atmosphere and tone

[Drowboy]

Suspension of disbelief is a two way street imo

And, really, genuinely: If you log in and think everyone around you is disrespecting the setting and doing a bad job and you're miserable- is it Really the other thousand some-odd people that play here? Really? Really really? Come on. Maybe you just aren't having fun.

Do your best, remember that it's a game, not a contest, and everyone else is also just trying to have fun and ignore the real world. Don't try to hold other people to your homebrew "Forgotten Realms is Game of Thrones but a version of game of thrones that only exists in my head where there aren't zombies and a human woman with a human husband didn't give birth to dragons. real low fantasy stuff" interpretations. Suspend your disbelief, I believe is what they call it.

As in all things, if it isn't hurting anyone (and very little in this video game actually hurts anyone): mind your business* and don't stress out about it. I'd rather RP with someone who's excitedly responding to the setting as it is than someone who is banally judging everything everyone does for Verismilitude and Accuracy To The Established Lore

*anything truly egregious should be reported as ever but come on. be reasonable.

[Xerah]

I don't know guys, you can nitpick over this if you want, but it seems a pretty simple concept to know to accept these impossibilities as part of the game design to allow the game to function at all.

[Skane]

I don't know guys, you can nitpick over this if you want, but it seems a pretty simple concept to know to accept these impossibilities as part of the game design to allow the game to function at all.

That's; sort of the point? Accept they grind high level enemies and move on so the game can function.

[Curve]

Xerah is right. There is not a problem with saying "I have killed dragons" the problem comes in saying "I have killed countless dragons". We suspend disbelief because there are not an unlimited number of dragons in the forgotten realms, there are in a video game. A good metric for these types of 'classy vs crass' debates is asking yourself: If I read this in a FR novel would it feel silly and out of place.

[Skane]

Xerah is right. There is not a problem with saying "I have killed dragons" the problem comes in saying "I have killed countless dragons". We suspend disbelief because there are not an unlimited number of dragons in the forgotten realms, there are in a video game. A good metric for these types of 'classy vs crass' debates is asking yourself: If I read this in a FR novel would it feel silly and out of place.

I have read these things in a FR novel; it's tediously high fantasy, and Faerun isn't a very high quality setting to begin with. Is it silly? I mean probably but I can overlook it. Is it out of place? Well there's so much precedent so not really.

[Curve]

At the risk of going too far into the weeds I’ll say that our experiences with FR novels is different. Don’t get me wrong they are not crime and punishment. But, generally speaking high level characters tend to have a reason for going on adventures more than “I did it for the lols”. Characters treat death seriously, and thus treat risk seriously. I have fond memories drizzt and wulfgar talking about the danger of mere goblins.

I’ve not read post 3rd ed stuff so maybe that is where there are a lot of high level adventurers chilling on the corner and bragging about how much of a bad Snuggybear they are?

Edit:

A lot of generally insightful stuff.

I don't disagree with you at all. The server has a history of crass rp. All I can counter with is that this thread should be about what we can do to improve things, rather than finger pointing. People care a lot and want to see the setting respected and I guess we get tired of just saying, 'be the change you want to see.'

[Skane]

At the risk of going too far into the weeds I’ll say that our experiences with FR novels is different. Don’t get me wrong they are not crime and punishment. But, generally speaking high level characters tend to have a reason for going on adventures more than “I did it for the lols”. Characters treat death seriously, and thus treat risk seriously. I have fond memories drizzt and wulfgar talking about the danger of mere goblins.

I’ve not read post 3rd ed stuff so maybe that is where there are a lot of high level adventurers chilling on the corner and bragging about how much of a bad Snuggybear they are?

I haven't either; but you can say 'you've killed numerous dragons' and say you are actively going to do so without it being under-quality. Drizzt and Wulfgar as an example killed two dragons together at level 7ish and 9ish respectively, a white and a shadow; both of considerable size.

