Unfair Consequences
Posted by Apostate on 01/14/19
So we want to make a very living world, where player characters' actions can drive story and have a organic effect on the way the metaplot unfolds, and that does mean that there can be huge consequences for the actions of players. But a situation recently reminded me that a lot of players may not be aware of what staff considers fair or unfair consequences, and what we will or won't do as the result of a story, or what we might use a very powerful NPC to do.
For one story, a character invites a powerful, evil entity to take interest in an event they are doing. The entity would be offended if the person changes their mind and rescinds the invitation, and threatens to murder citizens of their fealty's ward if they do so. In the context of a story, that could be anyone. But from an OOC perspective, it would be an extremely unfair consequence for staff to randomly kill off uninvolved players that happen to be in that fealty from someone else's action. We won't do that. Generally speaking, your characters won't have their stories ended without any kind of choices of their own.
So the problem is a character that's now in danger from people furious at them for dabbling with dark forces then asks why they did it, and the character then claims the NPC will kill off other players. ICly, that could be a lie they go with. OOCly, staff really doesn't want that, because new players that aren't familiar with staff not arbitrarily killing people off may take that as a threat, and a sign of staff unfairness that doesn't actually exist.
So long story short, ideally, you'll never have consequences that aren't in some way related to your choices. That could be a choice like, 'I want to watch the fight from a demon and a dragon dangerously close' and be rather unfortunate and the result of a bad roll, but it will never be, 'I was offline and my name happened to be in a fealty or org.' We don't kill characters that way non-con.
For one story, a character invites a powerful, evil entity to take interest in an event they are doing. The entity would be offended if the person changes their mind and rescinds the invitation, and threatens to murder citizens of their fealty's ward if they do so. In the context of a story, that could be anyone. But from an OOC perspective, it would be an extremely unfair consequence for staff to randomly kill off uninvolved players that happen to be in that fealty from someone else's action. We won't do that. Generally speaking, your characters won't have their stories ended without any kind of choices of their own.
So the problem is a character that's now in danger from people furious at them for dabbling with dark forces then asks why they did it, and the character then claims the NPC will kill off other players. ICly, that could be a lie they go with. OOCly, staff really doesn't want that, because new players that aren't familiar with staff not arbitrarily killing people off may take that as a threat, and a sign of staff unfairness that doesn't actually exist.
So long story short, ideally, you'll never have consequences that aren't in some way related to your choices. That could be a choice like, 'I want to watch the fight from a demon and a dragon dangerously close' and be rather unfortunate and the result of a bad roll, but it will never be, 'I was offline and my name happened to be in a fealty or org.' We don't kill characters that way non-con.