Is Tasing RDM?

[25g]

I was slain for haphazardly using a taser on a round in which I was a Detective, and I couldn't stop thinking about whether or not that was fair. (I have nothing better to do than to sit around and think about shit like this and, unfortunately, I'm not making that up.)

The underlying principle in question here is whether or not you can use a taser haphazardly, because you can only use a taser on suspicion. Right? If I use a taser, the train of thought is something like as follows:

(1) I see a player near or around me and I make a judgement call based on their virtual body language, etc., whether or not they pose a threat to my virtual wellbeing or the virtual wellbeing of other (presumedly) innocent players around me.
(2) I employ the taser to momentarily detain them in lieu of actually firing an armed weapon and thus inflicting damage, which would be considered RDM (and is thus against the rules).

The only other case in which a taser would be used by a Detective in a situation not as described above would be in the case that they're just fuckin' about, e.g., I fire a taser with the intention of temporarily handicapping somebody for kicks, or I aim to kill somebody, such as using the taser to drown a player while they are in a body of water.

Moreover, I was slain by a moderator, which is a demonstration of in-game privilege. (I started to cry and complain for three hours.) It seems to me highly unlikely that your average non-administrative player would go out of their way to report being tased unless they died, which is RDM (and an altogether separate issue). It's even less likely that a moderator would go out of their way to punish a player for witnessing a Detective tase somebody.

Ultimately, the point is that of intentionalism. As a Detective, what my intentions are in tasing a player cannot be proven beyond the speech act I provide for tasing them. If I suspect a player of being traitorous, and I fire a taser to apprehend them, I don't know that they're traitorous or not. I'm simply acting on my perception of whether or not they may be a threat, which is totally subjective. Even if I were fuckin' about (with the explicit sidenote that I do not aim to kill, viz., RDM), the act would look more or less exactly the same as that of the serious-minded Detective because it all rests on subjective agency. Thus, it's most certainly not worthy of a slay.

(The solution is simple. Tasers shouldn't cause damage. That's what the fuss is, I think. Mods shouldn't be the arbiter of correct taser usage. The Detective should be, and the Detective alone, unless the Detective kills an innocent player with the taser, because that is RDM.)

It's 3:57 AM where I am right now.

 

[Pokeben10]

Our rules on taser usage are fairly simple:

Since the taser inflicts a small amount of damage, if it's RDM, it's RDM. You cannot simply go around tasering people for kicks without expecting some backlash. If you're messing around with some pals, that's fine and dandy. But randomly tasering someone is RDM, and they can report you for it. That said, you cannot kill a detective for merely tasering you. If a detective RDMs you with a taser, report them. Do not try to take matters into your own hands because it will be RDM if you attack/kill them.

Our moderators simply dish out punishment in accordance with our rules, which can be found here and here. If we allowed players to decide for themselves whether or not their taser usage is RDM, things would get messy quickly. If you feel a staff member has handled your report incorrectly, you can speak to them (and all online staff) by putting an "@" before your message, or you can send them a private message with "!p [username] [message]". If you would like to suggest a rule change, please do so here.

 

[Voca]

Aside from dealing damage and putting a player at risk of dying if props are involved while getting tazed - A detective tasing another player also count as a Passive KoS, so even if your intention with tazing wasnt to kill, if someone witness you taze a person, they can legit kill the person that you tazed, and it will all be on you for calling a passive KoS.

Tazing on Suspicion is a no no, as much as shooting someone on Suspicion is. But as Pokeben mentioned, there are people who wont mind at all, not report and just have a fun time with it.

We arent really devil's advocate, who are going to punish players for having a good time, when noone is reporting anything, as long as its not on the expense of others.
There is a difference between messing with friends and making your own fun by ruining the fun of others.

Now you are free to suggest a rulechange, but I can already say that, what you are suggesting wont solve any of the core issues from tazing, even if you nullify the initial damage from the tazer, tazed players are still at high risk of taking world damage, taking damage if the ragdoll gets in touch with props, and with the passive KoS still being active, in danger of other players.

So even if you remove 1 reason for tazing randomly/on suspicion to be RDM, you are still left with 3 other causes of RDM through tazing.

 

[25g]

(I'm really not looking to bitch and moan; I just want to debate gameplay. I probably should have listed this forum under the general gameplay section. Please keep this in mind as I'm not trying to complain about the staff or server or whatever!)

