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We've had a player complaint about returning characters who have been wrapped up. Amdair is the first of two requests to return that succeeded. Here's the process:

If a player goes inactive (4 weeks without logging at least three hours in any of those weeks), they may at the request of other players, be wrapped up. The staff do not instigate a wrap up RP. Typically in this past, this has been enacted by left-behind spouses who want to move on with their lives. In fact, I think the cases we have are:

Paloma - Jaafs (Paloma requested)
Amdair - Arely (Arely requested)
Cecil - Cellan (Cellan requested)
Jei - Nagaita (Jei requested)
... I don't think we had anymore, but I don't actually handle these, so I might not recall...

Thus far, we have only had two requests to return (Cecil and Amdair). In both cases, the staff's stance was that, provided that the person who requested the wrap-up is okay with the return, we have allowed it IF they purchase RPA to explain how and why the 'wrap up' was a realistic part of the timeline.

The reasoning for this is that we want to retain players and allow people to play their own characters whenever possible.

However, a conflicting priority regarding the way the playerbase feels about 'wrap ups might not be true' rightfully leaves players feeling uncomfortable and perhaps a bit cheated.

Obviously our policies currently side with the possibility of return in what we feel are 'moderated circumstances'. However, clearly if some players are complaining, then there's likely players who simply haven't told us they don't like it. Is it your opinion that this policy should change, or is it good as it is?

Thanks for providing your feedback!

Here's my thought.
If you get the "wrapped up" player's approval to wrap them up, the death is final.

If you don't, either because they are unreachable or unwilling to let go, you make the death more open-ended and allow them the chance to come back.Making it very clear in the post that the person is 'lost, presumed dead', not necessarily dead. Their return can still have the same restrictions: the player requesting them to be wrapped up's approval and 10 RPA.

I was one of the people who complained. I initially asked Kinaed to leave my name out of it because Amdair/Jei have an IC rivalry and I was concerned about bias, but you know, it's not the case. Jaafs, Cecil, Nagaita and yes, Amdair, all had very specific deaths. They were all famous. Presumably in all cases other than perhaps Cecil's, a body was recovered, identified by loved ones and put into the ground. When this kind of 'unwrapping' happens, it cheats death, which I do not like. That being said, I don't think people should be definitively killed off-screen without their say so, barring certain circumstances (people rage-quitting after being caught and imprisoned and are pending execution by fire or quartering), I don't really like people being killed off-screen. I had Nagaita's approval to have her killed off because she wasn't sure she would ever come back to TI and it was in many ways restricting my RP with Jei.

Death on TI is final. You lose a fight to the death, you get burned, you get quartered, you get 'slay'ed, you're done. It doesn't matter if you -love- that character, it wouldn't matter to the staff in any of those cases if you said 'I want my character back or I'll quit'. So I don't think it should in these kinds of cases either. It's disruptive and it just plain looks like some kind of badly written soap opera plot or comic book ass-pull when this is done without any kind of foreshadowing, and I think TI and the people who play on it are better than that.

I'm not saying Amdair's resurrection should be nulled and his return RP voided, I'm saying in the future this needs to be a lot more serious a matter than just giving up 10 QP and getting the go ahead from the wrap-up requester, because it isn't particularly fair to the rest of us otherwise.

My stance is that if a player goes MIA and it's disruptive enough that a request to wrap-up their character(s) has to be made, the requester should decide the nature of the wrap-up. If the requester wants to leave open the possibility of the wrapped-up character returning at some point or not, it's their choice. Then, if the returning player wants to reactivate a wrapped-up character, it's already decided if that is a possibility.

Personally, I'm fairly staunchly against allowing people to kill off their RP partners due to inactivity. Writing them out is one thing, but it is always somewhat jarring to me when a character is killed off in this manner.

