atmosphere and tone

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Richrd
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Richrd » Wed Mar 23, 2022 6:41 pm

Edited#1; clearing up spelling mistakes.

Point of view on this whole thing from someone who came back for a while, after a relatively long (enforced) break from Arelith. Currently I am not active. Instead I am spending my gaming hours on games such as Final Fantasy 14 and Elden Ring. Here's a quick list, explaining why that is while also giving my point of view on some things.
EXCLAIMER: I am going to be snarky and very critical here.

  • Have to agree with the points brought up by nearly everyone here. It seems to all stem from a change in the server's player culture.
  • Modern day lingo and behaviors crept themselves into the "roleplay" on the server. Too often have I encountered outlandish concepts that reminded me more of modern day politics instead of the Forgotten Realms.
  • Character turnover rate is insane. To me the reasons why are very obvious. Too much EXP gain in too little time plus blatantly superior races only accessible through the reward system. Motivates players to keep rolling characters until they achieve their % dream roll and get that minmax character build or the current flavor of the month award race. The recent change to the writ system does not seem like a solution to me, more like an illusory band aid fix.
  • Many fantastic aspects of the setting are trivialized. Back in the day Epic Dragon Knights effectively being pocket dragons for any semi-experienced caster were my main go-to example of this. These days I'd say that this has been expanded. Crazy award races run around in every city. Everyone somehow knows everything and nothing is ever forgotten in the Forgotten Realms. Mystical materials used in the crafting of legendary armaments litter the shops around every street corner.
  • Giants, dragons, devils, demons? Nobody cares. Because everybody and their grandma can slay those and all PCs don't respect them any longer. Now a guy who refuses to get off his horse, manages to incapacitate several dragon-demon-devil-giant slaying guardsmen and runs for the seat of chancellor? That's some world-ending terror right there, judging from the chaos and the terror instilled into the hearts of men by this single individual.
Those are the main points coming to mind right now.


My brutally honest afterthoughts on the situation overall:
The R in RP is no longer capitalized. It's mostly about the P now. While Arelith has created many, many truly amazing gameplay changes and new assets for it's world, it has neglected the roleplay side of things. If it were up to me I'd raise the bar of entry for new characters, make it mandatory for people to actually invest themselves and roleplay. You know, like an actual DnD session. Would you like someone showing up to the start of a weekly DnD adventure while they know next to nothing about the world? Next I would drastically lower the overall amount of EXP across the board. Finally make it so that the Epic Sacrifice rewards are no longer based on character level but instead on time played on that character. If I were a DM I would also try to create more big plots with NPC villains rising up to give PCs something to work against together. Plots. Stuff. Roleplay. Reading. Cooperative writing. Fun.
Oh and you might see this as something very monstrous but I would also lock several of the human head options (both female and male) behind the noble award. Too many Barbies and Kens around.


Edited#2; addendum.
There is a point I forgot to bring up the other day. Consider it as part of the list above.
  • Death being nigh meaningless in character destroys immersion and hurts the setting. It feels like back in the day being reborn by the good graces of your chosen Deity was handled more like a blessing select few would receive (even though in actuality all of us were hit by that due to it being a gameplay mechanic). Dungeon bosses and writ encounters weren't roleplayed to be expected to return, it was more of "oh another guy picked up the mantle of Morghun the Black" sort of thing. After returning it felt like respawns became an established thing in-game. That the villain I am being hired to cull from his lair will be back next week anyways. Death in the real world is the ultimate end. A being ceases existence. On Arelith? It's an inconvenience, because for some reason Arelith seems to be a playground for Gods to throw their champions around in willy nilly.
Last edited by Richrd on Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:05 pm, edited 7 times in total.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Hazard » Wed Mar 23, 2022 7:59 pm

I like these suggestions and don't think it was snarky. Critical, but appropriately so.
Obviously I have no power or say in the direction anyones server takes, but I love Arelith and I would love for this to be a direction the server is pushed towards. A higher quality and standard of RP.

It doesn't have to be done how was suggested, but with those things as the goal at least.
The mechanics are great and so many new things have been added it's mindblowing .. but the non-tangible side. The spirit. The roleplay. The quality has been neglected and slipped. It's noticable. It isn't nostalgia.

EDIT: Yes. There were bad low quality times in the past too, but those were dealt with. Let's deal with these, too.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by 2d6 emotional damage » Wed Mar 23, 2022 9:25 pm

i'ma boutta pop off here. bare with me.

