Larpers (and people in general) like hard and fast rules that apply in all situations - it makes it easy to know what is allowed and what is not ok - but not all situations are the same. In Part 1, we talked about the different groups of people who have to consent to Character versus Character (CvC) conflict but we didn’t talk about how they signal, obtain, or confirm it. The key to any of those topics is this: consent should be appropriate to the risk of the action.
What does this mean? If we establish a protocol to handle consent then we want it to be used in every case. For example, let’s say we said we needed positive, verbal consent to any physical interaction. At first glance, this sounds good, but what about handshakes? It’s very difficult to shake hands with someone without their consent. If we add the additional step to handshakes, we have a high chance that people will ignore the protocol… and that leads to it not being used in higher risk cases. The protocol should be specific to the actions we’re trying to manage. As such we need to define levels of consent and how they relate to PvP. The three levels of consent are Inherent, Implied, and Explicit.
Inherent Consent
There are some things baked into Dystopia Rising, in terms of conflict - if you show up, you can expect to see these things, and have them happen to you. For example, you’re going to be attacked by zombies. In terms of CvC, it’s a role-playing game. People are going to get angry, yell and argue. With regards to the economy, people will compete for scarce resources, barter, and even exploit each other. You can always withdraw consent, but that only applies to you as a person engaged in conflict. If you’re a person watching a conflict and don’t want to witness yelling and screaming, then it’s on you to leave the area since that conflict is a core part of the game.
Implied Consent
Implied consent is consent that’s given as part of the actions you take. Generally, this doesn’t come up in CvC until you choose to engage in it. For example, if two people are fighting and you jump in, then you consent to the level of CvC they’ve already negotiated. If they’re fighting to the death, and you interfere, you’re giving implied consent to being killed as well (so be careful about jumping into physical CvC). Another example is theft: if you’re going around stealing from people, then you consent to getting your equipment taken from you.
Explicit Consent
Explicit consent is when you need positive and continued consent to an action. Usually these are significant actions that can have lasting consequences for your character. We require explicit consent for fighting and infection loss. When we talk about consent in CvC we are usually talking about explicit consent.
Understanding these levels of consent help you understand when you need to obtain consent, and when you need to speak up if you don’t want something. In Dystopia Rising New York we need you to make sure to speak up if you want to withdraw consent from economic or social CvC - these are inherent to role-play and the other players need to know your boundaries. As for explicit consent, we’ll talk about our tools to manage it in next week’s post.