Maybe people are getting too hung up on dragons specifically but the mere act of saying you've killed I dunno 'twenty dragons' isn't unreasonable; you just have to treat it like it's still combat and not a afternoon stroll. Because even if it's easy OOC, it doesn't mean it's no challenge IC, after all; you can always roll a series of nat 1s, mispronounce a spell and be burnt to ash; we don't need to worry about these things OOC because well; it's not fun.

My main point is that it's not anti-setting to kill many powerful enemies (such as dragons) and do so without being permanently injured or having it be a one-off thing. I /could/ cite the like, list of low-level characters who have killed X dragons in faerun from our edition but that's not really the point is it.

I feel like the primary issue people are having is that it's a PW; it's not a problem if, Dorn the Dragonslayer has killed thirty dragons, that's his *thing* and he's 'renowned' for it lets say. But it's a multiplayer persistent world, so anything one player can do; every player can and usually *does* do.

And I'm loathe to fully ignore what players are physically capable of doing ingame; so really the best solution, in my opinion, is to just acknowledge it and move on. I don't see people in Arelith bragging about killing dragons, it's just 'what were you doing'; 'i was fighting dragons in X location for hide', which I don't see as an issue honestly?

Besides barring rare exceptions when has RP ever centered around what Arelith PCs can do to NPCs; roleplay in Arelith is foremost driven by player interaction, maybe if we had people constantly talking about how strong they are because they slaughter dragons by the barrel it'd be an issue; but that's simply not my experience with Arelith.

The thread overall just feels like an excuse to vague-post about specific players whose RP has rubbed someone the wrong way; I mean, we play an MMO from the 2000s; we can literally count the polygons of the enemies we fight. If your personal immersion break is the fact that Bob killed a few dragons today instead of Bob looking identical to Sergeant Reginalli than I'm not sure what to say really.

Arelith players could probably serve to lighten up a bit; Faerun isn't an overly serious setting, Arelith most definitely isn't, just take what's given to you and work with it, or ignore it if you don't like it!

EDIT: Fixing phone autocorrect.

Posted from Samsung Smartfridge

[garrbear758]

Arelith players could probably serve to lighten up a bit; Faerun isn't an overly serious setting, Arelith most definitely isn't, just take what's given to you and work with it, or ignore it if you don't like it!

I feel like this is all that needs to be said.

The server is huge and if someone's rp bothers you that much you can always go rp somewhere else. There are around 2000 players a month I'm sure you can find some people that will fit better into your idea of what arelith should be.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

There's suspension of disbelief and there's playing a different game mechanically than you're playing in-story, though.

If a character sees a bunch of dragons (and the ones in the above example are DM-spawned, since player's can't summon black dragons) and responds to it by saying "you know what? this is a hell world and anything can happen" and warding themselves just in case- How is that their fault? How is that something to criticize on the forum?

If a character is described as wearing a suit of armor made of dragon parts and adamantine, well

Yeah, they just might be.

Should we suspension of disbelief away anything we don't like, or doesn't fit with our own notion of how the forgotten realms works? It's high fantasy. One of the highest fantasy settings out there, frankly. The god of death got replaced by a human twice in easily living memory.

What's this person from the above example supposed to do? Ignore every bit of the world as it is? Hell is an area you can literally live in. There's shops. Some quite convenient quarters. A bar. This is a fact.

What are they supposed to do? "Yeah, I need some armor made, but I can't say out of what because it breaks forum-decided kayfabe."

Reacting to the world realistically is to be applauded, no?

This is a good post. I don't think people should crap on others who are reacting to a DM event realistically. Dragons don't attack cities every day. The character isn't going "That was a DM event so who cares," they're going "Wow something crazy happened, and maybe it will happen again. I'm not taking chances."
That kind of stance is great and should be encouraged. It suggests things are uncertain. It suggests the game world is fragile and people won't come back if they die, even though we as players know that's not the case.

[Xerah]

I never once said you can't mention dragon or wear dragon armour or be able to go to different planes, that's just taking what I said to some extreme distance to make a point.

