ON CONSENT

At the moment, this only contains one long chapter. It may be subdivided and reorganized in due time.

NOTE : It should be fairly obvious (even though I carelessly failed to say so until I added this note) that my observations on Consent, and Implied Consent, and so forth, are the results of experience on many consent-based mushes, and that I wouldn't expect my ideas to be entirely applicable to places that are not "Consent-Based" in the traditional sense, such as many World of Darkness sites where the Player is generally given fair warning in the newsfiles that all sorts of awful things can happen to him once he starts RPing on them.

ON THE ABUSE OF CONSENT RULES

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ON THE ABUSE OF CONSENT RULES

I'll guarantee you this: every mush is eventually going to have some heated debates occur over what does or does not violate the local "consent" rules.

Consider the following quote:

"I ignore the nuclear explosion and press my attack." - the legendary Twink known only as "X."

Sound a bit extreme? Unless he's as tough as Superman and doesn't even notice the occasional mushroom cloud occurring in his immediate vicinity?

Yep. Now, that sort of thing is fairly rare, but there are many times when one side feels that the other guy no longer has the option of "nonconsenting" to something that's about to happen, while the other guy takes a very different view. We'll look at an example to show what I mean.

Let us examine in detail an example of a spontaneous situation, such as I have seen arise upon more than one occasion, where both sides can sincerely argue that "consent" favors their position on what the outcome of the scene ought to be.

We shall assume a "medieval feudal" setup where people are generally in the service of one or another of the Noble Houses, and any criminal must be tried by the appointed authorities of his own House, or by the King's Justice, but not by any other Houses who have an interest. We shall further assume that evidence has been found linking Mathin the Warrior to the attempted murder of a member of House Tully, and someone goes to arrest him. They don't OOCly discuss the matter with Mathin in advance, so from his POV one of the following variations on the arrest spontaneously arises in a hallway.

Situation One : Mathin, a soldier in the service of House Lannister, is approached in a corridor of the Royal Palace by Sir Hastings, a military officer in the service of House Tully, who says, "Soldier, you are ordered to confine yourself to quarters, under house arrest, until further notice."

Situation Two : Mathin, a soldier in the service of House Lannister, is approached in a corridor of the Royal Palace by Sir Hastings, a military officer in the service of House Tully, who says, "Soldier, you are ordered to return to your barracks and place yourself under house arrest until further notice." As Mathin looks around, he notices that Sir Hastings has five armed men at his back, and as he turns to look down the street in the other direction, he sees five more armed men blocking that route.

Situation Three : Mathin, a soldier in the service of House Lannister, is approached in a corridor of the Royal Palace by his liege lord, Count Balder Lannister, who says, "Soldier, report to the barracks and place yourself under house arrest until further notice."

Situation Four : Mathin, a soldier in the service of House Lannister, is approached in a corridor of the Royal Palace by his liege lord, Count Balder Lannister, who says, "Soldier, report to the barracks and place yourself under house arrest until further notice." As Mathin looks around, he notices that Count Balder has five armed men at his back, and as he turns to look down the street in the other direction, he sees five more armed men blocking that route.

Examine the different combinations of legal and practical power here. Assuming that Mathin would have at least a fighting chance in a one-on-one duel with Sir Hastings OR with Balder Lannister, and/or that he has a good chance of outrunning a single pursuer if he doesn't want to fight him, we see four different combinations here :

SITUATION ONE : Sir Hastings has neither the legal authority nor sufficient force to make Mathin obey his order.

SITUATION TWO : Sir Hastings has no legal authority over Mathin, but DOES have the necessary force to make Mathin comply with his order.

SITUATION THREE : Count Balder has the legal authority to give this order, but does not have sufficient force on hand to immediately enforce it if Mathin defies him.

SITUATION FOUR : Count Balder has both the legal authority and sufficient force available to make Mathin comply with him.

	PERSON GIVING ORDER	LEGAL AUTHORITY?	PRACTICAL ABILITY TO ENFORCE IT?
SITUATION ONE	Hastings	No	No
SITUATION TWO	Hastings	No	Yes
SITUATION THREE	Balder	Yes	No
SITUATION FOUR	Balder	Yes	Yes

Let's examine Mathin's options. In Situation One, if he chooses to laugh in Hastings' face, he can reasonably

A) Fight a duel with him, one-on-one.

B) Turn and run, using consent to claim that Hastings can't catch him.

C) Stand his ground and argue with him about the validity of the order, keeping A) and B) in reserve as his backup plans.

