(08-29-2015, 11:44 AM)Oli! Wrote: I still can't really see this as valid. People are free to do what they want in a public location. Additionally, one of the central unspoken tenets of any RP community is the idea that you don't have to RP with anyone that you don't want to. This would be in violation of that tenet.
If you were to walk up to a group of friends playing Monopoly in the park, ask if you can play, and then get denied, you can't say, "well this park is a clearly public location, and you must therefore let me play Monopoly with you." Similarly, if someone has their Ferrari parked in a street, you can't say "you have to let me drive your car, because you parked it in a public location." They're using private property in an open spot. Having someone play Monopoly with you, or driving your car when you don't want them to isn't a consequence of being where you are. Yes, you might be able to avoid these unwanted advances if you parked your Ferrari in a garage, or played Monopoly in your living room, but you also don't have to accept these advances just because you're in a public place. Just because something is out in the open doesn't mean that you are automatically allowed to partake in it.
In the context of this game, the Public Area is The Game, and the Private Property is Your Roleplay. Just as I am free to play Monopoly in the park with my friends and exclude people if I wish, other people are free to Roleplay in public with their friends and exclude people if they want to. It is even possible to turn the Consequences theme on its head, and say that if you decide to try and get involved in things that other people are doing, then you have to accept them excluding you as a consequence for your actions.
I also don't think that the concept of IC Consequence Avoidance applies here anyway, because they are not asking for anything; if I were to sit out in a bench in Ul'dah ICly, and someone Roleplays sniping my character and killing them without my approval, with their reasoning being "well, that's the consequence of sitting on a park bench in an area without security," I think that everyone here would be willing to agree that that would be at least slightly unreasonable. It's the same thing with Private Roleplay; if some people just sit out in the middle of a place talking about something, and someone comes over and tries to join, then I don't think it could be seen as Consequence Avoidance for them to say, "actually this is just between us, sorry."
It would be different if the scenario was such that they did ask for it, such as making it public and then making it private later, or giving someone permission to overhear them and deciding against it later, but those are both instances in which the Roleplay is no longer private, and therefore does not apply to the circumstances that we're discussing.
As far as turning people into an audience goes, I don't think that this is so at all. No one is forcing anyone else to do nothing but watch, and you are entirely within your rights to leave, roleplay around them, pretend they're there anyway, pretend they're not there, use them as barstools, or whatever else you may fancy.
I reject the idea that RP is inherently private property at all times. RP in public is public; you are making it clear by your presence in public and your RP there that you are, indeed, an RPer, that your character exists, and that they're in this location. You have a right not to RP with someone, certainly, but you do not have the right to preemptively declare that the conversation you're having in the middle of the Quicksand (to use an example) is private and that no one else can overhear it or interact with you. That's bad form, and it interferes with another central tenet of RP, which is that anyone can play if they're willing to make an effort. Don't we hold ourselves out as an open, welcoming group of people? Don't we try to engage others?
It is, to me, extremely bad form for an RPer to engage in RP in a public location, then OOCly tell a person "You can't participate" or to simply ignore them outright. I'm not saying you must RP with them to any great extent. What I am saying is that you, as an RPer, owe them as a matter of proper decorum the recognition of their existence ICly. If you don't want them there, you can make that extremely clear ICly. This is a perfect example of ICA = ICC, actually. The IC action is talking in public. The IC reaction can be someone reacting to that. That reaction itself can get a reaction, and so it goes. The problem is when, instead of there being an IC reaction, the first party throws a tell at them (going OOC) to say, "Sorry, private scene, get lost."
I think the difference we have is that I consider the very presence of a character in a public location to be an automatic consent to social interaction. The IC action is being somewhere; a reasonable IC consequence is people interacting with you. If you don't want to give that automatic consent, the world is full of places where you can go where it's unlikely anyone will run into you and it's generally understood that the scene defaults to private.
I suppose, then, we'll have to agree to disagree, since we appear to have different conceptions of auto-consent and ICA = ICC.
(As a side note, your example of being shot by a sniper is actually an issue of consent and escalation of consent, and part of that is that you can't do something to someone's character that's greater than what they've agreed to. Taking someone out because they were sitting on a park bench with no other story elements involved is a blatant violation of any plausible concept of consent.)
The Freelance Wizard
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((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
