05 Oct, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
So, as I've previously mentioned on here, I'm working on creating a MUD that is intended to be entirely RP Enforced, all the time. I'm wanting a realistic world in many respects, and a not so realistic world in others. After a quick conversation about a city idea me and my World-Creator person had (really, I'm too heavily involved with World Design right now, and need to get back to focusing on Code, but it's all just so fun to build a world. And I'm the Owner so neener neener they have to do what I say, etc.) I began to wonder just how far I want certain "adult" themes to go in my MUD world, and where I should draw the line.

I'll add the disclaimer that much of this conversation is pointless, since I do plan on running off of the Dawn of Time engine, simply because I'm familiar with it and have yet to find another codebase in C++, which is what I'd prefer to write in, or another one that has swayed me away from wanting to use Dawn of Time very much, though this early on I might break away from Dawn for the reasons I'm about to describe: the Dawn of Time licensure does not allow "Adult Muds" to be run using its codebase.

This isn't limited to just sex-RP, though I'll begin with that. While I understand the idea and intent behind those who argue "You shouldn't limit what people can RP about" the concern – and, as I've seen it, a very valid one! – is that if you build it, they will come. Inevitably a MUD that allows explicit sex-scenes to be RPed out will develop a culture, or a sub-culture, based entirely around sex. I don't want that; I don't want people to come to my world just so they can RP nibbling at unmentionables. Add to that the problems that places like this often develop because of the Internet-curse (IRL stalking and harassment, silly drama disputes because Char A had sex with Char B instead of Char C) and I think the problems of letting people RP as they please quickly begin to outweigh the benefits of having an open mind about it. I'm fairly certain my rule on the matter is going to be "take anything explicit off of the MUD, period, or Fade to Black."

But what about other themes? The brief conversation I had with my RP-person, Flayre, revolved around brothels and human trafficking. If I want to have a no-sex MUD, how far should I allow sex-themes to go? Prostitution is certainly something that I can't imagine wouldn't happen in my MUD, and brothels would certainly exist. Should I build them, though? My worry is that the presence of these places will encourage some of the seedier players who might come play my MUD to assume certain things about it. Granted, that is easilly fixed with a warning, a ban, and a disclaimer, so I'm prone on leaning towards allowing such to exist. (As my RP Person pointed out, I had already pushed towards having a "Siren" race, anyways!)

But then there's slavery. Slavery is an organization that I find completely horrible for so many reasons. I'll not get into it. But it's something that certainly happens, especially when you have so much conflict and demand for manpower that the time period and world structure promotes. I find myself wanting to simply say that Slavery is an act deplored by the Gods, etcetc, only because I know that I can. But that takes away from what I want to do with my world, in the grand scheme of things, and it's certainly a cop-out. So while I don't really want to have a Slave presence in my MUD, I believe that I still will, because of the depth that institution gives into the mentality of these races and kingdoms I'm creating. Further, I don't really think that too many players would find the presence of slaves highly offensive, given that it exists in a way that makes sense within the world, and I'd certainly never have a player become a slave unless they expressly wanted it OOCly.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, if you have any. Are there any problems that you know of coming up from allowing or not allowing "adult themes" (either of these three types or others) in a Role-Playing world? How much do you think players would hate seeing RP opportunities restricted to things that are more PG-13 (or even R, as opposed to X)?
05 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
The problem is that whether you allow it to happen or no, its going to happen anyways, and your ability to police it is going to be limited, since you can't watch what every person is going to be doing every moment of every day.

As a rule of thumb I've always said that roleplay that occurs within consenting adults is fine, as long as they aren't shoving it in other people's facts. This goes for sex rp of course, but also other roleplays - particularly bloody or controversial roleplay.

That said, you shouldn't put yourself out of your own comfort zone in your mud. Just because it exists doesn't mean you haven to bang on it.

Maya/Rudha
05 Oct, 2010, Mudder wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Coming from an RP enforced background in a MUD I will say that adult-themes (if that only applies to sex) shouldn't really be a worry.

