Fleeing Policy

[Voxumo]

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.

Essentially Rhea was in a scene with upwards of 8, if not more, people. So it was a 8+v1. At the end of it, Rhea emoted using her flight to escape, however soon after the emote was done, I, the player of rhea, used directions to fly upwards, towards the only unguarded exit. However I was then recalled by staff, not forcibly but still, back into the scene, to allow people a chance to react. This basically equated to everyone capable of it being given a chance to attack. So 8+ people's worth of turns attacking 1 person. Mind you there wasn't 8 people attacking, more like 3 or 4 since only bows and extended weapons work against flying folks, but the numbers don't really matter much for the point of this. I won't lie... I was prepared to book it because I knew if rhea stuck around once a certain spell deactivated, she was good as dead. So yeah, I feared for my characters life.

So yeah, basically the issue was that my character was called back to a scene after successfully escaping, a scene that would without a doubt end in her death, because I was expected to give everyone a turn to pose before she left. So 8+ people posing before she could even leave.

That is the gist of it, and I tried to summarize that to the best of my ability while staying unbiased...

[Tremere]

I have a feeling that this policy is going to actively hurt rp because it incentivizes people to go directly to coded attacks due to the risk of someone escaping simply because of the issue of someone typing something really quick and running, breaking turn order or ignoring the realities of the scene. In the Rhea scene could -everyone- have acted? Probably not, but I bet some people would have been quick enough to. I rather liked the compromise that had been discussed at the ooc meeting for things like this. That would prevent people jumping the gun straight to combat and would provide a more roleplay friendly way of solving the issue with a nod towards the code. It removes the twinking issue.

[Kinaed]

I don't agree with the people who view leaving a room as an OOC action. It is IC, just one people dislike because they cannot control the scenario or context of someone else using it.

You don’t have to emote after typing worth, treating a wound, or any other IC command - people just accept that you did something IC. People don't accept that people can run away from them if they haven't put a command (guard) in place to prevent it. To this, I say - too bad. Use guard.

Guard may need some changes to accomodate this burden as it was written for an Implementor with a different mindset and philosophy to my own, and I am considering those potential changes now. Perhaps we can discuss them in the OOC chat. In the meantime, I'd rather have frustrated good guys instead of dead bad guys.

[Kinaed]

At this time, I am thinking to add a command to guard:

Syntax: guard <name> all <emote>

This command would essentially take a standard emote and tag it at the end with [Guard] to let everyone know the emote is a guard action.

If a player attempts to leave when guarded, if they are within weapon range of the guarding party, they will be engaged in combat by the guarding player. A single character can only guard one person in this manner at any time. They can also use only one form of guard (ie, if you guard an exit, you cannot guard a person, and vice versa).

This will kick off turn taking and enforce the use of the already code-balanced flee command to escape.

[Geras]

At this time, I am thinking to add a command to guard:

Syntax: guard <name> all <emote>

This command would essentially take a standard emote and tag it at the end with [Guard] to let everyone know it is a guard action.

If a player attempts to leave when guarded, if they are within weapon range of the guarding party, they will be engaged in combat by the guarding player. A single character can only guard one person in this manner at any time. They can also use only one form of guard (ie, if you guard an exit, you cannot guard a person, and vice versa).

This will kick off turn taking and enforce the use of the already code-balanced flee command to escape.

I like the general idea, but why have it initiate combat? There's already the shoulder command to handle trying to break past someone guarding.

[Kinaed]

Partly because combat is turn based and you can flee from combat, which means that the player attempting to flee can use the flee code for arbitration and intiative standards are enforced. Partly because it follows the seemingly reasonable suggestion of an earlier player to cover the 'stopping one person from going or a beatdown'.

[Dice]

Can we make all forms of guard emoted in this way so it feels less weird/twinky to use in tense situations?

[Pixie]

I tend to feel that emoting is always required of an action which directly involves others -- Worth doesn't concern anyone else, treating a wound does, but it also does require an emote -- it's just the mini-game's multiple quick-fire commands that don't.

In combat rounds, assuming "flee" requires an emote to use (and it does, right?)...

What about: Enforcing a turn order in combat -- Maybe completely random order selected at the time of combat's initiation, based on your Luck score? If we changed combat so it wasn't about who typed the fastest or threw out the least detailed emote and made it so turns were based on something that wasn't an OOC mechanic, there might be less resistance to accepting "flee" as just another combat command.

[Jules]

As with all IC actions that could affect others, the general expectation is that when someone visibly leaves a room, they will provide some context or description, however brief. From Voxumo's explanation, it sounds like the issue wasn't whether the escape was emoted but whether the other players in attendance should have reasonably been given a chance to respond once it became clear that she was escaping. I can understand the frustrations around that, given the code limitations and the way the cards were stacked. I agree that all of the guard commands ought to require an emote and that the guard command could use an update.

Also, Kinaed didn't mention this in her original post, but you can add an emote to your directional movement, for example:

>south at a run, waving his arms frantically!

Displays to the room you're leaving from and the one you're arriving to as:

Jules begins to move south.
Jules leaves south at a run, waving his arms frantically!
Jules arrives from the north at a run, waving his arms frantically!

[Kinaed]

Should we change it so that, to leave from a scene involving more than two players, the direction commands must have an emote input before the thread is input, saying how a person is leaving?

Right now it's quite optional, but I would think that leaving RP, an emote ought to be required. The laziness is just that we're all used to typing '<emote>' '<direction>' to leave rather than 'direction <emote>' to leave.