10-04-2025, 02:48 PM
What follows is my personal opinion, not the opinion of the mod team or the administrators.
I think we should just ban weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, biological, and chemical. Any subjective case-by-case rule here is just going to be unworkably complex from an OOC perspective, and will lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
Imp:
We simply do not have the OOC knowledge on the mod team (and cannot expect to have it) to make these determinations.
We do not today have, and do not plan to have, an enforced resource index. Without that, this point cannot be ensured and will easily be the subject of argument.
This state is not working now, and shouldn't be our aim. Players in both Kundrati and Hutori have spent significant real life effort writing IC posts trying to justify WMDs in the recent past. Because no one in the community has actively voiced complaints to them, they might reasonably expect when they try to RP with others that those must be recognized. When and if the other player chooses NOT to recognize them, those players will be understandably frustrated and upset at the effort they spent not having paid off. I would much rather make this a flat out ban (nobody can use these, so don't waste your time) instead of a case-by-case "well, Vesica gets the benefit of the doubt because he's been here longer, but Dredd can't have them even though he spent several posts RPing building them because he's new and too edgy for my taste." Put more simply - I do not want vigilantism, I do not want community monitoring, I want clear up front rules that make it easy for all players to know where there's a line.
Wu:
This extreme option is obviously no more tenable than allowing no one nukes, in my opinion. It will similarly lead to frustration for players who will just end up ignored because they built a tool that is allowed to everyone but then used it badly.
Mbites:
I believe my response to Wu applies here too. NOT acting in this case means accepting that both Hutori and Kundrati are OK to proceed with the RP they have done, and that if players don't like it they can just opt to not consent. Do we actually think that that is going to lead to anything but frustration at some future date when it's not just "building a nuke" RP but becomes "using a nuke" RP? I think that's the obvious place we're heading.
Greek:
And IMO this is just a restatement of the already-existing rule that RP requires consent.
To me it reads as if you're just arguing that we should apply rules that already exist. That's fine and I agree that we should - but how, both in these cases and in general cases should we do so, when everything I have said above applies? Your approach here would leave much to community enforcement and subjective interpretations of intent. These can work fine on most things, as we have seen, but on weapons of this caliber (and particularly insofar as they are seen as means to international relevance), it's just going to be easier for everyone - mods, community, and players, if we say "nope, nobody has those". It's fair, it's impartial, it's easy to understand, and it's enforceable.
I think we should just ban weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, biological, and chemical. Any subjective case-by-case rule here is just going to be unworkably complex from an OOC perspective, and will lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
Imp:
Quote: 1. Nations must be able to demonstrate technical know-how with respect to being able to "master" nuclear technology.
We simply do not have the OOC knowledge on the mod team (and cannot expect to have it) to make these determinations.
Quote:2. Nations must be able to demonstrate how they acquired the materials necessary.
We do not today have, and do not plan to have, an enforced resource index. Without that, this point cannot be ensured and will easily be the subject of argument.
Quote:[...] we have a self-managing community wherein we aren't afraid to hold people accountable. I think once a proper criterion is laid out, players can do that "monitoring" part on their own.
This state is not working now, and shouldn't be our aim. Players in both Kundrati and Hutori have spent significant real life effort writing IC posts trying to justify WMDs in the recent past. Because no one in the community has actively voiced complaints to them, they might reasonably expect when they try to RP with others that those must be recognized. When and if the other player chooses NOT to recognize them, those players will be understandably frustrated and upset at the effort they spent not having paid off. I would much rather make this a flat out ban (nobody can use these, so don't waste your time) instead of a case-by-case "well, Vesica gets the benefit of the doubt because he's been here longer, but Dredd can't have them even though he spent several posts RPing building them because he's new and too edgy for my taste." Put more simply - I do not want vigilantism, I do not want community monitoring, I want clear up front rules that make it easy for all players to know where there's a line.
Wu:
Quote: 2. Be accessible to anyone, without depending on a subjective determination about the RP lead up to their procurement.
This extreme option is obviously no more tenable than allowing no one nukes, in my opinion. It will similarly lead to frustration for players who will just end up ignored because they built a tool that is allowed to everyone but then used it badly.
Mbites:
I believe my response to Wu applies here too. NOT acting in this case means accepting that both Hutori and Kundrati are OK to proceed with the RP they have done, and that if players don't like it they can just opt to not consent. Do we actually think that that is going to lead to anything but frustration at some future date when it's not just "building a nuke" RP but becomes "using a nuke" RP? I think that's the obvious place we're heading.
Greek:
Quote:1. Players/nations who choose to RP the development of nuclear weapons, auto-consent to the RP being discoverable - which means it's now an IC public relations game and not an OOC debate of cat and mouse gameIMO these are just restatements of rules against powergaming, which already exist. If a player is RPing something that is undetectable and refusing to face any realistic roleplay consequences of the story, they aren't even playing Particracy, they're just writing a book on their own. On point two in particular I also wonder - what exactly does this mean? If the entire world decides tomorrow that they're going to invade Dredd's Kundrati to stop the nukes, and he doesn't consent, what then? I think you're saying he could ignore it, but to do so he'd have to not have nukes - which is why I think it's just simpler to ban nukes in the first place and not leave it up to mob justice, threats of ignores, etc.
2.Consequently, they also auto-consent to the actions of the international community on the subject - which also means it's now an IC public relations game, just like in real-life, think N. Korea, Iran vs Russia / USA
Quote:3. Players/nations in possession of nuclear weapons cannot use them unless the "victim" player/nation asks for it - which means it's an RP vehicle that has nothing to do with power gaming
And IMO this is just a restatement of the already-existing rule that RP requires consent.
To me it reads as if you're just arguing that we should apply rules that already exist. That's fine and I agree that we should - but how, both in these cases and in general cases should we do so, when everything I have said above applies? Your approach here would leave much to community enforcement and subjective interpretations of intent. These can work fine on most things, as we have seen, but on weapons of this caliber (and particularly insofar as they are seen as means to international relevance), it's just going to be easier for everyone - mods, community, and players, if we say "nope, nobody has those". It's fair, it's impartial, it's easy to understand, and it's enforceable.