The MUD I played had a PG-13 rule. It wasn't hardcore enforced, in fact, I can't think of a time when it was (8 years of playing). If you don't reward sex IG ( Like all the Godwars I've played with xsocials), most players will rather spend time doing something that will offer some sort of IG reward - rather than break something they're pretty sure is a rule.

Brothels existed, even street prostitutes walking around asking if you wanted to have a good time. Sure, an occasional player would try and have mudsex with my character but I played it off, RPly, and went to go kill someone because it just wasn't worth it. I don't find MUDsex RP especially compelling. In other words, just make it a general rule and it will enforce itself. As long as the line is a grey area, they will approach it but I doubt hardly any would bother crossing it into a hardcore raunchy scene of lust.

As for slavery, why wouldn't you want it? In reality I am a hardcore atheist. I find the idea of a god silly and it makes no sense to me but when I RP, some of my favourite characters are extremely religious. I find that many characters tend to RP things that in real life are their exact opposite. (Obviously few will kill someone in real life for a sexy helmet) It's all about fantasy and that is the appeal of RP MUD.

I think that if you abolish slavery in a MUD due to your OOC dislike of the institution you are dispelling a valuable part of the fantasy and it can only hurt your MUD. No player should be offended from it's existence, it is there to enhance RP and it certainly does. Who doesn't love RPing an oppressed race of slaves rising up to return and kill "The man" ??

EDIT: Did I mention I also dislike slavery? I think almost everyone does.
05 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 4th comment:
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Mudder said:
If you don't reward sex IG ( Like all the Godwars I've played with xsocials),

While the xsocials may not have added any RP, they sure added some very entertaining drama to the original GW - probably more so than other feature I've ever implemented.
05 Oct, 2010, Mudder wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Mudder said:
If you don't reward sex IG ( Like all the Godwars I've played with xsocials),

While the xsocials may not have added any RP, they sure added some very entertaining drama to the original GW - probably more so than other feature I've ever implemented.

I still remember a buddy of mine sending me a message on AIM, asking me to have sex with him. It was a little unsettling. Once he agreed to give me some things though, I quickly agreed. Lol. It's disturbing. :wink:
05 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 6th comment:
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Mudders secret gay life comes to light! Controversy!

Okay, I'm being facetious. Mostly.

I think we can agree that having IG rewards for that kind of roleplay is probably going to encourage the wrong kind of thing.

Maya/Ruhd
05 Oct, 2010, Dean wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
I'll mirror what Rudha has said more or less. Whether it gets out of hand as you might fear will depend partly on two variables in the equation; the intricacies of your theme and the nucleus of your player base.

By intricacies of your theme, I mean things like city laws or other small snippets of information that aren't going to appear in your MUD's description on a listing site.

As an example, religious texts of Old Beard the Drunkard might stipulate that sex before marriage is a really bad thing. So any city with a Church dedicated to this particular god might well dissuade people from indulging such acts (at least where everyone can see) lest they suffer the wrath of the divine (or more likely, the pointy end of a sword).

Another example; In the Kingdom of Barbarianism, the Warlord has decreed that men and women cannot engage in any activity with one another (even conversation!) in public. On the opposite end of the scale, you might have a city where anything goes.. but how long will it stand before some religious fanatic incites an army to cleanse this foul den?

Brothels give a (mostly) legal (from a thematic point of view) outlet for those inclined to go this route but can still carry consequences for frequenting these places. Primarily social ones for those politically ambitious (or eying any role that is in the public eye that those higher up would prefer such.. immorality not be visible in that role) or those at the top of the social ladder - such things could be used as ammunition in the right (or wrong) hands. Then of course, if your Brothels are attracting commoners as well as all manner of low lives, then they just might become dangerous places for those who step out of line.

