Conflict and the surface.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

I've been talking a lot about this lately and figured I should make a thread for it. It's the aggressive neutrality of the surface and how that impacts evil and good RP.

Lately I've had a friend attempt to play evil on the surface, and then give up and go back to the Underdark once outcast opened up again.
I was surprised that anyone would make an outcast after the change that reveals the outcast tag, all it does is cut your RP options in half, why not just make a normal human and go RP in the Underdark. Their answer is, they don't want to play Surface. It's boring, there's nothing they want from it. It's impossible to start intrigue and conflict, or do anything to shake the boat. Other friends don't want to play surface period for the same reason, and have tried arguing I should give up trying to do surface RP.

"But that's not true!" I've heard people argue, that all you have to do is be subtle (which is then followed by, "if you want to play open evil then go to the Underdark"). Alternatively, people argue that there's plenty of evil RP on the surface, it's just secretive, and if you want anything else then go to Andunor.
I don't like these arguments.
For starters, it creates a really closed and non-inclusive atmosphere for evil RP. Being inclusive means taking chances, and if you get caught then you'll be cast out of the settlements and will have a hard time finding places to RP, or even property to own to get something started. Your options become extremely limited.
Secondly, not all evil is meant to be subtle. Every settlement quickly makes all Banites pariah, if you're a Banite you will not be able to have settlement storage. You'll get harassed and chased out of town. Banites should not be Underdark-only.

I dislike the result of "Well if you're obviously evil or caught being evil, just go to Andunor," because it's transformed server conflict into surface vs Underdark, and trying to get anything else going is difficult. Because to do evil RP, you're probably going to end up dealing with the Underdark in one way or another, because it's where many evil characters have ended up. And if you get caught, people will cut you out of RP. And that's always dismissed by "Well that's the consequence for getting caught!"

It's a self-feeding cycle where movers and shakers have given up on the surface because it is so entrenched, and so there are fewer people wanting to move and shake on the surface, meaning the Underdark has the people wanting to do intrigue and conflict and shake things up.
Likewise, the dismissive "well you got caught" attitude creates a cycle where characters wanting to do evil end up only being able to RP in Andunor, meaning there's less evil RP on the surface, pushing future evil characters to have to interact with Andunor. Except for extremely exclusive closed-door RP.

Banites should be able to exist in the world. And warlocks and necromancers shouldn't be underdark-only characters, which is the end result if they're outed. Same with Cyricists.

And characters absolutely cannibalize evil that they discover on the surface. Which a normal good person should do, standing up for good is great. But there's not a whole lot of options for evil characters to go at that point. Which feeds into the cycle of Andunor being the only place to RP.
Because of this, people say things like "The surface is too full of good." Which is incorrect, and I want to address that next.

Trying to RP an actively good character on the surface suffers very similarly to trying to play evil, because you are trying to move and shake things that do not want to be moved. I've watched people get cast out of RP for not being tolerant enough. For standing up for their beliefs. There is a lot of peer pressure on the surface to conform or else. And players can mechanically enforce it with pariah and exile, which cuts you out of both RP and settlement benefits.
I think good actually has it worse than evil, there's no Andunor option for good characters. You conform or else.

Essentially, there's too much player agency, which has allowed people to cut out conflict and entrench an aggressive kind of neutrality. Where if you stand out or go against the norm, you will get cast out of RP for it.

Does your character not like tieflings? Hey, you're now a racist bigot.
Does your character think drow are evil? Hey, you're intolerant and closed-minded.

And sure, there's consequences to actions and people are allowed to react to what you say. But at some level, the consequences are way out of whack, to the point where it's not only harming setting integrity but also the ability for basic conflict to take place. And I don't mean PvP. I mean story-telling conflict, or the ability for anything to change.

I think the problem is mistakenly attributed to long-lasting characters. As long as regions are entrenched, people can keep making new characters to RP in the same places, learning the same opinions, and supporting the status quo. I've seen it happen among several cliques and groups. Or people straight up "pre-downloading" all of the same beliefs their old character had, and hating all of the same people.
More character turnover won't change things. After all, the Axehold Accords persists even though Guldorand has had a few new mayors since its creation.

I think it is absolutely awful that all of the settlements can join a non-aggression agreement. And that characters can get exiled from multiple settlements, for a crime they committed in only one of them. I think "wanting better settlement relations" is the most harmful thing happening on the surface right now.
And it's so entrenched, I have no idea if you can even fix it directly. Wanting everything to be perfectly peaceful is a the IC endgame goal of most normal people. This is the natural stopping point for settlements, because it is the most beneficial.

I think the only fix is to boost non-settlements. Rather than take away from players and what they're already doing, make non-settlement cities. Make more places that nobody can actually own. More places people can form factions and guilds in without having to play popularity contest. Places that can't be micromanaged.

Expand the Radiant Heart area to have a township, so good characters with unpopular opinions have a place to be. Expand on Sibayad and the Crow's Nest. Sibayad has ended up being the only surface place for evil. It would be great if there could be a second area too.

