Torture Reports as Message Forwarding

[BattleMaster Server]

Summary:	Torture Reports as Message Forwarding
Violation:	2.4: exploitation of bugs
World:	Dwilight
Complainer:	Lyman Stone
About:	Haktoo

Full Complaint Text:
Summary:  
GM player requested torture of a character, and a forwarded report, for the express purpose of having a 100% reliable copy of the message for viewing, thereby skirting the long-standing lack of a message-forwarding option, a lack which is intentional precisely because 100% certainty ought not be available in such cases.

Details:
An adventurer sent a forged message to Haktoo. The real message was viewable by 42 nobles, including the Zuma Ambassador, Garret Artemesia. He testified to the Zuma concerning the true message. The Zuma withdrew from attacking Terran shortly thereafter, and requested that Terran send someone to talk to Haktoo personally.

My character did so. Upon arriving, he was informed:
"Letter from Haktoo   (3 hours, 58 minutes ago)
Terran human not need give weapons. Terran human must proof letter. Must give torture report from any human that got letter that include letter so we know true it not more lie!
Haktoo"

"Letter from Haktoo   (2 hours, 12 minutes ago)
Why human all say get one adventure? Many say get original letter. Many can be made give report. You not have time track down one human when many is with you. You come here so I give you 3 day more for report. If no report then we come you land. Barca human not get more time. We move again in hour in they land.
Haktoo"

The portion of the message which seems concerning is the reference to the "proof letter" and the "torture report."

It is demanded SO THAT the forgery can be INCONTROVERTIBLY proved. That relationship is clear from the letter. I privately sent an OOC complaint to the GM. The reply I received was:

"Out-of-Character from Haktoo   (1 hour, 45 minutes ago)
I'm sorry you feel that way. If that is what you think though, it might be an interesting case to take to the magistrates. I would be interested to see the debate on the situation as I did not see anything wrong with the demand.
 [reply to sender] | [ignore] | [userdetails]"

The GM did not disagree concerning my assessment of what the demand was; did not argue that there might be some other RPed motive (and no hints of any other motive have been given so far as I am aware).

My complaint, and the reason for filing this complaint under 2.4, is that message forwarding has been repeatedly denied as a feature, because the general consensus has been that we should not be able to perfectly validate messages. Torture reports, normally, are not "arranged" issues: we don't organize tortures to prove message validity. We accept them as valid because we, as players, know they are, and because the coding to make them ambiguous seems like it would be quite difficult and complex.

But to demand a torture report for the explicit purpose of getting 100% proof (and it is ONLY 100% proof because of OOC understandings by players) is clearly an attempt to "get around" the game mechanics that prevent message forwarding. Such metagaming is, somewhat to my surprise, not prohibited in the social contract, but seems in violation of fair play, and like an obvious exploitation of a game mechanic in a way it was not intended to be used.

Furthermore, the argument could be made that it is no different than asking for a scout report. This is not true, for several reasons. First, military deployment has never been seen as "privileged information" about which players fundamentally should not be able to get perfect certainty; message forwarding has customarily been such. Second, scout reports do have ambiguity, as CS usually has variance in it, and units can consciously misrepresent their CS through game functions. Such options are not available for torture. In sum, because of their different status and because of their perfect precision, asking for torture reports for the purpose of essentially forwarding a message with 0% chance of fraud, rather than extracting otherwise unknown information, seems to me a clear abuse.

[Vellos]

Needless to say, I will be recusing myself from this case.

[Geronus]

Interesting. Also potentially pointless, since there is no guarantee that torture will reveal the message that is of interest. What would the Zuma do then? Further thoughts to be forthcoming.

[Chenier]

Needless to say, I will be recusing myself from this case.

On what grounds? That you are the one who brought it up, or that your character is directely involved?

I would suppose I would have to do the same here.

[Indirik]

The GM did not disagree concerning my assessment of what the demand was;

Nor did he agree. Rather, it seems to me that the GM simply declined to discuss the matter with you in an OOC fashion. Which, given the nature of your accusations to him, seems perfectly reasonable.

But to demand a torture report for the explicit purpose of getting 100% proof (and it is ONLY 100% proof because of OOC understandings by players) is clearly an attempt to "get around" the game mechanics that prevent message forwarding.

