Underdark Slavery

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JubJub
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Re: Underdark Slavery

Post by JubJub » Mon May 25, 2020 3:28 pm

I never understood all of the OMG evil is at such a disadvantage, I have been pvp'd for lame reasons by good and bad people. If the player is eager for pvp is doesn't matter if they are playing a paladin or a BG they will find a reason to pvp. The advantages and disadvantages of every class is known and turning castles into faction areas is a bad idea because then you get what Benwick and Sencliffe became. The issue with openly evil in power is it starts to become they want to walk about the town with their undead and demons out, which imo is never a good thing or should become the norm, such things imo should never become a that's no big deal type of thing on the surface. Or you get the evil town now wants to unite with evil UD so evil UD folks can come chill there also. Wharftown was a good example of what happens when things are allowed to get out of control.

Shrouded Wanderer
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Re: Underdark Slavery

Post by Shrouded Wanderer » Mon May 25, 2020 5:07 pm

JubJub wrote:
Mon May 25, 2020 3:28 pm
I never understood all of the OMG evil is at such a disadvantage, I have been pvp'd for lame reasons by good and bad people. If the player is eager for pvp is doesn't matter if they are playing a paladin or a BG they will find a reason to pvp. The advantages and disadvantages of every class is known and turning castles into faction areas is a bad idea because then you get what Benwick and Sencliffe became. The issue with openly evil in power is it starts to become they want to walk about the town with their undead and demons out, which imo is never a good thing or should become the norm, such things imo should never become a that's no big deal type of thing on the surface. Or you get the evil town now wants to unite with evil UD so evil UD folks can come chill there also. Wharftown was a good example of what happens when things are allowed to get out of control.

People say evil is at a disadvantage because theres one alignment that will drop everything they are doing, and any possible grudges to fight another alignment.

Myon and radiant heart at war? Oh no worries we will band together to fight the greater evil for now.

Bendir and cordor hate each other? Oh no worries lets all attack this place.

Frankly, evil doesnt band together to smash good, good bands together to smash evil. Thats just a server culture thing though.

On the surface it is common knowledge the ONLY true evil place to hang out is admittedly the banite church. Sencliff is generally neutral at best and their chaotic alignment puts them at odds with banites 9 times out of 10.
Any surface evil that even hints at working with the UD EVEN in passing will be met with every single surface settlements immediate opposition to that evil entity.

And even when the surface evils goals align with surface goods the surface goods vehemently oppose even working with them, take hardline stances against them no matter what benefit it coulf have.

Frankly, the surface has a culture of not wanting antagonists, but thats not the DMs fault, Wharftown is often blamed but IIRC wharftown was blown up because a war started between the cordorian PCs and the Wharftown PCs. Anything else, problem players asside or DM intervention asside thats the jist of what happened.

As it happens its a culture thing within the playerbase that makes surface evil difficult. Nothing short of DM intervention would fix the hundreds of years of history.


That being said. The banite church is the objectively smallest guildhouse on the surface, and often has the biggest evil playerbase when active. There is none that could object that playing a surface banite is not playing arelith on hardmode. Certainly right now when the climate is that the entire surface is literally ruled by the radiant heart and myon. Not only is there a culture that basically says "if they have a radiant pin that means they can be fully trusted 100% because they always have the best at heart for everyone" make it impossible to legally challenge somone in a voting war,but holding any sort of ground as a banite thats not literally just the bane church and nothing else is met with the entirety of the Surface forcing them out.


Again, its not the DMs fault. Thats just surface culture, but to say evil isnt disadvantaged on the surface is factually incorrect. They absolutely are. But players like myself find that to be an added challenge and we enjoy the diffculty and the RP it brings.

Aelryn Bloodmoon
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Re: Underdark Slavery

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Mon May 25, 2020 11:11 pm

Shrouded Wanderer wrote:
Mon May 25, 2020 5:07 pm
Frankly, the surface has a culture of not wanting antagonists, but thats not the DMs fault, Wharftown is often blamed but IIRC wharftown was blown up because a war started between the cordorian PCs and the Wharftown PCs. Anything else, problem players asside or DM intervention asside thats the jist of what happened.

