TL;DR: Please allow "Copy/Clone/Impersonation," "Perfect Information," and "Enforce action/emotion onto others" with HEAVY caveats
Sacrificing clarity and gentleness for brevity, I'll first say that
the foundational philosophies driving these rules must be made public. Otherwise, members won't fully understand, given two similar quirks, why one was accepted and one wasn't. I personally agree with most of the current quirk bans, but some bans really confuse me. The line in the sand feels a bit arbitrary and not generalizable.
Below, I highlight in green which quirks are no longer banned.
| Old Don'ts ("Quirks that...") | Current Don'ts |
Grant perfect information
Grant immunities
Grant intangibility
Mess with space/time
Enforce action/emotion onto others
Accurately predict the future
One-shot kills you if you're hit at all
Copy and impersonate other quirks
Are copypastas of canon quirks
Automatically hit or cannot be interacted with
Only function when your RP partners accept it.
Interfere with plots and events in a harmful way
Create a large number of clones, minions, henchmen
Specifically make others more powerful fighters
| Perfect information. (Think lie detector)
Immunity. (Resistances are okay)
Intangibility. (Phasing through objects)
Space/time/gravity manipulation
Enforce action/emotion onto others.
Accurately predict the future.
One-shot kills.
Copy/Clone/Impersonation Quirks |
Old Ban List
Since I'm not staff, I can only speculate the base logic behind the Old Bans:
Evasion and
Resistance. Prior to the change, characters could throw fireballs and emit poison gas, but not read minds or copy quirks. To uphold the spirit of Evasion and Resistance, I can see why.
Evasion: You can always dodge fireballs and fan away poison gas, but it's trickier to stop someone from getting inside your head or from copy-pasting your powers
Resistance: You can apply burn cream, and you can take an antidote or build resistance against poisonous effects. It's trickier to push someone out of your head or to "remove" your quirk from the person who copied it.
The design goal of the Old Bans was to give RPers a fighting chance against malicious actors.
Current Ban List
Quirks now have the option to
"Only function when your RP partners accept it."I love that.
In my eyes, this reflects an evolution in the site philosophy. On top of Evasion and Resistance, there's now
Player Consent. Trust has been placed in the member base to
communicate with each other before, say, entering their character's thoughts.
This repeal has given rise to awesome concepts like Cordy, whose Mind Reading quirk delights me to no end.
However, I can't help but ask, doesn't Mind Reading fall under "Enforce action/emotion onto others?"Previously, Mind Reading was banned, because it was tricky to fight against it. But with Player Consent being a requirement, i.e. Cordy's player must obtain permission, that hole has now been patched. Problem solved!
So why not extend that logic to more quirks?
Take
Copy, for instance. A viable implementation is to have Player A say,
"Hey Player B, can my char copy your char's quirk?" If permission is granted, they may RP it out. If not, tough luck. At any point, if Player B says,
"Hey Player A, I want your char to stop using my char's quirk now," then consent is revoked and Player A is now indefinitely barred from RPing with said quirk.
This is enforceable, because staff need only step in when Player B reports Player A for violating their agreement. And if Player A complains that nobody will let their char copy their quirk? Tell Player A,
"Sorry bud, but that's the price of Copy."Let's trust that members are mature, humble, and communicative enough to properly navigate Player Consent. This may sound like a tall order, but I for one have faith.
