Extremely Attractive, Low Charisma

[PaaranDisen]

What I'm going to write is likely to be unpopular but I'd like to give my two cents anyway. This is one of the discrepancies that contributed to my drifting away from Arelith (i only occasionally stop by the forums and this thread caught my eye).

While it's admirable (and generally proper) to want to 'live and let live' in terms of role play and its relationship to the character sheet, this to me is too liberally interpreted. Consider that we do have norms of behavior for players relating to keeping in-character, and not veering too far off-setting with how characters are realized so it's not unprecedented to have some concern for the role play of others. To me, somebody who is dumping their 'non-physical' stats like int, wis and cha and then playing as a highly articulate, insightful inspiring leader is power gaming to the maximum extent possible. They're a blatant power gamer, period.

The penalties for low str, dex, con (and others but to much lesser degrees, wis = will, int = skill) are baked into the server so no amount of emoting how amazingly muscular your character is will let them hit that orc any harder or carry any more weight. No amount of gritty, robust posturing will increase your character's HP or fort save. If a player somehow found a way to dump their str/dex/con and still achieve rolls as if those stats were set to their maximum levels, we'd call shenanigans. This is true of int/wis/cha, only there's no real way of directly baking this wholesale into the mechanics. It's a difference solely of practical necessity rather than consistent principle.

This isn't to say players should generally be policing other's RP but it is foolish not to recognize how this encourages even more power building, which in turn ramps up the mechanical difficulty of the server to compensate, further punishing somebody who tries to make their character sheet actually reflect the capacities of their character.

If the counter-argument to this is that a player ought to just go along with it and power build too ('when in Rome' so to speak), then why bother having so much detail to choose from during character creation? It defeats the purpose. If the counter-argument to this is that non-power builds can still manage to get along with good gear/strong friends/whatever other reason then you're missing the point. The mere existence of the necessity for sub-optimal characters to have to make up for their shortcomings without a parallel necessity in terms of 'mental' stats only reinforces the point. If the counter-argument is that this would then lead to too much rigidity in character roleplay in trying to reflect stats on the character sheet, then it's worth noting that I'm only talking about the most extreme cases: the 8 cha character who is a 'beautiful social butterfly with a powerful force of will' or the 8 int character who can hold a deep and meaningful conversation about ancient Netherese magical arts for an hour. I'm not talking about Joe Adventurer with 8 wis who happens to make sensible decisions most of the time.

This runs on too, I think, into some players completely omitting to factor some bare bones form of naturalism into RP with their physical dump stats. A 6 con 8 str full plated Elven toothpick sprinting for miles from one end of Arelith to another without being even slightly out of breath or hindered in any way may be in part due to practical considerations (it's no fun to have to stop!) but it's nonetheless very jarring and easily as setting-breaking as some other sorts of extremely incongruous role play. I would have loved to see more of the 'heavy dump stat' builds really played out with convincing and interesting flaws or drawbacks, to the same extent that physically gimped characters automatically face already in combat.

It's also the case that any sub-optimal build is normally hit much harder by nerfs than your typical power build, since they've already skimped on the optimal attribute assignments, feats and/or skills. I experienced this personally several times, which while at time fair in terms of class changes, eventually ended up making my character basically unplayable to how I had roleplayed them (you can't be an immensely tough character if your AC is nerfed so hard that the most fragile party members can best you by the numbers). Any argument that one should just stop caring about the numbers if you're not interested in optimal builds misses out the fact that even very 'adventure-lite' characters run up against mechanical checks quite often in Arelith due to the nature of the server. You simply cannot ignore mechanics in that way.

What it boils down to is this: If your character sheet doesn't need to align with your role play in any meaningful way, then why on earth would you do anything but power build around things that only have a mechanical effect?

Arelith ended up feeling to me less of a role play server and more of a 'some people choose to role play while others sprint from area to area with a veneer of a role play 'skin' on the latest power build', which is fine if people like that. There was also the inevitable sense of 'if my character engages in conflict somebody is going to flip the 'hostile' switch and 'win' the conflict (whatever that means) by rolling higher dice'. This happened multiple times and I can only surmise that with this consideration only a power build can really functionally survive much conflict RP with a certain subset of players beyond trading a few barbs.