This is incorrect. There have been plenty of wars between the settlements, including settlements going to war with Cordor. Wharftown was not blown up because of war between PC's - Wharftown was blown up because of the reasons the war started, namely-
Shrouded Wanderer wrote:
Mon May 25, 2020 5:07 pm

Any surface evil that even hints at working with the UD EVEN in passing will be met with every single surface settlements immediate opposition to that evil entity.
There was not a "hint". Underdarkers were outright being allowed into Wharftown and were also staging attacks on the surface while using it as a rest stop. This was such an egregious break of setting that DM's actually had NPC's leaving the town in protest- and at one point PC Leadership of the town started executing NPC's after. The fact that Wharftown and Cordor were antagonistically hostile to each other at the time was just icing on the cake.

A lot of work had in fact just been done updating and making Wharftown bigger- I played a character in the Waymen that was part of protecting Wharftown and helping to build it up for several years.

I guarantee you no one on the staff turned around and decided to nuke all that hard work into dust just because of one side or another gaining an advantage in the war- it had entirely to do with preservation of setting, or it never would have happened at all. Irongron actually made a post after it happened expressing his dissatisfaction with how things turned out because IIRC, he did a lot of the footwork for the Wharftown update.
And even when the surface evils goals align with surface goods the surface goods vehemently oppose even working with them, take hardline stances against them no matter what benefit it coulf have.
I think there's a lot of backdoor politics you might be missing. Paladins and other characters with a divine obligation tend to behave this way, but they're usually supposed to. Still, I can personally vouch for dozens of alignment-crossing alliances and backdoor politics happening.
Bane's tyranny is known throughout the continent, and his is the image most seen as the face of evil.
-Faiths and Pantheons (c)2002

Shrouded Wanderer
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Re: Underdark Slavery

Post by Shrouded Wanderer » Tue May 26, 2020 4:55 pm

I tend to try not to derail the threads original purpose, but youve conflated my own personal views of Wharftown and other generalized comments about evil in general on the surface with only being attributed TO Wharftown


Not the original intention.

Backdoor politics aside, it seems like your view is taking the Wharftown sacking as admission of the DM team that they truely do not want surface evil settlements, which has been denied by the team on numerous occassion.


Evil historically needs to work with the underdark or be horrendously outnumbered on the surface at the moment. Whether by design or not, the surface is for "goodies" and the underdark are for "team evil".

As was stated before, there is no place for "team evil" to gain a foothold on the surface, if they are a banite, or hinted to be a banite they are scried every minute of the day, this may be anecdotal but currently this is the case. Evil summarily on surface either needs to be secret or they do not extend past minmir in any meaningful capacity.

Historically when evil is able to push past this blockade, OOC anger is flung almost immediately and actions are taken by certain PCs that cause evil surfacers to feel ousted OOCly.

This is not a complaint but just my own observations and again a challenge i see that needs to be overcome. The original point of my post was that trying to say that evil is not disadvantaged on the surface is entirely incorrect, ive seen it said numerous times that evil in general is goven a leg up, the opposite is certainly the case.

To adhere to lore, and to maintain the servers own rulings, surface evil is not allowed to truely intermingle with underdarkers, specifically monsters even if there is lore supporting that (Zhentarim and kobold/gnoll/goblin soldiers for example)

While the surface can generally looked at like team blue, and underdarkers team red.
And the current bases can be switched, with the minmir temple being team red, that foothold is told that it cannot utilize its team, whilst team blue can utilize its entirety.

The result of this is, for example, scenarios where the banites for example take ten soldiers out. And are met with 40.

It seems like an exaggeration, but it happens frequently enough to take note of.

Part of the reason why they tend to seek out the underdark, to their detriment is because they lack the numbers, simply.

Once again a challenge to overcome that others do not need to overcome.

It would be the same as a group of paladins attackibg the hub, except in the case of the banites in this example, the paladin house is located inside the hub. People may not siege it or smash the doors down twice a day every day because of the "be nice" rule. But you can certainly hope after a while of occasional smiting everyone and their mothers will have a reason to want to.

And thus, I dont think you can disagree, nor anyone can that playing overt evil on the surface is easy mode, or that they have some sort of advantage.

Infact a lot of the reason why banites on the surface are looked at like murderhobos is because if they do not attack an enemy quickly. They find themselves quickly surrounded by allies of their enemy.