Give these places bank storage, a player-runnable tavern, a peddler, a scroll merchant, a jeweller. Give them a bunch more quarters, even if they're tiny broom closets or small rooms. The only thing I need when I want to start a new faction is a room with a lockable door, and I scour the surface looking for non-settlement places so I don't need to worry about holding back.

I lean towards also suggesting enforced non-aggression in Sibayad, to stop people from coming in and stomping evil out of town. But that lends to people being jerks outside of town and using the city as a shield, so I'm not sure.

[DangerDolphin]

Fantastic thread, and I think you are spot on.

Your solutions are good too, but I think more than that you need to give people, and settlements, no black and white choices.

Right now it's essentially "Oh gee, should I as leader of Cordor, remain peaceful with every other surface town, and be popular and well liked for it, or should I start a fight over some territory and be hated for it, while also gaining absolutely nothing if I manage to take over that territory?"

There's nothing to gain from stirring the pot, and everything to lose.

Each settlement needs tradeoffs and morally grey areas to conflict on, not necessarily that being all out war, but points of contention.

For example:
- Make Sibayad a settlement (+ your ideas!), have a decision to ban slavery, but your economy becomes crippled from doing so, so shops get a flat 15% tax on all goods to prop it up
- Have the Cordor NPC populace start pushing some Lawful Evil type policies influenced by Amn, such as banning spellcasting in the city, hunting down wild mages, preventing Sorcerers from holding office, perhaps persecuting Half-Orcs (They're kinda monsters right?)
- You can, again, overrule the above, but get a flat negative modifier to the number of votes at the next election, to represent the disapproval of the populace "Why does the Chancellor let these Volcano causing wild mages run around!?"
- Amn demands concessions from Cordor, such as special rights and policies, if they agree, Cordor gets a second ship in their navy
- Have a mithril mine discovered between Guldorand and Brog that brings in the big bucks, but the territory is dispute. Do you come to some agreement, or go to war over it? Or just let the other side have it? If your city isn't in control, you gain a negative vote modifier (See above) as people see you as a weak leader.

And so on.

Right now, there is only one safe, reasonable decision to take, and that is stagnation.

[CorsicanDoge]

I think people respond to mechanics the most and right now it's beneficial to act this one particular fashion. All the keeps on the surface are all located near specific cities anyway so why shouldn't they have get along and just slice up bid properties, ban the same people, and come to the same conclusions? Everyone saves a lot of gold and trouble.

But it does speak for itself: Neutral spots, with the exception of Sencliff, are locked down pretty heavily on the surface in terms of property/stalls. Even the arcane tower is full to the brim on people and ICly it's professed that these spots are nice because they don't have to deal with player bureaucrats and play to their rules.

The only downside I can foresee is that these properties won't be held by movers and shakers and DM intervention takes a long time to get rolling. It'd be nice to see the bid system decoupled from settlements, so player factions can run their own castles as they wish without needing the consent of cordor, brog, Myon, guld, or Bendir. You need the people in these settlements right now and none of them are skinmask-wearing cyricists.

[Gouge Away]

Leadership is a popularity contest so to be an evil PC leading Cordor would take a lot of planning OOC, a lot of hiding who you really are and probably the expectation of deleting the character when you’re done. It’s been pulled off but it’s very difficult and I don’t think most could do it without scheming on Discord and maybe some DM assistance, and even then it takes a rare RP talent.

The democratic nature of this game just doesn’t support evil very well outside of the areas like Anundor with flipflop "evil is good" morality. We’re all fundamentally equals so a PC leader doesn’t have any real power besides some IG popularity ond OOC other players willing to play along, and if they do something “evil” or unpopular they’ll be on the outs quickly. Big evil just can’t get the foothold you need when there’s not really any way to control other people, it’s not like you can withhold the water like Immortan Joe and you can’t take control of a settlement and hold it by force when elections are a popularity contest and an unpopular leader could get voted out. Evil leaders are usually strongman dictators and players only seem to want to allow that where it's expected, basically only in pirate crews and The Sharps... The good characters of Cordor just usually won't support it even if there's promise of a good story to come.

Maybe if we had NPC powers stronger than PC leaders who regularly threw their weight around and forced even the good leaders to make difficult choices— like word came down from Amn that the Cordor chancellor had to declare war on Brog for example.. We’d see some really good grey area RP. Or imagine the island went into drought and food and water was difficult to acquire so you had to align with a settlement and leaders had to decide who gets fed. Times of crisis are when good and evil behavior really shine but crisises have to come from the DM gods, not the player community. I don’t think players would stand for stuff like that though, half the players would immediately complain they're sick of the drought storyline because it's getting in the way of their crafting and grinding.

[Royal Blood]

I agree with the OP on a lot. I actually played 3 surface characters but didn't feel like they got anywhere and everything was kind of bland imo and I went back to the UD. Aggressive neutrality is a good way to describe things.

