Double Standards due to IG Race

[Anomandaris]

. Monster PCs don't make for compelling villains on a server where every character starts off hunting bandits, goblins and orcs and continues to butcher their way through zones full of NPC gnolls, quaggoths, orcs and duergar as they level up. When faced with a monster PC villain, you don't need to have a compelling reason to oppose them - they're a drow/duergar/literal personeating monster, half of the gods you worship directly demand their eradication (or, on the flip side for Outcasts, they're directly in cahoots with literal monsters, which is alone enough reason to stand against them.)

This is only the case if you consider humans in Cordor to be the center of the universe and everyone else to be a side character. Playing a "monster" to some of us is the fun and challenge of filling in the cultural details and personalities of something alien. If I'm playing a drow or duergar I could honestly care less about being a bogeyman to surfacers- it's all about what makes these different beings tick.

+1 great point.

[Subutai]

I think I want to address this. Open evil on the surface is outright persecuted - good. If you want a culprit to blame for why all evil seems to migrate down towards Andunor, you need to examine the culture of the surface. I've played a few villains in my time, and started playing one recently. While I aim to make a compelling villain, a lot of players aren't interested in that sort of conflict and immediately go to that nuclear option: PvP or get out. While PvP can be great for a story, the stonewalling a lot of surface players perform towards evil characters makes you wonder why we have a culture so driven towards levels, mechanical strength, etc. They can't even tell a story unless they've the mechanic prowess to back it up.

It's a shame really. I think we, as a community, have reaped what we sow & compelling villains are forced to be mechanically competent, or supported by a large faction (probably also mechanically competent) to survive on the surface.

I think good villains require a sort of combination from both the good players and the evil players that I rarely see on Arelith. While Ork's post addresses pretty well the problems with the good side, I want to bring up the evil side. Or rather, the antagonist side.

For some reason, when people think of villains on Arelith, they think of outright, overt evil. People who torture and murder, who wear black, who practically twirl their mustache so dastardly are they. This can make an occasionally interesting villain in a book, show, or movie, where everyone in the world reacts exactly how the creator wants them to, but doesn't necessarily work in a much more real setting like Arelith, where every character is under some separate person's control.

Better examples of villains that might would on Arelith would, I think, be villains/antagonists like Senator Palpatine, who works in secret to achieve his villainous ends, or Count Dooku who, even as a Sith, still walked the line of being a villain, and just being someone whose end goals differed from the heroes. Even more along those lines, you could have a villain similar to Cardinal Richelieu from The Three Musketeers, who in many ways wasn't at all a villain, but simply an antagonist, trying to gain power for himself but also to keep a kingdom run by a low quality king under some semblance of control.

A great example from Arelith recently is Katernin Bersk. While I don't know the character intimately, I don't think there were many who would have expected her to take things the way she did before she was elected, and there's definitely a way to view her from the perspective of someone who wants to bring more stability and security to Cordor. While she's become an excellent villain, she couldn't be described as mustache-twirling at all (even if she was male). She's very definitely somewhere between Richelieu and Palpatine.

Of course, it doesn't have to be political. You can be a warrior who wants to fight for what they believe in, but takes it too far. Maybe you play a sun elf who thinks the humans and other races are invading what should be elf lands, and that many of the elves of Arelith are too close to the humans. The character might push to separate elves from humans and others, and bring more power to the elves. They aren't evil and torturous in it. Maybe they get violent about it, maybe not, but ultimately, they're just working towards what they think would make a better future for those they care about.

Maybe it's an half orc (why aren't orcs a playable race?) who is angry at how violent Arelithians are towards the native orcs, and struggles to find a way to help his pureblood brethren. Maybe it's a human who thinks King Edward is unambitious, and believes the violent, gods-forsaken island of Arelith can only truly thrive and prosper when united under one rule.

There are all kinds of ways to play a villain on Arelith that isn't just "I'm evil and I do evil things". Lots of people have played, and continue to play, wonderful evil characters, but I feel that in topics like these, there's often a strong undertone of people wanting to play Sauron, Voldemort, or other great and obvious evils, and being unhappy that it's not more accepted.

[Apokriphos]

I think I want to address this. Open evil on the surface is outright persecuted - good. If you want a culprit to blame for why all evil seems to migrate down towards Andunor, you need to examine the culture of the surface. I've played a few villains in my time, and started playing one recently. While I aim to make a compelling villain, a lot of players aren't interested in that sort of conflict and immediately go to that nuclear option: PvP or get out. While PvP can be great for a story, the stonewalling a lot of surface players perform towards evil characters makes you wonder why we have a culture so driven towards levels, mechanical strength, etc. They can't even tell a story unless they've the mechanic prowess to back it up.