D) Tamely let Hastings escort him back to his barracks and be placed under house arrest (although whether or not the Lannister men at the barracks will consider that to mean anything after Hastings leaves is another matter).

In Situation Two, Mathin's legal ground is just as firm as it was in Situation One, but in practical terms he knows those ten men-at-arms are probably going to do whatever Hastings tells them to do and never mind the legalities of the matter. Under these circumstances, Option A doesn't look too good unless he can ICly convince Hastings to duel about it and order the ten other guys to just watch, which is highly unlikely. Option B looks pretty silly when armed men are blocking both ends of the corridor. Option C will at least pass a few minutes, but if he doesn't come up with something clever, he's either going to end up cooperating in Option D, or find himself in a fight with eleven men at once, the outcome of which is a foregone conclusion (he loses) since Mathin is not the local equivalent of Sir Lancelot.

In Situation Three, Mathin is up against it as far as legal matters are concerned. Options A (fight), B (Flight), and C (Argument) are still possible alternatives, but A or B will get him immediately pronounced a criminal, at which point all the available resources of House Tully and of House Lannister will be dedicated to the task of hunting him down. His prospects of remaining free indefinitely are rather bleak . . .

If he tries Option C, Balder will presumably say something like, "You have been charged with attempted murder. Now report to barracks before I lose my temper!" and he either goes to Option D or disobeys a direct and legitimate order from his liege, which makes him an outlaw on the spot.

In Situation Four, Mathin is in really bad shape. Options A and B are obviously out of the question unless he really wants to get pounded on by eleven men at once. And even if he gets away with them, he has basically declared himself an outlaw. Option C might take a minute or two of RP, but isn't likely to change anything. Option D seems the only reasonable alternative.

Now let's take a moment to discuss the requirements of OOC Courtesy as it relates to suddenly showing up to arrest somebody with ten armed men at your back to make sure nothing goes wrong. This is where it gets really sticky, especially if Mathin and the arresting Officer have radically different views.

1) Some purists would say, "Well, having ten emitted men-at-arms along for the arrest sure looks like an attempt to deny Mathin his rightful option of non-consent to being arrested. Obviously the arresting officer (Hastings or Balder, depending) had no business emitting them because it just wasn't fair to Mathin to do it that way!"

2) Others would say firmly, "Well, Mathin has the right to refuse to consent to anythinginvolving his character that he doesn't like, so it doesn't really matter if the arresting officer has ten armed men along, or a hundred, or even the entire United States Marine Corps, because if Mathin's Player says OOCly 'I ain't gonna be arrested!' that settles the issue right there!"

3) Others would say, "Well, an arrest is not as serious as a conviction and execution. Since it's pretty hard to escape arrest when eleven people have cornered you, Mathin ought to go along with it rather than be twinkish and say he runs so fast they never see him move at all."

4) Some of the really conservative, "Let's Not Coddle The Criminals!" attitude, would say, "When he either committed the crime or agreed to be accused of it, he implicitly gave consent to being arrested for it! SHOW NO MERCY!"

Then there is my POV, which says, "The whole problem as I described it never should have arisen."

Why? Please note the words I used in describing how this scene began : "We shall assume that evidence has been found linking Mathin to the attempted murder of a member of House Tully, and someone goes to arrest him. They don't OOCly discuss the matter with Mathin in advance, so from his POV one of the following variations on the arrest spontaneously arises in a hallway."

Personally, back in my heavy-duty mushing days, I would never have showed up with a squad of troops to make an arrest of a PC before discussing the matter with him OOCly so that we both knew what the outcome of the scene was supposed to be. As a rule of thumb, I would say that if someone wants to arrest a Suspect and do it with the aid of ten men-at-arms, he really ought to clear this with the Suspect OOCly instead of being accused of "powergaming."

But in this case where nobody planned or coordinated anything, that word "spontaneous" sums up the problem very nicely. In the scenario given above, I was assuming that the arresting officer, either Hastings or Balder, was both not only ICly intending to arrest Mathin, but was OOCly expecting (at least in the Situations where they had along ten armed men for reinforcements) Mathin to OOCly take it for granted that he was inevitably under arrest, no way out of it.

BAD CALL!

Thus far we have not even considered the matter of whether Mathin is guilty or innocent, because it had no bearing on the consent rules in a different scene several days later. If Mathin had committed murder in front of several armed and dangerous witnesses, it would be a real strain on credibility for him to use Consent to claim he then got away from the scene unscathed (unless he cleared it OOCly and in advance with any Players involved). In other words, He Who Chooses To Do Something Extremely Illegal In Front Of A Crowd Is Basically Giving Consent To Being Quickly Surrounded And Attacked From All Sides In That Scene, but NOT indefinitely.

