How to react meaningfully to PvP?

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Gwenneth_Corvain
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How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Gwenneth_Corvain » Thu Aug 27, 2020 8:14 pm

I would genuinely like some advice on how to generate anything meaningful form the following scenario:

I'm in Sibayad, minding my business in the tradepost. Somewhere in the room someone exchanging words with an unseen / invisible character. Suddenly - timestop, while under timestop summoned mummies, fiery tentacles, teleport-ward. As soon as the timestop ends - i'm dead.

ICly my character had zero interaction, time was halted before any attacker even became visible. I just died without any reason, lead-up or followup.
I have had that sort of stuff happen before - reporting it is not doing anything as -someone somewhere- in that room probably had minimal "interaction" before everyone in the room got carpet-bombed. Played by the letter.

I am sure this has happened to others before so genuinely - How are we supposed to react, to play this ? What is a meaningful approach to making anything of the situation?

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Nitro » Thu Aug 27, 2020 8:19 pm

Report it. Interaction requirement before PvP is not one-way only, and if you're gonna be hitting innocent bystanders in your spree you'd best have actually interacted with, not at, them beforehand. So toss the DM's a report with details.
Last edited by Nitro on Thu Aug 27, 2020 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Gwenneth_Corvain » Thu Aug 27, 2020 8:23 pm

Honestly - i had different answers from DM on that.. but even if i were to report it, the question remains - how do i react to the reality of this In-Character? How do other players -play- that situations aftermath, independent of reporting? Or are we not required to play out anything that we report?

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Nitro » Thu Aug 27, 2020 8:28 pm

React to it as your character would IC. Maybe they'd like to get revenge, maybe they'd want to spread the word of a bloodthirsty maniac, maybe they'd be afraid and avoid the people they saw in that room.

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Gwenneth_Corvain » Thu Aug 27, 2020 8:35 pm

That seems a good approach if my character had a chance to -see- anyone at all.

From an IC-standpoint she was doing her business, and then she was dead.
There was no "and then spells, blades, arrows" ..time stops, death happens. I asume that while we as players can see what is cast during timestop our characters - being frozen in time - cannot know any of that. So the series of events from an incharacter-view is literally: "shopping --> dead" with nothing inbetween.

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by The Rambling Midget » Thu Aug 27, 2020 8:55 pm

As Nitro says, play it as your character would, to the best of your ability.

I'm hoping that there was some sort of miscommunication between you and the DM you spoke with, but if they're really telling you that nuking bystanders with no RP is just fine, report that DM to the head DM or higher if necessary. Players have been permabanned for stuff like that.

Regarding your situation, it's fair to say that your character would never have known they'd died, and mysteriously woke up somewhere else with a memory gap, so you could go that route if you like. In fact, that used to be a very common way to play death, even in cases where characters had seen their killers, so that PvP wouldn't have to turn into an endless back and forth of revenge.

It sucks, but it's kind of a grey area where you're just going to have to decide how best to adhere to the RP rule, and I would honestly be shocked if anyone gave you trouble for whatever you choose, so long as it stays IC.
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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Hazard » Thu Aug 27, 2020 9:14 pm

That sucks.

Maybe they subconsciously remember a flash of fiery tentacles and mummies.
Maybe it comes back to them the next time they're shopping, or as a nightmare.
A brief instant of mummies, fire, and pain?

"Ooh. Wands are on sale- Aaah! AAAH! MUMMIES AAH! NOO!"

I don't know, but it sounds a lot like that player broke the rules by including you in their PvP without interaction.

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by The Kriv » Thu Aug 27, 2020 9:53 pm

sounds like you just happen to get caught up in someone else's PvP... that the RP and rules and such may very well have been followed by them for their intended target, and you just happen to be caught up in the radius.

The fact you ended up dead is a very rare thing, and had you -not- ended up dead, since the PvP was initiated by someone else, then you should be perfectly able to defend yourself.

The crappy part is paying the XP penalty for self-rez on something you didn't have anything to do with.... and honestly... THAT is the thing you should report. -the irresponsible OTHER player to initiate PVP inside of a town, where bystanders can get caught up in... that is the thing that is the worst and should be what gets reported (imo)

Getting caught up by close proximity to PvP that spawns around you independent of your involvement... well.. that's always a risk on a server with full and open PvP settings allowed.

