In general, I've played both versions. We had a group in which two players didn't like each other, neither one was willing to quit, and we were still teenagers so we weren't mature enough to talk it out. One player restricted herself to IC abuse and asshattery, so that when the other player blew up OOC she could say, "Oh, it was just my character". The other player tended to rapidly escalate to OOC insults and yelling. It was a bad scene all around.

I also played in a game relatively recently in which what I'd thought was relatively controlled IC disagreements blew up abruptly when one player accused another of deliberately sabotaging his characters' goals due to hating him OOC. We had to stop the game and very carefully talk it out, and it really left a shadow over the campaign.

On the flip side, I've played in games in which a degree of verbal or physical abuse of a character was both expected and actually enjoyed by the players involved. The key is whether they're talking about it out of character, and in every case when it works the player roleplaying an abusive character is being very careful and checking in whether they're pushing too far.

Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
But - and this is important - if your fellow PCs don't agree with you, then you're wrong. Language is a consensus thing, and if they don't think what's happening is 'abuse', then it isn't. Accept it and move on.
Alternately, it means that you're the punching bag for an abusive group, which is totally possible.