In my view of things, each Scene should be treated as a separate item when you're considering the Implicit Consent situation. Implicit Consent is tricky to define (no two people see it from the same perspective, it seems) but I'll take a stab at it.

IMPLIED CONSENT

Introductory Remarks and a Sample of What Goes Wrong

Situations Where Implicit Consent Might Apply

Closing Remarks And Suggestions

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND A SAMPLE OF WHAT GOES WRONG

A common phrase in online newsfiles discussing Implied Consent problems is "IC Actions have IC Consequences." That sounds good as far as it goes but it's beautifully vague, leaving plenty of room argument over what the "natural" or "probable" or "inevitable" consequences of an Action should properly be in a particular situation. Personally I never had much faith in a system where such general statements were supposed to be interpreted in each case by the Players in question to suit their own tastes, without any specific examples and strictures being set forth for their guidance by the Wizards. Why not? Well, let me give you an example of how such loose language can become a disaster.

A former Imperial Torturer (of a Star Wars - themed Mush) told me of the following experience. Two Rebel prisoners had been captured and brought to him for a full interrogation, in which he used drugs, advanced technology, and anything else that seemed likely to get the job done. The interrogations were RPed from start to finish, apparently with the full consent of the Rebel victims involved.

Until the interrogations ended and the issue arose, "What do I do with them next?"

The Imperial Torturer felt that the only thematic thing for a sadistic servant of a fascist system like the SW Empire to do was to kill them and toss them out with the garbage, since they clearly were of no further use now that he had picked their brains for everything useful.

One sees his point!

The Rebel prisoners protested vehemently when he raised the subject, taking the position that they had consented to capture and interrogation in order to get some interesting RP, but NOT consented to having their characters slaughtered afterwards

One sees their point!

The Imperial Torturer evidently felt that when they consented to being his prisoners for interrogation, they should have known perfectly well that a PC in such a nasty profession wouldn't know the meaning of the word "mercy", so "Implicit Consent" reinforced his position that the only "thematic" thing to do was to kill them.

They presumably argued that all this wasn't spelled out in the rules. I don't know what the local rules said, but clearly they DIDN'T say in so many words, "Once you consent to becoming a prisoner charged with serious offenses such as treason (and being part of the Rebel Alliance is always treason) you have implicitly consented to being condemned and EXECUTED if the Imperial Authorities involved think it would be a good idea." It is probable that they DID have the usual babble about "IC Actions have IC Consequences" in very general terms, but what would that mean to the average newcomer as it related to his someday becoming a prisoner of the enemy? Nothing in particular.

Again, one sees both sides of it.

The argument finally went up to higher authority (an Admin) who saw fit, after reviewing all the arguments, to order the Torturer to send these prisoners off to an prison planet somewhere - still breathing, with the potential for further RP. The Torturer didn't like that ICly or OOCly but there wasn't much he could do about it now.

Who do I think was right? Let's take that point from the other direction. Who was definitely wrong? Who made the mistakes of judgment which set the stage for that argument?

My answer is simple : Everybody involved in creating the tangled situation which was eventually presented to the Admin was wrong in some way. The Torturer made a mistake, the Prisoners made a mistake, the Wizards who were responsible for providing coherent Consent rules for the guidance of all their Players made a mistake.

Whoever wrote such rules as they actually had on the subject of Consent apparently never squarely addressed the issue of whether or not, if you Explicitly Consented to be taken prisoner on a serious charge, you had automatically Implicitly Consented to being executed afterwards if your captors felt the execution was ICly justifiable. Either the problem of executions never occurred to him, or it did occur to him but he merely typed the usual vague babble about "IC Actions have IC Consequences" and assumed that in practice every Player would "naturally" interpret the rules the same way without fuss. Mistake Number One!

The Imperial Torturer apparently had never before confronted the problem of whether or not he was permitted to kill Player Characters at the end of an interrogation. His personal interpretation of theme and Consent rules led him to the sincere conclusion that he could do so without Explicit Consent from the Players, but evidently he never discussed this beforehand with the new Prisoners to see if they saw eye to eye on the subject, NOR with the Higher Powers (Wizards and Admins) to see if they would back him up on that issue if any controversy arose. He merely assumed that everyone would accept his interpretation when the time came. Mistake Number Two!

