALFA staff, and with input from many stakeholders. I would like all you all to understand that this is a big change for ALFA in that players will no longer be able to "force" CvC onto other players ig. CvC between players must be by "consent". Full on, open CvC is no longer manageable for a community our size. We are spending an inordinate amount of staff, dm and admin time on managing these conflicts. At the end of the day, this comes down to how we sped ALFA's limited and shrinking resources of volunteer time. If we want to continue to allow open CvC forcing countless hours of mitigation and adjudication by staff, then at best we will see less dming, adding of content or other contributions by those forced to to the work. At worst we continue to drive our contributors out altogether.

Please post your comments and questions on the policy, and please keep it friendly

Thanks,

Regas




You may engage in Character vs. Character conflict in ALFA when:

All involved parties consent

If all parties consent to CvC without a DM, they forfeit any right to contest the results with the DM team or Player Admin, although staff may act if they wish. Screenshots should be taken of in-game tells showing this consent. This consent can include the use of abilities which otherwise require a DM, such as invisibility or grappling, even if no DM is present. In short we just won't touch consensual CvC. Have a ball.

Parties may of course also consent to CvC with a DM present.

Naturally the location must be suitable so that it does not require DM involvement. For example, do not engage in CvC in front of guards without a DM present.

-OR-

You have been granted permission from the DM team, and there is a DM overseeing the conflict.

DM's have the right to ignore or refuse CvC requests for any reason, and such refusal is not appealable to any admin in ALFA
In accordance with ALFA's broader rules, you must notify us as soon as the intent to commit CvC is established.
...............................................................................................................

You may NOT engage in CvC when:

• It primarily results from a random encounter between two or more PCs in a public or outdoor location (wilderness, road, tavern, shop, etc.). ALFA is geographically much smaller than it should be, and so we must fudge random encounters in order to support PC diversity.
• A PC 'hates' all members of another race or public faction which is not normally kill-on-sight in their environment.
• It is a random act of violence; that is what NPCs are for. The CvC must be sparked by RP on both sides of the conflict.
• There is a large level difference, unless the defender is a known antagonizer of the attacker or the attacker's faction(s). High-level PCs should have better things to do than pursue lowbies.
• The DM team is busy and has no time to deal with it.
• The aggressor is willfully causing grief or disrupting others' ability to enjoy the game without meaningful context to role-play. We often enjoy PCs coming into conflict, but if players do as well then something as gone wrong.

If a PC requires an IC reason not to engage in CvC, the DM team can provide it.

[CloudDancing]

I like what i'm reading here and I hope it assumes:

Dms must not promote an environment that engenders CVC, BUT players who participate in CVC (in populated/patrolled areas) must realize that there are IC consequences (from Dms) to killing another living being in Faerun.

Faerun is a place where death is not the end of a life. It is well known to those with the resources, a murder can be easily reversed and that someone will be coming for you and perhaps your family, or with the law in hand.

Faerun is not a place where one can simply "get away with murder." The use of scrying by priests, druids, and mages precludes the plans of anyone who is planning CvC. You must be able to hide your murder and/or be able to defend your actions as a lawful attempt at self-preservation or an act of protection for the greater lawful good.

[Magile]

You may NOT engage in CvC when:
[*]There is a large level difference, unless the defender is a known antagonizer of the attacker or the attacker's faction(s). High-level PCs should have better things to do than pursue lowbies.

The only part I disagree with. This is metagaming, and there's no reason a strong character would ignore stomping a weak character unless it's in their code of ethics. Notice I use strong, since you can't tell "levels" in this game.

[kid]

Please if you may just add something that would prevent a PC to badger other PCs then go "Oh... No consent you can't touch me!"

Some things should be consent by default.
Let's say...

Drawing a weapon on someone means you consent to CvC.
Aggressive RP towards someone means you consent to CvC...
etc, etc.

If one party is not interested in CvC they should likely just walk away.
Staying and throwing insults or allowing a situation where one is allowed to bother others then hide behind the No-CvC rule would be a shame.

[Zelknolf]

DM's have the right to ignore or refuse CvC requests for any reason, and such refusal is not appealable to any admin in ALFA

And if the reason is "I like this character, so I refuse CvC when said PC is at a disadvantage, but allow it when said PC is at an advantage"? -- this rule says that the player of our newly-slain character has no avenue for appeal, and it surely falls under the broad umbrella of "any reason." What mechanism do we expect will keep these decisions fair?


In a similar vein, what do we do with PCs who are protected from CvC as lowbies, and then level up and buy powerful consumables? I assume that these would be the ones who aren't "well known" as attackers of those they're protected against? The previous lowbie suddenly has a few single-use Bigby items and wants to fight, even though that character would have been dead had this policy not explicitly protected him. Do their targets just have to buck up and deal with their (expensive, granted, but quite difficult to avoid) deaths?


