RP Assistance - Policy Q&A

[Kinaed]

RP Assistance - Q&A Session

We've had a few questions around RP Assistance Policy. Specifically:

1) Can RP Assistance include the loading of mobs?
... Yes. Naturally, if a situation logically would include the presence of mobs, an immortal may choose to load mobs. Please note that HOW a staff member implements RP assistance is up to the staff member helping out. We do this in different ways. Temi sets the guidelines, however, and generally will run most of the larger bits.

2) Can RP Assistance be given in a PK situation?
... Yes. RP Assistance exists to provide more options in any RP situation than code will allow. These situations are to be judged by staff as to the relative cost per realism given the IC situation and the extent of staff work required. It does not, however, dictate outcomes (though it may constrain results by its very nature).

3) QP cannot be used to "harm" another player. What does it mean to "harm" someone?
... Flat out, this means a staff member will not KILL a player for QP. It does not mean we will not assist with RP actions that may directly or indirectly lead to a character's death, arrest, disease, embarrassment, or anything else that comes under Help Non-consensual. These items are the stakes of RP on TI:Legacy. If we cannot and do not provide assistance that can possibly lead to these outcomes, then QP is relatively worthless, which is not the intent. In fact, QP is intended to be the highest OOC reward available in-game.

Given this, I've spoken to Sephone and we'll update the help file to change 'harm' to 'kill' to be more explicit about our intentions.

4) Freeform RP Assistance introduces a system that can be perceived as unfair. How do you handle fairness?
... This is sticky. True fairness, as a function of values, priorities, and point of view, does not exist. Rather, we can all plug our own personal values into the equation and determine what we think is fair in a given situation, and still disagree passionately with everyone else around us. It's even more difficult when emotion is involved.

By its very nature, giving one person tailored RP assistance based on QP gives them an in-game advantage, which in turn directly implies a disadvantage for those players without the assistance. So, the staff will not try to address fairness per se when providing RP assistance. Rather, we use our own judgment to determine if the assistance is logical given the situation, well deserved given the cost, and within our willingness to extend energy given the work required for the assistance to go into play. We may deny requests that we cannot do easily or do not believe are feasible. We are aware this is flawed from the "fairness" perspective, but we will abide by the guidelines as set out in Help RP Assistance.

5) If, in the heat of the moment, a staff member fails to abide by the guidelines, what can a player do about it?
... Bring the matter to the attention of your local, friendly policy imm (yes, that's me). If I am convinced that the staff has deviated from the guidelines we've established around providing RP assistance, we will compensate you in some manner to be determined by Policy. If I'm the staff member who screwed the pooch, I'll pass it to Sephone for review.

Please note that this specifically excludes a 'fair' outcome as being the cause for a policy case. The game is non-consensual, the very theme is not fair, and therefore fairness is not a point that will be argued or compensated. The guidelines in Help RP Assistance have to be demonstrably breached, and policy determines if the demonstration is compelling enough to warrant compensation, and if so, what sort.

6) If I want RP Assistance to deal with a given situation, can I halt the RP to wait for a staff member to assist?
... Yes, provided your RP partner(s) with a stake in the RP agree to the wait. If the RP partner doesn't wish to for any reason what-so-ever, you're shit out of luck. This harkens back to the non-consensual basis of the game. In short, we don't care what players do if everyone impacted agrees, but if someone doesn't agree, then the game will default on the side of the RP continuing as it would without RP Assistance.

[Jei]

As a former longtime Knight GL who was never allowed RP assistance wth anything, I think there's potential for good and potential for mega abuse with the new freeform RP assistance. I've listed my questions, most of which were pretty common questions in other TI.

While the tone may be bitter in some of these, and I apologize for that, each question is most definitely serious and I would like some kind of response to each from Temi or Kinkaed or whichever appropriate Immortal, if at all possible.

1) What type of RP assistance, if any, is it to have guards at major points in the city stop and search cloaked and hooded individuals to check to see if they are warranted people who just killed a Cardinal, or for some other reason is warranted and highly notorious? Major points = gates, major squares(River/Church), banks, courier offices, and other places that realistically would be watched.

2) What type of RP assistance, if any, would lead toward the use of a 30000 silver (read: 300 gold) reward, or a similar reward, to be taken advantage of by NPCs/VNPCs in order to provide information about location of said Cardinal killer/warranted person, who's identity is widely known? What about if only basics of a description are known? Height, gender, eye/hair color?