The Prisoners, one hopes, had read all the newsfiles before they got involved in actual RP. Nevertheless, if they had read anything in the rules which mentioned the subject of Implied Consent and how it could lead to nasty consequences, possibly including death (assuming the writer of the relevant files remembered to mention death as a possibility) once you had Explicitly Consented to the beginning of a predictable chain of events, it never occurred to them that this vague statement might actually mean they could be forced to die at the end of the TinyPlot they were now starting without Explicitly Consenting to the idea. Apparently, all through the Interrogation they were smugly taking it for granted that the Interrogator was required to deposit their characters somewhere else, still alive and kicking, after he was done despite the fact that nobody had guaranteed this in so many words. Mistake Number Three!

The Admin who was finally called in to referee inherited the results of at least three different mistakes by several different people and had to do something to settle the short-term problem no matter what might later be done concerning the long-term issue. At this point, there was no possible way he could make both sides feel they had been treated fairly. He chose to err on the side of mercy, presumably because (I'm just guessing here, but it seems reasonable) the Players of the Prisoners had not indisputably received "fair warning" that they were putting themselves into a situation that could be lethal even if they didn't want it to be. Under the circumstances, this was probably the most courteous way to resolve it if we assume that keeping the Players reasonably happy while they learned the ropes was a priority on this mush. On the other hand, we can hope that after he solved the immediate crisis, the Admin started a campaign to get whoever was the final Policy Maker on that Mush to rewrite the relevant rules to specifically tell people what to expect if they consented to be taken prisoner by an enemy so that this same fiasco wouldn't happen every week in the future.

In any event, I feel whoever wrote and approved the original Consent Rules provided online for all the Players were remiss in their duties. If they had done a better job of explaining where the Explicit Versus Implicit Consent situation stood with regard to Prisoners of the Empire, the whole argument never would have happened. With that in mind, let's take a look at what they could have said about Implicit Consent in general.

SITUATIONS WHERE IMPLICITCONSENTMIGHTAPPLY

There are a variety of situations in which one character will have, or will claim to have, an IC justification for exercising power over another character's immediate destiny, saying that his IC Power over the other is a "natural" part of the IC situation which both characters have brought about through their cooperative RP and thus the Player of the other character has given "Implied Consent" to what the speaker wishes to do next. However, the second character may argue the point, citing the local "consent" rules as his basis. Situations in which the first character might want to enforce his will on another include scenarios where the second character is currently filling the title role in any of these seven Situation Types:

1) The Subordinate in the Hierarchy

2) The Prisoner in the Cell

3) The Criminal In Front Of Witnesses

4) The Victim in the Assassination

5)The Loser in the Duel

6) The Weakling Attacking the Powerhouse

7) The Rebel in the Enemy Stronghold

THE SUBORDINATE IN THE HIERARCHY

If the hierarchy is something along Feudal Medieval lines, in the good old days of the absolute monarchy, keep in mind that civil rights as we understand them today hadn't really been invented yet. You took orders from your liege, who had the power of High and Low Justice over you, meaning he could sentence you to death if you misbehaved. Most of the mushes with which I am personally familiar are based on the medieval feudal system, even Regent of Dune MUX, a theme where the feudal system has been transplanted to a galactic empire in the far future. So : if you volunteered to play a role as a servant of Lord Barthanes of House Damodred, were you giving implicit consent to various things he might want you to do? I tend to doubt it. You WERE, however, giving consent to the idea that if you ever refused one of his orders, he would declare you an outlaw. Be warned.

Or suppose you're in a military outfit, even in this day and age, and you reject an order from your superior. He can order you arrested or fired or something without needing your explicit consent, at that point. However, he cannot assume he has your implicit consent to actually physically beat you up or shoot holes in you or something UNLESS he is known to you (OOCly) to be much, much deadlier in a fight than you are (Batman versus Superman, let's say) which would fall under the heading of Type 6, or unless you are currently in the midst of several of your fellow soldiers who will grab you for arrest, or attack you, if the commanding officer says so (assuming each of them has strength and skills roughly equal to your own, a squad of 5 or 10 of them at once means you're SURE to lose). This, of course, would be Type 7. But just being your nominal superior doesn't mean he can actually physically harm you without your consent - he would need to actually have superior force available, you see?

