I want to generally endorse the points made so far in this thread by robmark, James, jellybean and DueWizard. There has indeed been a pattern of unfair and at times downright bullying behaviour towards robmark. I also want to specifically back up jellybean's observation about some of the OOC reaction to Rob's RP involvement in the Malivia situation, because this is something I have noticed as well.
The most important thing I want to communicate in this post is that I value Rob as a member of this community and as a RPer here, and I absolutely want him to feel able to participate here, and to feel comfortable in doing so. The whole anti-Rob/anti-Endralon crusade has gone way, way over the line, and it is not only ridiculous, it is downright obnoxious and as far as I am concerned it needs to stop the day before yesterday.
Something a little bit similar to this happened with John Cracker. It is not acceptable. It has to STOP.
There are individuals here who really need to reflect on their behaviour, and who I feel should offer a personal apology to Rob. Auditorii, Rogue and Vesica, I am sorry if this hurts your feelings, but I am going to name you here. And Chitin, I am going to call you out over the remark you made earlier today on the public Discord server, while all of this was going on:
being "pro-endralonian" is basically being a bdsm submissive to a frail 18 y/o
Turning now to the subject in the title of the thread, which is about how the rules should operate in terms of players receiving "realistic" consequences for their IC RP actions...
This is actually not a new principle in terms of the history of the game. I know some of you will groan when I talk about "the old Game Rules", or "Aquinas's Rules" as they are sometimes called, and I'm not entirely blaming you, but if you will bear with me a moment...
21.3 Players who consent to a particular role-play by acknowledging it in their own role-play cannot then disown it or withdraw their consent from it. For example, if player A role-plays the assassination of player B's character, and player B then acknowledges the assassination in a news post, but then backtracks and insists the assassination did not happen, then he will be required under the rules to accept the validity of the assassination role-play.
21.3.1 Players also consent to the reasonable and predictable consequences of the role-play they consent to. For example, players who role-play their characters as committing criminal offences should expect those characters to experience the predictable judicial consequences of that.
It has, I think, always been the case - long before the old rule above was ever drawn up, in fact - that there have been moments when Moderators have felt it necessary to intervene to do something about that player who just goes
too far in imposing his own RP on others. The classic example of this would be when someone RPs their party doing all sorts of violent and blatantly illegal things in their nation and then expects to be able to get away with that with no IC consequences at all.
I suggest it would be more interesting, and more helpful, to talk about how and to what extent Moderation should regulate RP in terms of the whole issue of RP actions and their realistic consequences. Should there be a relatively light touch, which there has been through most of the game's history, or should we have Moderators getting much more involved, even to the extent of forcing players to accept war RP scenarios they do not want to consent to?
It is no secret to those of us who have been around long enough and followed things closely for long enough that Vesica, along with Auditorii and a few others, have a very particular vision of how Particracy should be played, which takes military RP and international RP really, really seriously and lacks empathy for those who are not so interested in those things, or indeed who are interested in those things but do not see eye-to-eye with them on how those things should be done. These types of players are often very enthusiastic, and can produce great RP...although, and let's be honest here, they do need to be watched over by a solid and fair Moderator to check they do not go over the line with their RP, and do not end up trampling over the needs of other players. Some issues begin to arise when these types of players...enter positions of responsibility and influence themselves, even becoming Moderators. And then there is nobody and nothing left to check or balance the over-enthusiasms to which they are prone.