Shattered Kingdoms

I think this is standard operating procedure in games in general; people want to play with their friends. On SK this mostly manifests as the same collection of people rolling as family members/IC lovers/IC friends generation after generation and predominately interacting with these same players. Sometimes it manifests as a handful of people OOCly deciding to all roll up characters to join the same faction. I am curious what the argument would be for this practice being unethical on SK, though, as it is so standard in games of all genres to want to play with your friends.

I think the distinction comes in when those people literally refuse to interact with any other characters beyond a social of spit after they steamroll them. That's the issue, not that they're rolling together. I don't think anyone actually objects to friends playing together, just to the exclusion of everyone else.

Exactly. Play with your friends. By all means. But play with the other people of SK, as well. Don't act like the only people on SK are your little circle of friends. 5 people can roll together to all join the same faction, but there are still 15 other people in the game, and some of them may even be on your side. Don't avoid them.

I guess I have not experienced this. I have always been able to interact with the insular groups if I want. They don't generally seek me out for RP, but they also don't act like I don't exist. Their priests/priestesses will even resurrect me! I agree that if what you guys are talking about were the case, if some insular OOC-based group were out there actively excluding everyone else and/or steamrolling them with no RP, it would be unethical in that the game simply cannot support such dynamics with a small player base and, therefore, it wrecks the experience for other players.

It happens some times, but it's not common. I wouldn't call it a serious issue in the SK environment.

The complaints I am hearing don't seem to be the status quo on SK. Not in my opinion, anyway.

Let me be clear: I never want to see an established, prescribed code of ethics in SK. That isn't because I want to be a shady jerk and break all the rules. It is, actually, because I can think for myself and decide on my own whether or not my actions are in bounds or not. Laws do not solve problems.

I would like to emphasize that what I am doing while associated with SK is not in any way instituting a formal code of ethics, further codes of ethics are not the same as rules or laws and while there are often elements involved to hold each other accountable for our actions they are generally not punitive in nature. What I would like to see from the pbase are what we would consider our own codes of ethics for play and how those things overlap with each other.

The reason I am doing this from my staff account as opposed to a new account is for my professor to be able to designate that I am on the staff of the game and not just making that up.

Opey, you mention you are capable of deciding what actions are and are not within the bounds of what you consider acceptable, would you be willing to provide an example?

I think that winning graciously should be a part of the ethics of the game. As much as people complain about sore losers, a complete lack of decorum is not only found on the short end of the stick.

I hesitate to get into it because I think that if we really did discuss it seriously, things would be said that the pbase would then consider to be "law." I'm not into that. We need characters that act without ethics and morals. That is what playing a darkie is all about. Of course, there are still ways to be an evil jerk in character and keep your humanity at the keyboard.

You might check out a book called Reality is Broken: How Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. (http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp/0143120611)

Opey, I think perhaps you are failing to understand what I am getting at. The code of ethics is not for the characters. It is for the players behind those characters.

Yes, there are evil characters who probably have little to no ethics and that is a perfectly acceptable way to play a character. However, you the player still have things you might be unwilling to do to another character due to your own ethical restrictions.

Continuing with your example of a darkie with no ethics or morals. To make it easier we will say it is a deep-elf necromancer, super evil, diabolic and obviously so. Let us say that you have just come into contact with someone of who is clearly of opposing aura to you an elf. Let us also say that after a very brief interaction with this character you can tell 100% that they are a new player to SK still trying to understand the world both IC and OOC. Now, your evil character with no morals who has enmity against elves would normally attack within moments of the first interaction. But you know this is a new player to the game and one of lower level than you. Do you still attack within moments? or because of that knowledge do you hold back some and offer more rp interactions that will evolve into PK?

Lastly, I think it is important for us to get into these sorts of topics. There is no "law" being stated here. I will say it again and again in every post I make and seriously doubt someone would take these discussions to be a formal SK rule. If you or anyone on these forums as players would rather not express some of your ethical considerations when playing that is perfectly acceptable and you need not respond to the thread further.