I think the root of stagnation is how OOC the surface tends to be and how personal it is to some. I also feel like established groups of players maintain a stagnant status quo. That being said, things ebb and flow. War comes and goes. It may be stagnant but I think eventually stuff will happen. For me, the UD is ideal because of the turbulence and you can do things without getting immediately smote or banned. You're expected to have ambition and personal goals. You're expected to want power and to be out for revenge against enemies. It's dramatic, it's fun.

[Nymann]

Hmm...

A few points to be discussed for sure, but there is also several errors...

1) I disagree that you can´t be evil on surface... Played two so far, who even killed people. Yet I am still wandering the surface and its settlements.

2) Each settlements has their own politics on matters. Just because you are exiled in one place doesn´t make you exiled other places.

3) The primary issue (in my experience), which of course goes both ways, is the fact that most of the Evil (and some good) RP that has transpired (except for few inviduals) has been people who really seemed more interested in just fighting people with their powerbuilds, and rarely sparked any chance for their opposition to escape and make a story.

4) When the accord was made, it was indeed done by long standing characters, but also new characters who was not part of the original signing of the accord or even the same players, has prolonged it... But when it was made, there was literally an attack somewhere on the surface almost every other day... There was a lot of underdarkers who loved to attack. Pirates, cyrists and banites. Now, one invidual player probably did it, maybe once every two week, but with so many groups it really felt like everytime as a settlement official you logged into "Ohh this settlement is under attack, or that settlement has been attacked.
It even reached a OOC point in which settlement raiding rules was stated over and over on forums. A fight was even stopped and everyone got put into an admin room, around +20 people to discuss a few things and get a lovely scold from Spyre and Axis. (even though most of that was one big miss understanding and mess xD. The point was given however.

I see where you are coming from by a IC perspective, but the way most evil vs good RP has been handled, I find it very hard to see it change... Mainly because the "I must win" mentality lingers in a lot of players, and a lot seems to brag... Literally experienced situations where we killed someone in PvP and as soon as the 24 hour rule was over, they send a message how they were drinking from their skull. With that type of bragging / RIP I don´t see how spreading out more places and just seperate players more would help with this problem... I am not fond of cliques my self, I try to avoid them, while still being able to play with those I enjoy playing with most. But they are there, and spreading of places or seperating areas won´t help that, the cliques just shift to a new place.
A whole new issue with this is, the rule that allows yourself to determine what you remember and what you don´t. It would be a lot easier to be evil if you actually could knock people out, not necessarily kill them, and they won´t remember it. But then someone who are still sad they lost instead of seeing the broader picture. (Must win mentality) Starts to send message to all his friends about character X killing character X.

Interesting topic however

[Xarge VI]

I've noticed the same issue. And I think it boils down to players not wanting to have their super smart/wise/whatever character look like a fool. At least I've recognized this instinct in myself.

Unfortunately it is seems difficult to code introspection in the playerbase. Well, maybe some kind of Zen fortune cookie wisdom phrases could be coded to come up as a server message every tick. That would be awesome.

Also as our experience with roleplaying scenarios and the setting we play in grows we get better and better at intuitively recognizing stuff such as incoming betrayal. This is also a human instinct we need to fight against when we want to build a good story.

I've sang this gospel before, but it is also related to the sense of community within factions brought to us by Discord. Which I think is not healthy. We should feel this sense of community as roleplayers of the server, instead.

Faction chats are not bad imo, in themselves. I have much fun in various faction chats, but the issue should be recognized by everyone who uses these and they should be used solely for scheduling and videos of cats doing funny stuff.

[Flower Power]

One of the problems I see (or rather have) with Evil on the surface is that 95% of the time if you want to play a character of questionable morality, you're going to end up having to deal with Andunor. Want to be a pirate and go around doing piratical things? Get ready to deal with Andunorians and to be killbashed on sight because Sencliff is intractably associated w/Andunor. Want to base yourself out of Sibayad? Better get used to the Drow, because players are willing to defend their right to be there against the expressed wishes of the signage put up by the Merchant's League (which clearly states [paraphrased] "Enter at your own peril, monsters.")

There's very little conflict on the surface these days because of monolithic entities that force 'friendship', either enforced by PCs (like the Axehold Accords) or by the Developers (like the Earthkin Alliance, which has very little basis in canon for its existence.) I very much doubt any of these things that hold the surface in strict neutrality will end up going away, which means that it's very difficult to get away with doing much on the surface (due to near-universal political alliances held firmly in place by entrenched player groups) and every single place you can go to on the surface where doing nasty things is acceptable has basically turned into Little Andunor, and you'll be treated as such by almost everyone.

And at that point, you may as well just be playing in Andunor, which is why most evil PCs have ended up down there. The surface needs more spaces where people can be bad people, without having to end up directly working alongside Literal Actual Monsters. Andunor was great for RP in the Underdark - but I think it's probably one of the worst things that ever happened to evil RP on the Surface.

[chris a gogo]

Im abit confused by this thread.

Are you talking about playing an evil character or playing a Villain?

