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 Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 3:51 AM |
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Heroic Knight
 
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A big discussion took place on the forums concerning OOC items sold for IC cash (such as beer, food etc.) and considering that that forum is closed I thought I would give my personal feelings on the subject and open the discussion a bit.
From inside ANY system, a group that opens an IC bar or restaurant has been welcomed with people supporting the idea that this sort of thing only helps the atmosphere at that event. Food, drink and other services are bought with our hard-earned IC money and our characters have a new 'experience' at the weekend that adds to the 'feel' of immersion. But at what cost?
If we go to a bar in our 'real world' we see the owner of the licence on a plaque above the door. The drinks and snacks are labelled before us giving us ideas of where they were made, who made them and (in the case of alcohol) what percentage of that substance is actually alcohol. All of those products are tested by independent labs to make sure that what's on the label is fact.
If you have a beer tent at an event then other factors have to be considered such as power and storage but essentially the products on sale have to go through the same tests and relevant licenses applied for.
With any place that sells you food. The cooks/chefs will have some form of official training and all preparation and cleaning areas would have to be up to some form of standard in hygiene and will be checked annually to make sure they are. Food has to be kept at certain temperatures and the facilities in the kitchen need to, by law, be kept in a condition so that these can also be validated.
Anyone that wishes to massage someone professionally also needs relevant certification as well as insurance to cover any form of accidents or injury.
Seems to be OK, in that in each of those scenarios there is a level of accountability and 'safety nets' are in place should anything go wrong. But how does this transfer to LRP?
IC Bars: Need NO license due to the fact that BY LAW you are giving the alcohol away as LRP currency is not recognised as a form of barter. There are NO guarantees whatsoever that what you are buying is what's on the label (It may say 4% beer on the label but who can verify this?). Are the glasses/tankards cleaned appropriately?
IC 'Restaurants': Again because the food is technically given away then you would think that 'bits of paper' aren't required - WRONG! The H&S Executive would have a heart attack at many LRP IC 'kitchens' mainly due to the myriad of violations going on. Inadequate cleaning facilities, unhygienic preparation areas as well as no H&S checks made are but the tip of the iceberg. You could be eating a big plate of bacteria that won't affect you till after the end of the event and then you can't follow it up as you only know the IC group/eatery name.
IC 'Massage parlours': No certificates, no insurance, no liability for any injury to the 'customer'
Overarching all of these factors is that for a trader to be able to sell anyone anything at an LRP event, usually they pay an extra fee to have the privilege of being 'watched over' by several government branches to ensure that they can't Take The Piss with their customers. They need to re-new any certificates and prove any claims that their products have (ABV etc.) as well as have strict guidelines to follow about preparation areas, handling, hygiene etc.
It is simply unfair to say to that trader that even though they have literally jumped through hoops to get a spot at an event, their potential customers aren't going to them because someone at the other end of the field (with no restrictions on where they can set up 'shop') is literally giving away food etc and to boot the IC 'shop' doesn't have any certification or accountability. Now I have no problems whatsoever with people taking their own food/drink etc. to events because if you are preparing your own food and you screw up then you only have yourself to blame.
My other point comes from the effect that these IC businesses have on a system. When a new LRP system is created, the writers have to balance the economy based upon the relative values of items based upon the work gone into them etc. Then someone turns up providing some sort of OOC service and charges more for that service than most items for sale mainly because if they charged the relative amount that that service would ACTUALLY be worth then, in all probability, they wouldn't provide that service as 'It wouldn't be worth it'.
What is actually happening here is that people are using (abusing?) their OOC advantages to gain IC benefits and breaking the economy system of that LRP system.
Still think no rules are broken? A few years back a person used their wealth to bribe the IC ref's at an IC 'sporting' event by giving them over 200 cans of various alcohol in return for better scores. Essentially selling OOC services for IC cash is the same. Not just a bit, but EXACTLY the same. An event is supposed to represent the fact that EVERYONE works damn hard IC and is rewarded IC for that work with IC money. The problem with opening IC bars etc. is that you are essentially saying to people 'You can either follow the rules or you buy IC advantages with OOC cash and beat all the other chumps who try and work within the system'.
Essentially that is what's going on. While the majority of people try and work hard at their characters progression through interaction and roleplay, the IC service providers are taking the rulebook and burning it because it doesn't apply to them (also applies to certification etc.).
In my opinion, IC service providers are literally abusing the system and ensuring that they have all the advantages of being better off OOC to make sure they can keep themselves above everyone else IC. They are, in an almost literal sense, purchasing IC advantages with OOC money (their own licence to print lammies?). Surely the point of LRPing in the first place is to get away from the 'real world' and attempt to play in a world where everyone is created equal.
