Prisoners and roleplay

This is a big note about prisoner roleplay. Everyone should read it.

For the Public
First and foremost, know your rights! Help Jail_Guidelines should cover a lot of it. As a prisoner, you have a right to roleplay. As a prisoner, you have a right to know when you will be released. Prisoner-taking clans take note.

If you think you are being ignored as a prisoner, please let RPC/IMMs know. We are always going to err on the side of prisoners, within reason, in these situations.

For prisoner-taking clans
Taking prisoners is NOT a right! I completely understand the necessity of major clans to take prisoners but you cannot take advantage of it. There is a very distinct difference between “being oppressive Imperials” or “law-enforcing Republicans” and “being jerks OOCly” and it is important you know the difference!

The RPC almost always says “please let us know if you are going to RP with a prisoner.” Clans need to respond to this!

7 days is the MAXIMUM you can keep a prisoner, not the default. If you arrest a character, it is your responsibility to see jail_guidelines through. This includes “processing” roleplay, and telling them how long they are arrested for. It’s been an ongoing issue that prisoners are juggled from person to person without knowing when they are being released and that is going to end.

Are you in the process of taking a prisoner? Guess what, they hate sitting stunned for a long time! Whispering to a stunned person is not good roleplay. I can fully understand security concerns but YOU need to realize PRISONER concerns. No one likes to sit stunned for 20, 40, 60 minutes. Meet them half way.

For the RPC
For the most part, the RPC has done a good job in terms of prisoner RP requests in the last few terms. Timezones of both prisoners and clan members will vary so you need to use your judgement here BUT if you think there are problems with prisoners not getting roleplay, please let immortals know! It is better to err on the side of prisoners in this sitaution.

In my opinion the RPC is usually too polite on this matter. Sometimes you need to stop politely asking clans to roleplay with prisoners and start TELLING them to. The RPC’s job is to serve and help the players, not major clans!

The bottom line
Being a prisoner sucks. Processing prisoners is tedious. We need to meet each other half way on the matter. I really hope that this announcement clears things up but if it doesn’t we are prepared to take things further!

help prisoner_guidelines has been lax for far too long this era. pe has repeatedly tried to tell people to get on it. i’m glad to see someone attempting to stick up for prisoners, but 9/10 people will ignore this. punishments need to be given out…not more talking.

pez*

After handling a prisoner and talking to some other players oocly, it seems like one of the largest problems is simple documentation. Not enough information is passed on to the next player who meets with the prisoner. I haven’t been around long enough to comment on the larger issues that may be lingering around involving prisoners, but it was really upsetting for me when I handled my first prisoner only to find out after the fact that half of the information known about them was wrong or missing and that they had been told the same things I told them by two other players.

The two most glaring issues I saw were no prisoner information posted on terminals and no option for lockers given….both of which are REQUIRED by help jail_guidelines. Jail_Guidelines is a misnomer anyway. It should be help jail_follow-these-fuckin-rules-or-the-imms-will-prison-rape-your-ass

I agree with Kirash 😛 The name of the helpfile is not really helping at all. Guidelines after all are guidelines, not things that are to be followed to the letter but things to be taken as an example and followed mostly. However with each era should also come a new Jail Rule. Each regime has their own customs and laws on such matters.

* I wholeheartedly agree that a post must be placed into the prison terminal in regards to the prisoner that is processed.
* A prisoner must be processed no matter unless they will be killed without being put into a cell. In which case the party that will kill the captured person should have the right to hold on to their gear.

Another issue is the amount of time they wil serve in a jail. Either these will be well defined by the Major clan doing the arrest so that the person arresting the prisoner will know their punishment’s length, or when they are ordered to make the arrest, person ordering the arrest should state the length of their punishment.

Now the Roleplay part is not as easy as one would think. For instance in the Empire as you all know throughout many timelines, your average joe stormy can’t go into the cell to interrogate or tend to the prisoner. The most they can do is stand outside and yell, which is a bit amusing thing to do. Which is also why I adored the Jedi cells on Arba last timeline. (I think it was called Arba) It worked like holotransmitter.