It's a shame really. I think we, as a community, have reaped what we sow & compelling villains are forced to be mechanically competent, or supported by a large faction (probably also mechanically competent) to survive on the surface.

I think good villains require a sort of combination from both the good players and the evil players that I rarely see on Arelith. While Ork's post addresses pretty well the problems with the good side, I want to bring up the evil side. Or rather, the antagonist side.

For some reason, when people think of villains on Arelith, they think of outright, overt evil. People who torture and murder, who wear black, who practically twirl their mustache so dastardly are they. This can make an occasionally interesting villain in a book, show, or movie, where everyone in the world reacts exactly how the creator wants them to, but doesn't necessarily work in a much more real setting like Arelith, where every character is under some separate person's control.

Better examples of villains that might would on Arelith would, I think, be villains/antagonists like Senator Palpatine, who works in secret to achieve his villainous ends, or Count Dooku who, even as a Sith, still walked the line of being a villain, and just being someone whose end goals differed from the heroes. Even more along those lines, you could have a villain similar to Cardinal Richelieu from The Three Musketeers, who in many ways wasn't at all a villain, but simply an antagonist, trying to gain power for himself but also to keep a kingdom run by a low quality king under some semblance of control.

A great example from Arelith recently is Katernin Bersk. While I don't know the character intimately, I don't think there were many who would have expected her to take things the way she did before she was elected, and there's definitely a way to view her from the perspective of someone who wants to bring more stability and security to Cordor. While she's become an excellent villain, she couldn't be described as mustache-twirling at all (even if she was male). She's very definitely somewhere between Richelieu and Palpatine.

Of course, it doesn't have to be political. You can be a warrior who wants to fight for what they believe in, but takes it too far. Maybe you play a sun elf who thinks the humans and other races are invading what should be elf lands, and that many of the elves of Arelith are too close to the humans. The character might push to separate elves from humans and others, and bring more power to the elves. They aren't evil and torturous in it. Maybe they get violent about it, maybe not, but ultimately, they're just working towards what they think would make a better future for those they care about.

Maybe it's an half orc (why aren't orcs a playable race?) who is angry at how violent Arelithians are towards the native orcs, and struggles to find a way to help his pureblood brethren. Maybe it's a human who thinks King Edward is unambitious, and believes the violent, gods-forsaken island of Arelith can only truly thrive and prosper when united under one rule.

There are all kinds of ways to play a villain on Arelith that isn't just "I'm evil and I do evil things". Lots of people have played, and continue to play, wonderful evil characters, but I feel that in topics like these, there's often a strong undertone of people wanting to play Sauron, Voldemort, or other great and obvious evils, and being unhappy that it's not more accepted.

I believe your response represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world of Arelith functions. A point of view I feel is grounded in a lack of perspective of what it is like to mainly reside in the underdark.

Your rare example using human characters in Cordor such as your newly elected are commonplace in Andunor. However, it is impossible without disguise for any underdark race denizen of Andunor to get this opportunity upon contact with any surface player. As many in this thread have said, including the one you quoted, the situation almost always devolves in to pvp, the only particulars being who angles themselves to take advantage of it beforehand (either through trickery, or a quick and aggressive response to the encounter). This results in death, and leaves no possibility of further interesting roleplay, but rather more of a semi-anonymous killing and abrupt end to adventuring with friends by the actions of the 'other', from the perspective of either side. This, of course, incentivizes future aggression and early hostility on the part of the loser of the first encounter, extenuating the cycle into bloody hatred that often spreads OOC.

What I wish would happen more often is a willingness to roleplay these more complicated villains that you so idolize in your post. However, as long as the most effective response is a quick pvp action, with a defined winner and loser, this will never be the case. Why attempt dangerous and risky subterfuge, or let someone go without killing them, etc, when the opposing side can (metagaming or otherwise - like asking someone to remove their helmet without breaking their disguise) trick their way to mechanical pvp victory.

When will things change? When there is an incentive to -not- kill every 'other' you see.

[A Mystery Clock]

More or less 3 years ago, Andunor was an almost exclusively drow city. With this I mean that drow were firmly in charge, and uncollared humans doing anything more than occasionally visiting was unheard of. There already was an elven slave back then (Fadra) and a couple enslaved humans, but that was it.

Were we in the same Underdark? 3 years ago I remember there being so many humans to the point I stopped playing in the UD entirely. Honestly, the Outcast changes helped a lot for awhile but I haven’t played UD for the last few months so I dunno how it is currently.

Absolutely. This was around mid-april 2016 to about... march 2017. I know there was a period close to when Outcasts were first released that they roamed about and clashed against UD races, but in the entirety of the period above there was one uncollared human outcast, permanently settled, one outcast who played on the surface 95% of the time and occasionally visited, and the rest was human slaves.