I think, however, this is such a rare and specific example, likely it will never happen to you ever again. You know... and if does.. you should go buy a lottery ticket.
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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Echohawk » Thu Aug 27, 2020 11:06 pm

There is not a hard rule for what you remember as a character.
But there is a rule against remembering and having your other buddies summoned to go and deal with that same someone.

I basically would view it in a way to whatever effect means the most to the story. If someone is just curbstomping, it probably isn't worth giving them more credit in your own story. If it matters then you can work it in. But it'll be on your terms, still the character should always be wary of their demise, but not so much that it ruins the fun of it. You can do both.

And accidents happen, and some people frankly just suck.
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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Good Character » Thu Aug 27, 2020 11:46 pm

Actually sounds like something you can seriously play well off of, and doesn't really need DM intervention.

May be alone in my belief, but this sounds like a fantastic play by an evil character. Ensuring that their target is truly dead regardless of cost, including bystanders. As far as rule breaking goes, I think what they did sufficed if the conversation was more than just "hey, get out of my way" and their target didn't. I would have hightailed it out if I feared for my life.

Multiple avenues:
1. Spread news about what happened and let others hunt him down.
2. If your character is good, see this an evil character feeling so safe they wantonly kill bystanders in the process of murdering someone else.
3. If your character is evil, watch and see how Sibayad reacts when you spread the news. If they do nothing, maybe you can capitalize on Sibayad's inaction, also.

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by The GrumpyCat » Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:07 am

Leaving aside rule break isues of this, there's one thing people arn't discussing about things to roleplay.

Why not roleplay the injury? Or the emotional fear of what happened?

Rp a sudden terror of undead?
RP the marks left on you by the awful tenticles?
Maybe the mummies left you with a terrible disease, mummy rot, that you can have cured by priests or healers?

This may not be your thing of course, but I enjoy using such situations to gain new connections, and (where possible) enable for emotional growth out of the character.
May be alone in my belief, but this sounds like a fantastic play by an evil character. Ensuring that their target is truly dead regardless of cost, including bystanders. As far as rule breaking goes, I think what they did sufficed if the conversation was more than just "hey, get out of my way" and their target didn't. I would have hightailed it out if I feared for my life.
Are you sure?

Because the above poster didn't seem to really like this situation. I guess in a book or movie it works, definatly. But ask yourself this - when people mention your characters name do you want their ooc reactions to be:

'Oh wow! Yeah! He's really cool! I love seeing what he comes up with next! He plays a fantastic bad guy, really caring for the fun of others! I need to find an exucse to interact with him!'

or

'Oh my god what an annoying, griefing jerk! A real *****. I can't stand him. I wish the Dms would just ban him already so we didn't have to put up with his antics.'

Personally if I were playing an evil character I'd want the former far more than the latter. And (if the above is anything to go by) it's the latter that you're more likely to get by that tactic.
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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Good Character » Fri Aug 28, 2020 4:10 am

The GrumpyCat wrote:
Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:07 am
Are you sure?

Because the above poster didn't seem to really like this situation. I guess in a book or movie it works, definatly. But ask yourself this - when people mention your characters name do you want their ooc reactions to be:

'Oh wow! Yeah! He's really cool! I love seeing what he comes up with next! He plays a fantastic bad guy, really caring for the fun of others! I need to find an exucse to interact with him!'

or

'Oh my god what an annoying, griefing jerk! A real *****. I can't stand him. I wish the Dms would just ban him already so we didn't have to put up with his antics.'

Personally if I were playing an evil character I'd want the former far more than the latter. And (if the above is anything to go by) it's the latter that you're more likely to get by that tactic.
Definitely. I am not arguing against the idea that the former is obviously the most desirable (and should be the only desirable situation), but as I mentioned that there's little information to go off of. It sums up to the player being in the trade post, noticed a conversation, watching the usual attack set-up occur as a wizard/sorcerer, then dying to AoE.

If the "exchanging [of] words" was heated and obvious intent was behind it that an attack would happen, then I can hardly see this as griefing. At best, it's borderline breaking the "be nice" rule.

