It was always my policy that players may police their own in private (personal messages) or semi private settings (clan chat). Whether or not things happened on these channels is rather inconsequential to the standards we maintained on public channels. I think that's pretty fair.

Rudha you do realise I'm English, right? I moved to Germany for work, but I'm still a British national, and I lived there for the first 26 years of my life. We get a lot of American movies and TV shows in the UK, and I used to import most of my DVDs (as well as quite a few computer games) from the US, so I've had quite a lot of exposure to stuff from both sides of the pond. The differences in censorship, while not huge, always seemed pretty obvious to me - but perhaps I just watch too much TV.

In the Netherlands there's not much censorship of anything with the exception of political incorrect thought, which from what I've gathered is worse in Germany and less severe in the United States due to the first amendment.

Like violence themed games, adult themed muds have the usual gender imbalance, unless you go for a BDSM themed game in which case there tends to be an abundance of submissive females.

Bottom line is that the most obvious way to discourage sex becoming the major theme (besides outright banning it) is to encourage a gender imbalance.

I think that kind of comment is about where this thread will now self-destruct..

Maya/Rudha

Scandum - Since this is an RP MUD, I doubt a gender imbalance would be a huge deterrent. I've RPed a gay giant warrior whom lead the crime underworld with an iron fist. While I wouldn't engage in MUD sex, who knows?

I agree, the self policing in MUDs is the best route. Imagine luring a player hoping to have sex into a secluded hut only to kill him. I like it.

We really should have a 'quotes' thread :biggrin:

Let's do ourselves a favor and not talk about Scandum's BDSM games or entertain more rants about political correctness censorship…


Well, I think of it this way: when you see a movie like Syriana, they're depicting torture as a fact of life but not something to be lauded or even tolerated. It just is. But then you might watch a movie/musical like Chicago, where the line between criminal and hero is far more blurry.


Well, I don't know what your theme is exactly, but personally I would steer well clear of players being involved in the actual enslaving. They might witness NPC slavers doing their thing; they might use it as an RP background for their character (perhaps they were a slave who escaped?); etc. But the notion of players actually enslaving other players (even with consent) or NPCs raises all sorts of red flags for me; even on a very practical level of administrative fall-out that might occur. (What would it even mean for a player to consent to IC slavery – what consequence would this have on gameplay?)


I think that this kind of thing might sound good in theory but not work well in practice…


Re: different countries and accepted norms for violence, sexuality, etc.:
France's position is generally that nudity is ok (and in fact, often won't cause people to look twice) and violence is less ok, but gratuitous, obviously comic violence (as it were) is ok. Violence that involves psychological violence or too much graphic gore will be less ok. So for example, Starship Troopers got a "-12" rating (meaning you must be 12 or older) whereas Reservoir Dogs was "-16". Relatively few movies get the -16 rating, and it usually means that there are hard scenes to watch from a psychological standpoint. Sin City also got a -16 rating, for example.
As an example of how little nudity matters, it is not unusual to see naked women show up in all kinds of unrelated advertisements, like for yogurt, watches, or perhaps slightly more on topic, various beauty products (shampoo, soap, perfume, etc.).

A gender balance might be a necessity for a RP environment however, I've never seen much roleplaying on male dominated games, while female dominated environments tend to be purely social.

Yeah, in letting my comment stew over for a few hours while I was in Conceptual Physics (tangent: why do I have to take Conceptual Physics to unlock more advanced physics in college?! I've taken a physics higher than this in High School as well as several levels of Calculus. I could sleep through this class – in fact, I sometimes do) and I feel like what you've said is certainly the better option. I've played in RP Environments where slavery was allowed, and I've noticed it starts to cause some OOC/IC problems in the same vein as allowing explicit sex scenes. In the end it's almost encouraging players to view other players in a way that I would really prefer to not deal with, so I'm likely to just keep slavery an NPC thing, though that's not set in stone to be sure.



Yeah, I agree. I've been wondering how to address the talks of "self policing" and while I feel like it could be okay, it could get out of hand way, way too fast. Certainly people have quoted needing a good core group of players to help that policing, but I'm not so sure that's a solid approach. To me, if it's against the rules and you find out that it's going on then you should address it, else it just promotes people breaking the rules in other manners. Nip it in the bud, as they say. From what I've seen of the RPer Physique, those that would be "lured into a house to kill him" would either a) flip out because Oh Noez They're Booty iz Attacking!!!1 or b) be lureable because they actually play a character to get into a mentality, not to have an ego-boosting textual intercourse, or whatever.

Noticed some sites might have an 'uncencored' or 'unmoderated' area (maybe not muds but some forums), seems like if enough people want it then the content could be controlled by someone opting in under the condition they don't get butthurt about it..kind of like how pk is enforced. Yet maybe keep it seperate from the rest?

..and the saftey word is 'flee' :D

And people wonder why I believe that roleplayers are insane.

I have had bad experiences with MUDs whose archons were too obsessed with the sexual side of RPing. I would recommend you keep it out of anything official and restrain it in public if necessary, but what they do behind closed doors is nobody's business but theirs.

Chiming in late here, but my two cents….

I tend to think that the player population will decide for itself what's acceptable and what isn't. If you enforce role-playing so as to make griefing and other purely disruptive activities a bannable offense, the rest will kindof work itself out amongst the players. While I don't think having players doing mud-sex in the newbie town square is a great idea, if they want to get a room, more power to them.

One thing I think I'd do in an RP-enforced game is remove all the stupid socials. Teach people how to emote what they want to say/feel/do for themselves, not via a canned shortcut. If you want to smile at me, type "emote smiles at $T with joyful recognition!" or "emote smiles at $T suggestively.". Put the players fully in control of what they say and do, rather than a bunch of lame greeting card one-liners. :)

The important thing is that RP be distinct from gameplay mechanics. That may seem odd, but rewarding people for role-playing in a computer game is just asking for exploits and abuse. If a GM happens to see someone role-playing a scene and considers it worth a reward, that's one thing… but make sure the players know there's no automated way to smile/slap/tickle their way up the food chain.

I could not agree more.