Conversation #3: Imprisonment RP
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.
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.