What are some ways to create a clan focused RP environment, with unrestricted PvP, that does not degenerate to being toxic?
Have tried to do as a dedicated server several times over the years, keeping very hands off. And that for sure just does not work I’ve found. But any intervention as an admin, even as a rules that all agreed to arbitrator does not end so well usually either.
I’ve really only by personal connections and friendships established with players, found a tenable position that keeps both RP and PvP on track.
A common suggestion I hear from other dedicated owners is weekend only PvP.
This is not meant as an insult.
This one is not certain that RP unrestricted PvP can remain civil. It’s sorta an oxymoron. If one is Roleplaying, especially in a setting even adjacent to the Hyborian Age, civility is weak. Civilized people are generally anthropomorphic effluvium made of greed, cowardice, and lies. Honourable people are savage, brutal, and vindictive.
Even divorced from the setting, how immersion breaking is it to be polite to someone who just killed you, possibly a few times, slaughtered your pets, destroyed your property and property people?
How disconnecting is it for those who are serial killers, slavers, cultists practicing human sacrifice or bargainers with the dark powers doing the same, to play nice?
To foster civil roleplay while still facilitating mass violence requires an extremely established and enforced setting. It isn’t a complete contradiction, but it’s also something of a stretch.
Even in low stakes sports competitions, people become truly vile to each other over the smallest of perceived slights, against them or their fandom.
Perhaps if there is a rotating roster of players, or mandatory cooling off period to prevent revanchist designs… But even that would foster only bitterness and loathing in the most dedicated/obsessed.
Good luck either way.
Choose your players carefully. That’s pretty much the only way.
People joining such a group need to accept that they’re free game, so a spirit of friendly rivalry needs to be fostered and encouraged.
Roleplaying hostility and enmity requires a lot of trust between players, so they can feel safe with the mutual understanding that whichever insults, threats and offences they direct at each other remain in-game and are not to be taken personally. Even within such a group, maintaining a faux-hostile relationship over extended periods of time can become stressful.
Even though the emotions we roleplay are supposed to be “acted”, it’s only natural that they end up affecting our real-world feelings. Just like watching an emotional film or reading a good book can make us happy or sad for the characters, our own make-believe emotions will affect us. So your players will need to acknowledge this from the start, so they know what they’re signing up for.