I don't think any solution to this needs to necessarily be all that time intensive, or involve a great deal of judgement of others from players. I think if players were allowed collectively more of an ability to reward other players for their good RP and the overall server philosophy were to strongly discourage 'attribute power gaming', I think there would be something of a sea change. Of course no solution if perfect but sometimes an imperfect solution is better than doing nothing at all. I doubt many people will agree with me but I am interested in hearing the reasons why I am wrong in this.

[Curve]

I think you are right. I find the general lack of expectations around server ethics to be disheartening at times. Arelith, to my understanding, is built to accommodate a lot of different play styles but in that sea of accommodation the play style of run and gun PvE and no holds barred PvP is hard to exist with less extreme styles. What floating ideas I have all revolve around giving DMs more power to enforce a more rigid set of expectations. Those solutions have very reasonable arguments against them that have been refined and proven right since the start of my time on the server.

The overarching problem with these solutions is that I am pretty sure that the team is not interested in them and for good reason. I think we as players, who have been here for short and long periods of time have built our ideas of what Arelith is in a vacuum (I personally am heavily influenced by Mithreas' time) but that is not what Arelith really is. Arelith, for better or worse, is the melting pot of NWN. It is the vastly most successful server and it is such a good server that I and many others have spent ungodly amounts of time here over almost two decades.

Maybe the starting point is to ask Irongron and the rest of the team,

-What is the Arelith mission statement?

From there we can establish if it is even worth brain storming ways to alter the server culture other than to do the right thing ourselves.

[The GrumpyCat]

So when deciding matters of rules/policy we have to consider a few factors, some of which include:

*How frequent is this?
*How harmful is this?
*How policable is this?
*How restrictive is this?

How frequent is it for people to not rp their charisma? - I'm not really sure to be honest. I'd guess relitivly? But I havn't stopped to really do a full check. But for the sake of argument here- let's say it's extremely frequent.

How Harmful is this - Well... it's minorly dissapointing, perhaps even a tiny bit irritating. But I don't consider it a massive detriment to the server. It's not something we recieve complaints about. I've not noticed any ridiculous examples of it and the over all consensus on this thread seems to be that it isn't harmful. Which isn't to say that the points from PaaranDisen arn't perfectly valid - they are. But they have to be tallied against the other factors.

How Policable is this - We have hundreds of characters on the server at any time... thousands over all. All with multiple charcters. Even if we just considered just policing the extreme angles of charisma (a charisma 8 or less person rping their pc as an absolute epitome of phsyical desirability) - and even if it were just charisma - it would still take a lot of our time and be heavily disliked by a large amount of the player base. I'm not really sure how much we'd be -gaining- for such a large amount of work
There was a suggestion that perhaps it should be 'policed' by other players. Empowering other players in this manner can be... problematic for a vareity of reasons. But perhaps the very simplist answer to this is two fold - Firstly that we do actually have the -recommend function - a way for players to bring to our atttention the good rp of other players.
This doesn't have any mechanical effect, but Id be wary of adding much more because, frankly, such things can be horribly abused.

How resrictive is this? - When an issue is *Frequent. *Harmful *Not Easily Policable - we have to consider mechanical options.
if we presume that this issue covers all three, what we COULD do is to mechanize all descriptions. Remove the players ability to write their own descriptions and add some sort of template.

E.g.
'This Character looks Very muscular and VERY healthy, with a SOMEWHAT agile build. Their attentivness is QUITE SHARP and they seem a little FOOLISH in their demeanor. Over all they are UGLY.'

Whilst an option I would consider such a response far too restrictive (as well as problematic) on various levels. For example - as aformentioned- It is possible to play a low cha build without them actually being ugly. Or a Low wis build without neccearly being obviously 'foolish'. It also gives far too much away about the character from start up - doesn't allow for things like bluff or equipment (Or if it does is there even a point to it?)
But most of all it's just dull. I want to see descriptions with intreage me, give sublte hints, pique my curiosity and give me an idea of more than 'WHAT' is on the sheet but WHO it is that I'm talking to. The above doesn't raelly do that. To me it's far, far too restrictive to the creativity of the player.

So yeah - I do entirely get the frustration of this, but I'm not sure that the cost of heavily policing it is worth the reward.