Also, if we're not allowed to CvC in public spaces or exteriors, because we're not allowed to find people except in their homes (unless there's another kind of private interior I'm not thinking of?), this seems to protect characters who have no homes from any CvC. They may antagonize to their heart's content, because this rule says that finding them isn't actually finding them. What options do we provide to the antagonized characters in this case?

[Ithildur]

One obvious problem that jumps out at me that needs to be addressed; CvC in ALFA has always been understood to include much more than game engine combat or combat period - this probably needs to be clarified before requiring folks to have mutual consent for various forms of character conflict.

i.e. if a drow PC and a surface elf PC meet somewhere, requiring mutual consent before verbal threats/trash talking can begin seems silly. Same with say a paladin of Kelemvor and a necromancer of Velsharoon who reveals himself, etc.

Overall... I understand there are potential problems/pitfalls with combat CvC, but these rules seem overly restrictive, rather artificial and likely to lead to ooc/metagamey behavior. I realize ALFA has gotten far more care bearish than in the past, but I generally am not in favor of rule changes that encourage ooc behavior for the sake of avoiding loss of a PC, especially now with players getting 2 PCs to play with if they so choose.

If combat CvC is in character, players sometimes just need to suck it up and deal with it, just as if a death in a DM event or to a spawn is IC they'd need to suck it up and deal with it. ALFA is supposed to be hardcore; unless something is a bug or obviously not IC, there's no reason to whine about losing a PC. If you roll a lowbie velsharoon wizzie and go around popping off about your plans to create an undead army and run into the aforementioned paladin, you fully should expect to lose your PC whether you like it or not.

I say this even after recently having seen (as a DM) PCs I liked very much/had plans for being subjected to cvc from a much higher lvl (which I agree ooc is pretty lame, higher lvl PCs do have better things to do than pick on lowbies); it's not something I would've been happy about if it actually had lead to the death of the lowbies, but there are many other options to deal with such a situation besides a blanket 'you cannot cvc because of your lvl or because the other player doesn't want to'.

[edit] Clarification please; if a DM rules 'mr. paladin and mr. neccro meet, mr. paladin notified me of what's going on, he has every reason to try to kill mr. necro, CvC on!', then mr. necro cannot 'opt out' of the cvc via "But I don't consent!"... is that right?

[Regas]

One of the reasons I posted this ahead of making it official is to see if we missed anything in forming the policy. I do think we must allow some appeal under certain circumstances. My expectation is that this will dramatically reduce the amount of CvCs, and energy that goes into them from players, DMs and admin. Two issues brought up are players provoking other with ic behavior and then hiding behind the consent rules or players who regularly game the rules to continue to force non-consensual CvCs, especially with vastly weaker players. Both of these need to stop. We want folks to rp, act ic and have fun, but it can't be at the expense and time of so many others in the community. The idea behind this rule is that whether dm or player, killing the other guy needs to be in the context of players who are friends and getting along. CvC is too often happening between members who don't like each other. Please, if you have to kill someone ic, make it a friend!

I'd like to give everyone a few days to add to the comments and we'll go back and look at them. Please help us make the policy as workable as we can. Unfortunately if we can't make something along these lines work, then the alternative is we simply turn all CvC off. That is not something I want to see personally.

[Adanu]

DM's have the right to ignore or refuse CvC requests for any reason, and such refusal is not appealable to any admin in ALFA

And if the reason is "I like this character, so I refuse CvC when said PC is at a disadvantage, but allow it when said PC is at an advantage"? -- this rule says that the player of our newly-slain character has no avenue for appeal, and it surely falls under the broad umbrella of "any reason." What mechanism do we expect will keep these decisions fair?


In a similar vein, what do we do with PCs who are protected from CvC as lowbies, and then level up and buy powerful consumables? I assume that these would be the ones who aren't "well known" as attackers of those they're protected against? The previous lowbie suddenly has a few single-use Bigby items and wants to fight, even though that character would have been dead had this policy not explicitly protected him. Do their targets just have to buck up and deal with their (expensive, granted, but quite difficult to avoid) deaths?


Also, if we're not allowed to CvC in public spaces or exteriors, because we're not allowed to find people except in their homes (unless there's another kind of private interior I'm not thinking of?), this seems to protect characters who have no homes from any CvC. They may antagonize to their heart's content, because this rule says that finding them isn't actually finding them. What options do we provide to the antagonized characters in this case?

All of the above. Just blanket stating that any DM can refuse for any reason is just asking for abuse, or for a DM to just say screw it all regardless of any IC context and ruin peoples RP.

What's stopping anyone from being assholes and antagonizing every PC that come across to hide behind these policies?

