Forums » Smalltalk » Community discussion: Policy changes for adult RP

Playing child characters in hardcore sexual situations is against current site rules, regardless of player age. If you see these types of requests, please report them.

A few concerns.

First of all, I feel that one of the Roleplaying Repository's greatest strengths is the unity of its userbase. There is as little room as possible for elitism here; we don't even have post counts. It is my fear that introducing an 18+ only forum would be splitting the community into two parts, and possibly even inspire some vitriol. Additionally, I am very perturbed by the thought alone of having a location set aside for roleplay that is entirely or mostly sexual in nature. I feel that it will affect the image and feel of the site in other ways, and contribute to the social stigma surrounding roleplayers.

My opinion: I would personally advocate for the removal of all public requests for this variety of roleplay altogether, and ask that members keep them to private messages.

However, in tandem with this, I would recommend putting Age Verification into place. The solution would then be very simple: create a directory of all Age Verified players & characters so that it is easier for them to find each other. New tags can be created for Age Verified characters that are parallels to the warning tags we already have in place--but rather than indicating that these characters have mature material on their pages, they could be used to show that these characters are open or looking for such content in their roleplays. In this way, users that are interested in finding sexual or violent roleplay can browse the directories in search of something that interests them, and then send a private message to the player or character that has already been tagged as open for the same content.

The ban on public requests for this roleplay would ensure that no minors are able to freely get into it, no matter what their account age says, and will also keep such things available but not as a prominent part of the site's image. Of course, minors can still go PMing around in search of sexual roleplay, but then the burden falls upon the other user to first check and see if their potential partner is Age Verified before engaging. If they do not and suffer consequences for it, that is, I think, out of the RPR's hands, as they were provided the tools to check if they needed to.

This is a very serious matter, and nothing short of Age Verification of some kind is capable of providing absolute peace of mind. The solution of the Adult Only forum by itself is not as foolproof, because, as has been observed, many of these youngins lie at registration--and some of them are smart enough to make sure nobody knows.

I don't mind the idea at all.
The verification might be a bit hard though.
Unless a birth certificate or something simple would do? I don't have any drivers license or anything.

And maybe have the other forum for more than just 'sexy' rps, but adult rps in general.
High violence or gore, people who enjoy swearing like sailors, and sexy rps.
Putting a forum for 'sexy' rps only feels a bit weird.,

I imagine the forum can double as a "Adult players only" type forum, as some people really just prefer to play with adults all the time regardless of content. Sexual RPs are just the main issue legal wise so those would go in there first, but I see no reason why we can't have both types of content.

I understand what option 3 is! What I'm saying is without that in place at the moment, we're still pretty good at finding and cracking down on minors who are lying about their age... primarily because they flub up and give clues that they're not the age they claimed at registration.

Personally I don't really think we'd have much of a noticeable split! We already have folks who go to private venues if they're looking for specific rps (18+ or otherwise), so we hardy seem them anyway; if these RP & Forum Board features work as they should, you won't even see them if you don't want to, so I guess from a glance it'd look like nothing changed sans a serious lack of advertisements for 18+ rp on the Looking For board. The worry over the social stigma is legitimate though, but we already have folks publicly looking for that stuff as things stand; does that stigma not exist when those threads are in the public eye, or am I missing something in your concern? It's very possible that I am, y'know me and how I tend to fail spotchecks!

Part of me feels that it's far too late to worry about "affecting the image of the site", in that we've had some pretty blatant requests for some pretty hardcore RPs on the forums for years. There are times when they approach the majority of requests. However, I completely agree that I don't want it to look like a focus of the site, which is why I propose that if this forum existed, it would not appear anywhere without the user doing something to "opt in", such as checking a box in their settings saying they wanted to engage in adult RPs.

In this way, these types of requests would be invisible to visitors, people who don't want this kind of RP, to known minors, and possibly to all minors (if we made this forum require adult verification as well).

Would this address your concern? To me, this type of system would upgrade the family friendly image of the site considerably, not downgrade it!

My fear here is that when people go looking, they end up mass-messaging people. I can see this becoming remarkably annoying and possibly resulting in some harassment feelings. I would always prefer to be able to browse RP ideas and respond to the ones that interest me, rather than having to personally say no to all the ones that didn't.

It seems very likely that we will create some form of directory!