Because playing an evil character with questionable morals and that is fairly straight forward and accepted in pretty much every settlement.

Playing a necromancer or an infernalist is of course getting you instantly exiled and hated by everyone, it's the extreme evil nature of those things so stay away from those two issues and you would have no problem playing an evil character on the surface.

Good plays fairly well to but again extremes are frowned upon playing a noble knight that goes around fighting evil sure...playing a crusader that wants to burn all none human settlements to the ground in the name of Torm is going to get you the same reaction as the evil issues.

What i think your in fact talking about is how trying to play a villain/hero limits you because you come into opposition with established groups.


To make an impact with a "evil" or a "good" group you need time dedication and someone to do all the leg work of running it, because it's very time consuming and often leaves players feeling frustrated.
I was involved in the building of a "good" group with high ideals over the last eight months this group was built up from a small number of players to having had well over 50 members (guessing not got the exact numbers) in it's life span, the membership isn't limited to "good" aligned characters just ones willing to work towards the over reaching goal, to that end there have been many evil, neutral and good characters in it's membership all working towards it's goals each in there own way.

So i finish by pointing out you can play evil or good and you can create a huge faction but not everyone is up to it and not every faction will gain traction, this doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

[DM Rex]

Does your character not like tieflings? Hey, you're now a racist bigot.
Does your character think drow are evil? Hey, you're intolerant and closed-minded.

Racist is by the by not a term permitted on Arelith. As in, racism can and does exist in this fictional fantasy world. And whether people openly do so or not, they all have some predispositions on various races big and small.

There is also the matter of the monster race policy, as Arelith does not support drow walking openly in daylight, or comfortably on the surface for extended periods of time. There are a few races that can walk between the top and bottom, but besides those few the expectation is that those who shouldn't be comfortable moving in the open, or accepted by every society should be lurking in their respective territories. Individuals that violate these expectations are to be reported.

[Emotionaloverload]

I love Evil. I have played a lot of evil in my time. Never once has this evil had to play with Uders or even have to think about the UD. I believe the problem is on both sides in that when people play Good, they play aggressively good, and when they play evil, they play aggressively evil.

Characters are not and should not be black and white. Regardless of alignment, they should be complex which is where we find spots for inclusion. My goodly character isn't a paragon of goodness, nor is my evil character darker than the deepest pit of hell.

I agree that too many black and white characters do not help a character trying to go against the grain but that can be used for the story. Is your goodly character blown away that Cordorians go insane at people if they are even seen with [insert group here]? Maybe they now think that Cordorians are crazy or evil and work against them accordingly. You can make a story of everything that happens IG.

I do think everyone needs to find reasons to rp with each other more. Yes, I understand that you have no reason to speak with [X] but find one. Like that a conflict can become personal. PCs are not NpCs. It is not rp enough to just fight them. You have to do more.

-S

[-XXX-]

Forcing opposition into social isolation and hoping that they'd roll once their character becomes virtually unplayable that way has pretty much become the standard endgame for any conflict.

Trying to destroy characters without any intention to meaningfully interact with them isn't fun and it isn't cool.

[The GrumpyCat]

This is a very interesting topic where I feel a /lot/ can be said but not many real answers can be given. I can quote a few people who have the right idea though.

I love Evil. I have played a lot of evil in my time. Never once has this evil had to play with Uders or even have to think about the UD. I believe the problem is on both sides in that when people play Good, they play aggressively good, and when they play evil, they play aggressively evil.

Characters are not and should not be black and white. Regardless of alignment, they should be complex which is where we find spots for inclusion. My goodly character isn't a paragon of goodness, nor is my evil character darker than the deepest pit of hell.

I agree that too many black and white characters do not help a character trying to go against the grain but that can be used for the story. Is your goodly character blown away that Cordorians go insane at people if they are even seen with [insert group here]? Maybe they now think that Cordorians are crazy or evil and work against them accordingly. You can make a story of everything that happens IG.

I do think everyone needs to find reasons to rp with each other more. Yes, I understand that you have no reason to speak with [X] but find one. Like that a conflict can become personal. PCs are not NpCs. It is not rp enough to just fight them. You have to do more.

-S

This. Everything. Here. Just This.

I've noticed the same issue. And I think it boils down to players not wanting to have their super smart/wise/whatever character look like a fool. At least I've recognized this instinct in myself.

This too. In fact I'll say this is one of the things I look for in a 40 rpr player.

A lot is made about respecting death and such - and that's good. But at the same time I think it's also about inviting Loss. Taking chances. Interacting with the other side. Doing something meaningful.

And there's also the... interesting connundrum that one must understand that often what your character wants for the server... isn't neccesarly good /for/ the server. For example - A Paladin would be all for destroying all evil, obliterating all monsters, spreading nothing but peace, justice and love in the land. But for those desires to be made true - it would mean everyone must be Good aligned, all Dungeons would be obliterated (so no kill xp) and a no pvp server. Which... I don't think would be very popular set of changes, to put it mildly. (This also goes for Evil. In theory your character may want to destroy the world, but you as a player almost certainly do not want that.)