Someone saying "they're so bored and they already killed [Big Named Bad boi] twice today" really isn't doing much to respect the setting/what you agree to suspend when you play in a world with respawns.

[Straxus]

One thing I do a lot, is when turning in heads, I emote the amount of heads I am turning in. I don't mention which heads, just the amount.

I am not one to brag about the things I've killed, I usually mention something along the lines of where I started, and where I ended up.

My main success is that I have the tendency to make a lot of gold, without even having a contract, just by painstakingly seeking out the best price for what I have picked up.

Yes, saying you killed (big bad dude) 7 times in the course of a few hours, doesn't really add much to the depth of your character. But an epic, still running the crypts, because the undead are raised constantly, that is not as bad to me, they could have a vested interest in keeping the problem at bay.

Little ideals like that, can lend way more to the depth of a character, than how many dragons you slay in an entire career.

[La Villa Strangiato]

I never once said you can't mention dragon or wear dragon armour or be able to go to different planes, that's just taking what I said to some extreme distance to make a point.

Someone saying "they're so bored and they already killed [Big Named Bad boi] twice today" really isn't doing much to respect the setting/what you agree to suspend when you play in a world with respawns.

yeah but consider; several ancient black dragons were spawned in cordor as part of an event

[Crookedblossom]

I never once said you can't mention dragon or wear dragon armour or be able to go to different planes, that's just taking what I said to some extreme distance to make a point.

Someone saying "they're so bored and they already killed [Big Named Bad boi] twice today" really isn't doing much to respect the setting/what you agree to suspend when you play in a world with respawns.

yeah but consider; several ancient black dragons were spawned in cordor as part of an event

I believe the point isn't as much to "not talk about dragons," but to avoid allowing your apathy as a player to become an IC expression. To avoid allowing the grind OOCly to become ICly monotonous.

So what if you killed 50 goblins on the way to Cordor? It's a video game. You can either choose to make that the most interesting thing about your character's life by incorporating that into their story, or you can opt for instead discussing other facets of your character's experience that you do find interesting.

What I personally don't want to see is your character lampshading mechanics for an attempt at a fourth wall breaking moment where we're all reminded this is a video game. I don't think this is a difficult thing to grasp.

This isn't about not discussing how many dragons Bob killed today.
This is about dressing it up in a way that makes people want to hear about it, or just don't bring it up if discussing it doesn't sound fun.
I sincerely don't want fantastical acts, regardless of how mundane, to be put on the level of blue collar water-cooler talk. Or at least, I don't personally find that endearing, interesting, or immersive and I'll probably excuse myself elsewhere.

[Curve]

This is what’s up.

[The GrumpyCat]

I never once said you can't mention dragon or wear dragon armour or be able to go to different planes, that's just taking what I said to some extreme distance to make a point.

Someone saying "they're so bored and they already killed [Big Named Bad boi] twice today" really isn't doing much to respect the setting/what you agree to suspend when you play in a world with respawns.

yeah but consider; several ancient black dragons were spawned in cordor as part of an event

Keep in mind however, that when doing that sort of event at players you need tough monsters to be a tough challenge, and tough monsters are supposed to be rare.
So we get the difficult sitaution of either spawning red dragons/powerful demons/devils/undead, super strong stuff... or say, restatting/souping up some goblin npcs to ridiculous lenghts to be a threat.
The latter is more work, and then you end up with the complaints of: 'But I'm level 30! Why did the Dms make these goblins such a challenge? It's so embaressing!'

Really it's doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.

[Zavandar]

This is what’s up.

[2d6 emotional damage]

I never once said you can't mention dragon or wear dragon armour or be able to go to different planes, that's just taking what I said to some extreme distance to make a point.

Someone saying "they're so bored and they already killed [Big Named Bad boi] twice today" really isn't doing much to respect the setting/what you agree to suspend when you play in a world with respawns.

yeah but consider; several ancient black dragons were spawned in cordor as part of an event

I believe the point isn't as much to "not talk about dragons," but to avoid allowing your apathy as a player to become an IC expression. To avoid allowing the grind OOCly to become ICly monotonous.