THE PRISONER IN THE CELL

Let's suppose that, as a result of something which the Prisoner consented to, he is now unquestionably confined within a prison cell (or other enclosed area) which he cannot ICly escape from without A) Passing a few miracles (producing a sledgehammer out of thin air) or B) Being rescued from the outside. At this point it would appear (at least from an IC perspective) that his Jailer is in a position to do any nasty thing he wants to do to the Prisoner. After all (he may say, looking as innocent as possible) if the Prisoner didn't want to run the risk of being beaten, tortured, starved, drugged, brainwashed, maimed, dissected, etc., why did he consent to become a helpless prisoner in the first place? Different mushes may take different positions on this issue. Some of them go on at length about "living with the consequences of your actions," which could be taken to mean that if you deliberately oppose the Mad Scientist's plans with such enthusiasm that he tries to kidnap you (and you consent to it) you will just have to live with the consequences of it, since you knew darn well that he was the kind of guy who enjoys injecting patients with blood samples extracted from werewolves in order to see what happens (or whatever he does).

If this is their position, they shouldn't wimp out by saying vaguely in their online files "Accept the Consequences of Your Actions" and then leaving it at that, cheerfully assuming that in every single situation, it will be possible to reach a polite agreement concerning what that means in practice. They should spell it out, saying something such as "If you end up (as the result of RP performed with your Explicit Consent) as the Prisoner of a villain, you have Implicitly Consented to whatever he chooses to do to you next, period."

If all this ISN'T their position, they should probably say as much in plain and simple language instead. One character being another's prisoner is a very common situation, and policy ought to be clear.

Personally, I used to run an Puppet Character I called "Smiler" because of his scarred face and generally morbid personality. The victim of an unhappy love affair (that's how he got the scar), Smiler twice was involved in the kidnapping of attractive young women. They would find themselves tied up while he toyed idly with his daggers and talked about the things he wanted to do them if the ransom wasn't paid. Slicing their faces to ribbons always seemed to appeal to him, but he branched out into other threats occasionally to break the monotony.

However, I never even seriously considered actually DOING anything severe (like maiming or mutilation) without explicit Consent from the other Player. If anyone had asked me for my reasons, I would have given at least three good ones:

1) The Rules. The general principle that you aren't supposed to do nasty physical things to the other person's character without OOC permission is well-established and almost universally understood. OTOH the Implied Consent idea that might permit exceptions in some situations is a vague doctrine in which I have very LITTLE confidence (and it was no better defined on the mush in question than it was anywhere else).

2) Courtesy. Regardless of whether or not their Consent to being kidnapped and imprisoned could "legally" be considered (under the local mush's rules) to constitute Implicit Consent to the idea that they were putting themselves totally in Smiler's power, it was highly likely that the Players in question didn't THINK it meant that (not that I ever asked their opinion, since I wasn't going to do anything) and I had better be polite if I wanted them to even consider participating in mutually agreeable RP with any of my characters in the future.

3) Personal Taste. I'm not a sadist and I wasn't particularly INTERESTED in RPing out the onstage maiming or mutilation or other vicious abuse of somebody else's character, even with their Explicit OR Implicit Consent. Building suspense was one thing (I'm a fan of most Alfred Hitchcock movies), but smearing blood and gore all over the place was something else (I've never watched a FRIDAY THE 13TH movie in my life).

Any of these three reasons would have been enough (I think) to make me remember my "manners," and taken together they were strong enough that my "instincts" made the decision for me - in other words, I never seriously wondered "Would I be within my rights to slice them up a little bit, just for fun?" I took it for granted that I shouldn't and wouldn't.

We merely did our best to keep the RP IC so that an impartial observer would have concluded that the Prisoner was really and truly terrified of what might happen. In practice, both prisoners eventually escaped - unharmed.

THE CRIMINAL IN FRONT OF WITNESSES

Standing in a room with several other people who are each as physically tough as I am, or near enough for our purposes, I commit some obvious and provocative crime such as murdering someone, spitting on the local flag, setting the place on fire, etc. (On the other hand, if all I did was throw a candy wrapper on the floor, this may be a misdemeanor, but it's not the sort of thing that gets people very angry usually). At this point I sacrifice all credibility if I say OOCly, "I don't care if I just horrified/offended/threatened ten people at once; I don't consent to the idea that they can surround me and bury me under a pile of bodies while yelling for the police to come take me away! Therefore I get out of the room unscathed!"

We are assuming, of course, that I am all alone in here. If I had previously established it IC that I had some helpers standing by, or if other Player Characters in the room were secretly on my side and wanted to help me evade arrest, that would be different.

THE VICTIM IN THE ASSASSINATION

Some mushes (Regent of Dune MUX springs to mind) attempt to add an extra whiff of danger and realism to the Byzantine politics they seek to recreate by adding rules which make it possible to attempt the surreptitious murder of another character WITHOUT his Explicit Consent. Since the Regent procedures are what I'm most familiar with, I'll discuss them here.