3) What kind of RP assistance, if any, would force certain warranted individuals to suffer from thirst/hunger damage until death, assuming of course that they don't have access to code food/water items from careful planning and/or accomplices and/or other means of acquiring (such as summoning or venturing out to get said items). In short, is there RP assistance to make it so certain wanted individuals would need to engage in satisfying their hunger/thirst or risk disease, harm to their health and potentially death?

4) Can you please be more detailed and less vague about what RP assistance can be used in PK situations? I think that since it's by it's nature giving one player an advantage to kill another, that this type of assistance in particular should be very well explained. Otherwise I, and I'm sure other people, would think the immortals might just be trying to drop a bridge on the victim of said RP assistance.

5) What sort of RP assistance would allow me to pinpoint mages who spam(spam: to redo the same pillar of flame command 5-10 times over a ten to fifteen minute period) the pillar of flame spell? Which by it's very nature should probably give away where it's coming to an exact degree within 3-5 uses?

6) What sort of RP assistance would allow me to question Marcin, the owner of the bank, when a mage publically claims they have a bank account and would like me to deposit money into it, including giving me the name (which I equate with an account number as well, otherwise... how could we pay them to begin with)? Also, how can I have Marcin burned for dealing with such obviously heretical people?

7. What sort of RP assistance, if any, would allow me to have guards in plains clothed positioned at the major bank of a city ready to jump when anyone tries to deposit or withdraw into the bank account mentioned above?

8. Per the RP assistance faq, RP assistance shouldn't be used to allow mages to have their own freeform spells. However, you mention that you can use RP assistance to indirectly cause the death of another player, free of conflict and possibly motive, by employing disease. Can you explain the nature of the disease(magical/natural) and how using RP assistance toward such an end makes sense, and is possible with the current PK rules? I figure that currently the Order can't catch a cold, but maybe a cold can catch the mage in question if this is really a possibility, and no, I'm not being sarcastic.

9. What sort of RP assistance, if any, would temporarily make certain mages using covert spells attract more attention when doing so in public places? I.E., is there a way to make a percentage chance happen for the witches eyes to glow, mouth to move, or fingers to wiggle slightly despite the covert nature of certain spells?

10. What sort of RP assistance, if any, could I employ to have the acolytes and churchgoers in a cathedral notice and report when a person comes in and sticks a body/head/bodypart on the altar. Presuming the person is invisible, what sort of RP assistance can I use to have someone notice the opening of a door, the dripping bloodtrail, and/or for there to be a check to be made to not bump into or otherwise disturb the objects and VNPCs in the area? If the person was sneaking/hiding, shouldn't there really have been a break in hide when said person moved to the altar and carefully positioned the head in just such a way?

11. Following on point 10, what sort of RP assistance, if any, would allow me to apply certain conditions from the above to other areas of importance? Including but not limited to: the other major squares, ahalin tower, the Knight's Keep, the Palace, the Cityguard Headquarters, the Bluebird, the Bear and Boar, and other major places of PC and NPC congregation where witnesses ought to realistically notice odd things.

12. What sort of RP assistance, if any, would allow me to get a full description (even if it's just cloaked), of a person who is sending threatening, obviously heretical, or obviously magical messages to select individuals or to the city itself via a town crier? Secondly, what sort of RP assistance, if any, would allow me to ask said messenger where, exactly, the person was when they made such a request?

As a subset of 12, if a person is invisible, and I'd even go so far as to say cloak concealed, should they really be allowed to use messengers, when they can't codely use shops? Or are messengers by their nature less intelligent and/or paranoid and/or afraid of mages?

That's all for now, but I'll try to think up more. I'm intrigued, but I'm also concerned about the potential for abuse. If it could be used to make criminals and mages do their illegal activities more intelligently... well, that would be great, so if there are ways to use RP assistance to trip them up when they don't (much as police in real life trip up criminals who make stupid mistakes) then I'd be happy.

[mattc]

I'm all for questions, Jei, but I personally find half the content of that post to be ridiculous, and the other half to be questions to which you'll find answers should you ever be willing to spend the QP ingame.

It seems to me that the intent of your post is less about clarification and more about probing, twinkishly, to what extent you can abuse the system. There are some legitimate questions to be asked, granted, but I imagine they could be answered more fruitfully by being asked more tactfully and with actual ingame context -- and with QP in hand.