[vergin_sacrifice]

I don't think a DM should be forced to deal with a CvC situation just because they are logged in, and should not have to explain themselves for excusing themselves from such a situation. I think the stated rule is a good one concerning DMs.

This does not stop the CvC entirely, it just recuses one judge from overseeing it.

[Ronan]

The above proposal is was almost entirely written by me. Its partially a response to Admin wanting to ban non-consensual CvC completely, and partially a response to the drama we've had associated with CvC on BG. In its current form I think its too long and lawyery, though due to DM permission always being needed players themselves don't need to really understand it. They just need to know to ask for permission.

This all started because ALFA's demands for fairness in CvC are too costly. DMs do not want to deal with most CvCs, and so the proposed response was to eliminate non-consensual CvC completely. Although I've never been involved in CvC as a player, I personally enjoy RP-driven CvC (as rare as it is) and did not want to see it inadvertently banned. I believe the threat and possibility of CvC is important to ALFA as it affects RP quality and the consistency of our world.

I'm sorry but we simply cannot keep going with both the quantity and oversight of CvC that we now have. Its too much work for staff and burns people out.

So I made a list of all the CvCs I've been involved with in ALFA, and came to the conclusion that most or all of our damaging CvC should actually be OOC, for the following reasons:

• Our game-world is much smaller than Faerun, resulting in far too many chance-meetings between antagonistic players and PCs.
• PCs don't have to eat, drink, sleep, go to day jobs, manage their business, etc. while in game. They have lots of free time. A high-level PC should not have time to personally pursue minor antagonists, but they do in ALFA.
• They're motivated by OOC feuds.

So I reasoned we could improve both RP quality and CvC outcomes if we could eliminate some of these OOC CvCs.

Note that most CvCs don't happen. They're reported to the DM team, followed by massive amounts of headache and drama occur, followed by no actual CvC.

You may NOT engage in CvC when:
[*]There is a large level difference, unless the defender is a known antagonizer of the attacker or the attacker's faction(s). High-level PCs should have better things to do than pursue lowbies.

The only part I disagree with. This is meta-gaming, and there's no reason a strong character would ignore stomping a weak character unless it's in their code of ethics. Notice I use strong, since you can't tell "levels" in this game.

Since DM presence is required for non-consensual CvC, the player actually doesn't need to know any meta-information. The DM might respond with something like "you have better things to do, such as X, Y or Z".

However, the key word above is "pursue". A level 12 should not be hunting down common criminals without exceptional cause. You're not expected to ignore them, you're just expected to not pursue them because you have nothing better to do IG. Its a similar vein to the idea that highbies shouldn't crash lowbie sessions.

Please if you may just add something that would prevent a PC to badger other PCs then go "Oh... No consent you can't touch me!"

Presumably the DM would grant permission to CvC in this case, but maybe we do need to spell it out better.

[edit] Clarification please; if a DM rules 'mr. paladin and mr. neccro meet, mr. paladin notified me of what's going on, he has every reason to try to kill mr. necro, CvC on!', then mr. necro cannot 'opt out' of the cvc via "But I don't consent!"... is that right?

Correct.

DM's have the right to ignore or refuse CvC requests for any reason, and such refusal is not appealable to any admin in ALFA

And if the reason is "I like this character, so I refuse CvC when said PC is at a disadvantage, but allow it when said PC is at an advantage"? -- this rule says that the player of our newly-slain character has no avenue for appeal, and it surely falls under the broad umbrella of "any reason." What mechanism do we expect will keep these decisions fair?

Granting DMs the ability to ignore CvC requests is really about releasing them from something they don't want to deal with 95% of the time. Note that "ignore" is not "forbid", so you can try to find a willing DM. Maybe we should remove the "refuse" above?

If every DM on the server refuses a CvC requests then grants to the PC's enemies... We don't have a contingency for that. I suggest the player relocate!

In a similar vein, what do we do with PCs who are protected from CvC as lowbies, and then level up and buy powerful consumables? I assume that these would be the ones who aren't "well known" as attackers of those they're protected against? The previous lowbie suddenly has a few single-use Bigby items and wants to fight, even though that character would have been dead had this policy not explicitly protected him. Do their targets just have to buck up and deal with their (expensive, granted, but quite difficult to avoid) deaths?

If they aren't known antagonists of the highbie, then the highbie would have no reason to pursue them in the first place. If there are Sharans under your nose and you don't know it, well, tough cookies. If the policy protects known Sharrans from Selunites then we've worded it wrongly, but I don't think it does.

Incidentally I have refused to run CvC involving Bigby spells, because many are so broken.

Also, if we're not allowed to CvC in public spaces or exteriors, because we're not allowed to find people except in their homes (unless there's another kind of private interior I'm not thinking of?), this seems to protect characters who have no homes from any CvC. They may antagonize to their heart's content, because this rule says that finding them isn't actually finding them. What options do we provide to the antagonized characters in this case?