Allowing the requester to dictate the terms of the character's offscreen death isn't very cool, in my opinion. And to make those offscreen deaths binding when the player who's being killed off has no voice in the matter is equally uncool. Yes, soap opera deaths are overly dramatic. No, TI doesn't emulate comic books terribly much. But we're real people, with real lives. Sometimes, shit happens, our lives change, and we just can't get up the RP mojo for one reason or another. I think that, in the spirit of the awesome community that TI is, when someone comes back from that, our answer shouldn't be, "Well, remember the wife/husband/lover/roomate/cat that you left behind? Well, she/he/they/it/Mr Meowagi decided that your absence couldn't be excused by anything less than your hideous, gory, onscreen death. So Mr. Meowgi defenestrated you and then disemboweled you in the middle of Story Time at the orphanage."

That's not cool to me.

This strikes me close to heart because there have been a few periods where my activity has dropped markedly, because I just didn't have the mmph to give Tobin. I had my Soap Opera Death ready to go. But that was *my choice*, and like most planned SODs, it had an escape hatch.

I'd agree with Jei and Clockwork that going forward it'd be nice if you couldn't be killed off permanently without your consent due to an absence to avoid this issue. If someone needs to be written out of a plot due to inactivity, a way should be found to do it open ended enough for that player to be able to come back eventually.

Though I'm fine with rectifying situations where this occurred in the past.

I concur with Tobin, though I do think it's viable to consider the person 'lost/missing, presumed dead' with a heavy emphasis on presumed, unless the player of the PC is okay with the character being killed off for real. This way it's the player's choice, not someone else's. Yeah, the player may have to then concoct a story about why/how he disappeared and then returned, but it's certainly an improvement over being killed off offscreen without consent, IMO, and it allows for people to return without it being so jarring to everyone when it's more explicitely stated that someone has died.

Jei wrote:I concur with Tobin, though I do think it's viable to consider the person 'lost/missing, presumed dead' with a heavy emphasis on presumed, unless the player of the PC is okay with the character being killed off for real. This way it's the player's choice, not someone else's. Yeah, the player may have to then concoct a story about why/how he disappeared and then returned, but it's certainly an improvement over being killed off offscreen without consent, IMO, and it allows for people to return without it being so jarring to everyone when it's more explicitely stated that someone has died.

/concur.

Alas, removing the staff and remaining pbase's right to wrap up an absentee character is not on the table, even though I understand the feeling of insecurity and anger that comes with the possibility that it could happen to you... but.

This policy is in place for a reason. We had, on previous versions of TI, had roles locked up for months because someone important dropped off the face of the planet. Generally, we also have a damn good sense for when they're really gone too, but we keep holding on out of sense for "fairness" or a vain hope of their return. Heck, players who fequested to wrap people up didn't do it because they're mean, but because their RP was suffering. TI isn't about the people that don't play, it's about the people who do. Being wrapped up only ever happens if someone in-game cares enough to request it, so by nature it won't happen without a player's absence actually causing a negative impact.

It is so easy to be active on TI to a level that prevents a loss of character, guild, etc. Three hours played once in four weeks can be done from a cellphone. Of all the players we ever wrapped up, not one ever popped in the next day to say, "Wtf, I was on vacation to Italy!" .

And even if it had happened, the show and game -must- go on. We can't let the game become "unfun" for the players left behind because their GL disappeared for 6 irl months. It is actually better for the game for there to be periodic churn in who runs things so there is never a dead end to play beyond a player's ability to keep churning up things to their own interest.

The staff put in enough time, energy, and money into the game. I won't add "chasing down absent players" to their list - it's also a little too close to stalking to me. If a player wants to hear from us, they'd log in and seek contact or send an

email.

/rant

Now, if we could return to the topic in question about whether or not wrapped up players ought to be allowed to return and the conditions surrounding that, I'd truly love to have your thoughts.

Also, my most humble apologies if my post appeared rude or broken. I'm a bit frustrated trying to post on a mobile phone...!

W/affections,
Kinky