Okay let us say they can roleplay with the Jedi. The roleplay can and will be limited based on said person’s rank and authorithy in the clan. What are their common points to roleplay about? What will the Jedi ask the random Stormtrooper? Of course it won’t be a Jedi that is captured and recently keeping a prisoner in jail seems like a myth to me, but then again I won’t judge. It’s just that both prisoners and the arresting party has a responsibility to roleplay. Yes it is boring to be put into a cell and it is your right to request roleplay. But when the person comes in to roleplay with you, please don’t be a dick. Don’t say or ask stupid things that really will make the arresting clan’s member to not want to roleplay or leave.

PS: I always roleplayed in the Empire era that the Empire has the right to confiscate weapons of the captured person unless it was a really minor thing they were captured for. – Having their comlinks and datapads reviewed for monitoring purposes -. So not everything would be placed into the locker. At least that is my own perception of how things should be like with the Empire. Republic is the “good” aligned clan which has far less restrictions, so it might be weird for them to confiscate weapons.
Anyhow that was my two cents.

“A prisoner must be processed no matter unless they will be killed without being put into a cell. In which case the party that will kill the captured person should have the right to hold on to their gear.”

I do not agree with this. It will only encourage people to ignore giving prisoners lockers no matter what because they’ll be like “Oh he’s gonna die anyway.” and then winds up getting released and now they’re out of gear. It’s different if you kill someone out in the open, but if you have someone captured, jail_guidelines applies imo.

The term prisoner is perhaps the wrong one. There are 2 terms used for enemies that are captured:

1- Dead man breathing. <– In which case they'll probably be interrogated and then killed. Or they'll be killed right away.
2- Prisoners. <– People who will serve time in a cell.

So the exception I gave that quote you pasted was for the Dead man breathing. It shouldn't matter where you kill the captured person. In a ship or in the execution chamber. For they will die shortly after. However if someone will be put in a cell, you gotta give them a locker to gather their belongings from afterwards. I don't really see why you want to oppose that. Dead men don't need their eq and people loots corpses in this game. Do you suggest looting corpses to be illegal?

http://www.legendsofthejedi.com/forums/topic/capital-punishment/

Already pointed out something I think is wrong with jail_guidelines, and generally got the response that people need to start being held accountable, and also that the prisoners need to stop being the ones essentially punished because of idiosyncrasies on the jailers’ part toward the jailing process. It needs to be better enforced that jailers post information about arrests in places that can be easily reached by the jailing clan. Waiting 3 days just to figure out “You will be here for 7!” would be really unfair. So:

“7 days is the MAXIMUM you can keep a prisoner, not the default. If you arrest a character, it is your responsibility to see jail_guidelines through. This includes “processing” roleplay, and telling them how long they are arrested for.”

If this is not already the status quo for prisoners, it needs to be. If someone is jailed for 7 days with that period beginning after a few day period where their sentence is decided, they need to be applying to the immortals in advance.

Well let’s go back to this then. Regardless of what is to become of someone who is captured, if they demand a locker via jail_guidelines, imo they better damn well get one. If you really want their gear that badly, well tough.

Can we also specify where the lockers are? I remember when Kenelm got captured, Bleak took me past the lockers on the prison level and took me to the engineering section of the base (which was on a different level, making it impossible for me to get my gear if I escaped). His reasoning? “You’re going to die anyways.”

And here’s a suggestion: rework the way jail works. There should be a way for a government to apply a proper ‘wanted’ flag to a character. Anyone in the clan can arrest him. Could also work in support for bounty hunters that way. The jail command could be useful again, “jail “.

… >> Jail (Person) (Length of Stay) (Reason)

When I was captured, I had a different person every Rp session, and they all had to keep asking me the same stuff because info didn’t carry over. And I’m also pretty sure I was short a commlink and some clothes when I got out. So I hope that all this will be enforced.

I think all of what has been said makes perfect sense. My engineer was jailed by the Republic last Era or the one before whenever they were powerfull. I didn’t get a locker to put my belongings in. Instead it was all taken by some random soldier. Second I was told I would be in jail for 4 IRL days. I think that info should be posted in the processing. Something like this:

Jail Date 3/26/12. Sentence 4 days IRL. Release date 3/30/12 (+/- 12 hours to settle timezone differences)

I ended up being in jail for 9 days, and I was attempting to RP every day. Finally I got a guy in there who I told I was in jail for “months” longer than my sentence (months being the actual time passed in the mud). He argued with me, I proved him wrong and he stunned me and left me in jail. This kind of thing is crap.

There’s no standard translation for time in game vs time irl so I’m not exactly sure how you won that argument.