A person who tries to hire an assassination knows from the start that nothing is guaranteed, but the attempt will be made (arranging for it is a long and expensive process, not something the average Player Character is in a position to do) and the appropriate Wizards will decide whether or not it succeeds. If it does, the target is really and truly dead. In practice, this doesn't often happen. However, the Implicit Consent is addressed by explaining all this in the rules files and effectively warning the reader, "If you choose to play here, you consent to the constant risk of being assassinated by a sufficiently cunning and resourceful enemy." Except in such mushes where the danger of being involuntarily assassinated is clearly described in the online files which all newcomers are supposed to read, it is just about impossible to murder a Player Character without their OOC consent. This is as it should be; we aren't playing a Pkill MUD here, after all.

THE LOSER IN THE DUEL

Let's suppose that the Grey Mouser has just overcome Fafhrd the Barbarian in single combat (swordplay), wounding him so severely that Fafhrd has collapsed from lack of blood, lost his grip on his trusty sword, and is sprawled in an alley, lying in a puddle of his own blood and already slipping into a coma. No witnesses are around (it's a dark alley in a bad part of town in the middle of the night) to see what happens next. At this point, the Mouser could claim that, as an IC matter, "If I really want to, I can slit his throat make sure he's really and truly DEAD before I leave. Or maybe just slice his hamstrings to cripple him for life. What can he do to stop me?" Viewed from a strictly IC perspective this is quite reasonable. However, as we veer over into the subject of OOC Consent, we sadly find that the Mouser shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. Not unless the Consent Rules for this mush SPECIFICALLY say something along these lines : "If you agree to fight a duel with somebody, and he wins, you are utterly at his mercy and he can even kill you!" In the absence of such a rule, the loser should be given the full benefit of the doubt. Giving the other guy Consent to do something to you such as knocking you out (or consenting to fight by a coded set of rules, knowing you might lose) should not be extended by him to mean he also has permission to continue doing anything else he pleases while he has the IC advantage.

THE WEAKLING ATTACKS THE POWERHOUSE

Suppose I deliberately pick a fight with someone who is unquestionably MUCH more dangerous than I am in a fight, and I already know it OOCly (whether I know it ICly is irrelevant to the consent issue). Imagine Batman versus Superman in the boxing ring, and no kryptonite in sight. I do this without OOCly discussing the outcome with him. I then claim that he can't win the fight because I don't consent to it, although I will permit him to daze me with one or two good blows before we declare it a draw. This is idiotic behavior and if nobody ever wants to RP with me again it's my own fault. It's also why in practice, whenever I went into a for-real one-on-one fight in my mushing days, I ALWAYS paged the other guy first to make sure we both consented to a specific outcome, such as "I manage to wound you a bit, but then you lose your temper and break my arm," to avoid all that pointless bickering about who the REAL winner ought to be.

Please note that I used an extreme example deliberately : Batman versus Superman. Batman has no superpowers whatsoever and Superman is the Man of Steel. He could fight with both hands tied behind his back and win, if only by letting Batman break his own hands punching at that invulnerable jaw.

On the other hand, I feel that any match between two people of ROUGHLY the same capabilities should be consent-based, or failing that, should be resolved by the coded combat system if there is one, instead of the one who's just a BIT better saying, "Fight's over. I whipped you because I'm obviously tougher." I mean, think Batman versus Robin (the third Robin, teenager Tim Drake) for a contrast. Batman is much older and more experienced than Robin. He's much bigger than Robin, i.e. stronger and with a longer reach and the stamina to absorb more punishment without collapsing. He's had time to acquire more expertise in more categories of martial arts. But is he INEVITABLY going to beat Robin? Heck no. Maybe 9 times out of 10, or 19 times out of 20, but it's not a foregone conclusion required by the theme of superhero comic books (I have read a great many comic books when the person who was clearly physically inferior still won the fight somehow) since Batman is still ordinary flesh and blood, and thus vulnerable to any blows that Robin actually manages to land. And Robin isn't a total ignoramus in martial arts either, and also stays in excellent physical condition. So he at least has a prayer, and standard Consent Rules should be used in the give and take of the various blows.

Now if Batman were fighting a fat elderly man with no muscles to speak of, no weapons, and no training in unarmed combat EVER, that might be called a foregone conclusion (though why Batman would bother fighting the poor fellow at all is a bit of a mystery - but I digress).

And please note that, as I spelled out in the previous section (#5 - THE LOSER IN THE DUEL) the fact that the big tough guy has explicit or implicit consent to win does not mean that he has explicit or implicit consent to break arms and legs, etc., much less kill the other guy after the fight is clearly won.

