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Building on the mention I made earlier about taking a revisionist stance to a raison d’être…
Basically, if I’m in the Pirate faction being a menace on the seven seas, I don’t want to be constantly having arguments with another pirate who believes a REAL pirate never takes another person’s property without permission, and I’m making life hard for pirates by giving them a bad name.
Like… what?
@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:
It is someone whose very existence is predicated on being part of a moderate to high-conflict group and then avoiding conflict.
I think we have to clarify whether we’re talking about someone playing an IC pacifist and the narrative of such a character. The character should strive to avoid conflict, sure, but at the same time, in order to create amazing story out of that, that pacifism should be tested by them being backed into a situation where they either maintain their pacifism and have to escape harm, or their personal ethics break and they evolve as a character.
On the other hand, you could have someone who’s character isn’t a pacifist, but they as a player choose to avoid CvC whenever possible, and also wish to stop the rest of their group from participating in such narratives with their PCs, regardless of their players intentions.
I think we need to really separate the IC pacifism vs OOC pacifism in this context, because I can totally see amazing narratives coming out of someone playing an IC pacifist in a CvC heavy faction, but can also see how OOC pacifism can lead to other OOC pitfalls.
Well, to clarify: if the sentiment being discussed is that pacifist characters don’t belong on PvP games and should always be disallowed, I don’t agree with that sentiment. I think you ideally want to cultivate a kind of healthy player ecosystem, where people with different playstyles can engage in ways that are compatible. For instance, I’m generally happy playing villains, but I don’t really care about winning or losing, I just enjoy drumming up excitement and giving people something to bounce off of. I don’t see a pacifist character as incompatible with that, because as long as we’re both having fun, me twirling my moustache and someone else going, “Oh my god! Someone stop that villainous scum!” can create good story for both of us, and solidify both of our concepts.
With that said, and with the explicit caveat that I don’t see outliers as inherently problematic, it can and often does become a problem when the outlier ethos gets normalised in the setting it’s supposed to be pushing back against. So if the theme is space war between humans and aliens, it can be cool to have one or even two guys on the ship going, “Have we even tried talking to them? There has to be a better way than killing each other!” And they can play at being morally upstanding rebels defying the majority consensus. But once one of two things happen:
a) The majority of characters aboard the ship are now Team Peace With Aliens
b) Players start to get very caught up OOCly in wanting to ensure their IC ideology wins, and get frustrated when the aliens still want to kill them or the staff-run space-guard can’t be persuaded against war
Then you will no longer be having a good time playing the Space War game. IIRC this kind of happened on The 100 MUSH, for instance.
This is also the Drizzt problem. One Drizzt is OK and shows drows can be different. But if every drow is Drizzt, then thematically what are drow even? What’s he rebelling against?
I have no skin in the game for whatever happened on SH, and I apologise if it seems I’m moving the goalposts; I realise this isn’t the point that was previously being made, I’m just broadening the discussion.
@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:
That was literally the statement that kicked off this entire tangent. A proposed zero-tolerance policy towards pacifist characters in high-conflict factions.
Looking back to @Jumpscare’s original post about zero tolerance for this type of player, I want to know that they are describing an archetype that they’re calling “the pacifist,” not players playing pacifist characters at all.
Here’s the actual description.
@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:
The pacifist is a player archetype who will join a moderate or high conflict group, then do as much as they can for their faction without engaging in the central conflict. Then, when they get backed into a position where they’re called upon to resolve a conflict by fighting it out, they’ll agree to the fight but refuse to fight back, letting the opposing side win, in order to give the other players the most unsatisfying resolution possible.
@Juniper then clarified with:
Pacifists don’t just sit out, they tend to belittle everyone participating and take a revisionist approach to the faction’s raison d’être.
Again, referencing the character archetype, not anyone who wanted to play a character with pacifist beliefs.
@Kestrel kept up with the idea that this was about a character archetype who uses their character’s pacifism as a bludgeon to wrongfun people playing characters who fit with the purpose/vibe of the faction.
I admit that I lost the thread a little bit with the specific example mentioned later, since it refers to some situations and mechanics specific to a game that I don’t play, but I don’t believe that there was ever an intention to ban people from playing pacifist characters, just characters who fit the archetype of a character who is (irony intended) a militant pacifist who uses their beliefs to demean and socially bludgeon characters who engage in violent IC actions within the designed theme and setting of the game.
@bear_necessities said in Non-toxic PvP:
@Jumpscare That has nothing to do with these people playing pacifists. It sounds like you have some jerk players. But there are jerk pacifists and there are jerk combatants and there are jerk everythings. It’s not a pacifist thing.
