there have been a number of instances of guns being used in skyrates roleplaying lately. characters have willingly become involved in gunfights with one another. also, a shotgun has evidently been kept behind the bar for the bartender's use. in at least one recent case, it was aimed at a player who did not wish it, without prior agreement for the sake of the story. this is a delicate issue, and i think we need to clarify what is and is not allowed.

now, guns in and of themselves don't seem inherently wrong in the skyrates universe. obviously, there are guns on each of our planes. there are wars mentioned in our history. it seems logical that guns would be allowed in roleplaying.

however, roleplaying is essentially an ongoing improvisation. guns being aimed and shot is an extremely heavy-handed technique which destroys the interaction between each player and story. i am not at all comfortable with the use of lethal force on a character who has not expressed a desire to have an imaginary gun pointed at them. when you do that to someone in RP, you have no idea how old the human on the other side of the screen is. i believe it is completely inappropriate to threaten the character of a little child. likewise, even if two grownups decide they want to roleplay a gunfight, that doesn't mean that there isn't a little kid watching.

on the other hand, guns appear in such traditional disney animations as Beauty and the Beast and Peter and the Wolf. (I don't recall if the original folk tale involved a gun.) so it would seem that by the judgment of those screenwriters (and the MPAA) that guns are not inherently an adult topic.

for me, what it all boils down to is this: what story in the skyrates universe absolutely cannot go on without a gun being trained on another character? i'm pretty sure there is none. i'm 100% confident i could roleplay a rough-and-tough bully without ever pulling a gun. i'm pretty sure the movie Porco Rosso is rife with exactly that sort of character.

-PL-

*shakes his head*
Sorry, I didn't mean to make this an anti-gun discussion when I brought it up.

Respectfully, I don't believe guns to be the problem. It's only if ya use them.

BL has one all the time. I'm new, but I've never heard anyone say he's had a problem with it.

It's not the firearms, it's behavior.

I don't have my character use guns, he doesn't need them.
I think that guns can be whipped out, but can't be /used/ without the other's consent as to if they get hit or killed or whatever.
It makes things much more barbaric to just bring guns out of nowhere (cough Manik and his thermos cough) and use them. To ask someone via PM or otherwise to arrange a well-played RP involving guns should totally be allowed.
For instance, I PMed Manik asking of I could kill him IC, and explained reasons for it that were IC, not OOC. And he declined, politely, and that was that. See, isn't that civil?

Yep, I agree with Fox, and adding:

Guns are of course discussed in World because we have Gun Upgrades for our planes, but to attack a fellow skyrate? NO this is not a PvP (Player vs Player) game, and gun usage should probably be dealt with in much the same respective manner we would expect in a law abiding place, our Tavern......unless is it a Pirate tavern?

Don't worry, it's been bugging me for a while. this just brought the issue to a head for me.

-PL-

My view on this is that guns and violence are part of the world we're playing in. As long as everybody understands that nobody else can force your character to do something -- including be shot -- without your consent, then there shouldn't be any issue. In fact, the situation is identical whether we're talking about gunfights or food fights.

Scenario: A gun/food fight breaks out in the tavern. Fred Giraffe shoots/throws a cream pie at Joe Fox. Joe Fox's player gets to decide if Joe gets hit or not, and if hit, how badly and what effects Joe suffers. If the player of Joe has Joe running straight at Fred when Fred shoots/throws at point blank range, but says "Haha, you missed!" -- then whether it's guns or cream pies, Fred's player, and perhaps others, may question whether Joe's player is powergaming. But Joe's player still gets to decide, ultimately, whether Joe lies bleeding/sticky-sweet on the floor.

So to the extent there is a problem -- and I'm not convinced there necessarily is -- it's the players not the guns that are at the root of it.

Shoot reponsibly. ;x

Guns don't godmod people, people godmod people.

Basically, there have been only very limited instances (two?) I can recall where rogue firearms have been at issue. There are much, much deeper issues here than guns.

Yes, there is a deeper issue. Like it or not we have children on as young as 9, and even some children in different countries which may be older but may actually be younger in life experiences (real life, movies, by whatever they have been subjected to and hopefully in a responsible way, etc).

The World at least treats the Gun as an Upgrade and quite responsible to equipping one's plane to shoot down Pirates (which we all know Pirates are all bad, just read Peter Pan!).

but RP wants to use the gun to horrify these children into showing them we shoot one another....and any of you think this is good how?

some are younger than 9, from what i hear some young'uns aren't at a reading age yet.

-PL-

On the subject of kids, I'm not entirely unsympathetic. Some degree of censorship is appropriate for things which are immediate, harmful, and difficult to "unsee", which is why I scold folks for vulgar language.