What this means is you get situations where say, you play a Guldorand Leader and people are like 'There are Banites near by! We must kill them every time they enter our boundries!' And that point of view makes sense, it does. But it's also really lame for the Banites. And maybe the mayor is a good sort and goes 'No. We should redeem/tolerate them!' (which is likely a path more interesting for said Banites.) They'll get a lot of blowback from people who don't or won't see it that way.

The settlment situation is a double edged sword. It can create some amazing opportunities for weighty, player lead plots. But it can also stifle them. It's why I've always been a huge proponent of there being a mix, and why I'm glad Sibiyad, Arcane Tower, Shadow Wharf ect exist.

Which isn't to say this is all in player hands. There's tottaly things that can be done development side. Right now all attention is on NewGuld and I do think that will be a big game changer.
But yeah, maybe more neutral areas would be good?
One problem I think (and please forgive this term as I'm actually not fond of it and think some of the better conflict on Arelith isn't 'team evil vs team good' but rather variations in other themes) is that back in 'the day' there were three none-racial settlements. Cordor, Guldorand and Wharftown. And 'Team Evil' could generally gather the numbers to hold one of those settlments. Generally Guld or Wharf. But when Whartown went 'boom' - and with Andunor also looking a lot more easy and attractive - it is harder for 'team evil' to get the numbers to take and hold a settlment like t hey once did.
So maybe another settlment will fix that?
Then again one of the reasons Wharf was blown up was because consitently 'declairing war' against Cordor.
This is like Wales declairing war on the USA, and routeenly sending around bombs/murder squads, and yet expecting no fallout. In the end the NPCs had to get involved because things were getting silly.
Now with the removal of war systems, outright 'raids' being more difficult, and a more alert DM team to the dangers of such a situation - maybe the surface could take another settlment to facilitate some more 'dodgy' roleplay?
Then again with the expanded numbers of EE, and differeint situations re Discord and such perhaps I'm wrong, and 'Team Good' would just take it over with ease? It's a bit of a dangerous call that one.

Especially as if, as in the origional example, we used Sibiyad, then sure, yeah, we'r eall imagining this 'evil/neutral' group taking it over and turning it into a paradice for ne'er do wells. But it could just as well be a Lawful Good Paladin group who then go about laying the exact same form of law as found in other settlments. There's no guarantee. and that would mean LESS neutral, dodgy spaces for 'mild evil' to go to.

(And as a note, this is one thing that does irritate me. It seems that MWAHAHAHA SUMMON DEMON MURDER 20 BABIES A WEEK' evil is treated in avery similar braket to 'Oh yeah I worship Mask and once or twice steal from peoples pockets.' I want there to be places, like Sibiyad, where those who are just well... a bit shady, can linger.)

And to touch upon much of Danger Dolphin's post, and also this:

Maybe if we had NPC powers stronger than PC leaders who regularly threw their weight around and forced even the good leaders to make difficult choices— like word came down from Amn that the Cordor chancellor had to declare war on Brog for example.. W

I try to run similar events myself, and it's something I think I need to do more of. The entire reason for the Queen Quest Plot (some years ago, where players got to vote who would be Consort to the King) was to present a group of options which were all varying sorts of problematic.
One candidate had the intellect of a ball of candyfloss, the other domineering amn noble, bent on conquest. Another was a Thayan mage, intelligent, smart but likely ruthless. The other was a Paladin, but very very intolerant of ALL evil, and ruthless about her goodlyness. And finally there was Jennifer Eldren, a mild mannered ,polite woman from Wharterdeep, who's faith never came up because she was smart enough not to braudcast it.
The pcs got to talk and decide about it - and I dare say some conflict occured, and voted Jennifer in. And hopefully the effects of that decision will be felt for some time. At some point it's a plot I do mean to go back to.

But whilst I think the above is good - for NPCs to throw weight around - we have to be careful that it doesn't happen too much, or too heavily. We try to be a (relitivly, in as much as we can be) player run server, I don't want players to think that they have effectivly 0 power due t o the overwhelming presence of npcs. It's a balencing act. NPCs should work to corall in some of the more zelious player decisions, yet also be hands off enough, and there should be tools enough, that players can shape their own stories.

It's all a really difficult situation and one I don't think we're ever going to get right.

Tl;DR? 'It's complicated.'

[Marsi]

This is cynical, but I don't think mechanical changes can fix what I believe is a cultural problem.

The surface is home to a large bloc of social roleplayers who aren't interested in meaningful conflict and just want to play out domestic drama. They are at home in unimpeachable institutions or in small settlements that can be secured against interlopers. While they suck at PvP or meta-conflict strategizing in general, they wield a lot of "soft power" that can be used to shape public opinion, spread gossip and invent rumors - all in order to make the life of boat-rockers, in-game and out, a nightmare. If all else fails, they'll simply wait out upstart regimes until a time comes where they can check back in and return everything to how it was.