By allowing the outside world to impact on a closed system in this way then why are we bothering with any form of 'immersion'? I don't mind if people laugh at my hobby when they don't understand it but when the people 'inside' the hobby are, in my opinion, taking the piss by buying their IC benefits with OOC work, it gets a little upsetting. If they want to be 'traders' then they should jump through the hoops that the REAL traders have to and stop taking advantage of this legal 'grey area' where they can act like OOC traders without the OOC hassles and still reap the IC rewards.
OOC traders have been making much more of an effort over the years to 'get more involved' and they should be rewarded for this fact instead of having to compete with someone who is able to compete by paying a fraction of the 'traders fee' and doesn't necessarily have the same levels of accountability.
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Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
DP Roberts: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
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| Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 8:31 AM |
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Champion
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There are two concerns here - the effect that IC trading has on OOC traders, and the effect that it has on the IC economy.
I'm going to tackle the first one, as I used to be a pub licensee, and so I know exactly how many hoops have to be jumped through (and at what expense) if you want to legally sell alcohol.
If someone had parked their car in my pub carpark and starting flogging cheap cans of booze from the boot, then I would have been rightly pissed off. Likewise, if someone had brought their own alcohol into the pub (as happened on a couple of occasions) then I would have asked them to put it away or leave. Once I caught someone selling cannabis in the pub and told him that the only person allowed to sell intoxicating substances round here was me. Such is the life of a pub landlord. But there are more serious forms of competition to a pub licensee - the biggest competitor is not other pubs, but alcohol sold in supermarkets and off-licences.
How does this relate to LRP events?
Well, yes, players running IC bars are a form of competition. But then so are players who bring their own booze to drink. The local supermarket will always be a much greater competitor than any IC bar. From the point of view of the licensee, it makes no difference whether supermarket-bought alcohol is sold for IC money or given away freely. Unless players are to be prevented from bringing their own booze on site, then the licensee will always face this form of 'competition', just as the OOC food stalls will face 'competition' from players who decide to cook for themselves. Anyone trading at a LRP event for the first time might not be aware of the amount of food and drink brought to events by players, but they'd be a bit of a numpty if they didn't take it into account for future events.
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"Fantasy is the artificial sweetener upon the poisoned cake of materialism." - R. J. Stewart
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| Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 8:38 AM |
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I do talk a good fight
Group: System Moderators
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Regarding Health & Safety, certificates, liability, etc.: AGREED! It's time we had health inspectors at every school fete as well, checking old ladies' fairy-cakes to make sure they've been prepared in approved circumstances...
All joking aside:
(a) H&S requirements for food prep are not THAT stringent. When I ran a cafe, the H&S inspector basically had a look round the kitchen, noted that there were no rats, and left.
(b) Given that H&S inspections are at best annual, many commercial kitchens don't meet standards between inspections. I've worked in commercial kitchens that have FAR worse H&S standards than I've seen at any LRP event.
(c) People running IC kitchens still have to have reasonable H&S standards, and IME are generally a lot more careful to ensure cleanliness than many commercial kitchens are.
(d) Bars are kinda a different matter, but you're not risking anything more than you would at a party where communal drinks are provided.
As for the implications for the game economy -- real-world economies can't be controlled by the designer... they're based on supply & demand. It's up to each game system whether they allow OOC beer, food, & massage to insinuate their way into their carefully crafted economy for IC money. If they do allow it, it will indeed have an effect on the economy -- but IMO, in a genuinely well-crafted economy, that effect will be a feature, not a bug.
Is it "realistic"? Yes -- luxury goods have always commanded a premium, in every society throughout history, whether it's Romans spending all the looted gold from Gaul and Britain to import fresh food & fine cloth from hundreds of miles away, or malt whisky aficionados spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on a rare bottling. Yes, IC, that means that greasy burger is a phys rep for hand-crafted meat of the rare Boga-Beast, or whatever, but that's no more implausible than that piece of foam and latex being a phys rep for the very Vorpal Blade that slew the Jabberwock.
Is it genre-appropriate? I believe so -- almost every Conan or Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser or Elric story I ever read had the heroes spunking all their ill-gotten gains on wine, women, and song... mostly, again, 'cos their authors had the sense to base those characters' actions on the way people in the real world behave when their work is extremely risky but extremely profitable.
http://www.hyboriantales.com
PD: Ghostdance ("The most irritating curse I've ever encountered" -- NPC played by H.)
Riftworld: Rossar Kuug ("Clearly mad, because he thinks he's a Com-Trow Skirmisher" - Aela)
Hyborian Tales: Crew, cook, dogsbody, general labourer, toilet cleaner ("Dangerously overoptimistic ref" -- Tom Nowell)
Otherwise usually crew ("Quite spry & fit, & willing to wear a big costume & run around a lot" -- various event organisers)
"My other oversized foam weapon is THE LORD" -- Questionable Content
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| Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 8:48 AM |
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Knight
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| Oh gods not this again! Didn't we argue it enough (and unpleasantly) last time? What is the difference between people giving away beer and food IC/OOC to people (which lots of folk do at LoD events - we also have one group that always turn up with enough small bottles of water for most of the players and crew on the regular events (as opposed to fests like Darkmere and Sirens Call) - at one recent event it was one player's birthday and he provided a huge IC picnic lunch, several bottles of wine and port and bourbon for eveyone to enjoy) and people doing it in a slightly more formal manner as an IC group? I don't get it. If people are generous enough to spend their own time and money shopping for stuff to GIVE AWAY to other players (and monsters) then I for one applaud them. Edited by Admin to remove inflammatory remark.