[Jei]

I'm all for questions, Jei, but I personally find half the content of that post to be ridiculous, and the other half to be questions to which you'll find answers should you ever be willing to spend the QP ingame.

It seems to me that the intent of your post is less about clarification and more about probing, twinkishly, to what extent you can abuse the system. There are some legitimate questions to be asked, granted, but I imagine they could be answered more fruitfully by being asked more tactfully and with actual ingame context -- and with QP in hand.

Thanks for posting a response, Mattc. I am sorry you found half ridiculous, and that you felt the intent was for me to see how I can twinkishly abuse the system. I'd like to clarify that all my questions were serious, and yep, a fair amount do border on abuse, which is exactly why I asked them. However, the intent isn't so -I- can use them, I don't play a law enforcement person and I'm not planning on it for this version of TI. The intent is to get a baseline of what the -Immortals- feel is acceptable and what is abusive, so hopefully some guidelines can be enacted. I'm hoping that we can get guidelines together so that the responses/outcomes from these various RP assistances are at hopefully consistent and at the very least not contradictory. I think it would anger some people, myself included, if certain uses of RP assistance were allowed by one Imm or in one case, but then not allowed in another. Allegations of favoritism, lack of fairness, etc, etc could erupt.

In short, the point of my post is to try to get the immortals to consider situations that probably will be asked for and come up with relatively generic outcomes/costs beforehand.

In response to asking when QP is in hand, well.. see my first part of this reply. I probably won't use any of the things I questioned about on this character, so saving up QP to ask when I want it to happen would be a little contradictory. It also means that they'd need to decide on the spot, individually, instead of thinking about these situations together, as a group, which is what I'm aiming for to happen.

[Kinaed]

I know Temi's organizing something for you a bit more in-depth to answer each of your questions, so I'll keep this generally brief. My first read of your note was exactly as Mattc got out of it, so I appreciate your response. Giving us these situations to consider does help us clarify what we're about, however, so thank you, even if it was a disturbing read in the first instance.

I think what you're pointing out is true and exactly why we're not trying to pretend fairness. RP assistance will always be 'unfair' to someone - which I suspect is why older versions of TI shied away from it. I've also seen other games that make RP assistance standard activity be considered 'immortal fiats' because they implement assistance from their point of view as to how that assistance ought to go and are more understanding towards their friend's ambitions than those they're not close to. We can't promise it won't go that way because some of the "assistance" system flaws are intrinsic to the limitations of human perception - but we can at least attempt to be sensitive to it in our approach.

I'm sure somewhere down the line (if it hasn't already been said based on the most recent policy inquiry that started our exploration down the path of questioning how we'll do things), we'll be accused of favoritism. To a degree, it may even be true as we're all marginally unaware of our biases and beliefs - we just believe our biases and beliefs to be true. Thus, we're saying that asking for RP assistance (and even playing TI to a degree) requires some trust in the judgment of the staff in question. We offer RP assistance on this game because we've determined it's more beneficial than detrimental at this time. If we get a lot of cases that seem to be negative for the game as a whole, we may choose to re-examine the question and change our minds.

Anyway, at the very least, if there's a problem, you can contact policy to discuss it.

[Temi]

As a former longtime Knight GL who was never allowed RP assistance wth anything, I think there's potential for good and potential for mega abuse with the new freeform RP assistance. I've listed my questions, most of which were pretty common questions in other TI.

While the tone may be bitter in some of these, and I apologize for that, each question is most definitely serious and I would like some kind of response to each from Temi or Kinkaed or whichever appropriate Immortal, if at all possible.

1) What type of RP assistance, if any, is it to have guards at major points in the city stop and search cloaked and hooded individuals to check to see if they are warranted people who just killed a Cardinal, or for some other reason is warranted and highly notorious? Major points = gates, major squares(River/Church), banks, courier offices, and other places that realistically would be watched.

Reporting cloaked people going through gates suspiciously should be information which we may be able to make available as appropriate. As to stopping and detaining them, this may be doable in limited locations on a short term thing, but there is a question of *how* we would actually do it. Imms would actually need to be online and watching to ensure that this actually happened as they were going by, which starts making this less reasonable and a bigger thing. Guard mobs which just refuse to let cloaked people by? More possible but not minor. This is a big advantage towards the law folks, which is not bad for an RP assistance situation, since you would be spending QP and they wouldn't, but I wouldn't want it in place all the time. A criminal should be able to play the game and having them around makes things more fun and exciting, if only because of the thrill of catching them for you.

