DM Rights & Calling the Cops

[Kommand]

Hello Eclipsians, today I'd like to talk about the ambiguous and often contradictory portion of the deathmatching rule. The rule reads:

Quote

Deathmatching is the act of attacking a player without proper IC motive and interaction. Prior interaction should include escalation such as a robbery or a report to the police. 

It is interesting that despite specific mention of this being a justified reason to kill another player, we still see reports that disregard it as enough to warrant deathmatching. Of course context is important in any RP, but a call to the cops is quite literally worse than individual retaliation. By calling the police you are effectively weaponizing an entire faction against another player, a faction that is more than capable of injuring, and/or arresting you. That is why I believe the rule specifies this action as escalation, due to the severity of the consequences it brings.

In this report, we see Senior Moderator @SirQubed deny deathmatching because the reporting party called the police:

However, in this report we see Senior Moderator @Wolokai142 issue deathmatching punishments despite the reporting party calling the cops on the reported:

This thread is not to encourage criticism, debate, or dialogue on the reports or moderators cited. Please be respectful of all parties involved. My intention is only to illuminate the confusion that can be created when rulings contradict each other. A lot of players rely on these rulings as examples of what not to do, and as it stands, you cannot confidently kill someone if they call the cops on you, even though the rule specifically states that it is sufficient. 

Obviously it's not black and white, and Moderator discretion exists for a reason. I really think both verdicts have merit to them. My concern is that this confusion potentially sets players up for failure, as what is considered absolute in the rules is not really reflected in the precedent set by staff. So what does everyone else think? Does a call to the cops always grant DM rights?

[SirQubed]

I think you failed to note that most of why that report was denied was due to lack of evidence and I was going based off of memory. 

[Bala]

Well, if you lead with the roleplay as being the support behind an action then having DM rights on a player to me, depends on the circumstances.

For example, say you are in a traffic collision with someone and you call the police on the person that hit you.

• In isolation, the person that hit your car would get a small charge, if that.
• But then suppose the person that hit you has a warrant out for murder and them being caught by the police would be have grave consequences for them.

It would make sense for that person to try and silence you, if they could. Because even though they've just hit you with their vehicle, you calling cops on them could have a bigger impact.

Same thing goes with insults. Calling someone an asshole isn't enough to get smoked over. If you were to hit someone with racial abuse or something like that, that could get you killed.

There's no one size fits all for rules, it's just about using common sense as much as possible.

[XeV]

Did you actually look at the report you mentioned from Wolokai, it was clear as day a group of people harassed some "legals" in terms of being a joke and having a laugh, so instead of just leaving when the situation escalated to a call to police they used the rule (rule playing) to then just gun them down because they called the police for being harassed.

Like Bala said its just common sense, if someone calls the police on me for annoying them I simply just leave and evade if needed. If someone calls the cops on me cause I downed them with a pump shotgun and I got a AP on me I would really like to "silence" said person So there is no way for them to give more information on who I was.

Edit - The rule should 100% be edited to relay that just a phone call to police is not enough to die over, its the context in which the police were called.

Edited February 10, 2023 by XeV

[Kommand]

7 minutes ago, SirQubed said:

I think you failed to note that most of why that report was denied was due to lack of evidence and I was going based off of memory. 

I thought it's inclusion within the picture was adequate, but I get you. I didn't mean to lessen that factor, but I do remember the video as well before it was pulled, and your memory of it is essentially the same as mine. Again I don't want to fuel debate over the report, that should be reserved for Decision Appeals. 

With that said, the rule reads as absolute but it isn't enforced as such. That's all I'm trying to highlight.

8 minutes ago, Bala said:

Same thing goes with insults. Calling someone an asshole isn't enough to get smoked over. If you were to hit someone with racial abuse or something like that, that could get you killed.

There's no one size fits all for rules, it's just about using common sense as much as possible.

Yeah that's true, although the line of where it becomes worthy of deathmatching is still sort of subjective, no?

[MarcoD]

We don't take the opinion of ban evaders.

Archived.