How common is sex in Cantr?

[*Wiro]

I don't WANT other players to know I am not an adult. It just ruins the roleplaying as there are enough idiots out there that don't care about "little kids" at all and just say "screw this" and kill them just for that. Just like when someone knows the player and kills the char for that reason. It can't be proved, but it will and (with the second thing I mentioned) does happen.

And I'm afraid they'd roleplay differently because of it, too. Surely some adults wouldn't swear when there are minors around. Something completely ridiculous and it just doesn't fit in Cantr. If you can't handle roleplayed sex and swearing and violence and whatever, then don't play Cantr, no matter what your age is. Unless you wish to avoid it yourself, but they shouldn't complain about others.

Cantr is not defined, who is to say wether or wether not roleplayed sex and whatever belongs in Cantr?

[Tangential]

All true, but those are just opinions as every one else has. Rated R movies are RESTRICTED.. parents make the choice of allowing a 14 year old to watch these. Acting is an artform also, so why is the movie restricted, yet Cantr isn't?

Not a licensed attorney, as I haven't completed law school yet, but I will in a few years and I'm already working in a law firm. My previous post was solely for legality reasons, which was why all the links and crap - it's not all black and white.

I like comparing Cantr to the movies, and obviously, novels. Movies and novels offer stories, which is exactly the mainstream purpose of these entities. While there are outstanding stories in both, there are also those shady aspects on the outskirts - outright porno.

However, here's my opinion - given the society we are in right now, we need to be realistic. Sex should or should not be part of a lot of things (depending on your own opinion), but in reality, it's everywhere.

My girlfriend is a Twilight series fanatic (a literary phenomenon that has swept America by storm recently) and even in -those- books, there's sexual content in the written form. The general age demographic for those books range from those from age nine to the ripe age of sixties, even. Granted I don't know how the sex scenes were written and how in depth they are, but they are still there in novels. Which surprised me at first because I tended to think Twilight books as something for mostly teens and young adults. But that then leads me to adult novels. What's stopping the young ones from just checking out or purchasing a book by erotic novel authors from libraries or stores? Nothing. There's not even a rating system for books to show what content is written inside. It could include sex scenes galore, mixed in with a crime fighting plot and still be placed next to books like Sherlock Holmes series.

PG-13 movies even now have a range of sexual content; nudity; drug content, etc. For movies, producers are not required to submit their movie for rating. Nor is there enforcement to ensure that the appropriate people are watching what is really suitable for them. Enforcement really comes from the movie theatre or movie distributors themselves to protect against complaints from parents for liability reasons.

This is where I agree with you to a certain extent, Sunni. The game could use some written form of term agreements to state that players might encounter sexual content, but I only support this for Jos's sake of liability issues. It is a stretch since this game is solely text-based (slow paced as well) and there's no graphics and characters involved that are often not portrayals of the real player behind the screen with obvious privacy protection - but it is better safe than sorry.

Upon thinking this further and bouncing off some more of these posts, I'd like to pose a question of - what about violence? We have separate threads that even glorify particular character killers, yet is virtual killing so ingrained in our society that we can just shrug it off? Should players take into consideration the possibility of killing off a minor's character? Does violence belong in Cantr?

Just some thought provokers of what we are as a society. Just to throw this in and reiterate, I think all of it belongs in Cantr without need of restriction (yet) for the various reasons I have already stated. Writing is an art. Cantr is a text-based simulation of an "imagined" society. Sex happens. Violence happens. Realistically speaking, if minors can't handle the text of these - then heaven forbid what would happen if they saw these visually.

[Doug R.]

There is nothing even remotely simple about posting a disclaimer. Disclaimers, in my experience, act to condone and encourage the behavior they are warning against. This is why disclaimers on XXX sites are displayed proudly in 26 point flashing fonts.

Having a virtual society with all rules created by the characters in-game is 100% different than adding, oh, by the way, minors play this game and you might encounter sex.

What that says is that it's a virtual world where you can make characters to have sex, possibly with minors, and that we're totally cool with that because we warned you before you signed up.

In addition to encouraging the wrong kind of play (and attracting the wrong kind of players - because sickos flock together), it would turn away serious players that don't really want to deal with sex. So, instead of that person signing up, falling in love with Cantr, and then having to thwart another character's advances occasionally because the game is worth it, they never sign up at all.

See the problem here?

We can't ban any activity in-game, because that would destroy the nature and fabric of Cantr. We can't ban minors, because we'd have no more players. We can't post warnings, because that's implicit encouragement to behave badly.

It's a no-win situation.

The easiest thing to do would be to remove gender from the game, because it serves no purpose at all in regards to the game mechanics. If we want classifications, it would be just as easy to say Blue/Green as it is to say Male/Female, and there's no sexual consequences.

[Rigel Kent]

blah blah lbah you kiddies can type a lot.

Any hoo it is the best role playing online for one very simple reason there is nothing. Nothingg made by the programers no building cars ships ect only locations that are empty raw materials and animals other then that people have to do everthing them selves. there are also no rules but the dont use info from one char to another so the law and order is by us the player. no other games i have seen have anything like this.

[Doug R.]

I spoke with Tangential privately, and he suggested some wording that I think will work without all the bad things I mentioned happening. We'll discuss it in the GAB.

[Sunni Daez]

Thank you Doug.. But I have a question too. If you are worried a disclaimer would stop someone from playing,because of the sex issue, don't you think this thread would too?

[Sunni Daez]

You could've mentioned that players are required to provide one's age when registering and it's possible to check with the staff if a player has reported one's age to be 18 or over, so if a player intending to initiate sexual dialog first contacts the staff to ask if the partner is of legal age, the only chance of ending up playing with a minor is when the minor has lied about one's age during registering.