Then onto slavery. I would suggest that having slavery but on the caveat that it is made clear that all the gods frown upon this (I'm assuming from a thematic point of view here), is perhaps not a good thing. Especially so if religion is going to play a reasonably sized role in your MUD. People for example, might start to wonder why the Gods allow this to occur if they all condemn it. Not all slavery need be bad either in the sense of taking people and forcing them to do stuff against their will. In the Kingdom of All Loopy, slave trading and the possessing of slaves might legal (Think Illium in Mass Effect 2 for similar example) but there are strict guidelines to dictate this business. It might even be the case that particularly poor people willingly offer themselves to Nobles knowing that while they might not get paid in coin for their work, their new master will ensure they are fed well and have a roof over their head.

Onto my point about players now (and this ties into what Rudha said - quote below)
Quote
and your ability to police it is going to be limited, since you can't watch what every person is going to be doing every moment of every day.


From personal experience, (on both sides of the fence), your core group of players (those generally have either been around since day one or a really long time) are going to know the intricacies of your theme and in most cases, residing in mid to high positions in factions/government/religion/other and as such, they'll likely do a fair bit of "enforcing" themselves within the realm of role play. This is not to say your staff shouldn't bother trying to police at all (I think they should) but to do so knowing they won't catch everything and that spending too much time snooping players to make sure they aren't misbehaving takes time away from developing new content/plots for events/etc.

Obviously, starting out you might not have that core group in place but for a time, that could be supplemented by your staff.

Your biggest problem at this point though is not being able to run an Adult MUD, I believe. I played around a little with the DoT codebase years ago so I don't remember the specifics of the license but short of slapping on a pg 13+ rating and making it clear that sex, slavery etc are not welcome themes (regardless of whether they can be policed or not) you might run into trouble down the road.
05 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 8th comment:
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I think that the reason for not having sex RP is very different from the reason for not having brothels or slavery. Sex RP involves people actually, well, role-playing these things; people are involved in the act for better or for worse. A world with brothels and slavery does not necessarily involve the players partaking, and in fact could provide an opportunity for players to free slaves, etc.

It seems a little inconsistent to forbid slavery due to some touch of some gods' hands but allow other things. For example, prostitution, in many cases, is in fact a form of slavery! What about extreme violence like beheading people, spilling their guts, and so forth? I think that MUD players have been inoculated against such things to some extent, perhaps because a textual description isn't as graphic as actually seeing it – but regardless players are usually willing to suspend disbelief (as it were) for violence, even if normally they might take offense. Under normal circumstances I would find even a shred of the violence described in MUDs rather disturbing, but as pure fiction I have no problem with it whatsoever. I disagree that there is zero risk of offense here; I think it's a little misplaced to ignore people's sensibilities on painful dividing issues that run deep in our culture. But I think that how you present the issue will make a huge difference. If the slavers are very clearly the Bad Guys, then it provides all sorts of opportunities – psychological and game-play – for players to feel good about themselves and point the finger at the Bad Guys, even if they are playing a bloodthirsty villain themselves (who, for whatever reason, refuses to enslave people). On the other hand, if the slavers are presented in any form of positive light, then you are rapidly crossing a very dangerous line.

Think about Lord of the Rings: were you offended when you saw the orcs and Urukhai enslaving people? Well, you probably thought to yourself something like: "hey, those guys gave me yet another reason to hate them! Woohoo, go Aragorn!!"

The point here is that if you want a realistic world in which people behave as we know, from our own history, psychology will push them to behave, then slavery is a natural consequence of a more or less lawless world with clear and strong power lines between groups of people. If you're going to not have slavery, I would not try to explain it; just pretend it never happened. Nearly any explanation you provide will be cheesy, and inconsistent to boot. So the gods hate slavery so much that they make it impossible, but they're fine with stealing people's livelihoods to the point of death by starvation; they're fine with people getting mugged and murdered; they're fine with wars that kill hundreds of thousands; etc. ? Speaking of "drawing the line", you'd put yourself into quite a pickle if you have gods (or whatever supernatural force) who get picky and choosy about which reprehensible acts are in fact ok after all and which aren't.