However, I'm not sure how this would be different from having an "invisible" forum seen only by people who are 1) Adults and 2) have requested to participate in that forum. Aside from, again, when you wanted to look at potential RP offers, you couldn't -- you'd have to suffer being spammed and saying no rather than simply not responding to a post.

Although a lot of people do flub up and get caught, how do we know how many DON'T flub up? It's impossible to know what we don't know!

Somehow, I missed this detail. Carry on.

Yeeeah, I know. D> I still feel like we do a pretty good job though. Okay, carry on, folks!

Shall do! I think I have once before, but I'm not sure how many times I've seen it. I don't think very often at all, maybe the once or whatever, but it got taken care of. I honestly can't remember what happened. @.@. But if I see that stuff I will.

I would definitely prefer to move, rather than to ban public requests for adult roleplay. Banning such requests completely feels to me like curating a pretty large interest group and shoving them under the rug. It's not nice to feel like dirty laundry.

However, I'm sure that most of the adults who play would benefit from a "safe zone" like a verified adults only forum. I would opt in even if it required a fee, just so that I would have a place to put my thoughts and roleplays where I know that I am inviting responses from adults only. We've talked about underage players approaching others for adult RP, but at the moment if I put out a request and someone underage responds, having slipped through the cracks of our mod elf eyes, then that looks even worse on me. I think that's a pretty key point for me, knowing that (some) requests I put out onto the RPR will only be seen by adults, for my peace of mind.

You have, and it was a super good catch! Thank you again, and thank you for any in future.

Good question! There's no current plans on the table for this, beyond the existing policy of asking people to take extreme violence or language into less public areas of the site.

On the subject of other mature manners of RP, would that forum section be applicable for them too? We have had to deal with an abundance of swearing and/or violence in public rps before.

I am all in favour for option 1. Especially if the requirements are that you need to be 18+ in order to even see it. I think I'm pretty much repeating what the majority agrees with here. I don't mind verifying my age as well, though that must be another huge task for the mods to keep track off, which I think might be overwhelming at some point.

Though, as asked before, I do wonder if that forum will also be for people requesting an RP that might get viciously violent or want a roleplay with a character with a potty mouth. I'd prefer not, though I'd understand if all these adult rated things would get sorted in said forums. It's just that for some reason I don't think people be looking in the 18+ section for epic adventures across the lands and slaying monsters. But they'd have to if they want to find my character who might drop one too many F-bombs.

Ooh boy, I'm pretty bad at voicing opinions like that, but you can be sure I'll be looking forward to the development of this!

None of this affects me in all reality, I don't often get into those sorts, though some violence is had sometimes. I personally find banning them would hinder freedoms, blocking from unverified accounts wouldn't, it'd be protection.

I'm fine with options one and two, but I would REALLY prefer not to have to show some identification for privacy reasons. I take my privacy and anonymity very seriously on the internet after all.

I personally love the idea of a separate forum area that you had to be verified and opt in to see.

I really like the options put forth. I would be on board with all of them. I also really like the idea of 'verifying' anonymous accounts. It could be through some innocuous little tag at the base of the page, tucked in with the copyright text. When it comes to verification I can understand why people would be wary of sharing information from official documentation. Perhaps there could be a compromise in presentation of an ID, taping off an address for example. Personally, I have no problem with verifying my age. While I know no system is perfect, I am fairly confident in the security of RPR and the honesty of Kim and our Mod team. Unfortunately, it has been proven that there are users who cannot and should not be trusted to behave responsibly. So when it comes down to it, I would rather err on the side of caution.

I am very in favour of an opt-in forum.

Verification, not-so-much. First, Security risk, the ID scans getting compromised. Second, there's the degradation to people such as myself who's ID does not match their identity and frankly, I don't care if it's not you (as in, a company) looking at it, I don't want people seeing it. Thirdly, I don't even have an ID at this point (I still own a passport), as it's simply /too expensive/. In my state (here in the USA), a state ID costs $30 - which is an incredible amount of money for something you can't get a job to get said money for without. Obviously this isn't a true problem for me, as I have a passport, but just keep in mind that, especially with your POC base, there's a chance of not having ID due to expense and possibly other problems. Forth, expense again - you're dumping an unneeded cost on players who don't necessarily have money.

Keep in mind, my entire comment re: verification is only for it being required to enter said opt-in forum.