Conversation #3: Imprisonment RP

rayuu

3 years ago
updated 3 years ago

Please conversate about the rule below and if you agree or disagree with certain points. Also feel free to recommend certain changes for slimming it down or elaboration on certain points. Any and all feedback is welcomed, but keep it civil!

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Imprisonment RP

In many situations it is highly discouraged to keep a player kidnapped and locked up for a long amount of time.

One may argue that if they didn't want to wait it out that they shouldn't get themselves in trouble, however no one can truly measure how much time a situation takes to roll out due to many things.

No matter if the player you have captive is a criminal behind bars or a hostage, keep them captive at a maximum of 30 minutes.

If you intend to hold them captive for a story driven reason, you are welcome to do so as long as you reach out to them in /me's or on Discord if you know that information and they are reachable-- as long as you get their consent before proceeding as they have full right to decline.
You are also welcome to ask them if they are okay with the situation being longer. If they agree you are fine to proceed, but if they protest it is best to try and wrap up the situation.
Keeping police from rendering aid, gaining a lawyer, or any other on-scene delays adds time to this. It is 30 minutes for processing once the criminal is behind bars.

We love hearing about story driven situations, but also the player you are bringing it upon deserves to be able to draw the line and not feel like they are combat logging if their real life obligations are merging into their playtime.

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Zopfco

3 years ago

Like I mentioned with some of the other rules, I think this is overly wordy which leads to confusion. The reasoning and explanations can be done elsewhere, the rules should be a straightforward and concise as possible.

Do not keep a player captive or in custody longer than 30 minutes

Exceptions:

All involved consent to a longer time OOC for the sake of the RP scenario
Ongoing situations such as having one suspect in custody while dealing with the scene or accomplices, EMS to treat injured on scene, etc
The 30m limit for police custody begins once the suspect(s) are behind bars, unless waiting for a lawyer at their request

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BIRLZeY

Instead of reaching out in DMs or emails as my character doesnt have "emails" or anything just change it to OOC its what its for at the end of the day, everything else is okay imo

Yung Sleezus

I would simply add some more exceptions and clarifications in regards to police. If the police show up to a kidnapping in progress that's already been 20 minutes in the process but then gets extended another 20 minutes due to police negotiations and general RP, that's nobodies fault and can't be held against anyone in my eyes.

I would also change the wording of 30 minutes once they're behind bars for an arrest. Sometimes people will insist on a lawyer who takes a good 10 minutes to make it to PD, sometimes a suspect will refuse to be searched unless it's by a specific person or gender which adds time, some people attempt to stall with unnecessary medical RP such as suddenly collapsing in the cell after 15 minutes and doing "/me is unconscious and bleeding from head", etc. which extends the "ImprisonmentRP" beyond the 30 minutes due to no fault of the police.

In general police situations can vary. If someone's time is being blatantly wasted then I agree it should be stepped in on, but if it's clear that the police are doing things at a normal, somewhat efficient pace, I believe there should be some wiggle room there. Sometimes a suspect's situation is very tricky or there was a large group of people involved and multiple officers performing searchers, or they're being difficult and dragging out the process in the cells. I just know that ever since this rule was in place I've definitely seen unnecessary stress on the police to wrap things up quicker than they maybe should and mistakes get made and tensions rise. PoliceRP is 70% driving around in your car, 15% seeing superbikes launch away from robberies, 10% being shot at. It can be really frustrating finally getting some verbal RP time but then being rushed under a timer looming over our heads.

I think personally this is one of those rules that is a judgement call from the character themselves. If they are having a good time being hostage for more than 30 minutes, they don't have to report it, if they are behind bars and trying to negotiate with a lawyer, they don't need to report it.

I do distinctively remember mentioning at one point under this rule that once COSA is chosen to be involved in the situation by the player that it knocks off this rule entirely. If you make the choice to extend the RP this way, I think it's okay.

Something was changed here either through the formatting changes or by someone else, but I was not aware until I posted this rule that said that about when the 30 minutes started for criminals behind bars. I don't remember this discussion taking place around that so if it's causing confusion, we can definitely take it into consideration moving forward.

The big thing that was my goal in implementing this rule was that it discouraged criminals from being able to just have someone as a hostage for hours with no real in-depth rp attached to it, and to discourage cops from thinking they can walk away to handle something more important when they have a person behind bars who --in real life-- is maybe someones parent or spouse or employee and has other obligations and thus we force the criminal or cop on a time limit to do their thing so that person can return to those things if they need to do that.

You don't see it in bigger servers because the majority of those people are doing GTA RP for a living, but we do it here because we know this isn't most people's main life focus.

You don't see it in bigger servers because the majority of those people are doing GTA RP for a living, but we do it here because we know this isn't most people's main life focus.

Talked about it before but I think the issue here is that going to prison is basically an AFK timeout when it should be a continuation of RP & part of playing a criminal character. Granted it's not easy to balance this but so long as it's seen as a punishment in the OOC sense players will go out of their way to avoid it, leading to low-risk crimes & less RP between them & law enforcement.

Spending an hour or so doing jail RP should be rewarding & enjoyable in the sense of providing some character development, making connections with other crims, maybe getting a gang tattoo.. doing something other than waiting for a timer to run out. Playing a criminal mastermind is far too easy in a game world where nobody really questions how you have a mansion and 15 cars from working at a taco stand.

The flip side of this is that knowing you'll never spend more than 20 minutes in jail leads to a lot of reckless behavior & low-effort criminal RP. Why not shoot at cops & blow up gas stations? It's hard to ask people to value their freedom when they know it's not really at risk.