[Spriggan Bride]

Practically speaking you're not going to see a situation where DMs are reading everyone's character description and making sure they don't claim to be prettier than their charisma score suggests. It's a phenomenal waste of time and would only lead to soul-crushing pissy arguments over what descriptors are allowed at what score.

DM:"You can't say you're beautiful, you only have 13 charisma."

Player: "Can I say they're fetching?"

DM: "I'll allow lovely, but only if you invest a point to bring it to 14. Now you also say the blue eyes are piercing, again, 13 charisma and that requires at least a 15..."

Player: "I'll have to let that go. Is fair-haired okay to keep?"

DM: "Fair describing facial features would require a 14. I'll have to hold a Zoom meeting with the other DMs to discuss if fair describing hair coloration is allowable."

[Curve]

I was speaking to general issues brought up in PaaranDisen post and not so much specifically to the Charisma/Pretty debate.

[roy rutan]

if you are playing a game that has a set of rules designed to moderate the structure of the game and you ignore the rules such as the following.

Charisma measures a character's force of personality, persuasiveness, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness.

you might as well go back to cheating at battleship. because that is what your doing by ignoring the structure of the game to God mode your play style. over the years ive kept quiet on the god modeing ive seen, ive seen human characters live hundreds of years when the average life span for a human is 60 years, and people not playing to their stats. it irritates me to no end and I tend not to RP with those people for long.

The physical attractiveness is a component of charisma, its how others are going to see you and react to you.

I dont know, maybe I am used to following the rules for my characters stats and I hold a bias against others that dont.

[Hazard]

Charisma doesn't = physical attractiveness
That's just one of many possible qualities.

[LovelyLightningWitch]

Practically speaking you're not going to see a situation where DMs are reading everyone's character description and making sure they don't claim to be prettier than their charisma score suggests. It's a phenomenal waste of time and would only lead to soul-crushing pissy arguments over what descriptors are allowed at what score.

DM:"You can't say you're beautiful, you only have 13 charisma."

Player: "Can I say they're fetching?"

DM: "I'll allow lovely, but only if you invest a point to bring it to 14. Now you also say the blue eyes are piercing, again, 13 charisma and that requires at least a 15..."

Player: "I'll have to let that go. Is fair-haired okay to keep?"

DM: "Fair describing facial features would require a 14. I'll have to hold a Zoom meeting with the other DMs to discuss if fair describing hair coloration is allowable."

I feel anything positive, including 12 (remember: 12 str means you can lift 130 lbs over your head without trouble and walk normally, and waddle around with 260 lbs) is sufficient to characterize a character as a confident, sure in their identity, potentially attractive individual.

Unless you wish to say being able to carry 260 lbs slowly, without any technique, equipment or assistance does not count as physically strong.

And this is with P&P rules, using Arelith's modified carrying capacity. Let's assume "Heavy" treshold is the maximum carry capacity.
Someone with 12 strength can lift 195 lbs and move around decently, and carry almost 400 lbs while waddling.

per

Lifting and Dragging
A character can lift as much as his or her maximum load over his or her head.

A character can lift as much as double his or her maximum load off the ground, but he or she can only stagger around with it. While overloaded in this way, the character loses any Dexterity bonus to AC and can move only 5 feet per round (as a full-round action).

A character can generally push or drag along the ground as much as five times his or her maximum load. Favorable conditions can double these numbers, and bad circumstances can reduce them to one-half or less.

The issue is with 8 charisma characters being like Alexander Petrovich (hopefully citing this guy, using his lesser known spelling of his name should avoid politics. Also it's 200 year old history but still) who could rouse a crowd to revolution with a poem or speech. With 12 or 14, it would no longer be a problem - considering how strength scales.

(And further points on why just 12 is enough. That +1 attack bonus? That increases the ability of an untrained individual (0 BAB), barehanded to pierce full plate armour (no shield, 12 dex so 19 AC) 15% of the time rather than just 10. I consider that a significant improvement.

If just 2 points of strength is such a massive difference... Why shouldn't charisma be?


