TRP is a post-Great War AU RWBY RP set in Mistral City and Haven Academy with no canons, no rank claims, no maidens, and no god interference. We offer a progression system and site-wide events that change the setting based on player actions.
One area in which I have frankly sometimes failed the past couple of months in is adapting realistic consequences for really off the wall player actions. A big part of verisimilitude for me is when actions have realistic consequences, because it keeps the appearance of this being a real and living world.
I'm calling this the Car Five Rule because I think Carmim and Nikolas both exemplify how I want this to work and they happened to both be in Car Five of the Argus Limited Event. I could've instead called it the Clover Clause but Nik is a great example too and sadly does not have a name that starts with C.
Nikolas was acting like a crazy dude and got called out by faculty and forced to agree to not be a wild crazy man and put others in danger. This directly influenced some of his actions in the Huntsman internship that followed. The world consistency was maintained, and everything made sense. He did something wild in public, and it was addressed IC in a way that spurred on character development.
Carmim went ham in the Rochdale epilogue and has had IC consequences for that and had threads detailing the recovery of the trauma associated with that action. World consistency is maintained, and everything makes sense. She did something wild in public, and it was addressed IC in a way that spurred on character development.
What I haven't done a good job is enforcing this. The players of both of these characters readily agreed to threads and consequences for their actions as part of their goal was to drive conflict and character development. In instances where characters are acting like criminals or publicly wild and dangerous, I've responded to rebuffed attempts to have that IC confrontation with a staff member with just throwing my hands up and saying "Okay, that's cool." and just letting them do whatever uncontested which has been a minor but recurring issue.
Going forward, if your character does something in public that is wild and crazy and dangerous and illegal and would realistically give you IC consequences and a faculty member thread is made -- it's no longer an option. It's you being called into the principal's office for burning down buildings or committing other crimes. Not showing up to the thread will result in further IC escalations, because for example if Carmim blasted the wall and ran to her room without giving up her weapon she would have been forced from her weapon. By the huntress there. She would have been forcibly disarmed against her will. It's not Carmim's choice at that point, because to do otherwise would IC have Haven take an action that puts everyone else's lives at risk.
Basically this is explicitly stating that going forward the assumption that you can avoid any consequences and negatively impact the setting simply by refusing threads or ghosting event ones when your character gets challenged is not going to fly anymore. If you want your character to do wild crimes, assault people, and all sorts of other things you need to be willing to live with the in-character consequences. Haven students are not above the law and are not above prosecution for crimes. Faculty are not going to stand there as people are put into danger and not intervene.
The thing that's frustrated me is that when those threads are denied or ghosted, sometimes that lack of intervention is noted as an explicit strike against Haven. The player refuses to thread any consequences, and then writes that lack of consequences as a strike against the setting that then bleeds into other threads. That's been a mistake on my part, and I'm sorry I allowed it for so long. Going forward, this will be enforced to the best of my ability.
Your character can absolutely get away with things if nobody is there to see it or nobody tells on you. What you cannot do is flagrantly do it in public and then skirt around in-character consequences by not agreeing to it. If Carmim and Nik teamed up to burn down a city block with cameras rolling the entire time and just refused to acknowledge it again, they're both still getting expelled and warrants put out for their arrest. Nothing to that level has happened, but lower level public stuff has been ignored for long enough that I've become resolved to change it.