In any case, to actually answer your question, I think that the line should be drawn when player involvement gets deeper than you are comfortable with. You gave very practical reasons to avoid the role-play of sexual acts: it creates needless divides between players based on jealousy; it attracts certain unsavory players; heck, it might even be illegal in some places, and you have to worry about the age of participants lest you expose yourself to liability; and so forth. It's interesting that your arguments were not really about moral issues (people are doing unsavory things on the MUD, oh my!) but about practical ones. I believe that the practical issues come from the fact that the players are actually enacting these scenarios, whereas (presumably) they won't be enslaving people. Anyhow, if you want to paint some activity as "bad" (or "worse" than others, I suppose), just make sure that only NPCs can do it, and they're all pretty clearly bad guys.
05 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
I think my problem with arguements like yours, David, is that MUDs like these are clearly designed for adults. And I'm not just saying that in the sense of 'mature themes', I'm saying that in that these kind of MUDs are designed for people of mature age to play, as opposed to kiddies. While I'm a bit of an anomaly (I've been MUDding since I was 11), the average younger person has a lot of difficulty psychologically seperating whats okay in a game world, and whats okay in the game world. Adults, should not, though there is some deviant psychology I could delve into, and shouldn't.

I do find it somewhat curious that as a culture, we have a sort of inoculation from extreme violence. We can have games where people literally get decapitated, disemboweled, thrown through woodchippers. This is okay. But the moment a game has titties in it? Well, that gets the child protection groups out in force. The Mass Effect "controversy" comes to mind, and that was a pretty PG-13 scene. Ben Croshaw described it best: "Not even enough flesh to satisfy the world's most choosy cannibal." It's worth keeping in mind that these reactions come into play when it's kids involved. If you say its a mud for 18+ or whatever, then sure, you can't stop kids if they really want to participate, but you've protected yourself.

That said, as David himself said, a lot of it can be dramatically changed by how it is portrayed and perceived in your world. It can change things from 'another unrepentant and petulant furry sex mush' (you know who you are!) to 'harsh world where unpleasant things happen'. An article I recently read in The Escapist was an interesting discourse on how games these days can be modern morality plays, and I think there's some truth to it. People are much less likely to complain when the morality you're portraying in the world is in line with their own.

I think it's worth considering that you shouldn't be designing a MUD that you aren't comfortable playing. You're not going to lose integrity by omitting things you don't see the point of, or get upset by. You mention that slavery bothers you - why? If the idea of having slavery bothers you because you think it would encourage the wrong kind of player, than as David suggested, emphasise that its a horrid thing that the gods look down upon, and you should be okay. If it bothers you, as a person, then it's probably not worth addressing. The same goes for excessive violence, or prostitution, or sex.

The most important thing is to be consistent. Like I said, it seems somewhat abhorrent to me that I can brutally murder someone in a frankly way-over-the-top way and yet I couldn't see the mention of text-titties or something. People will call you on that kind of thing. They've been calling videos games on that since the early nineties, let alone MUDs.

Maya/Rudha
05 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 10th comment:
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I think social network type games have an obligation to have some type of decorum. Otherwise you should clearly label that your game contains rated X material.
05 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 11th comment:
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Runter said:
I think social network type games have an obligation to have some type of decorum. Otherwise you should clearly label that your game contains rated X material.


What exactly obligates us? As long as they follow the laws and don't allow anything regarded as breaches of privacy or exploitation of minors, there really isn't a legal obligation.

MUD designers are designing more than just game systems, they're designing games. If anyone forgets that, then they've lost touch with the point of what we do all this programming fappery for. As long as the game you design is fun for those involved, then why should they have an obligation to please anyone else? It's like having a heavy metal concert and having to please random country music fans that wander in. Which is to say more plainly, different strokes are for different folks; if you're not breaking any laws, and you're having fun doing whatever it is you're doing, don't let anyone else tell you any differently.

Maya/Rudha
05 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
I think my problem with arguements like yours, David, is that MUDs like these are clearly designed for adults.

I'm not sure I understand what problem you're pointing out with my argument… I didn't say that this stuff should be given to children…

Rudha said:
While I'm a bit of an anomaly (I've been MUDding since I was 11), the average younger person has a lot of difficulty psychologically seperating whats okay in a game world, and whats okay in the game world.