This type of roleplayer has always existed on Arelith, but I feel as though Wharftown was a vitally important buffer - it was the ultimate wildcard. No self-serious telenovela could truly safeguard itself against Wharftownian strife and absurdity. Wharftown was removed right around the time the floodgates of EE opened. This marked a significant paradigm shift that took place in the player body.

There is a new breed of Discord-savvy, hypersensitive, non- introspective, conflict-averse player who doesn't care about Arelith's laissez-faire "bad things happen to good adventurers" culture. They just want to do Maple Story RP and get married, and they'll happily destroy (socially) anyone who gets in their way.

I think you can only really "solve" a problem like this through policy. And while this all sounds doom and gloom, but I actually think we are in a better place than we were a few years ago. The administration has gotten a lot swifter in recognizing and banning social bullies and gossips. Pregnancy RP was forbidden. The Arcane Tower was opened up. Policy changes like these check the development of micro-culture stalemates and discourage the kind of domestic roleplay that has an antipathy towards uncertainty.

[DangerDolphin]

But whilst I think the above is good - for NPCs to throw weight around - we have to be careful that it doesn't happen too much, or too heavily. We try to be a (relitivly, in as much as we can be) player run server, I don't want players to think that they have effectivly 0 power due t o the overwhelming presence of npcs. It's a balencing act. NPCs should work to corall in some of the more zelious player decisions, yet also be hands off enough, and there should be tools enough, that players can shape their own stories.

I think it's fine as long as you're not railroading anyone. You give them the options and let them choose, and there's no wrong answer.

I certainly agree that Cordor's King stepping in and saying "We're out of food so the beggars have to starve, make sure you beat them up if they try to steal any" would suck for the player government, but there's nothing wrong with the King saying "We're out of food and either the beggars have to starve or the nobles need to be made to share their food stocks, you can decide how to solve it"

Both can have positive and negative consequences (Perhaps the latter being more severe, as you're dealing with a powerful group) but there's no wrong answer there, it's just IC decisions.

[Aniel]

This is a really interesting post and it makes me almost want to go reference my write-up about the Underdark module here but I'll spare everyone that and try to keep this mostly surface related.

I agree 100% that the biggest problem is there are penalties for conflict, it's very expensive both in reputation and resources and overall energy to bother with engaging others in conflict. It's a hassle! And there's absolutely no reward for it other than the story, of trying to do fun RP, which... Well, sometimes the other side has fun with it too.

I'm not too sure however that anything mechanical would actually help with this. Overall, it all just seems like a huge culture issue that necessitates strong DM intervention to promote a healthy environment.

Social RP is a huge part of the problem. Plenty of people aggressively run away from anything that isn't wedding RP, some kind of party, or the dreaded language lessons. To a degree, it's incredibly disruptive to the setting. Because most people OOCly vilify conflict for getting in the way of their second life RP, there's often several months where nothing happens because people are too afraid to do anything.

Most characters tend to follow a standard pathway of doing something, getting exiled because they tried to do something, and then they end up maybe in Sibayad if they're lucky. Big maybe for Sencliff, or more often than not they go to Andunor since it's the one place that they can RP.

I'd love to see hug boxes go and all settlement alliances burn, but, ultimately the social RPers will never allow that. And I wonder if that makes it worth doing - if more people actually prefer second life RP... Is it right to want to disrupt that? All I can say is I'd prefer it if things actually happened and if there was actually drama, tension, conflict, the bedrock that builds stories.

Not that it's a great solution anyhow but short of mechanical systems that significantly reward conflict (in the vein of the old war system, or something like big land leases that require fighting over) I don't see the majority of the player base ever choosing to deviate from its course without DM intervention/policy.


And also yes the obligatory tidbit of the module's design naturally encourages hug boxes because of the lack of options for shady or openly evil characters that isn't Andunor. Still, the surface is a million times better designed than the hug box of Andunor at least.

[torugor]

I tried to read a lot because of the points here and i want to give you guys a fresh point of view because i play here for like...2 months maybe more? And here is what i feel.

I play a chaotic neutral priest of a non-evil god. One that is loved by warriors everywhere in faerum. One that has no quarrels against undead use. And my brother is a necromancer...its a big issue i know. But it was his issue not my character. It didnt get much to have my character spelled from cordor because people saw me with my brother who was a necro.

I talked a lot on how crazy it was for my character to be expelled of a city because his brother was evil. Kind of shows how crazy a city really is about evil and good. But ok...lets go on. First visit i went to guldorand i was attacked on sight. So now its two cities i dont go. Also i didnt get inked but they started saying i am a pirate just for living in a pirate city. And to which city should i go if i cant go to cordor or guldorand?

So people placed an evil tag on my character. And this evil tag formed my character to consider all people in cordor and guldorand cowards who have no respect for the god of war. And to be true...if you read the rules of war...you will see this:
People should respect the ones who die in battle. Cant say how many times people showed me a severed head laughing.