Also note that I titled this THE WEAKLING ATTACKS THE POWERHOUSE and not THE WEAKLING VERSUS THE POWERHOUSE. If the Powerhouse starts the fight, he's not in a position to claim that now that he's started it, he's going to win it by beating the other guy to pulp just as he planned from the start, and no alternatives are permitted.

How do you define "starts the fight?"

That's a good question, and I'll get back to you on it. In the meantime, let's just say as a temporary rule of thumb that if the Powerhouse strikes the first blow (yes, Virginia, casting a spell constitutes a "blow" for our purposes), or if the Powerhouse OOCly suggested the idea of a fight and didn't say, "And obviously I win by knocking you out, right?" then the Powerhouse started the fight. This may be a bad way to phrase it, but I'll work on it later. The point is, whenever there's a reasonable doubt, one should probably favor the Weakling on general principle.

THE REBEL IN THE ENEMY STRONGHOLD

Once upon a time two characters on a mush had a run-in. Call one of them Tourist, a visitor to the local Imperial Palace, and the other Official, a member of the local bureaucracy. Tourist was walking through the Imperial Palace when he was stopped at a checkpoint and informed ICly by Official that security was being tightened up. To pass through the doorway into the next wing of the palace, he would have to show some appropriate ID. Now, as I understand it, proper ID had not been coded in as Objects which every character was required to receive from a Wizard and carry at all times - you were merely supposed to RP the existence of such ID if you would logically have some. Satisfying these new security requirements was never meant to be a difficult task for any character who had legitimate business within the Palace. Tourist could have, and should have, simply posed, "Tourist pulls out a photo ID and shows it to the guards, waiting patiently for them to give it a thorough examination" or words to that effect.

He didn't. He ICly made a joke about it and tried to pose bulling his way through without producing ID. After at least two IC warnings (and possibly one or two OOC warnings as well - I'm not sure) Official sighed and emitted a squad of local Security Guards closing in to make an arrest of a stranger who was behaving suspiciously and was refusing to provide proper ID. At this point, Tourist apparently went ballistic on the OOC level, insisting that the whole thing was a travesty of justice. His points (as I recall - it's been awhile since I read these arguments) were: A) You couldn't arrest him without his consent no matter what he did, B) Official was of a lower level than him and had no authority to arrest him at all, even if conceivably a higher-ranking Character might have gotten away with it (Characters on this mush came in three Levels, but their meaning was more an OOC issue than a question of an IC Caste System).

Let's dispense with Argument B first. There was nothing in the online rules that said "A Level One [the lowest level] cannot order the arrest of a Level Two when the L2 is conspicuously violating the law of the land." Tourist was taking a LOT for granted in assuming that if such a statement wasn't in the rules, then by golly it ought to be!

Now as to Argument A, let me fill in the background a little. This Palace was supposedly the administrative center of the known Universe (certainly many thousands of inhabited planets). The local guards were drawn from a population who supposedly produced the toughest warriors in the universe. On the face of it, you would think the attempt of an obnoxious stranger to walk right through a security checkpoint without showing the requisite ID wouldn't be tolerated for more than, oh, thirty seconds tops. In short, if Tourist seriously thought it would be IC and thematic for him, an outsider, to get away with ANY loud and obvious violation of the security procedures within that Palace, in front of one or more witnesses, after these new rules were ICly explained to him, he wasn't thinking clearly (to put it as charitably as possible).

To take another example, suppose I'm RPing in a Medieval Fantasy mush and I enter the room where a King is holding Court. I shout out something inflammatory like "No taxation without representation! Death to all tyrants! One man, one vote!" and then turn to run. I then claim OOCly that I am assuming I can make it back out of the Castle without being caught, even though I didn't discuss this OOCly with the King or other interested parties (the Court Magician, perhaps?) who are ICly likely to try and stop me. This really should have been negotiated in advance; otherwise I'm asking everyone to believe I can evade the armed guards in the room, any guards in the corridors outside, walk right through the drawbridge presumably being raised as soon as the hue and cry goes up to stop me, swim across the monster-infested moat, and disappear into the woods without leaving a scent for the Royal Bloodhounds (or Royal Magician) to follow. Fat chance, unless I already the ability to pass miracles (heavy-duty magic). If the King, etc., claim that my action in the seat of his power, before so many witnesses, gave Implicit Consent to being seized and thrown in a dungeon, it would be hard to refute that claim.