Is 12 charisma enough to impose your will upon reality simply due to your sense of self/identity (i.e: cast sorcerer spells)? Yes. You are capable of channel such powerful magics as turning invisible! Sure, for us level 30 adventurers on Arelith that's nothing... But from perspective of most of the world? Some cultures may consider that normal (wild elves especially due to strong sorcerous tradition) but otherwise, you need to be in a decent sized settlement

In addition, not every town or village has a spellcaster of sufficient level to cast any spell. In general, you must travel to a small town (or larger settlement) to be reasonably assured of finding a spellcaster capable of casting 1st-level spells, a large town for 2nd level spells, a small city for 3rd- or 4th-level spells, a large city for
5th- or 6th-level spells, and a metropolis for 7th- or 8th-level spells.
Even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to
cast 9th-level spells, so seeking out such a caster may become an
adventure itself. (The Dungeon Master’s Guide has more information
on settlement sizes and demographics.)

This to me indicates being able to cast 2nd level spells is quite impressive.

[xanrael]

I don't think a description stating "extremely beautiful" is really god-emoting. Writing something like "her presence draws you to her, her every utterance leaving you in anticipation for the next word, her beauty such that it leaves you a slack-jawed idiot unable to resist her charm" would be god-emoting and would be improper whether they had a charisma score of 1 or 101.

If we had some sort of mechanic/rule where PCs were forced to be the minions of those more conventionally attractive than them then it might be a problem, but we don't.

[kiljaedon]

It might not be god emoting but it still seems a tad bit going overboard with something that does not really describe beyond what the person probably thinks of he/herself. Descriptions are best used to give the reader away to envision a person and even having a description that states "athletic build" I think is acceptable with maybe a face that speaks of smooth skin and carefully prepared makeup etc That gives the reader insight into how that person takes care of themself and takes the time to appear attractive in most people's eyes. Not just what they think of themself.

[MRFTW]

I think Paaran and GrumpyCat have articulated both sides of the debate fantastically.

I do agree that players should really roleplay their stats, but to police this would require much more intervention from staff than I would like to see.

[PaaranDisen]

It's good to read the discussion and reasons around considering these issues. I'd like to clarify that the solution I proposed was not an increase in the ongoing time DMs and other staff need to spend policing/enforcing certain role playing standards, even dire cases. I understand the already heavy burden it is for a volunteer force to keep a server as big as Arelith going so that would be pretty unreasonable to expect.

Instead I proposed putting more power to reward excellent/consistent role play into player's hands, and being vocal about the spirit of the server's philosophy on role play. Of course any system offloaded onto players is ripe for exploitation but there may be ways to bake controls that mitigate that for the most part into the system itself. I'm imagining something like a 'recommend' system, only some bonus is given when X players choose to 'recommend' that player, and tiers of that reward being gated behind increasingly high thresholds of player approval. So for the first tier you'd need one player's recommendation, for the second tier four players, the third tier eight, and so on.

This would mostly circumvent the "I'm going to preferentially use this system to help my friends" problem by gating the substantial tiers of reward behind larger and broader requirements from the community at large - unless you have a huge number of friends you're not going to get far just trying to game the system in this way, you would need to genuinely do well among a wide player base.

A further control on that might be to gate higher tiers of reward behind recommendations from other players who themselves have a high tier (e.g. for tier V you need recommendations from X number of tier IV reward players, along with Y players of any reward level).

This is just an off-the-cuff proposal so is likely to fall apart under careful scrutiny but my main point is to emphasize that a solution may not necessarily need to take up more staff time, and that it may have safeguards against exploitation built into it. That would make the main cost the time and effort it takes the implement such a system in the first place.

[Skibbles]

(There is already an RPR and Recommend system)

Grumpycat is right on. Objectively policing a subjective interpretation guarantees that everyone will be unhappy sans the narrow envelope of people who just happened to agree with whatever policy is instituted - everyone else sidelined and Arelith surely to gain little to nothing from it.

It gets worse, I think, because policing Charisma as an Attractive metric is subjective twice over: First in the determination of how much Charisma plays a direct role in attractiveness; Second - what is even Attractive in the first place? The tired cliche of 'beauty being in the eye of the beholder' may be exhausted, but it is no less true for it.

If this six page thread is any indicator - it's that barely anyone can agree on either of the points above, and even more likely is not to agree on both at the same time.