I see people of cordor as cowards. My character got a tag of EVIL and he is not a evil. Got a tag of PIRATE and he is not a pirate. Got a tag of animator and he is not an animator.

Now the mess is so deep that my character decided the surfacers are cowards sinners that needs to be punished. People of the good settlements forced my character to hate them. What i mean is. People in the 'good' settlements are so strict with what is good that no taint of gray is allowed. And once you get tainted you go all black fast. So either you are of good alignment and can live on the surface or you should move to sencliff (which is not a settlement) or Simbayad (not a settlement) or andunor.

I think it would be crazy good if players could take some keeps and make it small guild houses and run them as small settlements. And let them loose with imagination. I saw the temple of bane and thought. MAN!!! I want to have a place for my tempuran to preach. I cant!!! I asked a dm if i talked my rp ingame to make..i dont know...the port of crows nest another settlement for people who are chaotic but not inked...and the answer was 'we dont plan to have more settlements'. So yea....you live in the surface you are one of the group of good guys or you need to place ink. Dont see a middle ground.

Also....must i say. I see a lot of focus on this game on Power-building. There is a forum for it. On discord its the most popular area where people are always asking things. Role playing is not about getting the stronger character. The best characters are often those who have weaknesses. By making such a focus on powerbuilding characters People will naturally want to focus ingame on testing how well their build is against the others. So your people will end up looking for ways to pvp. And what better way to get to pvp than to be radical on evil-good spectrum?

The rules of cordor and guldorand are good. I read the rules. Thing is the player-base enforce rules much more severe to those that you can read. I never broke a single rule of cordor still if i enter there today i get escorted out. And they do that hoping i make a fight so they can kill me. Because players make the rules and players decided i am evil and will be good for pvp. Laws and order go to hell. If it happened to me who am not even a evil character...it probably happens to all.

That is my thoughs on the settlements of arelith. So if you do not have a good aligment...dont bother trying to fit in in cordor or guldorand. come to sencliff...we welcome all.

[WanderingPoet]

Lately I've had a friend attempt to play evil on the surface, and then give up and go back to the Underdark once outcast opened up again.
I was surprised that anyone would make an outcast after the change that reveals the outcast tag, all it does is cut your RP options in half, why not just make a normal human and go RP in the Underdark. Their answer is, they don't want to play Surface. It's boring, there's nothing they want from it. It's impossible to start intrigue and conflict, or do anything to shake the boat. Other friends don't want to play surface period for the same reason, and have tried arguing I should give up trying to do surface RP.

Interesting that your friends would find the surface boring, without intrigue or conflict. Most people I know find the exact opposite; that it's the Underdark that is severely lacking. That if you go against the status quo you just get PVPbashed, that unless you're part of the few cliques below that the only fun thing to do is go raid the surface.

I've tried the Underdark on three occasions separated by years; on the first I got yelled at by drow for not behaving properly (I was a drow male) and pvped; on the second I got pvped at level 2 as an imp; and on the third I played a kobold and had interesting RP but only with other kobolds. It was always boring; everyone was focused on grinding or beating eachother up over small issues.

In contrast, the surface is always boiling with conflict and intrigue; you have alliances being made and broken; you have racial settlements trying to balance the various needs of their people; you have those like Cordor with radical changes in leadership; sometimes with clearly evil leadership. There is rarely a night that goes by where some underdarker doesn't come up to kill people; or an animator is running around with mummies/vamps.

I have played plenty of good characters, some neutral and even an evil on the surface and never had an issue shaking things (and in one char's case, he tried really hard to not let things shake and ultimately failed).

That said, the Surface is a bit hard to shake due to the settlement alliances. Why are there settlement alliances? Because the underdark comes up every night, because when you have a rampaging drove of 5-10 underdarkers running around when your people are IRL asleep, you need the backup of other settlements with different playerbases.

Ultimately, wherever you go, your mileage will vary - some people do better in the UD, some on the surface.

This shows what the issue is clearly - the Underdark being a playable area. Now before steam shoots out of ears, here is why:
1) The Underdark being the 'big bad', is a great IC reason to ally; it's also as noted above a big reason for alliances so that people can respond when people are offline.

2) A lot of conflict stirrers go to the UD because the Surface is 'boring', reducing the number of people that would stir the pot up top

3) A lot of people try to be nice to the UDers trying to create conflict above; since it's rare that it is more than just raid pvp; more exceptions are made and goodly people end up defending them; diluting the story. This is especially a problem with good aligned monsters; who have been an issue for years of snuggling up to surfacers.

4) As listed above, Andunor is a place for evil to escape to; it's a release hatch that means once evil starts having a hard time it can run off to there. Which on the flip side gives the 'good team' a goal - to drive them off.

--------------
Now how could we fix this? Of course, the easiest would be to remove monster races and Andunor entirely; if everyone is playing together then all of those issues cease. As a bonus we wouldn't have the awkwardness of goblins/gnolls/kobold being surface mobs and super powerful players that defy IC reason. We'd also finally be able to make the Underdark a scary place; rather than somewhere for a pleasant stroll on an afternoon.