What we’ve identified here is a spectrum of behavior, the extremes of which result in the problems we’ve outlined. Let’s call them the invested vs the uninvested. This spectrum is important because, as someone earlier noted, and was very correct: Arelith’s setting is traditionally designed by the collective RP of the players. Understanding the player behavior therefore will allow us to understand what’s going on with the setting.


With the Uninvested side of the spectrum,
We have the disillusioned, the lazy, the apathetic. The people who aren’t really putting in a lot of effort because they are not invested in the public narrative (the Setting) at large. In benign forms this is not horrific; you can totally be casual and not be the anti-thesis to RP. But, in its most extreme forms, the Uninvested actively undermines the Setting through the lack of belief in it. For Fantasy to work, it has to believe itself. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, these are. great fantasies because every single element of the story affirms the fantasy; the characters, the dialogue, the action, the locations, the lore, all of it takes itself seriously, and therefore affirms itself. Because the setting is made by the players, when the player disbelieves the fantastic, treats the extraordinary as ordinary, you cheapen the effect. Now you have a fantasy in which a lich rising to power and attacking a town is a vermin nuisance, drow raids are like road construction, and dragon hunting is like getting groceries at RDI. In this extreme, the Arelith setting cannot take itself seriously because the players do not take it seriously. And because this attitude is manifested through IC behavior, you effect everybody else with it. The Uninvested therefore robs the setting of passion and vitality. The Uninvested is not ‘living’ in the universe, they are not passionate about anything because they are indifferent to it, and because they are part of the setting themselves, vulgarize the extraordinary into the mundane.

The Uninvested is very frustrating because it is not a rulebreak, and is very relatable from a Meta perspective. It is a fantasy, it is an mmorpg, so it takes considerable effort to remove your understanding of this as a place and put yourself in your characters shoes. There's a lack of passion here that feeds off itself and perpetuates. And as Hour has demonstrated, it’s very difficult to teach people ‘how’ to be invested, because it’s not a formula (and shouldn’t be). A good setting should demonstrate models of how to engage with it that players an use to inform their own methods, but we don’t really have that.


Then we have the Invested
These are the people who are invested in the setting. In benign forms, this looks like a general concern to the setting, morality, consequences, you’re playing into the pretend and thereby creating something. However, in this extreme, we have people who are so invested that it extends to their OOC. The Over-Invested are the people who are responding to the uninvested apathy with radical positions on morality, religion, culture, all IC. This comes from an OOC motivation to “correct” incorrect assumptions/behavior that does not align with their vision of the server setting. The Over-Invested are not just making conflict because conflict is good, they are making conflict because it is necessary, and further, the position they are working from is absolute. They are Too Passionate about the RP and that makes them rigid, inflexible, and ultimately static.

This is really frustrating because they’re not wrong. Conflict is the essence of stories. Even in comedy shows as vapid as Bing BANG theory rely on conflict to drive scenes and over arching stories. It is an extremely necessary component to story telling (because nothing moves in stasis, and conflict is defined as the clash of two opposing desires. stories cannot be still or you never have progression, just a description). Yet in the extreme of Invested, we have conflict being deployed to Other people; instead of an apathy, there is a passionate disrespect of another players writing.

What’s interesting about the two extremes of the Over-Invested and Underinvested is ultimately, their results are the same. The Uninvested is an apathy disbelief of the setting that renders it inert, while the Invested is a passionate corrective behavior by those seeking to bring life into the server. But, the Over-invested’s passionate contributions are only a facade of vitality, as ultimately they are also seeking to bring the setting into a fixed point - or static, too. Because the Over Invested is not here to affirm the setting, their behavior in running characters out of towns, blanket bans on concepts, and so on actively reject the setting but do nothing to put anything in its place.

I'll add that it's not a 'bad' thing to be uninvested/invested in moderation. It's a spectrum, and where you fall on the spectrum is not necessarily destructive to the RP one way or the other unless you fall into the extremes. Its totally okay and valid to be more on the uninvested side as a casual RPer, that isn't problematic. Your placement on the spectrum aligns with your respect for the Server (which is to say the combination of the community OOC, the IC narrative, and the nebulous atmosphere). Ideally, your RP should be affirming the setting or neutral to the setting, not actively undermining it, which is behavior that ranges somewhere between the two extremes.

TLDR: there is a spectrum of engagement of the RP that ranges from Uninvested (passionless, apathetic, lazy) to Over-Invested (too passionate, authoritative, corrective, rigid, inflexible, absolute). its ok to fall anywhere on this spectrum except on the extremes. the extremes result in a static, inspired, and dull setting.

