Consensual RP

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Consensual roleplay is what happens on a cooperative MUSH where people respect each other's characters. It's a way of roleplaying, or maybe a better description would be an ethic of roleplaying. It essentially goes something like this:

If I am roleplaying where you can find/see me and where you would be able to be, you are welcome to join in with the roleplaying. On a MUSH, if you're in public, you're assumed to be inviting people to play with you. Your character might feel differently, of course.
If my character is about to change something about your character or a relationship with your character, I will ask if that's all right. On PernMUSH in particular, there is a high value placed on people's rights to dictate what happens to their characters. There are circumstances, like a Hatching, where people have willingly given up a certain degree of control (you can impress me to green, blue, or not at all, but I won't know what the decision is in advance and am ready to deal with any of the above with this character), but generally, even if the scene is going quickly, it's a nice idea to quickly page: hey, my character's about to slap you... okay?
I will not thrust a situation on you that you cannot ignore. This especially seems to be important when dealing with people like Healers and leaders, who can't ignore in-character wise certain kinds of things, like people running and screaming that they've broken their arm, or that Thread is fallling. A good rule of thumb is, if you need someone to react to what you're doing, give 'em a page first. Most people will, in fact, really want to roleplay with you, but they might have a headache, be about to leave, be in the middle of something, or they might be concerned about what they have to do (like rush out and fight Thread).
You are not required to roleplay with me. This comes out the most in leaders' situations, I think. No one has to roleplay with someone else. Not even the Headwoman or Lord Holder or Craftmaster, even if you'd really, really like them to be there when you pull of that magnificent stunt. Let me be clear that I think it's a very good thing if they do anyway. At the same time, it's a bit much to say that someone else has to roleplay with your character or else they're mean and bad and rotten. 99.9% of the time people will want to roleplay, but if they don't, who knows what it means... they're completely wrapped up in a particular plot, they're suffering from having too much work, whatever. Just find someone else who will!
Some scenes don't require much consent to be given. I sort of think of it like an 80/20 rule, and a 20/80 result. Eighty percent of scenes are more casual scenes, which impact on a character's capacity for change about twenty percent. Twenty percent of scenes are more forceful, conflict oriented scenes, which account for about eighty percent of major character changes. The problem is that you can't always predict from your window of perception on the scene what's significant to another character. When in doubt, ask, is usually the best policy.

Igen Notes: I think it's important to stress here how absolutely Igen Weyr has bought into the idea of consensual roleplay for all its members. I think it's because there's a definite focus on intimate roleplay... the kind where a character can change minutely from a cool, detatched character to a slightly more interested in people character and people will notice and go with it. That kind of investment in the inner workings of a character requires that people care very much what happens to their characters. And when they do, they tend to -- no exaggeration -- explode if something is imposed on them. Even when they would have consented if they'd been asked first.

I've noticed that there is a particular tension when people are coming from areas where there's a slightly different expectation that the people 'higher up' in authority will go out of their way constantly to visibly include people in their scenes... even when it doesn't make logical sense. At Igen this happens to a certain extent, particularly for very new people, but once they've been around a few weeks they're pretty well expected to involve themselves if they so desire without people fighting to include them.

I visualize this as the difference between 'grabbing' people and providing 'hooks.' I try, myself, to leave as much room as possible for someone to get into a scene... a look, a question, a physical motion like turning to see the person. This is a hook that they can grab onto. But I don't often try to force other characters to react to mine by pulling them forcefully into roleplay. I figure if they want to join in, they can, but I shouldn't assume that just 'cause I'm the Weyrwoman they want to.

It's funny to me, because the usual cry about this is that there's 'snobbiness.' I myself see it as quite the reverse. We don't assume that people need coddling and prodding to join in. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't aware of it being a problem in some people's eyes, but I still prefer to lay down as a fundamental assumption that if people want to join in, they will. I don't want roleplaying to centre around any one person, or any one group of people. No one needs me to figure out what their character should do. :)