Raina and Anara Tasar, Legion of Dreams
Cleopatra, Sinergy
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| Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 9:08 AM |
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Champion
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| As an aside, I happen to know that at least 2 of the people who do Massages at the Maelstrom events are qualified and the public liability insurance at the event will cover anything that their personal insurance doesn't. The issue I have with your statement is that you are saying that people are using IC cash for an ooc service, and that is not true. The discussion is about people who are using ic cash for an ic service. In Character, you are (lets use my own example) giving me money, and in return I am cleaning your shoes. Out of Character, you are handing me a worthless piece of tin and I am cleaning your shoes. I don't have to be VAT registered, I don't have to declare my extra income, I'm not insured. Chambers of Delights, you are IC paying for *Whatever you get* IC with IC cash, on an out of character level, someone is giving you a backrub for free. You can extrapolate this back down to the bare minimum, were these people also making an OC profit or gain in real world terms then maybe I could see a logic for certification but, ultimately consider these two examples I cook a BBQ in my back garden and have spare food left over, I give it away to my neighbour who has popped over to borrow a screwdriver. I cook a BBQ at a lrp event and give the food away to people who are walkling past. What is the difference? None, the setting ... yes, but then, I've seen the effort some people make at BBQs. While I appreciate your concerns Agent K, you don't need that certification unless you are set up as a business. There is no law requiring standards to be met by people in their own kitchens or homes, unless you are trying to make a profit in some way. If you can PROVE me wrong, please feel free to provide citation rather than just making a STATEMENT IN CAPS. LRP events run on the foundations of trust. But also of common sense, do you want to start trying to codify common sense?
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| Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 9:27 AM |
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Overlord
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| Apologies people, but having been throwing up since 6.45 this morning, I'm not in the best of moods. [admin hat on] Posters are reminded of the terms and conditions agreed to when using these forums. Having monitored the Maelstrom thread wherethis discussion originated I am in no mood to let this debate degenerate in any way. I will be monitoring the thread and will take action should it derail. http://forums.rule7.co.uk/Topic95-55-1.aspx Please stick to the original topic and debate with respect and in good order. If you get angry, take a breath and step back. The posting guideliens are also, very helpful. http://forums.rule7.co.uk/Topic96-55-1.aspx Remember this is a discussion. That means people have different views - you are not going to be a winner and I am fresh out of prizes.[/admin]
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| Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 9:50 AM |
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Cold Water and Brass Tacks
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| Agent K. Your grasp of the legal system is limited. If you research your statements a little further, then you might have a point Ill take on board. Thanks.
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| Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 10:57 AM |
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Heroic Knight
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| I think the expression I would like to add to the discussion is "at your own risk". I think it is pretty damn obvious that when you are handing over IC coinage that you are accepting that the product you are buying does not have the same guarantees that a commercially offered product does. I also think that it's very clear that the buyer has the right to make that decision and take responsibility for the consequences. If they are willing to take the risk (minimal or great, our opinion of that risk may differ) then they should be allowed to. Caveat Emptor and all that...  It's very interesting to see that in LRP the "WoW Gold" phenomenon where World of Warcraft virtual currency assumes real cash value can apply where an economy is restricted. In my opinion, given that anyone can gather a reasonable amount of IC wealth through the right character and proactive, competent play, surely allowing some people who are prepared to invest their real life money into props/services/supplies in some ways actually IC benefits both the less wealthy players and the system as a whole. The area of contention I have an issue with is whether or not a consumable (eg: a barrel of beer being sold for IC money) is fair game for sabotage/destruction/theft in the same way as any other IC item? If not, is it fair to give it IC value. Should we grant concessionary lammies to such barrels of beer before they can be sold IC? All gets a bit messy in my opinion.
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Maelstrom - Carl Whitesnake
Scavenger LRP - Organiser
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| Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 11:15 AM |
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Prodigal
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| I cant see why you'd want to destroy the beer for real when someone could drink it OC. You wouldnt destroy the physrep for a sword you were breaking IC, or destroy the physrep of a character you were killing IC. I honestly cannot understand why people are getting so upset about this. Its only a game, and anything that enhances the game has to be a good thing. I play a skald in one system I play, and I spend OC time researching or writing appropriate stories. This brings me IC benefit because sometimes other characters give my character money for it. So effectively, I am gaining IC because of OC effort. However in this case no-one would ever object. So whats the difference?
_____________________________________________________ It is not a competition. It is a web forum.
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