The physical stats are easy and objective measurements and don't serve an adequate comparison. There's no subjective interpretation of strong. It's quite easily measured as was done just earlier. More strong = more strongness.

This is why I don't think citing the PNP books is a good idea. In PNP there are only NPCs and the Party. NPCs are there to be manipulated by the Heroes, for good or ill, because that's their purpose as minor characters in a story. NPCs, being mostly two-dimensional, surely require a statistic that easily dictates simple social realities like attractiveness because nobody cares about an NPC's long history, cultural background, personal preferences, or what-have-you, when making a benign social check.

In Arelith there is only the Party and the Party (Yes there's NPCs but I hope there doesn't need to be an argument made to show how different they are to what an NPC would be in PNP). If we force NPC-tier interactions between PCs, (insofar as social skills, attractiveness, and magnetism are concerned), we would be directly robbing player agency from the game.

Should we punish people for not role-playing their Charisma because other people enjoy playing with them so much that their character has simply happened to become 'magnetic' just by being fun to be around? On the inverse - should we punish people for having fun with or being attracted to characters deemed neither fun nor attractive? If the answer is no to either, then I say all else follows.

If there was any doubt - my position isn't to expressly approve and defend those that ignore or downplay a character's stats, but that unpoliced subjective imperfection is preferable to heavily policed subjective perfection.

[PaaranDisen]

(There is already an RPR and Recommend system)

This is true - so there's already a system in place that could be adjusted/enhanced to help counteract this problem.

As to the notion that policing subjectivity won't work - firstly, policing isn't necessary. Secondly, something with fuzzy boundaries and variances of interpretation can nonetheless have very clear examples of something that is not that thing. An example would be the concept of 'health'. What a 'healthy person' is may differ in many respects between individuals, including in relation to their life goals and what they want to achieve. However there are universally agreed notions of what is not healthy, such as having a stroke, a heart attack or type 2 diabetes. Another example would be what is considered moral or immoral. Most people disagree in many ways but nonetheless find consensus on things like serial killers.

Likewise we can disagree pretty strongly on what 'charismatic' or 'wise' or 'intelligent' entails while still maintaining that there are egregious cases of misuse of the concepts. These are the cases I'm specifically highlighting.

If there was any doubt - my position isn't to expressly approve and defend those that ignore or downplay a character's stats, but that unpoliced subjective imperfection is preferable to heavily policed subjective perfection.

This is a false dichotomy. Policing may not even necessarily be required and as noted above, something being subjective does not stop things from reaching an agreed consensus in many cases, especially egregious ones.

[Skibbles]

Egregious cases of extremely poor roleplay can already be brought to a DMs attention.

There is already recourse in place both for tiered rewards for roleplay quality and egregious breaches of character concept/portrayal/etc. All the infrastructure you propose is already present, and has been for years, as far as I can tell.

That's why my case interprets yours as a step further, and why I would argue that it isn't a false dichotomy in that frame. We're already at the stage you seem to want, players are fully free to report anything they want, whether breach of character or someone just being mean, so I can only interpret your requests as a call for harsher or heavier action - that it hasn't happened to your liking only means that the majority aren't interested in pushing it further.

[Kriegos]

I just want to quickly weigh in and say that six, nearly seven pages in, that I'm so happy with the discussion on the topic. Thanks everyone who has taken time to weigh in their thoughts, and doubly so those who have taken the extra time to check back and have conversations and back and forth dialogue on the topic. Thank you, everyone. It's been a fascinating read so far. Keep it going if you're so inclined!

By the way, I don't mean this to stifle or end any discussion. I just felt the need to weigh in and thank the community for sharing their thoughts, and having such a great discussion all around.

[MissEvelyn]

What I'm going to write is likely to be unpopular but I'd like to give my two cents anyway. This is one of the discrepancies that contributed to my drifting away from Arelith (i only occasionally stop by the forums and this thread caught my eye).

While it's admirable (and generally proper) to want to 'live and let live' in terms of role play and its relationship to the character sheet, this to me is too liberally interpreted. Consider that we do have norms of behavior for players relating to keeping in-character, and not veering too far off-setting with how characters are realized so it's not unprecedented to have some concern for the role play of others. To me, somebody who is dumping their 'non-physical' stats like int, wis and cha and then playing as a highly articulate, insightful inspiring leader is power gaming to the maximum extent possible. They're a blatant power gamer, period.