The rules are intended to forbid chance encounters from turning into unwanted CvC. If one PC is actively hunting another for valid IC reasons then I would not classify that as a "random" encounter.

The wording definitely need some work. The core of it is that CvC must be sparked from RP on both sides of the conflict.

[Ithildur]

After some discussion with Regas, I'm more sympathetic to his (and other admins') plight. I still fundamentally feel that IC events, choices, consequences etc. should be influenced as much as possible by IC factors rather than OOC restrictions, but I can understand the intent to try and reduce the number of complaints, appeals, incidents, bad feelings, etc. that sometimes arise when CvC occurs.

In an ideal world, everyone's mature and level headed about CvC going into potential situations that such things are avoided. ALFA is a game, a hobby, that's played by a community vs single player RPG played in isolation where only one person (or one group)'s fun is at stake, balanced by the maxim that for those of us who enjoy more hardcore RP, setbacks and consequences including the possibility of permanent loss of a character are part of the mix that contributes to what we find fun. We might want our PCs to live another day, but sometimes part of the story is that it doesn't work out, whether due to bad luck or poor choices, etc. Or we may want to RP powerful, hardnosed types that inflict punishment to the wicked or act out belligerently or cruelly to other sentient beings; that's fine, as long as people can be reasonably mature about it, and DMs are willing to help create a sense of a somewhat consistent world where consequences matter (paladin in Westgate smites a Nightmask PC with connections? you might find yourself the target of multiple nasty assassination attempts. PC murders a half dozen Selunites and walks by the Spire? word might've reached them and you get captured on sight, etc).

The fact that multiple complaints/appeals etc are regularly ending up on the desks of admins is an indication that something is gone wrong with the above. Cases that should be decided either between neighbors possibly with involvement by the local sheriff should not regularly end up in the Supreme Court, with the end result being that the Federal government issues laws that impact not just the local disputes that started all this, but everyone in the entire country.

Whether the changed rules go into effect or not, amended or otherwise, I think we all can do more to try to act like rational adults playing a game; if someone cannot handle CvC situations without good judgment getting clouded by hasty tempers or whatnot, might be best to take a deep breath and step back from it all before ruining the game for dozens of other players and DMs.

[edit]The clarifications/explanations from Ronan's post are also helpful; for what it's worth I'm much more sympathetic to an amended/clarified version of proposed changes at this point.

I also highly favor swift, tough preferably IN CHARACTER responses by the DM team to people being asshats.

[kid]

What might be clear to some and might look to some as reasonable might not look the same to others.
So yes, mainly spell it out word for word what situations are ok and which are not.
That, in order to reduce the need for DMs.

Meaning, when 2 sides say its ok, its ok.
When a DM says its ok, its ok.

But...
give a few clear signs for players to know when its ok even if no DM is about.
Something like...
A. a rival faction is making itself known and is antagonizing a rival faction.
(meaning don't make a sharan and pee on persy's feet)
B. One party is taking a hostile act towards the other... (Threatening RP, whatever you'd like but define something relatively clear)
and so on.

The more examples you'll give the easier it would be for players to judge a situation and know if what they choose to do is according to the proposed rule or not.

[Adanu]

So basically, if a DM doesn't like you and decides to grant a CvC request to the opposite party, you are SOL because admins don't want to deal with admining it?

Fuck that. While I can understand that people don't like OOC drama... anyplace that has a diverse population like we do is going to have some conflicts. Pretending they don't exist, or ignoring them, is just going to drive people away since they have no legal way to deal with it.

[Ronan]

give a few clear signs for players to know when its ok even if no DM is about.

It never is. I kinda wanted something allowing spontaneous CvC, but no one else wants it and I certainly don't want it that badly.

Adanu, more or less yes. Note that things already work this way most of the time, the difference is that PCs can go ahead and CvC each other without DM consent, effectively demanding vast amounts of work from the staff. No it isn't perfect but our current dispute processes are just way too costly. Drama from disputes pushes a lot more people from the project than actual CvC.

[Swift]

f*sk that. While I can understand that people don't like OOC drama... anyplace that has a diverse population like we do is going to have some conflicts. Pretending they don't exist, or ignoring them, is just going to drive people away since they have no legal way to deal with it.

Then lets ban it completely.

One comment from the discussion thread on the DM forums came from Ronan where, before RL ramped up for him, he estimated that he was spending 90% of his DM time on BG dealing with CvC bullshit. We went through a period where ever day or two CvC warnings were getting posted with the lightest, almost non-existent reasons as their basis, to the point many DMs were just rolling their eyes.

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.

The bottom line (and the reason this discussion even needed to be had) is that the vast majority of CvC in ALFA these days is NOT RP-Based. It is bullshit, and DMs are tired of dealing with the fallout from it.