In a thread about non-toxic PvP it seems pretty on-topic to bring up the issues caused by both jerk combatants and jerk pacifists? And I notice that people often discuss the former but rarely acknowledge the issues with the latter. No one is saying you can’t play a pacifist, pacifists ruin PvP games, any more than anyone is saying that all combat characters are domineering murderhobos. But problematic pacifists exist, as do problematic combatants. There are specific issues with each that healthy community management needs to account for.
@Jumpscare That has nothing to do with these people playing pacifists. It sounds like you have some jerk players. But there are jerk pacifists and there are jerk combatants and there are jerk everythings. It’s not a pacifist thing.
There’s social conflicts, espionage, vandalism, and more on SH. But just because something is IC doesn’t mean it’s automatically fun. Here are three examples of when a PP became too much effort to allow them to continue playing.
One PP was secretly exploiting code to stalk other players in order to show up immediately where the RP was happening in order to get in the way. I’ve since patched those exploits.
Another PP had been given a no-contact request from a number of characters who were tired of their shenanigans. (A no-contact request is a last resort when two people’s RP styles are untenable with each other. It means no direct RP, no plotting against each other, and to keep interactions minimal in public events.) The PP then sent their friends to get in on the scenes on the PP’s behalf, then report back so the PP could influence things nearby (e.g. vandalism) in an “I’m not touching you” plausible deniability manner, giving the people on the no-contact list zero recourse to react.
A third PP was asked to tone down the snark. When the snark was not toned down, we said to stop the snark entirely. This resulted in the PP repeatedly saying IC something along the lines of, “I have no opinion I can voice on this matter,” as a way of getting around the snark ban.
In all three examples, their goal isn’t to provide fun conflict, it’s to wear down the other players by getting in the way as often as possible, while also denying any satisfying resolution. They typically don’t care about the win or the loss in the plot, because they score a win simply by disrupting the scene and forcing everyone to deal with their antics.
@Jumpscare Makes sense, thanks. I think you should’ve included that detail in your scenario above to paint a clearer picture of what was happening.
But idk man. At the end of the day, people aren’t assholes for using in-game mechanics to create a story, so if it had ended like Jumpscare initially said it did? I don’t see the issue. The issue is when people take it way too far, cross a line, and act like dicks because they can’t take the L and move the fuck on.
@bear_necessities said in Non-toxic PvP:
MH is hoarding the item and soley determining where it goes,
PP offered an alternative and was ignored.
Why did MH run to staff and win after ignoring PP entirely in the first place?
This is all very loaded language and not how I read the example as laid out.
MH has the item, they get to choose what happens to the item. That’s not “hoarding”, it is obviously a contest designed by a storyteller and one that MH is currently winning. PP’s choices to influence the outcome are diplomacy or violence.
It looks like MH and PP are both been crystal clear with each other about the outcome they’d prefer. That’s good. But they still disagree. PP failed to persuade MH to abandon MH’s plan and follow PP’s plan. What then?
There has been some chatter that in this example MH didn’t need to fight PP, they chose to. I disagree, and this may be a quirk in the design of Jumpscare’s game specifically. You should assume that PP used conflict mechanics to physically block MH in the room until combat is concluded. MH’s only choices are to attack PP or just stand there. Forever.
At what point do we acknowledge that PP cannot have their cake and eat it too? They want the moral high ground of not using violence (technically. kind of? not really), but can’t accept that relying on diplomacy doesn’t mean guaranteed success in a scenario with multiple participants. Nobody is entitled to get the result they want in a plot, least of all the person whose plan amounts to forcing their opponent to hit them and then crying.
PP could have easily handled the situation in a way that stays true to their character without being a cretin. They could have stood aside and said “You’re making a huge mistake/I wish you could have seen things my way/David would be disappointed to see the person you have become”. They could have begrudgingly come along to protect the MacGuffin from the Murder Imps in the Danger Pit. They could have bribed, manipulated, or blackmailed someone else into doing what needs to be done to acquire the MacGuffin. They could have declared neutrality and come as a medic. Just… anything else.
@bear_necessities said in Non-toxic PvP:
The fact that PP stood there and took it, and then snarked about it afterward, is IC.
And the 3rd and 4th time PP stands in the way and says, “Let’s just get this over with,” and continues with the snark? Snarking over 20 times a week, often in pose after pose.
I think that’s what was missing from my explanation. PP does this with great frequency. It isn’t just a one-time thing. It’s a pattern of PP’s daily activities consisting of standing in the way and snarking. If your character wants to do something that PP opposes, your choices are to either give up and walk away from the conflict, or fight and give PP more snark ammunition.
It wears MH’s player down, as well as a decent portion of the playerbase, to witness that act day after day.