In essence this leads people to pre-emptively strike, or live long enough to become a joke in the eyes of the Pcs and the players as "ineffective bad guys"

The whole thing is a careful balancing act that requires foresight, build competence, mechanical knowledge, PVP skills, fast typing, and the ability to build character arcs within a short timeframe due to the short interactions players have with those characters.


I think it would be decently summized that using this context that Wharftown was open to the UD because they needed the numbers. But of course, that breaks the lore of the server.

I was told this needs a TL;DR version:

Evil on surface is disadvantaged not only by numbers but by player culture. It's not a DM issue but I see no way to fix it. Server setting prevents evil on surface from thriving and gaining a foothold, its a challenge and one that I personally enjoy.

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Watchful Glare
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Re: Underdark Slavery

Post by Watchful Glare » Tue May 26, 2020 7:48 pm

My main gripe with slavery can be summarized up in one image

Image

There are good slaves that I've seen that really make for good RP and ambiance. Masters who brutally punish their slaves in public when they act bratty or disrespect their betters. Some I've seen even get savagely punished for things they didn't do, pretty hardcore that make them (and everyone watching) think how sucky it is to be a slave.

Then it goes away when you realise that's not the norm, but some exceptional, scarce RP. There are slaves who act disrespectful or outright conflictive, which is far more common. It turns into a 'I can do whatever I want, and if you do anything about it other than tell the character's owner we'll gank you'. Which I find... disruptive. Why is that character a slave even in the first place, some kind of kink? But it's kind of a repeating trend that a slave will be disrespectful towards other non-slaves, and that will happen.

Slave disrespects low-mid level character. If the character speaks with their master, nothing is done. Slave's attitude remain the same, no impact IC. And really who is going to force that kind of change? Death is not permanent so if you want to punish the slave you would have to gank it and start a gank war with their cliqué afterwards. It seems very unrewarding, all around. Without laws or rules and anything to enforce them IC even, when something immersion breaking happens things start coming apart at the seams once these things become obvious and you just cannot unsee them.

I'm all in for some changes. They needn't be mechanical, but there has to be a way for the slave experience to have a little more structure. I'm all in for player agency but at the moment it more often feels 'whatever goes, no consequence, anyways'. The exception being people who are very commited to their characters.

While owning slaves, I've gotten some downright excellent RP, it is also an investment on time on your part to give them a chance to be involved in what your character is doing, and I've been lucky in the sense that I have found someone who was excellent at their RP and used it to furthen the RP. It felt rewarding. Given slaves a more prominent role or their own places could help to aid this, to give them more avenues in which they might be useful or engage in RP.
Biz here was a constant subliminal hum, and death the accepted punishment for laziness, carelessness, lack of grace, the failure to heed the demands of an intricate protocol.

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Talvenlapsi
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Re: Underdark Slavery

Post by Talvenlapsi » Wed May 27, 2020 1:40 pm

I'd be all in for having people go talk to my slave's master. Man, there's countless times I've had someone tell me "I'll make sure your master knows about your behavior", AND! I'm all in for that! Heck, I'd LOVE to see that happen. I'd love to go through the fact my slave gets back from being piece of crap to someone.
But guess what? None, not once, someone has actually taken it up to her master? Just complaining and telling me she misbehaves. Hell, I know she does. Talk to her owner! Attitude won't change less it paybacks badly to her. Please give me that side of the RP too, I'd love to develop her character through those interactions and disciplining that would ensue from it, but alas.. :roll:
You need the Dark in order to show the Light.
- Left the Isle: Sabre Brightburst, Liberty, Lila Havenfall, Lillaniarin Dragonsbane, Avidelra Aza'Athreen, Hexflaerin Amav'fer, Eclipse Silverbane

Chosen Son
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Re: Underdark Slavery

Post by Chosen Son » Wed May 27, 2020 1:47 pm

My characters, on the small handful of occations it has been meritied, have always just killed slaves that were not properly respectful. They are property, however prized and precious to their owners they might be, and any character that takes disrespect from a slave in Andunor (justly) earns considerable humiliation and risks loss of status. The idea that they would suffer public mockery, or disrespect, and try and resolve the situation by running to their owner to discpline them has always been absurd both ic, and ooc to me. Only the post powerful of owner would have bought any consideration at all. But these were all IC solutions, to an IC problem. Dont expect anything to change because of a thread unless you are willing to follow up IG.

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