The penalties for low str, dex, con (and others but to much lesser degrees, wis = will, int = skill) are baked into the server so no amount of emoting how amazingly muscular your character is will let them hit that orc any harder or carry any more weight. No amount of gritty, robust posturing will increase your character's HP or fort save. If a player somehow found a way to dump their str/dex/con and still achieve rolls as if those stats were set to their maximum levels, we'd call shenanigans. This is true of int/wis/cha, only there's no real way of directly baking this wholesale into the mechanics. It's a difference solely of practical necessity rather than consistent principle.

This isn't to say players should generally be policing other's RP but it is foolish not to recognize how this encourages even more power building, which in turn ramps up the mechanical difficulty of the server to compensate, further punishing somebody who tries to make their character sheet actually reflect the capacities of their character.

If the counter-argument to this is that a player ought to just go along with it and power build too ('when in Rome' so to speak), then why bother having so much detail to choose from during character creation? It defeats the purpose. If the counter-argument to this is that non-power builds can still manage to get along with good gear/strong friends/whatever other reason then you're missing the point. The mere existence of the necessity for sub-optimal characters to have to make up for their shortcomings without a parallel necessity in terms of 'mental' stats only reinforces the point. If the counter-argument is that this would then lead to too much rigidity in character roleplay in trying to reflect stats on the character sheet, then it's worth noting that I'm only talking about the most extreme cases: the 8 cha character who is a 'beautiful social butterfly with a powerful force of will' or the 8 int character who can hold a deep and meaningful conversation about ancient Netherese magical arts for an hour. I'm not talking about Joe Adventurer with 8 wis who happens to make sensible decisions most of the time.

This runs on too, I think, into some players completely omitting to factor some bare bones form of naturalism into RP with their physical dump stats. A 6 con 8 str full plated Elven toothpick sprinting for miles from one end of Arelith to another without being even slightly out of breath or hindered in any way may be in part due to practical considerations (it's no fun to have to stop!) but it's nonetheless very jarring and easily as setting-breaking as some other sorts of extremely incongruous role play. I would have loved to see more of the 'heavy dump stat' builds really played out with convincing and interesting flaws or drawbacks, to the same extent that physically gimped characters automatically face already in combat.

It's also the case that any sub-optimal build is normally hit much harder by nerfs than your typical power build, since they've already skimped on the optimal attribute assignments, feats and/or skills. I experienced this personally several times, which while at time fair in terms of class changes, eventually ended up making my character basically unplayable to how I had roleplayed them (you can't be an immensely tough character if your AC is nerfed so hard that the most fragile party members can best you by the numbers). Any argument that one should just stop caring about the numbers if you're not interested in optimal builds misses out the fact that even very 'adventure-lite' characters run up against mechanical checks quite often in Arelith due to the nature of the server. You simply cannot ignore mechanics in that way.

What it boils down to is this: If your character sheet doesn't need to align with your role play in any meaningful way, then why on earth would you do anything but power build around things that only have a mechanical effect?

Arelith ended up feeling to me less of a role play server and more of a 'some people choose to role play while others sprint from area to area with a veneer of a role play 'skin' on the latest power build', which is fine if people like that. There was also the inevitable sense of 'if my character engages in conflict somebody is going to flip the 'hostile' switch and 'win' the conflict (whatever that means) by rolling higher dice'. This happened multiple times and I can only surmise that with this consideration only a power build can really functionally survive much conflict RP with a certain subset of players beyond trading a few barbs.

I don't think any solution to this needs to necessarily be all that time intensive, or involve a great deal of judgement of others from players. I think if players were allowed collectively more of an ability to reward other players for their good RP and the overall server philosophy were to strongly discourage 'attribute power gaming', I think there would be something of a sea change. Of course no solution if perfect but sometimes an imperfect solution is better than doing nothing at all. I doubt many people will agree with me but I am interested in hearing the reasons why I am wrong in this.