I find TTT a fascinating game to think about in terms of rules and how they are enforced. My position is in support of vanilla. I don't like playing on servers that have ten trillion additional items because I feel they end up breaking the game, or altering it beyond recognition. (Think about how much of a hassle I'm going to make for this one taser.) I am very sincerely asking people to consider whether or not they think the game would be better or worse without this single item as it functions now. Or, at the least, I want people to consider how many implicit and explicit rules underlie what is at face value just a goofy sussy baka game.

One of my earlier points was that there is no good reason for the taser to inflict damage (at least that I can think of). If that were fixed, I don't think there would be much of a conversation to have here. That is, would tasing still be considered RDM if it didn't cause damage? Beyond putting players at risk of death (see below), which is one thing, and is a nebulous and ill-defined scenario in and of itself, I don't think there would be any gripers present if the taser functioned as a simple player-administrated handicap.

This is a good response, Voca. Here's what I think:

"Aside from dealing damage and putting a player at risk of dying if props are involved..."
(1) I don't think they should deal damage;
(2) I think the only threat present (present as well as in the imagined case wherein tasers do not deal damage) with regards to death-risk is natural or environmental hazard. If I, as a Detective, use a taser to apprehend a player while in a precarious environment (examples: over a ledge, near a body of water, near a diamond sword, near magma), this is the only perceived case in which taser usage would be unanimously regarded as incorrect and would justly entail administrative punishment. Why?—because this is RDM. I don't think that players are put at a higher risk of death than they already are at any given time when they are tased (unless they are in a hazardous environment). Their facility to self-defend is revoked for a moment, but I don't think that most players interpret a player being tased as invoking the right to KOS.

You have to separate potential RDM from actual RDM. I should state now that I disagree with the notion that tasing somebody should count as a passive KOS. (I'll unpack that below.) Besides the fact that the taser does cause damage (which is a flaw), the only other case in which it would obviously count as RDM (thus, rule-breaking) would be that in which the Detective is placed in an environment that would ensure beyond a shadow of doubt that he intended to kill the person tased. (For instance, let's say that I'm Detective and you walk past me on top of the doorframes on ttt_dolls. If I fire a taser here, knowing fully well that you are bound to fall off the ledge and die, then I should be punished for RDM.)

Before I move on, I want to address this: "Tazing on Suspicion is a no no, as much as shooting someone on Suspicion is."
I totally, hugely disagree. Here's a bit of a teleological pickle, and it has to do with the intended design of the instrument and its use. I think we may be disagreeing over what the taser is designed to do. You can only tase on suspicion. (I mean, kinda. Hear me out. You can use a taser on a Traitor knowing that they are a Traitor, but why wouldn't you use a weapon?) Are you saying that the only acceptable (=non-rule-breaking) use of the taser would be on a player who is confirmed to be a Traitor?

The taser does two things: one, inflicts damage, and two, momentarily stops the player tased from moving or communicating. I believe that the second effect denotes the correct usage of the taser. I believe the Detective is meant to use the taser as an instrument and not as a weapon. So, just or correct taser usage would entail the following: the apprehension of a player suspected of being a Traitor (which allows for suspicion to exist on a very wide spectrum, i.e., from the player releasing full-on gunfire in a crowd to casting a weird glance at a non-traitorous player). In this way, I think that tasing on suspicion simply is to tase. That is, the taser is meant to be deployed on suspicion, but because it causes damage, the whole thing becomes a pain in the ass. I absolutely disagree with the point that tasing on suspicion is tantamount to shooting on suspicion for the reason that shooting on suspicion is much more dangerous and places much more emphasis on the "DM" in "RDM."

(Ah, this is another point to poke at. I don't think that the label of "RDM" really applies to taser usage if "RDM" stands for "random deathmatch." I think that, unless the explicit intention is to kill as has been demonstrated above, another term is needed to demarcate annoying or troublesome behavior from the full-stop instigation of a "deathmatch.")

In the specific instance I was slain for using the taser, I fired to keep a suspicious player from escaping a Traitor Tester via the backdoor T-Room. I think the taser also grants the Detective the pseudo-authoritarian privilege of defusing tense situations which would otherwise result in violence (a player is menacingly orbiting a crowd holding an incendiary grenade, for example). Both of these situations operate on the Detective's suspicion, but are conceivably reasonable and just (in my view) and certainly not worthy of a slay. This pokes at the larger fault of the taser causing damage in the first place.

