Conflict between characters isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Often it’s a great way to generate RP not just for the characters involved, but for their friends and allies as well. Two Sidhe knights vying against each other to complete a dangerous quests and win the corresponding acclaim, two Ventrue struggling for control over a hot new up-and-coming investment firm, two wizards of the Order of Hermes racing to see who can come up with the best solution to a mind-bending riddle — these are all ways that characters can compete while the players continue to work together.

For this among other reasons, characters being unfriendly or even hostile to one another is not in itself a violation of the Code of Conduct, and you should not expect that staff will necessarily intervene if another character develops a grudge against yours. If that hostility appears to be mostly or solely OOC motivated, or if it carries over into the player’s OOC conduct toward you, that’s a different story. But if your character gets someone fired from their job, throws them under the bus to the Prince, sleeps with their IC significant other, and so forth — well, that other character is probably going to be hostile toward yours, and we aren’t going to tell their player to play their character differently. Understand that and accept it before you do something that’s likely to cause that hostility, and also understand and accept that not everyone is going to have the same standards you do.

If someone’s IC enmity is making your character genuinely unplayable, then staff will work with you to find a way forward. Unless your character is entirely blameless in that conflict, however, there are likely to be some IC consequences involved. We’ve done our best to provide multiple venues for play in every sphere so that your character will not have to be stuck in an IC group with your mortal enemy, but changing allegiances has risks of its own.

There is, however, one kind of inter-character conflict that staff actively discourages, and that’s the kind that leads to the death of one character (or both of them). TowersMUX is fundamentally a storytelling game, and, by and large, when a character dies, their story is over. Sometimes that’s fine — sometimes it’s even desirable; not all characters are meant to last forever, and when their stories are over it can be right and fitting for their lives to end, too. In a game focused on cooperative storytelling, however, that should ideally be the result of informed decisions made by the character’s player. It should not be a decision made unilaterally by another player who may or may not be invested in their target’s own ongoing story. A character dying because they made the decision to go on a dangerous mission to help their comrades is one thing. A character dying because someone else had a bad day is very different.

With that in mind, any character death from PVP that is not clearly OOC consensual will result in the perpetrator(s) forfeiting the character(s) involved. If you want to end someone else’s story against their will, you should understand that it will also mean the end of yours. IC, the retribution from the dead character’s faction, allies, etc., makes the perpetrator’s continued presence in the city untenable — maybe they leave the city and never come back, maybe they’re themselves killed in turn; staff will adjudicate the situation if and as necessary. This does not mean that if you’re willing to give up your PC, staff will automatically OK your killing someone else’s; it is a necessary condition for doing so, but not a sufficient one.

Aside from the aforementioned consensuality waiver, there are two situations in which a character may escape the penalty for killing another. If they are attacked against their will, are intentionally goaded into frenzy, etc., and kill their attacker as a result, staff may opt to waive the penalty, depending on the circumstances — this is not a guarantee, so think carefully before creating characters who frenzy easily, or sticking around when you have the chance to escape situations that are likely to require frenzy checks. Finally, certain IC actions may result in staff designating a character as fair game — for instance, if you’ve done one of those things that your entire faction regards as a capital crime, if your vampire character has decided to stroll into a werewolf sept, or if your mage character felt like it would be a good idea to crash Elysium, you’ll have to deal with the consequences of that.

Threatening other players with character death, and particularly threatening them with character death unless they do such-and-such, is a violation of the Code of Conduct. We don’t consider that to be treating your fellow players “with respect and consideration,” and it’s also “intimidating OOC behavior.”

Players who are repeatedly involved in the deaths of other characters and who do not seem to be deterred by any other penalty may be asked to leave the game.