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Dwagin, Estara,
I know it's far more easy for us DMs to impose consequences on characters and rob players of their control. I am really not sure what advice to give. For now, I guess I'll just ask people to reflect on it, because it really is a crucial part of this hobby.
I'll give an example to start you off.
Say you play a dwaven defender, a champion and protector of the dwarven people, and while patrolling the wilderness of Brogendenstein with your fellow hammer-wielding maniacs you happen upon a few sinister-looking drow with an entourage of demons in leash. From somewhere, a DM is looking down at this, expecting an epic clash of wits followed by swords and axes! However, they go:
//Dudes, you are epics and we are barely 18. We are just looping the frost giants. Could you leave us alone this time? Catch you next time when we are 30! >.>
You could do the "IC out" PvP-rules routine, but even with these rules to back you up, you'd feel like an ass for bothering people with RP (and PvP) they clearly don't want. So you deem it's best just to be cool and let them go, and you trot on to find hopefully better sports.
But what is the problem with OOC courtesy? Why should we force people, with a limited amount of gaming hours each week, to suffer through RP they do not want. Personally, I really don't want anyone to have to do anything they don't want, but the problem, for me, is how this refusal to give up control affects suspense:
"Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. (...) In the kind of suspense described by Hitchcock, an audience experience suspense when they expect something bad to happen and have (or believe they have) a superior perspective on events in the drama's hierarchy of knowledge, yet they are powerless to intervene to prevent it from happening. In broader definitions of suspense, this emotion arises when someone is aware of his lack of knowledge about the development of a meaningful event; thus, suspense is a combination of anticipation and uncertainty dealing with the obscurity of the future." [Wikipedia]
When the scenario I described above happens often enough, the atmoshphere of Brogendenstein changes. It becomes harder to immerse yourself in the danger of lurking drow and violent dwarves, because you have too much control. There is no suspense, because you are not powerless to intervene; you can just ask to be left alone.
This is why I would prefer if people avoided RP that they do not want by not rolling up characters that are likely to end up in RP that they do not want, or don't travel to places where they are likely to suffer RP that they do not want. Because I want to keep the suspense, damnnit!
BTW, Suspense is also why the counter-arguement to harsher death penalties: "just dump more gold in a trash-can and ask a DM to dock a few levels of you when you die" doesn't work. People who want harsher death penalties want it without losing the suspense of doing harsh quests and dungeon-crawls. But that is Off Topic.
_________________ To err is human; to forgive divine, but VENGEANCE IS MINE!
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