Torture reports providing a guaranteed accurate depiction of exact message contents is completely intentional. It is also completely intentional that this is given in a manner that can be forwarded to other characters.

Think about it for a minute. Why are secret police reports not given as a scribe note? It is 100% intentional that they are not, exactly because the information they provide is supposed to not be 100% guaranteed and accurate. It is intentional that this information is given in a way that the one who gets the information cannot give it away to other characters in a manner that is beyond question.

Torture reports, on the other hand, are intentionally given in a manner that explicitly allows them to be forwarded to *anyone* in a completely accurate, and guaranteed to be accurate, manner through the mechanism of a scribe note. Had this not been the intention of a torture report, then the scribe note link wouldn't be given to the character. The player would just get a screen full of messages.

[^ban^]

Game mechanics are intended to be IC knowledge. Why should torture reports generate scribe notes if they are not intended to be forwarded with 100% reliability? In fact, one of the primary reasons that message forwarding has been rejected so often is for situations exactly like this, where the only way to confirm truth is through torture.

[Indirik]

Also, this:

We accept them as valid because we, as players, know they are, and because the coding to make them ambiguous seems like it would be quite difficult and complex.

All it would require, really, is that the character not be given a scribe note link or the torture report. If that link is taken away, then only the judge performing the torture would get the text. Therefore there would be no incontrovertible proof that the messages delivered by the judge were 100% accurate. Quite simple.

[Chenier]

A few points I would like to bring forth to the discussion would be:

*Scout reports are not 100% accurate as far as CS goes, but are able to be shared anyways. Copy/pasting such information in letters to such level of precision would be impossible.
*Secret police reports are short and easy to copy/paste. The text is short and there is no special formating required.
*Torture reports are lengthy and a hell of a pain to copy/paste. Copy/pasting these letters without breaking the formating and without spamming 100 letters would be impossible.

When arguing on the basis of whether certain other features offer a scribe note or not, it should be considered how easy or hard transmitting such information without a game link would be. Odds are ease of manipulation and sharing played a great role in these design decisions.

[Lavigna]

In game talking tortures are supposed to provide information that are accurate to the side who performs the torture.The fact it is a person in pain makes it so that in game a certain number of messages is forwarded and not all of them.

Rp talking on the other hand even if the message for which this whole cased started will appear in the torture report could actually mean nothing at all as another one could easily follow (that does NOT appear in the report) that is altered.Also pain can alter the truth if you wish

I do not find it as an abuse in terms of game mechanics and rp talking (only because it's this  particular Continent we're talking about) there are so many ways to actually ignore the torture report .

[Indirik]

When arguing on the basis of whether certain other features offer a scribe note or not, it should be considered how easy or hard transmitting such information without a game link would be. Odds are ease of manipulation and sharing played a great role in these design decisions.

This is incorrect.

As Tom has stated before, secret police reports do not generate a scribe note because it is 100% intentional that there is no way to share the information in a 100% verifiable accurate manner.

Take into consideration some of the other features that generate scribe notes:

• Mixing with locals
• Diplomacy reports
• Priests estimating local religions
• Temple visits
• Suspicious people
• Route finder

And several others...

All of these things provide small amounts of information in a format that is easily copy/pasted without needing any work at all to make legible. Yet Tom/devs went through the trouble of providing scribe note links specifically to make the information easily disseminated, and in an accurate manner. So the idea that secret police reports aren't given scribe notes because they provide small amounts of information that is easily shared with little effort is nonsense.

If it was intentional that you cannot share the information with other players in a 100% accurate and verifiable manner, you would not get a scribe note link.

Edit: Updated the list of things that generate scribe notes a bit...

[Lavigna]

I agree with Indirik and i believe there is no room for discussion in that part of the case.

It would only be an abuse if said action was asked for an OOC for example but for in game messages the whole purpose of torturing is for the part who performs it to fish up such in game information.

As it is also intentional the the messages you take are random and not in the precise order of the players message page.I mean after all the person that gets tortured doesn't spit letters...but the truth from what he is supposed to know.

[Anaris]

In game talking tortures are supposed to provide information that are accurate to the side who performs the torture.The fact it is a person in pain makes it so that in game a certain number of messages is forwarded and not all of them.