Would I have sent a whisper to an innocent bystander saying "just a heads up X, Y, and Z are about to happen" before unleashing my slew of OTK spells? Yes. Would I be upset if someone did that to me? No, so long as what transpired in the room led me to believe I should fear for my life.

I understand the specifics of a complainant can't be mentioned, but it's difficult to place the attacker in a good or bad light without specifics. However, with what was given I would be satisfied, because I feel like I can generate some RP out of it.

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Skibbles » Fri Aug 28, 2020 5:04 am

This sounds like a plain unfortunate scenario that doesn't really have an ideal solution. It might fall under 'bad things happen to good adventurers' which is to say: we're sorry this happened to you but it isn't the norm.

I'd say it could be hard to determine a breach of rules. If four good meet four bad and everyone talks in elven but one out of the eight doesn't understand elven is it a breach of rules? Hard to say.

I've killed a bystander in pvp before, and it's sadly very easy to do this on accident if you're a caster of some kind and you had to use a ! in all the fuss. Especially if people are around that are far under your level and would stand no chance to survive your DC 42 banshee.

I think I've only ever done it once, but I was able to raise the bystander promptly with an apology. Both IG and OOC. However if my character died in the fight or it became a running battle across multiple areas it might have been an altogether different case.

Do you know what happened after? Were you bashed? Maybe the assailant was chased off or killed, and your body simply wasn't notice or forgotten in the rush and activity.

Bottom line is that nobody will force you to follow a 'story', for lack of a better word, that you do not enjoy. You can just move on, or ask around to put together some missing time and curious circumstances. You never know what you might get involved in though which could end up being a major component of your character's future!
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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Gwenneth_Corvain » Fri Aug 28, 2020 5:16 am

....No, so long as what transpired in the room led me to believe I should fear for my life....
The exchange was nothing of that sort, i'm afraid. From my position it was only one character asking an unseen person why they are following them. No hostility perceivable. I can only assume there might have been some sort of reply but it was either whispered and not perceivable for anyone else or not shown because it was spoken while hiding (?)

Again whether rules were broken or not - i know is a muddy mess. The rules allow for pretty by-the-letter checkbox playing to get PvP cleared. It happens and i believe there are many others out there who have been subjected to sudden, unexpected PvP and had to make some sort of sense of it ICly.

There just isn't much at all to work a story with but i received some good answers how to handle the situation. Playing the aftermath of the physical battle, infection or disease sounds good. In a different scenario not involving timestop, emotional reaction to trigger-memories sounds good too.


I don't PvP myself - dislike it to a fault, but i understand there is a huge base of people who like to do it here for big or small reason. And it is a reality of Arelith that you can get caught up in it everywhere.
I believe when PvP is happening there is some story playing in the mind of the person who starts it ( let's be honest - the person on the receiving end has no say in whether or not there is a story when one side is determined to toggle hostile).

Thanks everyone.
I am interested in how we turn a "not sure what and why" into a satisfying plot point to incorporate.
I'm still interested in pooling ideas how to make situations like these go somewhere - to hear how others handle them.

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Fri Aug 28, 2020 2:54 pm

Good Character wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 11:46 pm
Actually sounds like something you can seriously play well off of, and doesn't really need DM intervention.

May be alone in my belief, but this sounds like a fantastic play by an evil character. Ensuring that their target is truly dead regardless of cost, including bystanders. As far as rule breaking goes, I think what they did sufficed if the conversation was more than just "hey, get out of my way" and their target didn't. I would have hightailed it out if I feared for my life.

Multiple avenues:
1. Spread news about what happened and let others hunt him down.
2. If your character is good, see this an evil character feeling so safe they wantonly kill bystanders in the process of murdering someone else.
3. If your character is evil, watch and see how Sibayad reacts when you spread the news. If they do nothing, maybe you can capitalize on Sibayad's inaction, also.
I'll bite.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

The problem with this manner of PvP, and this line of thinking, is that it relies on the idea of resurrection and respawning. Any narrative that hinges on the idea that "coming back from the dead, to spurr new RP" is fundamentally flawed.

Whenever a character becomes a corpse, it should be treated with the severity that there is no coming back. If you roleplay anything otherwise, you're undermining the significance of Death.