Of course I doubt such will happen, so more realistic suggestions:
1) What the OP said; of enhancing non-settlements so you can get banking and such outside of town. This would help evil a lot, I agree, as you'd have places to go other than Andunor.

2) Lock down the UD; make it so we can only enter/exit it 2-3 IG months a year. This would prevent raids every other RL day, as well as make them more meaningful. It'd give a chance for conflict between settlements to grow without having the "Why in the world would we weaken ourselves when monsters attacked the last four months straight?"

3) Make portals to the underdark unaccessible to surfacers, and portals to the surface unaccessible to underdarkers.

4) Make good aligned monsters a greater/major award to reduce the number on the surface, and make palemaster evil only. This would mean that mooooost of the time you encounter one, they're evil; so you get less snuggling up with monsters.

----------------
TLDR: If we want more conflict on the surface, we need less Underdark presence. The Underdark stifles Surface RP by giving a constant daily presence that makes it difficult to see any lesser evil as 'bad enough' to have issues with; of if you do take issue then you have to stomp them quickly to focus on the real dangers.

Otherwise, agreed with everything Shy said.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I'll echo Marsi.
Server culture is also largely about upholding the status quo.

The most resistance (yet again) I've ever played from a good character is from other good characters. This is always to me a symptom of "Team Good" becoming "Team Comfort", or that antagonists/villains find themselves without meaningful opposition.

You need to rip out wealth, safe settlement mechanics, radicalize leadership, and make questionable alignments/tendencies more favourable.

Another of SsoS's crazy hottakes - The whole bloody castle system incentivizes nothing more than rewarding the hording of wealth, the institutionalization of factions/cliques, and deleterious non-confrontational settlement behaviour.

How do you get a castle?

You bid on it.

You don't conquer it. You don't vote on it. None of the mechanics are reflective of any kind of positive roleplaying. You literally just throw money. Sure, there's some level of subterfuge around the auction, but really, it's just about gold.

edit: We also still can't talk about roleplaying on the forums/Discord out of fear of "ur doing it wrong." You'd think there would be a maturation on this idea - some kind of expiry date. That we'd grow out of it. Nope. We haven't. Don't ask me how.

[TimeAdept]

Being able to conquer the castles would rule, as does decoupling them from the settlement system.

There's all this cool Snuggybear territory on the surface, but no way for people to mechanically do anything with it. Pax Magnificum Bellum Glorioso! Let us conquer, let us have territory wars! Then peace! And cold wars!

[Xerah]

I'm mainly a surface player (maybe 66/33%) but I certainly echo Marsi's comments (and others with similar thoughts) with the issues on the surface. I really don't believe that the new Guldorand is going to change the dynamic that much.

I know the general view is not to have "evil" or "good" settlements, but I strongly believe that would be a huge change for the positive if we had full settlements that gave other options.

[Petrifictus]

We dont have Team Good vs Team Evil in Arelith.
We have Team Comfort & Stagnantion vs Team Conflict & Change.

[Jack Oat]

We dont have Team Good vs Team Evil in Arelith.
We have Team Comfort & Stagnantion vs Team Conflict & Change.

+1

[Amnesy]

I agree with Marsi,

It all makes it difficult (especially by individuals and small groups who are not outcasted) to create RP tension on a wider scale or let in the fresh air.
I've seen many great people who brilliantly react to interactions with a less moral populace, with players visibly interested to be included and open to interactions as it benefits their characters, their story-arcs, even if PCs end up with the short straw or get hurt.

It is something I think won't be resolved with new settlements or areas, everything can be alienated, and it will lead to creating alignment silos on the surface (where outcast won't be named Anduronians but [insert that evil bad bad settlement name here].

Perhaps all it takes is a gentle push of a few storylines (with NPC reacting to PC driven ideas, setting small fires of change within stagnant haystacks); and a little faith, that not all evil exists just only to take someone fixtures away, or make some party postponed by X ingame years (till elections).

There is immense storytelling power within the conflict & tension; and to make a good one requires the contribution of both sides.

[Flower Power]

That said, the Surface is a bit hard to shake due to the settlement alliances. Why are there settlement alliances? Because the underdark comes up every night, because when you have a rampaging drove of 5-10 underdarkers running around when your people are IRL asleep, you need the backup of other settlements with different playerbases.

The idea that the Axehold Accord's founding is a response to UD pressures and raids is one that's often forwarded as an explanation for why it came about, but one that doesn't actually jive with the history of the Accords if you actually know it and look at it (and the lead up to their signing) objectively; the time that they came into being was actually marked by some of the LEAST intensive UD raiding in recent years. The Accords weren't really about mutual defense, but about hegemony and institution building, which have turned into some of the negative stumbling blocks to dynamism that we've been discussing here - everything else came afterwards as window dressing to make their continued existence more palatable.

It's kind of awkward to dance around this point because I already feel like I'm delving into FOIG territory, but it's also kind of impossible to actually have this discussion without pointing it out, too.