2) What type of RP assistance, if any, would lead toward the use of a 30000 silver (read: 300 gold) reward, or a similar reward, to be taken advantage of by NPCs/VNPCs in order to provide information about location of said Cardinal killer/warranted person, who's identity is widely known? What about if only basics of a description are known? Height, gender, eye/hair color?

RP assistance can be used to find out information that should be out there and this seems like a realistic incentive to draw out information. What information would be available depends on what the person is doing. If they are taking precautions, you will have a harder time.

3) What kind of RP assistance, if any, would force certain warranted individuals to suffer from thirst/hunger damage until death, assuming of course that they don't have access to code food/water items from careful planning and/or accomplices and/or other means of acquiring (such as summoning or venturing out to get said items). In short, is there RP assistance to make it so certain wanted individuals would need to engage in satisfying their hunger/thirst or risk disease, harm to their health and potentially death?

I think we need to go with the assumption that people are able to get the food and drink that they need or we're opening up whole worlds of difficulty. I think this is something which can be handled ICly by responsible players who aren't going to have much fun if they lock themselves away and never interact with anyone anyways. People will want to find others to RP with anyways.

4) Can you please be more detailed and less vague about what RP assistance can be used in PK situations? I think that since it's by it's nature giving one player an advantage to kill another, that this type of assistance in particular should be very well explained. Otherwise I, and I'm sure other people, would think the immortals might just be trying to drop a bridge on the victim of said RP assistance.

This is something which we will have to work out over time as we work out the kinks and get a feel for it. Obviously people would like something cut and dry, but I think that it does have to depend on the circumstances. We will not kill someone for you or anything which amounts to the same thing. Will we do something which tips things in your favor in a situation which may result in you doing that? If it makes sense. Basically: is this an advantage which this person could reasonably have? Is it something which they would have had to plan ahead for, and if so, are they planning ahead for it, or just trying to say they did now that they need it? I would be much more inclined to work with someone to do slightly less obvious things when they are preparing for eventualities, rather than in the situation, trying to get a pkill off after their actual preparations have failed. For a person in a reactive role, rather than a planning one, would they reasonably have that help immediately available? If it makes sense, I don't see a problem with doing it. If it's grasping for straws to get any advantage to kill someone off, well, that's not really what this is for.

5) What sort of RP assistance would allow me to pinpoint mages who spam(spam: to redo the same pillar of flame command 5-10 times over a ten to fifteen minute period) the pillar of flame spell? Which by its very nature should probably give away where it's coming to an exact degree within 3-5 uses?

We have been talking about this, and I don't think this is so much an issue of RP assistance as an issue of making these spells handle risk vs reward better and address spamminess. I think this is something we would more like to see refined through improved systems rather than just providing assistance to out the mages that are doing it. That said, if you have some plan for figuring out how to do it, the plan is what we use the RP assistance on, not the result. The 'How' is important for RP assistance and will judge what information is appropriate to be able to obtain. Might I be willing to help you triangulate from a pillar of flame? Maybe, pending a discussion of if this is how the spell actually works.

6) What sort of RP assistance would allow me to question Marcin, the owner of the bank, when a mage publically claims they have a bank account and would like me to deposit money into it, including giving me the name (which I equate with an account number as well, otherwise... how could we pay them to begin with)? Also, how can I have Marcin burned for dealing with such obviously heretical people?

People have used RP assistance to get information from the bank. It's not foolproof and doesn't necessarily give all of the information you might want, but people have used it. However, part of this is code limitations. The manus has their one bank account. Would they probably change the names and funnel things around every time they did something like this? Probably. Are we going to make that possible codewise? No. Am I willing to have using their bank account so publicly expose them to risk? Yes, and I have. As to burning Marcin, if you are in a position which could ICly do this, I'd be willing to talk about it. Though, this would have consequences, like this bank not being available for a time. If you're doing this as a way to lash out for the code not providing a better way for the mages to be sneaky, though, I'd rather ask for you to suspend disbelief and think outside the box about ways they might be managing it and how to expose those.

7. What sort of RP assistance, if any, would allow me to have guards in plains clothed positioned at the major bank of a city ready to jump when anyone tries to deposit or withdraw into the bank account mentioned above?

See #1. Over a short period of time with Immortal supervision, maybe, but it shouldn't be easy. Might I be more likely to allow you to position a PC there and try to listen in on whose accounts are being accessed? If it looks feasible on investigating how to do it, and then you would have someone to react to it as they should.