I think you somewhat overestimate your status as an anomaly; it's not at all uncommon for kids to have been playing games not "meant for kids" for quite a while. The particular group of people on this forum is also a rather biased sample; whether or not you are an anomaly in the bigger world (and honestly I don't think you/we are), I'm all but certain that your situation is not unusual here. That said, I think Bobo is ok with the MUD being meant for a generally mature crowd, or at least people older than 11. In fact, he more or less explicitly said that in his concluding question.

Also, I don't buy the argument about children having "a lot of difficulty psychologically" separating game from reality; that sounds a lot like the arguments that D&D is nothing but a satanist cult and kids will think they can fly and shoot fireballs and stuff. Do you have references for that statement? It gets trotted out a lot but it feels more like hearsay than something with solid scientific evidence. I'm also not sure why it's relevant, because the same argument should apply to the violence that is pervasive in MUDs and of course video games more generally (not to mention TV, etc.).
I think that this might be a tangent, though, and not wholly relevant to the original post (or what I said in my post, for that matter). I don't think that anybody is discussing whether or not this stuff is ok for young children (questions of personal anomalies aside); I think the question was at which point something becomes unacceptable even as an adult theme.


Incidentally, rereading the OP, I'm a little surprised that prostitution and human trafficking was considered ok but slavery was considered different. I said in my post that some prostitution is a form of slavery and hadn't picked up on Bobo making that comment explicitly; isn't it a little weird, Bobo, to be ok with enslaving people for the purposes of prostitution but then to be unhappy with enslaving people for the purposes of labor?
05 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 13th comment:
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I think there's an obligation to your users. I don't want to play on a mud that's not safe for work. I expect to know that a certain amount moderation will happen. This expectation is no different from going to a mainstream movie (perhaps with your mother) and not wanting it to degrade into a porno. The morality isn't the issue.

I think attitudes like the one you just expressed aren't practical at all.

Edit: on the other hand we are talking about an "adult" game so maybe its clearly labeled. I just wonder why we would have a conversation about the appropriateness of xrated content on an "adult".
05 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 14th comment:
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I should certainly hope you don't take your mother to x-rated movies if she's not okay with that. How is, for example, having a MUD where you have peoples limbs lopped off, or hearts ripped out, okay, but not sexuality of any measure?

Your somewhat confused response is the problem that I have with video games these days, and indeed popular media, to go into a broader social commentary: in no other context than modern popular media would that kind of violence be okay, but we glorify it, whereas sexuality, which is something that I can gaurantee you is happening right now in bedroom across the world - is demonised and completely unacceptable in any measure.

Maya/Rudha
05 Oct, 2010, Mudder wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
I'd like to point out that this extreme violence and sexual censorship is mostly localized to America.

Much of the world does not have this issue and does not have such a tolerance for violence that Americans call normal.
05 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 16th comment:
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I didn't say anything about having no sexuality. I said I don't want to play a game with the expectation that its not porn and have to deal with completely unmoderated content. I.e. X rated. And this lame argument about violence is made time and time again. There's an extreme of violence I am going to be turned off by in games too. You equating extremes to all things is really quite silly.
05 Oct, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 17th comment:
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Rudha said:
Your somewhat confused response is the problem that I have with video games these days, and indeed popular media, to go into a broader social commentary: in no other context than modern popular media would that kind of violence be okay, but we glorify it, whereas sexuality, which is something that I can gaurantee you is happening right now in bedroom across the world - is demonised and completely unacceptable in any measure.