So what if you killed 50 goblins on the way to Cordor? It's a video game. You can either choose to make that the most interesting thing about your character's life by incorporating that into their story, or you can opt for instead discussing other facets of your character's experience that you do find interesting.

What I personally don't want to see is your character lampshading mechanics for an attempt at a fourth wall breaking moment where we're all reminded this is a video game. I don't think this is a difficult thing to grasp.

This isn't about not discussing how many dragons Bob killed today.
This is about dressing it up in a way that makes people want to hear about it, or just don't bring it up if discussing it doesn't sound fun.
I sincerely don't want fantastical acts, regardless of how mundane, to be put on the level of blue collar water-cooler talk. Or at least, I don't personally find that endearing, interesting, or immersive and I'll probably excuse myself elsewhere.

thank you. this is it.

no one is asking anyone to censor themselves. the general askance is to please just, care a little bit. put a little bit of effort into your rp, don't just fig-leaf meta commentary behind apathy and ic disillusion/boredom. its really hard to want to engage with people who don't seem interested in telling a story.

re: grumpycat

unpopular;
there are a lot of ways to make a strong monster. you don't need a monster with high stats and a dragon. "less is more." you can get a lot of mileage out of a semi-sentient ooze. or helping a tiny family of myconids subsume their jerk drider neighbors or a horde of illusion ghosts. you can have a boss who has cool telegraphed moves before he drops a hell ball or a bunch of implosions or he despawns into a pile of ooze babies before reforming into his big form. like rpg bosses that have stages. this is cool and offers more for the players to interact with and think about interacting with. phylacteries are a good tool too. and you have the added benefit of not having to figure out on the fly what's going to be a good mechanical challenge for your assortment of epics to lowbies. the pay off of finally confronting your BBEG should be cool and exciting. you lose a lot of control when you do your big show down in the middle of a city. i always recommend doing all your hooks and performative stuff in town to get people involved and hooked, then lure them away to kill them mercilessly in the woods where no one will find them i mean show them a very nice time. its okay to not get absolutely everyone on the server involved in the event. thats lag fest anyway, and most people end up being confused or feel left out or get annoyed they don't get to participate in a meaningful way. just spread the love.

[Kuma]

What I personally don't want to see is your character lampshading mechanics for an attempt at a fourth wall breaking moment where we're all reminded this is a video game. I don't think this is a difficult thing to grasp.

This isn't about not discussing how many dragons Bob killed today.
This is about dressing it up in a way that makes people want to hear about it, or just don't bring it up if discussing it doesn't sound fun.
I sincerely don't want fantastical acts, regardless of how mundane, to be put on the level of blue collar water-cooler talk. Or at least, I don't personally find that endearing, interesting, or immersive and I'll probably excuse myself elsewhere.

I think this is a good middle ground. Everything Drowboy's been saying is extremely true. As I mentioned in a discord DM,

now if you'll excuse me my Gray space alien from Hyperborea/Agartha is going to steal your ancient precursor civilisations artefacts and store them in a transdimensional tesseract while praising money Satan and giving part of the spoils to his Warp-powered dark elf platonic gf that runs a wizard school for war criminals located in an entirely different plane of existence

I kind of understand this 'setting and tone' issue to be a primarily surface problem. There's castles and knights and shadowy woods and werewolves and snowy dwarfish holds and there's this vague sense that people "should" treat it like a quasi-game of thrones dirt farming simulator with realism and romance - and in the process, handwave or forget about the parts where the knight is wearing armour made of four dead dragons.

The fact game of thrones has green magic napalm, dragon fpreg, and zombies seems to be lost on people who are (perhaps unconsciously) trying to ape its aesthetic or 'tone'. If you want to play that, play a Commoner, and be extremely vulnerable to the rest of us playing the atomic supermen that blight the FR setting around you endemically.