And then you have the much larger issue of in-game symbolic acts and how they are interpreted. ("A detective tasing another player also count as a Passive KoS, so even if your intention with tazing wasnt to kill, if someone witness you taze a person, they cant [Typo? Do you mean can?] legit kill the person that you tazed, and it will all be on you for calling a passive KoS.")

If I use a taser to detain a player based on reasonable suspicion (which is what I believe the taser should be for), I don't think that tasing should be interpreted as a passive KOS. I would have otherwise called suspicion or a KOS. It seems highly unreasonable to me that a KOS should entail tasing a player.

In sum:
(1) That tasers cause damage is a serious flaw in the game's design. Whether or not that can be fixed I don't know, but it is a flaw because the game would simply flow better in the case that the taser did not cause damage. (This qua the second effect of the taser as non-harmful instrument. The removal of damage-causation would remove a philosophically bumpy element to a game that is composed of many philosophical rules. That the taser does cause damage is antithetical to its second use as an apprehension device. I cannot think of a good reason why the taser would cause damage.)
(2) The only instance in which administrative intervention should be considered is in the scenario that the Detective fired a taser with the environmentally-situated foreknowledge that it would kill the other player. (Hence, RDM.)
(3) The taser should be used as an intermediary tool to detain suspicious players in lieu of actually harming them.

 

[Nitro_Hunter]

Tasers are the deescalation tool then you start blasting people’s heads in

 

[25g]

Tasers are the deescalation tool then you start blasting people’s heads in

I agree with the first part!

 

[Nitro_Hunter]

I agree with the first part!

I don’t agree with it

 

[25g]

I don’t agree with it

bet

 

[Nitro_Hunter]

bet

I don’t like to gamble sorry

 

[RyanHighman]

There would be another flaw opened up with making the taser not a passive KOS or dealing damage. What would be the gameplay use of using it? Incapacitating a suspicious player for 5 seconds and then they get to keep going. I get where you’re coming from, but it would make the taser useless, and you’d be more likely to get it removed than to get these changes

 

[helix]

(I'm really not looking to bitch and moan; I just want to debate gameplay. I probably should have listed this forum under the general gameplay section. Please keep this in mind as I'm not trying to complain about the staff or server or whatever!)

I find TTT a fascinating game to think about in terms of rules and how they are enforced. My position is in support of vanilla. I don't like playing on servers that have ten trillion additional items because I feel they end up breaking the game, or altering it beyond recognition. (Think about how much of a hassle I'm going to make for this one taser.) I am very sincerely asking people to consider whether or not they think the game would be better or worse without this single item as it functions now. Or, at the least, I want people to consider how many implicit and explicit rules underlie what is at face value just a goofy sussy baka game.

One of my earlier points was that there is no good reason for the taser to inflict damage (at least that I can think of). If that were fixed, I don't think there would be much of a conversation to have here. That is, would tasing still be considered RDM if it didn't cause damage? Beyond putting players at risk of death (see below), which is one thing, and is a nebulous and ill-defined scenario in and of itself, I don't think there would be any gripers present if the taser functioned as a simple player-administrated handicap.

This is a good response, Voca. Here's what I think:

"Aside from dealing damage and putting a player at risk of dying if props are involved..."
(1) I don't think they should deal damage;
(2) I think the only threat present (present as well as in the imagined case wherein tasers do not deal damage) with regards to death-risk is natural or environmental hazard. If I, as a Detective, use a taser to apprehend a player while in a precarious environment (examples: over a ledge, near a body of water, near a diamond sword, near magma), this is the only perceived case in which taser usage would be unanimously regarded as incorrect and would justly entail administrative punishment. Why?—because this is RDM. I don't think that players are put at a higher risk of death than they already are at any given time when they are tased (unless they are in a hazardous environment). Their facility to self-defend is revoked for a moment, but I don't think that most players interpret a player being tased as invoking the right to KOS.

You have to separate potential RDM from actual RDM. I should state now that I disagree with the notion that tasing somebody should count as a passive KOS. (I'll unpack that below.) Besides the fact that the taser does cause damage (which is a flaw), the only other case in which it would obviously count as RDM (thus, rule-breaking) would be that in which the Detective is placed in an environment that would ensure beyond a shadow of doubt that he intended to kill the person tased. (For instance, let's say that I'm Detective and you walk past me on top of the doorframes on ttt_dolls. If I fire a taser here, knowing fully well that you are bound to fall off the ledge and die, then I should be punished for RDM.)