Maya/Rudha


It's really not, one just has to look at the extent of it. Further, the "fight" over violence and the like has already happened: remember when games like Doom came out, the impact they – okay, they didn't really have that much of an impact because video games didn't have that big of an impact. The issue is larger now because the industry is: the more people affected the greater the problem. Now, though, violence in video games has become expressly the norm, and you have a difficult time attacking something as socially unacceptable after it has become socially acceptable. There's always an outcry, there's always a controversy, but expressions of controversial topics tend to be integrated over time, with time healing the wounds of surprise and fear of the naysayers. They know it, which is why "they" want to impose long-lasting and difficult-to-change laws now so that the apathy or acceptance of later doesn't change their precious social structure.
05 Oct, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 18th comment:
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David Haley said:
Incidentally, rereading the OP, I'm a little surprised that prostitution and human trafficking was considered ok but slavery was considered different. I said in my post that some prostitution is a form of slavery and hadn't picked up on Bobo making that comment explicitly; isn't it a little weird, Bobo, to be ok with enslaving people for the purposes of prostitution but then to be unhappy with enslaving people for the purposes of labor?


Sorry for the confusion, I got off-beat because the original conversation I had regarded "human trafficking" and I expanded it later as a sub-set of slavery. To explain my personal views more, it disgusts me to no end that a human being would consider themselves empowered enough to call another human being their own property, but since I do have, as you gave a LotR version of, orcs .. well, orcs probably do think themselves empowered enough to call someone else their own property, and even if this all was a one-race fantasy world, I do understand how easy it is to establish ownership over others given the sort of world I would create. I mentioned the cheap solution of "Teh Gods forbid it!" as one way that I could solve the problem but, as you said, it'd be cheesy and the players would probably scoff at it.

But this goes back to my question: where do I draw the line? In the end I think it's all about 1) justifiable morality and 2) administrative problems that arise. I can justify the in-game morality or mentality of slavery, even if I hate it IRL, as something that is used to give more depth to the world I am creating while not actually supporting the actual, real-life slavery that does or has gone on; I can't see the specific use of slavery in my game attracting many, if any, players that I don't want or causing too many problems, so long as I make sure people either can't be enslaved or can't be enslaved without express OOC consent. So, then, I don't think that I should limit it, despite the fact that I'm not too terribly comfortable with the idea here.
Dean said:
Your biggest problem at this point though is not being able to run an Adult MUD, I believe. I played around a little with the DoT codebase years ago so I don't remember the specifics of the license but short of slapping on a pg 13+ rating and making it clear that sex, slavery etc are not welcome themes (regardless of whether they can be policed or not) you might run into trouble down the road.


And yeah, from considering all of this I'm really beginning to wonder if I might just be better off rolling with a different codebase, not because I want to run an "Adult MUD" but because someone else might think that I am running an "Adult MUD."
05 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Mudder said:
I'd like to point out that this extreme violence and sexual censorship is mostly localized to America.

I was just about to comment on that, and I think it's been discussed here on MudBytes before as well. I've noticed that the USA seems to heavily censor sex and nudity but not violence - while in Germany it tends to be the opposite way around (eg see here and here), and the UK seems to be somewhere between the two. Not sure about other countries, as I've only watched movies and played computer games from those three.
05 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
As someone who pretty much has secondary residence in Scotland, and by extention the United Kingdom, (and indeed is a UK national) I can say that their censorship is about on par with Canadian and American censorship, they just don't make as much a fuss about it so long as it is properly labelled, which really seems to be the point of contention. Runter seems to be concerned that because of the nature of online communities he may go into a game with certain expectations of behaviour, but because of elements in the gameworld, this may encourage abhorrent behaviour that he would not want to deal with. Really, as I've said before here, David's approach is probably the best if you do want to have those elements in a game: ensure that it is in no uncertain terms made out that these acts are evil, and the result of Evil People being evil. As to it popping up n muds with none or very little of that kind of thing in the game world - it happens trust me - that really just comes down to the MUD admins policing things, and the population reporting those things.

I tend to agree with Dean that these things are very likely to become self-regulated in communities with a healthy player base - I've been witness to that myself. I won't name names publicly here because its tangential and Im providing an example not trying to tarnish reputations, my character ended up doing that herself, when she basically became aware of a sex ring operating out of a player-owned house she had the city it was in repossess it and brand the people involved enemies. The administration never had to get involved.

Maya/Rudha
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