8. Per the RP assistance faq, RP assistance shouldn't be used to allow mages to have their own freeform spells. However, you mention that you can use RP assistance to indirectly cause the death of another player, free of conflict and possibly motive, by employing disease. Can you explain the nature of the disease(magical/natural) and how using RP assistance toward such an end makes sense, and is possible with the current PK rules? I figure that currently the Order can't catch a cold, but maybe a cold can catch the mage in question if this is really a possibility, and no, I'm not being sarcastic.

I don't remember mentioning killing people with disease. I have no intentions of doing this. Would I be willing to spread a disease through the city, striking at some different people and perhaps spreading? Sure, something like that would work. Will I strike your enemy sick without any risk to you? No. Would these diseases be deadly? Probably not in general, with some possible support for people who get the disease and decide they want to RP it killing them. Would this be minor? No. In general, I would say things which are not targetable are not reasonable for you to ask to be targeted. Unless of course you are asking for them to be afflicted on you to help your RP.

9. What sort of RP assistance, if any, would temporarily make certain mages using covert spells attract more attention when doing so in public places? I.E., is there a way to make a percentage chance happen for the witches eyes to glow, mouth to move, or fingers to wiggle slightly despite the covert nature of certain spells?

If a spell is covert, it is covert. Do you have plans as to how to make that any different? I don't see this one flying. If you think that things need a chance of happening, that's an issue for the covert magic system, rather than RP assistance.

10. What sort of RP assistance, if any, could I employ to have the acolytes and churchgoers in a cathedral notice and report when a person comes in and sticks a body/head/bodypart on the altar. Presuming the person is invisible, what sort of RP assistance can I use to have someone notice the opening of a door, the dripping bloodtrail, and/or for there to be a check to be made to not bump into or otherwise disturb the objects and VNPCs in the area? If the person was sneaking/hiding, shouldn't there really have been a break in hide when said person moved to the altar and carefully positioned the head in just such a way?

Getting information from vNPCs who would have been around to see this, or looking at other clues which should have been there, definitely makes sense and is well within the scope of assistance.

11. Following on point 10, what sort of RP assistance, if any, would allow me to apply certain conditions from the above to other areas of importance? Including but not limited to: the other major squares, ahalin tower, the Knight's Keep, the Palace, the Cityguard Headquarters, the Bluebird, the Bear and Boar, and other major places of PC and NPC congregation where witnesses ought to realistically notice odd things.

See #10. If it's something that could reasonably be seen, I could reasonably report what those seeing it would have seen to you. Will I account for such things as sneaking skill and chance? Yes.

12. What sort of RP assistance, if any, would allow me to get a full description (even if it's just cloaked), of a person who is sending threatening, obviously heretical, or obviously magical messages to select individuals or to the city itself via a town crier? Secondly, what sort of RP assistance, if any, would allow me to ask said messenger where, exactly, the person was when they made such a request?

Full description, as in word for word? Not happening. Details that would have been noted and described by a messenger? Sure. If the messenger would report it, I am willing to look into getting that information to you.

As a subset of 12, if a person is invisible, and I'd even go so far as to say cloak concealed, should they really be allowed to use messengers, when they can't codely use shops? Or are messengers by their nature less intelligent and/or paranoid and/or afraid of mages?

The inability to use shops would be a code limitation, and one that I would be willing to help wanted invidiauls with. Would this then result in word that they threatened a shopkeeper and where this shop was and what they got? Oh, maybe so. But the idea is not to just make tracking down criminals easier, but to enable them to do more as well. Is it without risk? No. Does it provide an advantage to the side using the QP? Yes, but they have to spend the QP to do it, QP which they earned, they should get some result.

That's all for now, but I'll try to think up more. I'm intrigued, but I'm also concerned about the potential for abuse. If it could be used to make criminals and mages do their illegal activities more intelligently... well, that would be great, so if there are ways to use RP assistance to trip them up when they don't (much as police in real life trip up criminals who make stupid mistakes) then I'd be happy.

I'm glad to hear you're intrigued and looking to how this could help improve things. I would definitely love to see criminals and mages making use of this potential to make things more cool, and I would love to enable the people hunting them down to be rewarded for out of the box thinking. The idea of assistance is to enable things to become more cool and exciting for everyone. We will also be looking for ways to keep this consistent and balanced so that what you get out of it is based on creativity, rather than being on the wrong side of the fence.