Rp talking on the other hand even if the message for which this whole cased started will appear in the torture report could actually mean nothing at all as another one could easily follow (that does NOT appear in the report) that is altered.Also pain can alter the truth if you wish

I do not find it as an abuse in terms of game mechanics and rp talking (only because it's this  particular Continent we're talking about) there are so many ways to actually ignore the torture report .

In this case, all the GM wants is verification that the original message sent did not say certain things.  Thus, disbelieving in the accuracy of particular messages in torture reports is not an issue here.

[Geronus]

A few points I would like to bring forth to the discussion would be:

*Scout reports are not 100% accurate as far as CS goes, but are able to be shared anyways. Copy/pasting such information in letters to such level of precision would be impossible.
*Secret police reports are short and easy to copy/paste. The text is short and there is no special formating required.
*Torture reports are lengthy and a hell of a pain to copy/paste. Copy/pasting these letters without breaking the formating and without spamming 100 letters would be impossible.

When arguing on the basis of whether certain other features offer a scribe note or not, it should be considered how easy or hard transmitting such information without a game link would be. Odds are ease of manipulation and sharing played a great role in these design decisions.

Of course, I would also trust the designers (of which ^ban^ and Indirik are two) to have some knowledge of the intent of these features. That said, I think a better and far more relevant question is whether this request actually constitutes the exploitation of a bug, which is what is explicitly forbidden by the Social Contract. In spite of Vellos' lengthy justification, I'm not inclined to say it is. It requires a pretty significant leap to get from 'meta-gaming a feature' to 'exploiting a bug'. And, as Vellos admits, meta-gaming is not explicitly forbidden.

EDIT: On top of that, from what Indirik is saying, it's questionable whether this is even meta-gaming.

[Lavigna]

As i said. rp talking a torture report should not be a verification it would rather spice up things.After all and i repeat ,it's a person in pain that spits out his truth.

[Vellos]

Clarification:

Did a Magistrate seriously just imply that preventing meta-gaming is not their job?

Also:

It's worth noting that this case, however it is resolved, has no material implications. The requested torture report(s) can be easily gotten. The adventurer has been captured, torture will be done, in all likelihood, the issue will be fully resolved.

The question I was raising is why it is acceptable for a character to operate on the assumption that torture reports are 100% always accurate (it's like back when we had "buy title": doesn't matter what YOU as a player know, the character doesn't know it was bought), and therefore to request a torture report be forwarded, not because it might contain some unknown intelligence or be proof of some retributive aim, but precisely because it is known to be 100% accurate on an OOC basis.

Our characters would request scout reports whether or not they were known to be 100% accurate (and in fact they are not 100% accurate. maybe 90%. if you count misdirections, maybe even less). But "torture reports" are purely an OOC convenience to add a fun feature to the game.

I do not argue that torture reports can and should be forwardable. They are clearly intended to be forwardable. I do not argue that we should never be able to ASK for a torture report. We can and should. My argument is about WHY we should be able to ask. If our sole motive is to get a "perfect confirmation" of a fact we already trusted enough to base our military movements on it (as the Zuma GM evidently did), that seems like meta-gaming to me.

According to wikipedia:
"Metagaming is a broad term usually used to define any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.
In simple terms, it is the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions."

This action clearly refers to the game universe outside of the game itself, goes beyond the environment set by the game (presumes that characters have good cause to believe that torture reports are always accurate beyond simple experience), and certainly transcends the "prescribed ruleset" pertaining to IC/OOC separation of knowledge.

Further, I ask that magistrates keep discussion here, and not have any substantive debate on the issue on IRC.

Finally, I would like to remind the Magistrates that they set a precedent. This case does not pertain to a specific violation of the social contract, nor the inalienable rights. It is not a case of "rule-breaking," but of meta-gaming which substantively breaks the immersion and changes the game experience for many players. This meta-gaming occurred as an action OF A GM, ON AN SMA ISLAND. This renders the issue of even further weight: an SMA island has stricter standards of immersion, and GMs should be held to a higher standard. Should the Magistrates decide that no violation has occurred, then they have decided to cede their right to regulate meta-gaming, even in the strictest of environments by the most accountable of people. The case is not about whether we can forward scout reports or not, but about whether the Magistrates can police meta-gaming.

On what grounds?

Because I brought the case. I will argue as plaintiff but not as magistrate.