And what would be the point in including that information? The whole key was the anonymous minor, and not knowing. We already know that discussing sex with a minor is illegal. ( in certain situations... I am not trying to debate that again, I am just curious as to why she feels I should have included this? What difference would it make to the answer? If you knew they were a minor and your morals didn't let you RP that way anyways, you wouldn't)

[joo]

There may be events in Cantr when someone encounters another sexual character, but frequently there are cues to gauge the other player's inclination to sexual behavior based on his/her character's perceived responses. If that person doesn't want to go any further than making out, an out of character comment should suffice if the partner hadn't already asked in a OOC comment about age.

How about instead of killing the RP with unneccesary OOC collaboration, you just play your character as not wanting to take things further? If a player can RP enough to get into such a situation, I'm sure they're capable to getting out of it, or slowing things down, if they don't like the way things are going.

if the partner hadn't already asked in a OOC comment about age.

In my opinion, this will have a very negative, even awkward effect on the RP. By one player asking the other's age, that implies that the character is planning to have sex with them, which is revealing private IG information about a character's intentions OOC (a.k.a. CRB). What if, however, the character who is suspected of being played by an underage player, does not plan to actually have sex, but it just seducing the character to distract them while their partner is breaking a lock on a storage building outside. Now, if the player controlling the character being seduced were to ask "OOC: ZOMG R U UNDERAGEB&??? I WORSHIPS GEEZUZ SO CANNOT RP WITH YOU IF UNDER 18!!1" this would put the other player in an awkward position - they were not planning on actually having sex, but if they were underage, and did tell the other player this, then the other player might suddenly decide to break it off and go outside to gather potatoes. In an ideal situation where the game progresses naturally by pure, isolated, cause and effect, the two characters would probably have continued to make out, or whatever, and neither character's intentions would have been put at jeopardy.

Additionally, it is never possible to be sure of who somebody is on the internet - so anybody claiming to be 12 years old might actually be a paedophile, and anybody claiming to be 25 might be exactly 10 years younger. In the latter case, those who alternatively choose to give their correct date of birth will effectively be punished because of this, being cold-shouldered by other players who believe they are not worth RPing with, and experiencing a second-class existence. And I am sure that nobody why starts playing Cantr would want to discriminated in against in that way.

[Sunni Daez]

In my opinion, there was at least 1 comment there that made sense.

[BarbaricAvatar]

The direction this whole thread has taken is ridiculous.

Are you seriously saying that in your country a guy can be prosecuted for roleplaying sex in a fantasy-style game while the other person is an underage boy with a female character in their 40's, having lied about their age when asked OOC if they're over 18?
And you can find a lawyer who has nothing better to do (like go after real paedophiles for example) and will take the case on?

And nobody thinks this crazy? Some people need to look more at the bigger picture rather than the end of their noses.

Additionally, it is never possible to be sure of who somebody is on the internet

Indeed after further investigation it's quite possible to find that the underage boy from the US roleplaying a girl char is actually a 46 year old woman pretending to be a 13 year old boy, living in Peru.

What does your failed lawyer do then?

[Doug R.]

Thank you Doug.. But I have a question too. If you are worried a disclaimer would stop someone from playing,because of the sex issue, don't you think this thread would too?

Potentially, but I have no control over what is said in this thread. I do have partial control over what gets put in a disclaimer. Also, this thread offers explanations, arguments, and counter arguments - much more information for someone to base a decision on.

And nobody thinks this crazy?

I'm pretty sure most of us think it's crazy.

Laws are supposed to prosecute intent. Somewhere along the way, that principle got lost in the US, along with the principle of prosecuting minors as minors, and the principle of personal responsibility for one's actions.

[SekoETC]

Sunni, because the way you asked the question most likely made the attorney think that a minor has an equal chance of encountering sex than an adult, when in fact the chance is smaller due to some players checking the age of their playmates and abstaining from playing with minors. He might also think that the game is Sodom and just a facade for a sex fest, when in fact characters have full lives involving food gathering, other projects, social relationships and sex is just a small part of it. In fact Cantrians are much more conservative concerning sex than today's teens (at least Finnish teens). Characters are often monogamous and marriages tend to last until death.

Playing a game like Cantr can give social practice to young people, they can learn pretty much safely how to tell an admirer "I'm not interested" or "I'm okay with hugging but I won't take my clothes off". Also they can come to notice how people are treated differently based on age and gender and possibly role-played beauty aspects.

[Sunni Daez]

Seko, the point of the question.. can there be legal trouble if you RP sex with a minor even if you don't know the other is.. in an anonymous situation... the rest doesn't really matter, to answer the question I had.

[SekoETC]

I disagree but I guess it doesn't matter. Using another example, if there were two bartenders, one who sold alcohol to a minor without asking for papers and the other one after asking for papers and not realizing they were forged, I'd say the first one was more guilty. The same goes for a person who doesn't check someone's age before exposing them to sexual material. According to you it's all the same, so people might as well stop checking since they'll be screwed anyway if they ever get sued, but I'm still going to continue checking people's age because it makes a difference to me and I'd recommend it for anyone who cares.

[joo]

According to you it's all the same, so people might as well stop checking since they'll be screwed anyway if they ever get sued, but I'm still going to continue checking people's age because it makes a difference to me and I'd recommend it for anyone who cares.

So if a character of yours happened to meet mine, and was seduced by my masterful RP, you would look up my DOB, and if you found I was less than 18 years old, would you make your character lose interest? Or would you just substitute the goods with *has sex*?