Fleeing Policy

[Kinaed]

Greetings,

I've recently (well, after Rhea's death) changed direction on RP policy around fleeing. It occurs to me that I ought to alert players with regards to what to expect.

Players seem to view fleeing for your life as twinking. I'd like for TI players to accept a cultural shift that it's not.

As we are an RP game, we hate coding, and when people walk through a room, we want people to politely stop and emote rather than walk through. Due to this, at some stage between Old TI (Tamara's version) and TI: Legacy, it became viewed as 'twinking' for people to suddenly flee from others. Back in TI's day, what you could codewise get away with was the way it went, and as a result of this, they built guard.

"Good guys" get frustrated when bad guys run, but bad guys usually have their lives on the line. For this reason, most players look at the impact of the results and decide they'd rather be "rude" or "a twink" than dead... and I've decided I support that. I don't think there's a strong enough reason for staff to force bad guys to stick around and 'take their medicine' when comparing those potential outcomes. If it means missing out on capturing a mage, well there's always next time.

So, from a policy perspective, staff will not drag characters back into scenes they've successfully run out of, and that means they've typed <direction> as an action. I will not view people running out of a scene as twinking, I will view exiting a room the same way we view most game commands - as an actual IC action. This is why checking your worth shows you counting your money, or attacking someone actually is an attack - you don't need to emote that you're leaving to leave, you can just leave as your action (we even have diremotes to say how you're leaving and it's threaded so people can attempt to intervene!).

SO WHAT DO YOU DO TO STOP SOMEONE FROM FLEEING?

Guard. Just like back in Tamara's time, at the first hint that someone is a flight risk when your character wouldn't let them run, guard. This is the IC mechanism built into the game to handle this issue, and it is designed to determine if someone can successfully flee or not.

Guard historically had some bugs, but I believe they are resolved now. If you note any problems with it, please tell us via bug board.

[Voxumo]

*Is internally super-glad to see this finally be a thing*

However perhaps there should be someway to prevent fleeing through an up exit, specifically flying. As I understand it, guard can not be used for guarding an air exit? I've never actually tried it, but common sense would say that it couldn't work. Maybe there can be items that when held and used with a command can be used to try and prevent flying related escape? Like a Bow, or a Net?

Just something to put out there as food for thought.

[Dice]

I cannot agree with this, not comfortably, because I think it's extremely anti-roleplay. Why? In my mind, it reduces how things happen in scenes to 'who can type the fastest'. It reminds me of the old days with threaded spells like Atmospheric Vortex, where the people who take the time to actually RP are the people who die, and those who spam out attacks or etc. without any concern to taking their time are the ones who live. In other words, it feels as if we're not just allowing but now actively incentivizing bad behavior, like throwing out rapid-fire attacks the second people start leaving a room, or putting guard on the second we enter a room, before properly RPing it out.

I believe Rhea's death did show an issue but we need a different way to handle it.

[Rei]

Can we have either a means to put a target in to combat rounds without an attack or a method to guard a person instead of an exit if this is the way things are going to be? In most situations I've come across where this happens it is a 1v1 and as far as the scene is concerned weapons are drawn and the fight it ready to break out. Covering an exit deals with all people going in and out of one route, what about the much more common situation of "I'm going to attempt to hit this person should they try to move an inch."?

[Rabek]

Can we have either a means to put a target in to combat rounds without an attack or a method to guard a person instead of an exit if this is the way things are going to be? In most situations I've come across where this happens it is a 1v1 and as far as the scene is concerned weapons are drawn and the fight it ready to break out. Covering an exit deals with all people going in and out of one route, what about the much more common situation of "I'm going to attempt to hit this person should they try to move an inch."?

Guarding an exit can target just one individual. If you target everyone, you can allow specific people through.

As for the policy itself, staff have been pretty clear lately that code trumps RP whenever the two conflict, so given that this is consistent with the established rulings thus far, I can't really complain.