It may be unpopular, but as someone who played on Arelith back in the Jjerm and Mithreas days, I agree wholeheartedly. The general attitude of the server has shifted massively. There is both positives and negatives to this. I don't think it's fair of me to say which one weighs the most, as that is definitely a subjective matter.

But I can with certainty say, for better or for worse, that Arelith is not the hardcore RP server it once was. There was once a warning at the OOC player creation area that told you that if you're looking for exp grinding and killing everything, this server isn't for you. That warning has long since vanished, since, well, people who are looking for Action can find it here. While they still have to Roleplay, they can skirt the rules by roleplaying at a bare minimum. And there is no consequence for them doing so. Some might say getting a RPR drop to 0 is the consequence, but I disagree. Grinding and doing writ after writ provides you with much more experience points than RPR ever will - perhaps with the exception of RPR 40, but those levels are unattainable for probably ~95% of the playerbase. Not because players don't deserve it, but because most players cannot dedicate that kind of time of their life to it.

I love many, many of the quality of life changes that have come over the years. Loot has been made interesting. In the past, monster drops were nonexistent. A few coins here and there, but no magical items whatsoever. "Magical Ring" and "Magical Amulet" with randomized stats didn't exist back then. Neither did writs. And you started at RPR 0 and had to work your way up. Reaching something like level 10 could take a very, very long time. And I get that it's frustrating, especially if you like me don't enjoy grinding, you don't have all the time in the world to spend 6 hours a day playing this game. So these changes have been good and helpful. But they came at a cost, and this cost was attracting players who didn't care much to RP. I really, really don't mean to sound judgmental, but it's true. Silly sayings like "RP starts at 30" began cropping up, and many actually live their Arelithian lives by that. Some even say that RP starts after you roll a Major Award.

I can sympathize with those saying to stop worrying about other people's RP and move on. But is it really that simple? If you see your fellow player in a PnP session putting down way more spells than they have spell slots, are you not obligated to gently call it out? Before you attack my comment with "Arelith isn't PnP", understand that the same idea applies. While it's not PnP and while there are no "main characters" on Arelith, the rules are still rules. Your character sheet should still mean something. You don't have to be a two-dimensional character for you to roleplay your stats, not at all.

What I take from this post is this: Be mindful of how you roleplay your stats. If you always roleplay your character's weak attributes as being strong, is it really wrong for your fellow player to call you out for it?

[PaaranDisen]

Egregious cases of extremely poor roleplay can already be brought to a DMs attention.

There is already recourse in place both for tiered rewards for roleplay quality and egregious breaches of character concept/portrayal/etc. All the infrastructure you propose is already present, and has been for years, as far as I can tell.

That's why my case interprets yours as a step further, and why I would argue that it isn't a false dichotomy in that frame. We're already at the stage you seem to want, players are fully free to report anything they want, whether breach of character or someone just being mean, so I can only interpret your requests as a call for harsher or heavier action - that it hasn't happened to your liking only means that the majority aren't interested in pushing it further.

I'm certainly not advocating to change nothing, or I wouldn't have posted. I'm aware of the reporting system and the RPR system. My proposal was that the RPR system could be expanded/modified to be deeper, and more powerful a tool for reflecting a consensus on fantastic role play. Even then, my critique does not require this solution, I only used it as one possible example.

I also don't advocate for any more punitive action as that would require more staff involvement over time. It's also the case that, even were I advocating for harsher/heavier action, I don't believe a system currently being in place necessarily means the majority thinks it's in a good place. That's what threads like this (and other feedback) are for, and even then those might represent a vocal minority in the community. Regardless, I am definitely not advocating any harsher action.

[Skibbles]

My proposal was that the RPR system could be expanded/modified to be deeper, and more powerful a tool for reflecting a consensus on fantastic role play.

What happens if someone is comfortable just being RPR 0, or however the bottom rung works in the new system, and playing their interpretation of Charisma as they wish anyway?

[PaaranDisen]

Then they're comfortable with it - there's likely to be outliers like that with any proposed system I'd imagine. Likely less so depending on how prestigious/beneficial having a higher reward is. I don't think this in any way defeats the idea that things can be better. An imperfect solution is nonetheless still a solution. I think we can improve on things, even if we cannot reach perfection.