Which is why being collateral is such a headache from a narrative perspective. The OP's character was not involved, not interacted with, but died as a result. What, she comes back and says, "yo this guy killed me?" like what? What does that do? That's how our story begins, young adventurers?

Simultaneously, downplaying the OP's death also downplays the errors of the PvPers. It's really a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario. Which is why, a lot of times, those situations are 100% reportable.

We can't simultaneously ach waily waily on these forums about "meaningful death", while spewing out these ways to make death less meaningful.

The OP's character died.
Last edited by Seven Sons of Sin on Fri Aug 28, 2020 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Archnon » Fri Aug 28, 2020 3:10 pm

Sounds like it is time to set up an altar of Beshaba at the location

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by The1Kobra » Thu Sep 03, 2020 5:53 pm

My personal advice?

If your character was raised IC, then you can continue to react IC. It was an unexpected and random attack and you died out of seemingly nowhere. At least here, continue on as if it was an unexpected and random occurrence and keep IC. Being raised can take a toll on a character, and it's a storyline to continue on with.

On the other hand, if you were forced to respawn (or corpse-bashed and respawn), I'd honestly just try to just move on from it without much fanfare. If there was literally no RP on the attack, and no sensible reason to why your character should be back, which if you have to respawn there isn't. I find it's often better to do that than to answer questions like "Yeah, I was disintegrated entirely and then the gods brought me back" because when you get to stuff like that, it can be very immersion breaking.

(Naturally in either case report it, since it's a clear rulebreak).

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by The GrumpyCat » Thu Sep 03, 2020 6:01 pm

The1Kobra wrote:
Thu Sep 03, 2020 5:53 pm
My personal advice?

If your character was raised IC, then you can continue to react IC. It was an unexpected and random attack and you died out of seemingly nowhere. At least here, continue on as if it was an unexpected and random occurrence and keep IC. Being raised can take a toll on a character, and it's a storyline to continue on with.

On the other hand, if you were forced to respawn (or corpse-bashed and respawn), I'd honestly just try to just move on from it without much fanfare. If there was literally no RP on the attack, and no sensible reason to why your character should be back, which if you have to respawn there isn't. I find it's often better to do that than to answer questions like "Yeah, I was disintegrated entirely and then the gods brought me back" because when you get to stuff like that, it can be very immersion breaking.

(Naturally in either case report it, since it's a clear rulebreak).
Yeah I mean - don't get me wrong. I am all for roleplaying death and the effects of death, definatly!

But I will say in cases where there's practically 0 rp leading up to it and 0 rp that can neccesarly come out of it - I wouldn't worry too much about making a massive hullaballo of it unless you really want to.
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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by Fallout » Fri Sep 04, 2020 6:14 am

I would ignore it, however you can take some bit of it as DM here suggested, being scared of undeads, or frowned upon is a nice touch.

Maybe this next for here, but i will ask anyhow, what is btw thing with assasinations like, you get the orb there is a contract put on your head, 2 minutes later there is dozen of assasins on you that ends with your death? Is that still legit, or there is some rule like, give 1h IRL for target to absorb he is now a target? (a suggestion maybe?!).

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Re: How to react meaningfully to PvP?

Post by The1Kobra » Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:20 pm

Fallout wrote:
Fri Sep 04, 2020 6:14 am
I would ignore it, however you can take some bit of it as DM here suggested, being scared of undeads, or frowned upon is a nice touch.

Maybe this next for here, but i will ask anyhow, what is btw thing with assasinations like, you get the orb there is a contract put on your head, 2 minutes later there is dozen of assasins on you that ends with your death? Is that still legit, or there is some rule like, give 1h IRL for target to absorb he is now a target? (a suggestion maybe?!).
TLDR: Report this when it happens.

The rule used to be that an assassin could PvP a target with no prior RP if their target had a contract out on them. The rule was later changed to that the assassin needed to RP with the target prior and then had a 24 hour window to carry out the assassination.

When the assassin system first came out, how it often was used was that an assassin would stalk their target, OOC in communication with a buddy who wanted the target dead. When they got to a good ambush position, their partner would then put up a minimum amount bounty and then the assassination ganking would take place.

Needless to say, the above behavior I describe is blatant metagaming. If you're being ganked seconds after a bounty posting is put up, report it, because this is probably happening again.

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