[Rei]

Can we have either a means to put a target in to combat rounds without an attack or a method to guard a person instead of an exit if this is the way things are going to be? In most situations I've come across where this happens it is a 1v1 and as far as the scene is concerned weapons are drawn and the fight it ready to break out. Covering an exit deals with all people going in and out of one route, what about the much more common situation of "I'm going to attempt to hit this person should they try to move an inch."?

Guarding an exit can target just one individual. If you target everyone, you can allow specific people through.

As for the policy itself, staff have been pretty clear lately that code trumps RP whenever the two conflict, so given that this is consistent with the established rulings thus far, I can't really complain.

Right, but you can't stand with your sword at someone's throat and be able to react to any direction they might go despite it making sense to be able to do so. If someone is held at knife point in the Crossroads they'd be able to move freely in three directions despite a person being within striking distance and focusing solely on them.

[Geras]

Yah, I would hope that at least fleeing should only happen without warning when it makes IC sense that you would be able to. Ignoring RP would be twinking. Letting the code handle guard/shouldering as is intended would not be.

[Noobus]

I personally prefer the use of contests or luck rolls during PvP situations, perhaps we could all do that? Letting code handle everything without bringing in the aspect of 'Thee who types fast' wins through stat rolls? You might be extremely good with your bow, but are you fast enough to release the string before that other person darts behind a bystander then out of the room? On the other hand, You might be fast enough to outrun that law enforcer but maaaaaaybe lady luck did not smile down on you tonight and you trip when about to take off, or bump into someone who knocks you back or something. That way, code still handles things BUT we all still get turns. Just my two coins.

[Sabrelon]

So, in short, I'm conflicted on policy like this. I would -prefer- that everything be handled by roleplay, and that everyone be willing to RP everything out. This doesn't work, unfortunately, as you'll have people who panic, or are twinkish, or are just unaware of how to roleplay a situation properly. And, in situations like that, I'd prefer the code -support- the roleplay. In this situation, I'd prefer to see something that initiates combat should someone try to move, forcing them to move along with turns, and forcing them to roleplay out the attempt to avoid their pursuers. This would require pretty strict rules of engagement, and a bit of trust on both players parts, but I'd guess it'd be more effective than just blocking an exit, or allowing someone to spam flee.

Of course, as this situation might favor one side or another, the long-term thing is that it facilitates further roleplay in the long-run (as long as the fleeing player doesn't just hide, forever, which happens), which I generally think is a solid trade.

[Jules]

There's room for confusion here, since FLEE is a coded command that can only be initiated in combat, and it requires an emote to execute. I think what Kinaed is referring to is making an escape outside of combat?

I agree with Dice that faster typing shouldn't be incentivized over RP, either for the person escaping OR for a person guarding. It'd be just as easy to 'twink' the guard (or attack) command, by rushing into it without adequate RP or without giving the bad guy a chance to emote turning and escaping the scene, and that seems just as crappy, because it's a form of power-gaming. I think that if RP has been initiated (this IS an RPI game, is it not?), then the person escaping ought to RP their exit, however briefly or in a diremote, and the escape needs to be reasonable in light of other reasonable actions that have already occurred (i.e. no power-gaming or twinking on either side). If no RP has been initiated, I think it's perfectly acceptable to leave a publically-accessible room or to walk through one without acknowledging others present.

Not knowing the details of the 'Rhea encounter,' I like some of the more flexible solutions being proposed (e.g. contest rolls) for gray-area cases or to define what's 'reasonable' in a given encounter, but this all feels very circumstantial to me. I'm ultimately okay with the policy, but like all policies, it can and will be abused.

Related tangent: the issue of time/speed is actually one of the top reasons why I don't engage in dangerous encounters more often. There's often too much risk of being ganged up on by other PCs who belatedly enter into a tense scene. During the time it takes to thoughtfully and engagingly RP a conflict, additional players can wander in, thereby turning what was meant to be a quick encounter between two or three people into a much bigger, drawn-out affair, with prospects looking increasingly grim for the bad guy. As a bad guy, if I take things OOC to try to negotiate the scene, I then run the risk of looking like I'm trying to use OOC to escape IC consequences. I still haven't figured out how to deal with this issue of speed, yet, but I'm willing to start a new thread if people have advice or opinions to offer.