However, for violent ideas my attitude is that the fact that this is text and not visceral images or sounds really limits whatever potential damage we're worried about here. Anyone not mature enough to handle written concepts is someone so young that they ought to have an adult monitor to contextualize or prohibit what they're reading. If that responsible adult is absent, that's not the fault of RPers and shouldn't burden them unduly.

As for the notion that violent concepts shouldn't be presented, even to those those who are old enough to handle them, simply because they are regarded as distasteful, my reply is here: http://skyrates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=40783#40783

My vote in the matter mirrors what has been said before: It's not the presence of the guns themselves, but the readyness with which they are drawn and used that irks me. There have been times where I have wondered whether certain people (I won't name names) can't settle their discussions and arguments with words. Weapons (of any kind) are too readily drawn and used.

First off; man, nothing escapes the devs, does it?

Two; the Skyrates world seems a fairly violent place to me, although it has a peculiarly honorable code of ethics (pirates not killing you in combat, for instance, though this is more of a game mechanic). To remove the possibility of guns from RP when they're right there on our planes is an instance of doublethink to me. I would draw the line at it devolving into excessively graphic portrayals (large amounts of blood, dismemberment), but a weapon isn't inherently good or bad until it's given context by the one using it. The shotgun in question may very well be a sword - it doesn't change the situation in any form.

I'd find it vastly preferable that, instead of banning guns outright, that people treat guns with the kind of respect and caution when we RP, as we do in reality. Carrying a gun into a tavern ought to be the kind of action we associate with someone criminal, or the kind of person who has been digging into a fair bit of 'nip.

Three; I'd like to go on length on consent and consequence in regards to IC actions, but that one's for another time. Just be responsible for what your character does!

I am rather neutral regarding this (my concern is a drama clique monopolizing the RP tab), so either way is fine.

If there were no guns allowed in the tavern, it could be like how things are here in Minneosta - you can legally conceal a handgun with a permit, but any business can nullify your right to carry this concealed weapon in the establishment by clearly putting a "[This business] bans guns on the premises."

I would also point out that plenty of war movies with guns earned U, or at least PG ratings. (The Great Escape and Zulu were both rated at a PG here and both involve firearms.) Where either the weapons or the violence is less realistic (so usually either Sci-Fi or animated) the ratings tend to be lower (EG. Star Wars rated U and the most recent Transformers movie was rated anywhere from U to PG-13 in various countries.)

The issue with whether firearms are appropriate for the age of the audience is almost a moot point. I suspect that any child is going to see firearms long before they get online, even if it's only in the news. (Think about the number of times shooting in parts of Africa, Iraq, Afganistan and along the Gaza strip appear on the news.)

Plus were you to ban guns we'd all have to outfit our planes with paint spreaders to fight

By being a "Skyrate" that owns a plane better than the old family CR-4P, you are counted in the ranks of the elite already. Kind of like the fortune seekers, bounty hunters and all those other people that own spacecraft in the Star Wars universe, as an analogy. It's therefore rather implied that most of us are packing heat; after all, our planes are armed. I don't RP much, and my character has never brandished a gun, but it's pretty darn implied that Moros has a trusty old .45 or something like that; it's just I (the player) don't really like RPing a gunfight.


'nuff said.

It is worth mentioning that there IS supposed to be a no guns policy going on in the bar, recent spats seem to have started between people who were either ignorant of the rule or deciding to ignore it because everyone else pulled guns already >_< Some of them make it outside before bullets actually fly, but better enforcement IC would set a better tone of noncombativeness right from the start.

Still, even when guns are not involved, there are several characters who are just as dangerous with knives or the like. If you are going to ban guns in an OOC way, then you had better just ban all violence, or somebody is getting stabbed in the neck with a fork eventually and scaring the little childrens. I personally don't think this is a road we want to travel down

Consider this scenario: 7 year old kid shoots his sister with the father's handgun. During the police investigation, the boy's comments were that, "she should've just dodged it!"

I know this is an extreme example, and no doubt there are many steps that could've been taken to prevent this but were not. The point is I'd rather see Skyrates as not being a part of the chain at all. RP'ing irresponsible gun use is probably only slightly worse than staging a children's play of the Godfather, in terms of gun-safety education.

Above is my take on phil's reasoning behind this. Personally, I have no problem with guns being around, nor with them being constantly used in bar fights in the tavern. However, I'm not adverse to showing some restraint when young minds are present either.


As many others have already pointed out, the real issue here is something else entirely and mostly off-topic, so I will leave it as such.

Like, uh, Bugsy Mallone?

I tend to try to avoid gun battles. But many of our characters are people who a) would carry guns as a necessity and b) a fair number of the characters probably would have very minor qualms with shooting the average person dead 'cause they don't like the color of their shirt.

And Suino's comment reminds me of this article