Before I move on, I want to address this: "Tazing on Suspicion is a no no, as much as shooting someone on Suspicion is."
I totally, hugely disagree. Here's a bit of a teleological pickle, and it has to do with the intended design of the instrument and its use. I think we may be disagreeing over what the taser is designed to do. You can only tase on suspicion. (I mean, kinda. Hear me out. You can use a taser on a Traitor knowing that they are a Traitor, but why wouldn't you use a weapon?) Are you saying that the only acceptable (=non-rule-breaking) use of the taser would be on a player who is confirmed to be a Traitor?

The taser does two things: one, inflicts damage, and two, momentarily stops the player tased from moving or communicating. I believe that the second effect denotes the correct usage of the taser. I believe the Detective is meant to use the taser as an instrument and not as a weapon. So, just or correct taser usage would entail the following: the apprehension of a player suspected of being a Traitor (which allows for suspicion to exist on a very wide spectrum, i.e., from the player releasing full-on gunfire in a crowd to casting a weird glance at a non-traitorous player). In this way, I think that tasing on suspicion simply is to tase. That is, the taser is meant to be deployed on suspicion, but because it causes damage, the whole thing becomes a pain in the ass. I absolutely disagree with the point that tasing on suspicion is tantamount to shooting on suspicion for the reason that shooting on suspicion is much more dangerous and places much more emphasis on the "DM" in "RDM."

(Ah, this is another point to poke at. I don't think that the label of "RDM" really applies to taser usage if "RDM" stands for "random deathmatch." I think that, unless the explicit intention is to kill as has been demonstrated above, another term is needed to demarcate annoying or troublesome behavior from the full-stop instigation of a "deathmatch.")

In the specific instance I was slain for using the taser, I fired to keep a suspicious player from escaping a Traitor Tester via the backdoor T-Room. I think the taser also grants the Detective the pseudo-authoritarian privilege of defusing tense situations which would otherwise result in violence (a player is menacingly orbiting a crowd holding an incendiary grenade, for example). Both of these situations operate on the Detective's suspicion, but are conceivably reasonable and just (in my view) and certainly not worthy of a slay. This pokes at the larger fault of the taser causing damage in the first place.

And then you have the much larger issue of in-game symbolic acts and how they are interpreted. ("A detective tasing another player also count as a Passive KoS, so even if your intention with tazing wasnt to kill, if someone witness you taze a person, they cant [Typo? Do you mean can?] legit kill the person that you tazed, and it will all be on you for calling a passive KoS.")

If I use a taser to detain a player based on reasonable suspicion (which is what I believe the taser should be for), I don't think that tasing should be interpreted as a passive KOS. I would have otherwise called suspicion or a KOS. It seems highly unreasonable to me that a KOS should entail tasing a player.

In sum:
(1) That tasers cause damage is a serious flaw in the game's design. Whether or not that can be fixed I don't know, but it is a flaw because the game would simply flow better in the case that the taser did not cause damage. (This qua the second effect of the taser as non-harmful instrument. The removal of damage-causation would remove a philosophically bumpy element to a game that is composed of many philosophical rules. That the taser does cause damage is antithetical to its second use as an apprehension device. I cannot think of a good reason why the taser would cause damage.)
(2) The only instance in which administrative intervention should be considered is in the scenario that the Detective fired a taser with the environmentally-situated foreknowledge that it would kill the other player. (Hence, RDM.)
(3) The taser should be used as an intermediary tool to detain suspicious players in lieu of actually harming them.

It should be noted the exact opposite argument was made when the tazer was first introduced. Initially, the taser did not cause any damage at all. This led to a lot of players being upset because they were being tased for nearly no reason at all. You can read more on that here: https://afterhoursgaming.gg/threads/enact-punishments-for-detectives-randomly-tasing-people.1609/

As it stands, right now, tasing is RDM because of the damage it inflicts if you're using the taser against someone who you were not able to conclude did a traitorous action. We're always open to suggestions on how we implement gameplay and rules (we have a suggestion forum for just that), but I wanted to give you some of the back history on why it is the way it is right now.