To put it yet another way, in the movie STAR WARS the only reason Han, Leia, Luke, et aliae were able to escape from the biggest and baddest space station the Empire had was because Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader decided to let them get away with it, having planted some sort of transponder on the Millennium Falcon first.

NOTE: All this only applies to cases where the people running the stronghold plausibly know on the IC level, either from past information (like Wanted Posters) or because you tell or show them (by shooting people, for example) that you are a real live Enemy in their midst. If your political allegiance is a secret, or you're well-disguised, or nobody in there has any reason to hate you when you enter, and you manage to commit a few crimes inside the stronghold without leaving live witnesses to raise the alarm, there's no reason for the opposition to insist they have the right to ICly gang up on you before you can get back outside again, even if OOCly they know who and what you really are.

CLOSING REMARKS AND SUGGESTIONS

Implied Consent does not last indefinitely. My own rule is this:

When implied consent is fairly presumed to have been given, it has only been given for the duration of that scene or basic situation; that is to say, until one or more of the characters has left the Room in question and is now acting on his own volition, his departure not having been successfully challenged on OOC grounds like "It wasn't realistic for you to get out of here without us stopping you!"

Examples: 1) If I let myself be seen stealing a diamond when I'm in a room with five witnesses who aren't on my side, and I was dumb enough to do it without negotiating anything IC, you could fairly argue that I gave Implicit Consent to the idea that they would all gang up on me and knock me down.

However, if I get out of the room ICly and nobody OOCly challenges my escape at the time (maybe I did have a confederate, or there was a secret passage, or I yelled OOCly "Please let me get away with it for now!" and they did), if I run into some of those witnesses later in another room, another scene, they will certainly recognize me as a Wanted Criminal but my Implicit Consent to being mobbed by them has expired. They don't still have the right to expect me to cooperate while they pose capturing me in this fresh situation.

2) If I punch at a Powerhouse (a Superman or Rand al'Thor type - verypowerful fictional characters) without any advance negotiation, and he doesn't care to fight me right then (he thinks it's funny, or he's in disguise and doesn't want to blow his cover, or he's in a hurry to go do something more important somewhere else, or whatever), he can't track me down later, in another time and place, and insist that I am about to get whipped in a fight because of Implied Consent doctrine based on that previous scene.

OTOH the ending of a scene is different from the end of an RPing session when I abruptly Logout from the mush in the middle of a cliffhanger situation. At one extreme, I've played single scenes - interaction between my PC and another character - that took an hour or two of RL time each day on at least 3 different days, because that was when our RL schedules intersected. ICly it was all part of a single scene occurring in the course of a single IC day.

The point is : Suppose I am a normal human (or a very lightweight superhuman compared to Superman) and I shoot an ordinary gun at Superman on a Superhero - themed mush, and then I immediately disconnect before he reacts, and then I come back online a day or two later. I have no right to say, "Well, Superman didn't pose instant retaliation in the three seconds between my gunshot and when I logged out for the night, so that means I got away and he never laid a finger on me, and now it's a couple of IC days later and he can't lay a finger on me without my Explicit Consent for a brand new scene." Superman would be within his rights to argue that the scene wasn't over and done with just because I had left the mush for awhile, and to claim that since he never said anything that could be construed as consenting to my escape, he probably clobbered me and stuffed me into a jail cell "between scenes", and we had better discuss exactly what happened between "then" and "now" before I started RPing new scenes with someone else and claiming Superman had never laid a finger on me.

You may have noticed a trend here : my basic rule of thumb is to avoid "Implied Consent" arguments as much as humanly possible by advance negotiation in any situation where the other person might (IMO) plausibly think they had my Implicit Consent to do something drastic to me. Contrariwise, upon those occasions in my mushing days when I had plans for doing really nasty things to somebody else, I didn't try to entrap them or force my ideas upon them without warning.

I've heard that some mushes (especially World of Darkness types, I think) have a special class of Staff called "Judges" who specialize in untangling doubtful cases such as the ones I discussed above, but I've never been active on a mush where such help was readily available, and my natural skepticism means I'm not likely to deliver myself into a Judge's hands if I can possibly help it.

In short, Iadvise that whatever Implied Consent rules you want on your mush, they specifically outline any very common types of situations (such as any of the Seven Iprovided as examples) where a character is likely to find that"Implied Consent"has been assumed by the other party, particularly if the Implied Consent involves anything as drastic as maiming, mutilation, or murder. You may feel that "common sense" ought to guide the Player to the correct conclusion in such cases, but there's no good way to test a player's CSQ(Common Sense Quotient)before letting him RP.