Are you still here? Okay great. Now we move onto the thesis of my argument:
high turnover rate of PCs, along with all the other issues we've pointed out, is a symptom of the de-prioritization of collective speculative story telling.

People are rolling because there is no reason to stick around. The only reason to play is the novelty of the character and how they exist in the setting; the character and the characters they interact with how to generate their own novelty. When you reach the inevitable end of novelty- i.e things have become static or repetitive, you roll and make something new. Of course this is not always the case- there are a lot of variables that go into rolling, but I’m going to posit this as my main argument. You would see higher character retention if the setting was story affirming instead of story suspicious (as the extremes of uninvested and over invested both are) then the setting would generate novelty for characters to engage with. I know of plenty of people who have kept ‘joke’ characters around because roleplay happened and kept them around because they became invested in the story.


So the question becomes, how do you lift people up and create something in a fantasy setting that is persistent and requires conflict for passion?

I submit my humble thoughts on the thought as my closing remarks.

Conflict does not need to be an absolute win/lose. It can be the journey of investigation, of challenging behavior/activities, of exploring the oppositions of good vs evil, chaos vs law, what counts as people, the ramifications of war, and so on. These are concepts that generate reflection and do not actively shut down the RP right away, but engage with the prompts in a meaningful way. It can be a negotiation, a challenge, that does not need an immediate answer. Consider story first and how this makes a cool story, not how ‘right’ or how to ‘win’. There's no rush to find an answer, and sometimes there really isn't one. Make a story out of that, and write it collaboratively.

Consequences. These are important to the story and often unpleasant, but are also direly necessary It is JUST as bad to be dismissive of consequences or refuse to bend to them. In fact, i would say the aversion to consequence is a very big contributing. factor to why corrective responses are always so radical. If you treat with levity transgressions your pc has made against others and are flippant/unwilling to have a back and forth, of course they are going to go extreme to get a response out of you. The absolute best thing you can do for the server is to be humble, accept the sentence once you’ve been defeated. Consequence is necessary to allow lasting grudges to go to bed so there can be development. this is, to my mind the single biggest thing that under-invested and over-invested do to ruin the setting.

This extends to not just the ‘losers’, but the ‘winners’ who don’t know when to quit. You can't be making unreasonable demands of the other side; you captured an evil warlock, maybe you make them study demons and provide classes on how to fight demons to rehabilitate them. This is constructive. Bashing someone on the hub portal is not (but it is funny). Make people 'want' to lose against you. Show them you're cool and invested in their story and want to give them something novel for their character when they lose/win. Be interested! Be curious! Or at least pretend.

Thank you for reading my essay.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Sundial » Wed Mar 23, 2022 9:34 pm

Aradin wrote:
Wed Mar 23, 2022 3:31 am
But if you treat the setting - and your fellow characters - with a healthy amount of fear and respect, then the conflicts of your story mean that much more. It doesn't mean anything to take down a nobody. But to take down a foe that you fear, who you respect as a genuine threat, who you've built up to be the big bad of your story, then your victory over them - or your fall at their hands - means so, so much more.
When you treat everything besides yourself as inconsequential, then all you've done is stop yourself from being able to achieve anything of consequence. In a world like Arelith you create your own stakes. You have to decide who the big bad guy of your story is. And if you don't treat your big bad as an actual threat, if you don't respect the setting and give the devils and dragons and liches the proper awe they deserve, if you don't respect other players enough to give their stories a chance, then you really just rob yourself of the chance to be part of a cool story.
I think you hit on something really nice that I'd like to circle back to. When you spend energy to celebretize other PC's - make them feel potent or impactful or badass - you heighten your own conflict with them and win out too! Acting with generous intent is a win-win.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Wed Mar 23, 2022 10:25 pm

I never understood high character turnover because it takes about (atleast) 1+ RL month to form those deeper bonds and relationships where you can finally begin to explore character narrative.

It's clearly not enough of a priority anymore. I'd argue that a lot of character-building isn't a reality anymore - I'd be bold enough to say we don't see as many interesting and varied characters as we used to.

Sure, we see more races and ancetries and mechanical expressions - but cool and novel characters feel more a rarity than they used to.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by VibeKings » Thu Mar 24, 2022 3:30 am

To be honest, I think the furor about deleted characters is more pearl-clutching than a genuine problem. For every "here today, gone the next" zero-preservatives character that you see, there were probably just as many back then (proportionally, of course). I think you saw back in the "good old days" pretty much every problem people mention in this thread, only with a fifth of the playerbase at a very generous maximum -- it was, simply put, much easier back then, by any metric except time investment for leveling/gearing; smaller ponds and all.

