Shattered Kingdoms

I was once told by an IMM that RPing rape in any way is prohibited by the terms of service, and is a punishable offense. I can't actually find that in the terms of service, though.

It's in rule help file. http://www.shatteredkingdoms.org/help/111

I guess its paragraph 5, Member Conduct, letter b, which states:

to transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or otherwise objectionable, nor may you use a misspelling or an alternative spelling to circumvent the content and language restrictions listed above;

So I guess you rape would be considered abusive, harassing, tortuous, vulgar, invasive, ect. It also doesn't sound all that ethical.

EDIT: Furthermore, I'd be suspicious of anyone saying, "such-and-such is against the terms of service," or, "this-and-that is against the law," because they most often do not know what they are talking about. There was a cop who once told me that I had to provide a hard copy, not a digital copy, of my insurance information when he pulled me over for speeding. I'm no lawyer, but at the time I highly doubted that the law was written with smart phones in mind. He didn't seem to see things my way, though.

If rape is not, "harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or otherwise objectionable" to you personally, then perhaps you should consider how it might be percieved by others.

And I think that's the crux of the converstaion, really. When you sit down at the keyboard, are you considering the others in the game, or only yourself? I'm sure we can all think of really good examples of both types of players.

If I was writing a code of conduct for SK it would have the following characteristics, although they are each just a rewording of the helpfile on the golden rule.

1: Keep players and characters of SK separate, don't take things personally.

In SK everyone plays a character, not themselves. In your interactions with others, feel free to enjoy developing your character, including friendships and conflicts, but don't assume that just because you are in an IC conflict with another character that you also have to hold an OOC conflict with that characters' player.

2: Strive to stay in-character, but -always- respect the other players.

Keep in mind that you are playing with other real people. While role-play is required in SK, you should also venture to ensure that your actions are making the game more enjoyable for other players, not less. Even the best RPed character in SK would be a negative impact if no one wanted to log in when they were online.

I basically assume that behind every character is a player that is an essentially decent human, here to immerse and enjoy themselves in the game just as I am, and therefore do my best to treat them on an OOC level as I'd like to be treated myself, regardless of whatever IC conflicts our characters might have. I have no ambition to ruin anybody's evening for them in any way or for any reason.

Where it seems to me that the player behind another given character isn't actually a decent human being, I tend to assume that the fault and misconception is mine and give them the benefit of the doubt as much as I reasonably can.

The Internet has a kind of "Lord of the Flies" effect on your perception of other people. It's far too terribly easy to misread negative motivation and intent when all interaction is entirely typed, and things spiral downwards from there ever so quickly.

I think spamming people with aggressive OOC tells or PMs after you die to them should be a punishable offense. I'd like to see good sportsmanship among losers.

Winners with good RP (not just haha, PK and loot, bye bye) could be rewarded as well.

In these forums, I'd just like to see less newb-bashing or specific-player-bashing.

We aren't making any policies with any kind of consequences in this thread.

That wasn't the point of this thread, so I don't think we need to worry about not accomplishing that.

LaeZ1, you may need to work on your reading comprehension.