(This post is advice, not rules. You are not on the hook for memorizing it.)
PvP has come up in a few discussions, as it should. This is a big post covering the game's view of it. "PvP" means different things to different people, and sometimes has strong negative connotations. So it's a difficult thing to use in a game pitch. Note how neither "PvP" nor "player-vs-player" are mentioned exactly in our tagline ("A Dungeonpunk Fantasy Game of Intrigue, Skullduggery, and Adventure") nor our basic introduction / description of genre (we use the word "adversarial").
The rulebook does go into it in some depth in various places, however. I highly recommend reading the "What Kind of Game is This," "Advice," and "Roleplaying" sections of the rulebook (found in the What Kind of Game is This? and Advice and Roleplaying teasers).
Let's start with what we aren't doing:
We're not a WoW-style, "horde vs alliance" style game. There's no big good/evil or order/chaos axis to align to, etc.
We're not a "form up into guilds, dress in your colors, and murk each other for profit" sort of game. Especially, we are not a "kill the noobs for their loot" sort of game.
Griefing/hazing are against the Code of Conduct, and will get you in trouble with all of RFR, including possibly banned from playing.
We're not expecting everyone to just start "blood feuds" and fight each other over petty grievances. That said, blood feuds can happen (petty or not) and staff isn't trying to make people get along.
So, what are we doing?
Usually, PvP will be about stuff you (a PC) care about. Its seriousness will often scale with how much you care. "I need to stop that guy, because he's a russian agent trying to destroy my country." "I need to identify and eliminate Agent Bond and her associates, before they foil my plans." "I'm in the mafia, so I need to find and remove the werewolves in our midst" and "I'm a werewolf, so I need to find and remove the mafiosi in our midst" etc. (Every character in those examples would be a PC.)
PvP isn't just about murder, but it is sometimes about murder. Escalation is natural when characters care about a thing while under stress, and "willing to die on this hill (literally)" or "willing to kill on this hill" are somewhat natural thresholds that people will hit.
It could also be low-key: "I want to finish my post-doc research, and if that means using up the last catalytic converter so the other researchers can't, so be it." You could solve that through negotiation, through subterfuge, through murder...or just by being faster or more clever than your "opponents."
It's pretty safe to assume that no-one is innocent. No-one is "just a good guy," and everyone is up to something. You're playing PCs, not innocent bystanders. A pithier way to say this: you can always be a hero in your own story, and you're probably a villain in someone else's. (Just about everyone is hiding who they are / what they're up to, so they don't know you're their villain yet, and neither do you...)
Technically, a walk-on part may be an exception to this, because staff hasn't had a chance to integrate them into the tangled web of plot (yet!)...but anyone would want to pretend to be a walk-on to divert attention from themselves, and of course you're allowed to lie about that.
This is also why character backgrounds and event briefings are confidential. You literally are not allowed to show them to other people. You can't prove who you are (or aren't) or what you're up to (or aren't up to) so easily...you earn trust through actions, not by quoting staff documents.
Other notes:
We try to keep PCs moving and doing stuff (via goals and problems and responsibilities, not "busywork" or grinding), and you probably have better things to do than casual/cruel PvP. (Alternatively, casual/cruel PvP is often the result of player boredom, combined with player frustration, usually frustration about a lack of agency. We try to keep you on actual plots, and we're all about giving you tons and tons of PC agency, so hopefully this will head off the bad stuff.)
As the rulebook says, the important thing is to keep characters from getting complacent.
Also, killing random characters is a good way to get killed yourself, or to at least run out of in-game friends.
I expect, statistically, the majority of PCs to "end" through retirement, because they finished their plots (maybe success, maybe failure, maybe a little of both). Some of them will die, to other PCs; that's probably inevitable.
Sometimes, character death will still feel random or pointless. Sometimes you walk in on the wrong secret meeting...sometimes curiosity really does kill the cat. We don't always get a dramatic send-off.
It's very unlikely that a character will die permanently to NPCs. Sure, you could go on a mod with a sign that says "if you touch the red tarp, your spirit is instantly immolated" and some poor NPC could be the one to push you into the magic hell lava...but that's probably super rare. And you can't actually be forced to retire due to too much character trauma (regular death) --- that is always a player choice.
Related (not really PvP) point: the game is not built around an attrition model. There's no "death track," and NPCs will usually not be trying to fight people who don't want to fight, nor will they be trying to get everyone to be on the "same side," nor are they trying to get everyone to expend skills (skills are infinite-use, anyway). Presumably, you fight NPCs because you enjoy it, or because you want loot, or because they are in the way --- and we're not here to force it, nor to punish it.
(This post is advice, not rules. You are not on the hook for memorizing it.)
PvP has come up in a few discussions, as it should. This is a big post covering the game's view of it. "PvP" means different things to different people, and sometimes has strong negative connotations. So it's a difficult thing to use in a game pitch. Note how neither "PvP" nor "player-vs-player" are mentioned exactly in our tagline ("A Dungeonpunk Fantasy Game of Intrigue, Skullduggery, and Adventure") nor our basic introduction / description of genre (we use the word "adversarial").
The rulebook does go into it in some depth in various places, however. I highly recommend reading the "What Kind of Game is This," "Advice," and "Roleplaying" sections of the rulebook (found in the What Kind of Game is This? and Advice and Roleplaying teasers).
Let's start with what we aren't doing:
So, what are we doing?
Other notes: