On Gor SL (and elsewhere on SL, for that matter), half of the drama arising from roleplay events (in character) stems from illusory power struggles, and the other half from a refusal to accept the consequences of roleplay. In fact, the individuals who cause both types of drama are often the same.

And in both cases, the end result is always the same: wasted time, wasted effort and goodwill, frustration, disappointment, players leaving, entire communities falling apart.

Is this inevitable? Not at all. Is it human nature? That’s the worst excuse there is, and it’s also false. Because this type of behavior and reaction is always the work of a minority of players, so it’s neither inevitable nor natural: it’s just an identifiable problem that affects a minority of people who refuse to understand one thing: you play with other players, not against them, because you have nothing to gain personally from role-playing. The only real victory is the pleasure shared with other players, having experienced an exciting adventure full of intrigue, surprises, tension, laughter, and unexpected twists and turns!

1- The player who wants to win

So, let’s talk about the minority of players who are convinced that they are competing with others and that they want to win, that they must win. And I would add: and who, if they can’t win, will destroy everything they can out of anger, because if they can’t have what they want, no one else will.

This type of player is motivated by a desire for status, power, and the ability to dominate others. This can be more or less pronounced, and can apply to free men, free women, or slaves in Gor RP. It won’t be expressed in the same way, but the methodology and motivations are similar.

– The brute: This may be a player who plays a brute who knowingly ignores the principles of Gor. They do not respect hierarchy, castes, free women, or other people’s property, but they also do not respect other players’ IC boundaries, feelings, or opinions. They will brag about knowing what the world of Gor is, about being a true Gorian, about having the right to offend and intimidate others, and as a general rule, they will solve their problems through IC violence… and if that’s not enough, they will become obnoxious OOC and deliberately provoke drama.

– The gatekeeper: This may be the player who will do anything to obtain a position of authority, and once they have achieved it, will behave like a nepotistic oligarch, favoring their friends based on their loyalty rather than their skills, deciding what is Gorian or not according to their own standards and rejecting anything that does not suit them. This is a gatekeeper who is convinced that they hold the truth about what is Gorean and what is not, often not only aggressive and slanderous OOC, but also quite frequently harassing IC, using roleplay as a social and political tool to ostracize people who are not loyal to them.

– The poisoned lover: This may be a player whose real goal is to attract and obtain the exclusive affection and attention of another player in a position of authority, isolating their target in order to achieve this emotional exclusivity. This is someone who is not there to play a role, but uses their role to find someone to love in an abusive way. This is often the portrait of what are known as princess slaves, but it also applies to certain players who control their slave or partner with jealousy and possessiveness that goes far beyond the scope of role-playing. To achieve their ends, they will use the same kind of methods as gatekeepers, resorting to harassment and OOC slander, using every social trick in the book to reach their target, isolate them, and thus possess them completely.

Yes, I know you’ve already recognized one or more of these types of players among those you’ve encountered. You have probably even been victims of them. What characterizes this type of player is that their motivation to play a role is not enough for them. They want to win, even if it means using any means necessary. And they are often the source of the most devastating drama in role-playing sims. And they have one last characteristic, the most important and often the most serious: they refuse to accept the consequences of their actions in role-playing games.

2- Accepting the consequences

Accepting the consequences is the golden rule of role-playing, and it applies to everyone. It’s the very principle of playing together, the essence of fair play:

Because for everyone to have fun, everyone must accept the consequences of others’ actions and their own responsibilities, even if their character’s fate suddenly takes a dramatic turn. This is the basis of the social contract between role-playing game players!

In short, while I completely agree with specifying the limits of your character, there are personal choices and trade-offs that go against accepting the shared consequences of everything that can happen in a role-playing game on a Gorian sim. I can understand that players don’t like their characters to end up badly… I don’t either, I don’t want that. But when it comes to managing and accepting the consequences, everything is debatable. Refusing to accept them, with this type of limit that prohibits any consequences, is saying, “I don’t want to accept what could go wrong for my character, even if I am responsible for it because of my own actions and decisions in the game.” And that’s exactly how the vast majority of dramas begin, and how all roleplay, all history, is destroyed.

And above all, if these limits apply to the person who wrote them, why shouldn’t they apply to the players they’re playing with? That’s the essence of fair play: don’t do to me what you don’t want me to do to you. So accepting the consequences is part of participating in roleplay; not wanting to do so is refusing to play the game and accept fair play. And guess who does that? The person who isn’t there to play, but to win! Accepting painful consequences means losing, and losing is unacceptable, so they will refuse and cause drama.

Because I rarely hear players on Gor SL protesting that a slave who has committed a crime should be killed, and it happens much more often than you might think. On the other hand, as soon as a player risks losing their warrior in a duel or a crime that is going to be judged, it’s drama, betrayal, and an accsation of denial of respect for their character and their role. Funny, isn’t it? We don’t hear you when a free woman loses her freedom and is enslaved on a whim, but as soon as someone touches you, you scream.

The consequences go further… and include the idea that a character who has been mistreated will come out of it with scars or trauma. What, you refuse to accept that it was your actions that caused this? Then why did you do them? You act, you bear the consequences of your actions, and that’s indisputable.

3- Take responsibility, or don’t play.

In my gaming career on Gor SL, my various characters have suffered and endured things that were not funny, even horrible. At first, I tried to temper things, to water down my reactions. I tried to negotiate OOC: “Be a little more reasonable, pay attention to my limits, etc…” and I gritted my teeth.

After the third truly horrible event caused by players who thought “it’s just roleplay” and therefore didn’t want to take responsibility for the consequences I had to bear, I decided to stop negotiating or procrastinating. I have to accept my consequences and the consequences of other people’s actions, so now I accept them fully, in the way I think I should, and with the consequences that this has for my character. The first time I did this, it felt strange to the player, who didn’t realize how violent what they were doing was. Since then, I’ve continued down this path: no compromise with the consequences of each other’s actions in roleplay, unless they themselves are capable of doing so. It killed two of my characters, but while it pissed me off, those responsible had to deal with other consequences, especially those of their own actions. It’s a lesson. It has no effect on the power-hungry players I described above, but it does have an effect on everyone else, including making them angry at those responsible for these actions when they refuse to take responsibility. This allows us to eliminate these types of players. Since drama is inevitable in these cases, it might as well produce a useful result for the community.

Seriously, it’s a strategy I recommend. Of course, it makes your character’s life on Gor, which is a world that can generate a lot of trauma, quite complicated. But playing hard and without compromise forces others to also take responsibility for the consequences of their actions… or not to play. Because that’s the whole idea: a player who doesn’t accept the consequences of their character’s actions betrays the very principle of the social contract between players.

Yes, I have a rather dark view of the world of Gor, and an even darker view of what Gor is like on SL. But while this is also what makes the world of Gor so exciting (finding light in the darkness is a constantly renewed challenge; I don’t share any romantic views of the world of Gor, but I do share the views of hope and light at the end of the tunnel), for Gor SL, this dark vision is solely the responsibility of that minority of players for whom role-playing is a competition for power. They are primarily responsible for the damage suffered by the rest of the player community, and it is the duty of every player to tell them: since you won’t take responsibility, don’t play. And kick them out. Gor SL doesn’t need them; it needs to be free of them.