[Sadrithos]

8 Charisma character reporting in. I ended up ultimately having them be attractive for a few reasons.

1. Everyone kept treating him like he was, even when I would describe him as tired, sweaty, generally unwashed, sleeping in mud and snow. After a point it becomes pointless to insist upon these things if people arent listening/they base their reactions on the head model chosen regardless

2. I have always viewed charisma as more of a combined trait, covering social grace, gravitas, and so on, not just "is pretty, is not" due to it being a casting stat for a bunch of classes (So either every single one of those people is impossibly beautiful, or else it means more than just being sexy, and since it helps with animal empathy, Im going to assume we arent just Disneying the animals into helping us by being a pretty princess)

3. His wife is a Sunite, and picks out his clothing, does his hair, and constantly asks if he has been cleaning properly and sleeping well. So he cleaned up, shaves more often, and tries to carry himself better, so he is no longer as tired and dirty as he was, in an effort to please his wife by making his outward appearance match the man she sees in him, and desire not to embarrass her with his poor fashion sense and prior lack of personal grooming.

While he cares very deeply about others, is genuinely kind, and sincerely wants to help them, wants to be a good person, and do the things he believes are right, he is ultimately still blunt, often responds with verbal hostility when questioned or doubted, finds praise and attention awkward, has a tendency to feel out of place in highly formal settings or meetings, and tends to stay quiet and only chime in if he feels he has something important to say, or to engage in, often poorly timed, poking and prodding of people he dislikes.

[Skibbles]

Then they're comfortable with it - there's likely to be outliers like that with any proposed system I'd imagine. Likely less so depending on how prestigious/beneficial having a higher reward is. I don't think this in any way defeats the idea that things can be better. An imperfect solution is nonetheless still a solution. I think we can improve on things, even if we cannot reach perfection.

I agree, but this doesn't quite illustrate to me how your solution is better than the one we have now. In fact I don't even see a difference.

It seems to me in both systems people are fully allowed to play how they feel they should play, and in both systems there are tiers of reward for one's roleplay. Where does your proposal specifically, and objectively, differ?

How are we to know that the very problem we discuss, right now, isn't the aforementioned outlier already?

[Curve]

I think any system that involves recommendations from other players without DM oversight is going to be intensely gamed. Even if a system like this requires a large number of ‘likes’ from other players higher on the RPR scale. One quick glance over any of the recent housing threads will give a hint at how willing large groups of players are willing to work together to get a leg up in the game.

We have a set of six rules that tell players what to do. What we dont have is the opposite of rules, a guide to doing the right thing. We just generally let players do what ever they want and lump them into one of four categories of RPR, handing out punishment if they stray too far.

We don’t expect anything out of our players other than not breaking the rules. As MissEvelyn said above, the leveling system benifits those willing to push hardest into it and RPR does not compensate enough to matter. So when players are faced with the equation of ‘should I run and meme while I grind or should I walk and emote’ the numbers benefit the former. Especially when players are able to maintain their RPR while acting a fool.

From my perspective the only reason to stay in character, rp your sheet, try not to be a meme, and engage in healthy respectful conflict comes down to personal ethics. The system does not benefit you doing this.

How can we change that?

[Drowble Oh Seven]

Honestly, I'm not sure you want a system to reward it. Ultimately this an RP server, and RP should (with the possible exception of RPR, which I would still personally be delighted to feed into a wood chipper) be its own reward.

On other servers I've played on, mechanically rewarding certain forms of roleplay failed to achieve much more than making those forms of roleplay stale and trite, as people just went through the motions to collect whatever-the-incentive-was. Stories stagnated. And, as Skibbles, said, it's all so subjective that starting down the road's a wee bit of a mess anyway.

The reward for good roleplay is being involved in good roleplay, not any sort of mechanical plusses, special characters, or unique hats. You cultivate good roleplay by doing good roleplay around interested people.

I feel like we're overstating what's ultimately a non-issue.

[Curve]

I don't really disagree, Drowbie. That being said I do think that server culture is moving us away from "hardcore rp" towards "action/adventure". I am interested to know if that is what we as players and the team wants or even agrees with. If we are collectively okay with this happening then I guess we move on, but if we are not okay with this happening we can try to brainstorm ways of urging the server back in the other direction.