Conversely, yes, understanding that's still part of the setting and fantastical and not treating it like an easy stroll is still the hallmark of decent roleplay. Lampshading is bad. Recognition this is a fantasy game and fun, is good.

[La Villa Strangiato]

As an addendum to my last, snarky post: basically everything Drowboy, Kuma, and 2d6 said. Less is more. I would be a lot happier with smaller-scale, low-stakes combat events where the focus is less on the combat and more the personal consequences.

As for statting goblins to be an actual threat; I would love that. You have no idea how fun it would be to defend against a goblin raid or kobolds setting up traps and actually becoming dangerous to high-level adventurers in the sewers. Something that pushes a group of players to think and roleplay creative solutions to a problem instead of throwing a bunch of enemies at a group.

Obviously, this is something that requires a bit of planning and thinking on behalf of a DM. It means that events may not be as frequent! And that is completely fine. A better thought-out event that is less frequent means a lot more to me, as a player.

[Exordius]

Need more events not less... small more often, but at least one giant one every other year or so, and maybe a medium one at least once per year. It gets boring just sitting around in the town square with nothing to do.

[Kuma]

It gets boring just sitting around in the town square with nothing to do.

A user error is an error made by the human user of a complex system, usually a computer system, in interacting with it. Although the term is sometimes used by human–computer interaction practitioners, the more formal human error term is used in the context of human reliability.

[Exordius]

Uh not sure what that's supposed to mean?

[La Villa Strangiato]

It gets boring just sitting around in the town square with nothing to do.

A user error is an error made by the human user of a complex system, usually a computer system, in interacting with it. Although the term is sometimes used by human–computer interaction practitioners, the more formal human error term is used in the context of human reliability.

Uh not sure what that's supposed to mean?

Kuma is using the term "user error" to imply that you, an Arelith player (or "user"), has created your own error; it's not a fault of the system. In this case, you complain of a lack of events because you are "sitting in the square with nothing to do". The problem with this statement is that you yourself are just, well, sitting in the square. Are you actively engaging with people? Are you browsing Cordor, Guldorand, Myon, Bendir for people to roleplay with?

The thing about roleplay in general that I think a lot of people forget is that you kind of have to create your own fun sometimes. You can't just sit around and wait for stuff to happen, and you definitely can't expect the DMs to cater to you if you aren't putting in effort in engaging with the people around you. Make up reasons to talk to new people. Give your character a goal that they can accomplish. A listless character is not only boring, but deadly to your fun.

[Edens_Fall]

WYSIWYG

[Griefmaker]

I personally loved the idea someone else had about changing bosses from named bosses and dragons and Paush and the like, and going to something similar to the yellow "lieutenant" creatures that are randomly generated that are usually tougher or have special buffs as compared to the normal versions.

But make the buffs or traits of those bosses even more pronounced so you never really know what to expect. One day, the boss could have high AC, another day high DR, or high SR, or whatever. Or multiple mixtures! Or maybe even something like tribal barbarians where they spawn with extra specialty bodyguards or something. Those can have names like the yellow creatures do, but instead of fighting the epic devil lords or epic dragons, whatever chieftains or leaders are special, but not lore-breaking special.

Then you can save those creatures for big plots to really freshen the narrative. Paush deciding Cordor needs fewer paladins and more of Sharess? He can knock politely on Cordor's gate with an army of devils to cleanse the city of those who abstain from decadent hedonism! Or perhaps Auril has instructed the White Dragon (whatever its name is) to begin bringing winter to arelith and it can work as a mastermind to her plot. Something like that!

But in all seriousness, the above scenario I think would be best, though I apologize to the devs since i know it would be a ton of work to implement. But I tend to already do this IG with my characters, where they face a mini-boss or something they have seen a ton of times and always respawns, like the Forest Ogre mini-boss in the Arelith Forest by Myon, it is obviously not the same creature...just the newest alpha of the pack to take the lead.