Including this one. Except those characters here today and gone the next are coupled with swift mechanical progression, rather than simply fading out at level 5 or 10 or whatever, before they have any mechanical agency, i.e. the most crucial form of agency from which all others stem, they get level 30, maybe run a few dungeons and get some gold together. Before they decided this character concept isn't working out, for one reason or another, and just stop playing. They still disappear, but it's harder to notice a level 5 than a level 30.

Is that a fault of the award system? Maybe in part it encourages a sort of "disposability," encouraging abrupt disappearance over a sloping ending, to say nothing of the sort of slot-machine dopamine hit you get out of it. I don't really care for the award system, or the gamut of special races, and I never have. But I'm not crazy enough to think that it's going anywhere. Ironically, you find much more mechanical advantage in keeping a character for months/years, since resources snowball so fast once they get going; that's how people pay the millions and millions of gold for a bid on Darrowdeep castle or what have you. The hardest part of the "process" is being a fresh 30 with subpar or no gear. I should know, because I'm one of those people who sticks around for a month and then -delete_character x2s with quite a lot of frequency.

But conventional storytelling through writing in the text box is more or less as it ever was, if not for one big change: the proliferation of Discord.

I realise that there have always been such programs with similar purposes: Teamspeak, Vent, Xfire, Skype, etc. None of them were ever as prolific as Discord, and it's not even close. Even my friends' children or their young siblings use it to play Minecraft or whatever together -- when I was their age I wasn't nearly as half online or using the aforementioned programs because for the most part I didn't see the point; these two things probably go hand in hand. It's not the way it was then for kids now, even as someone still in his 20s. Things have changed remarkably, and remarkably fast.

Sadly, even as OOC communication is easier than it's ever been, it seems to have had the opposite effect I always imagined it would; to my feelings, the community is more fractured, more tribal, more subject to the delusions of their own various echo chambers, and altogether just more spiteful and absent the healthy kind of levity. Is that, particularly, an Arelith problem? I'm not so certain. I've found much the same sorts of things in the communities of other servers. I think it is simply the way the Internet has developed; the web of 2002 and 2022 are very different beasts, altogether, and I think we forget just how venerable Arelith is and how very distinct our little microcosm is. The "EE boom" was always going to be disruptive, and I think while we knew that very well going in... we still didn't expect to be modernised quite in the way we have been.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by gryggrstrkssontreelover » Fri Mar 25, 2022 11:45 am

As a player who was very active in Skaljard years ago and inbetween Andunor and the Surface now on various characters, I would certainly agree with Marsi's post that the biggest threat to my immersion is the spiritually dead midwit player, which I would then probably go a step further to say form a sizable bulk of the currently playing populace.

It is understandable that some people may have simply no interest in broaching beyond their long-established clique, but it becomes seriously frustrating when these same people attempt to actively stifle roleplay in their surroundings that they disagree with seemingly out of OOC distaste, rather than any IC interaction. I expect that when I play my character and choose to express something that those around me will react appropriately per their character and setting; generally through IC agreement or disagreement. However, often the response I see is that when a character is exposed to roleplay outside of their typical comfort of sitting in the hub making small-talk with their friends that they will either ignore them and pretend they don't exist for the time in which they're around others, or something along the lines of threatening their lives for relatively inconsequential actions; which is sometimes fine and sometimes a clear overreaction. I'll also note that while I've never really experienced it myself, I have noticed some clear-sighted attempts at OOC bullying from players towards factions and individuals they didn't like which seems to rely on spreading a bad reputation OOCly and ICly where they believe they can get away with it. Any such cleaning up of this behaviour primarily relies on people to stop feeding into insular bubbles on discord metaclubs, and start reporting people who are beginning to fester this brand of toxicity onto the server.

I would greatly appreciate if more players would take the opportunity to stop expressing their character purely as an avatar of their real-life person, I have played D&D for years and I appreciate that there will (almost) never be a true divorce of character and person and it isn't expected but I would like to speak to a D&D character when I am playing on a D&D server. I would probably guess this is a result of people not being immersed in the server to begin with, or simply having played on Arelith for so long that they've lost whatever sense of character they may have once held after it's been blurred between their own personality. I am not entirely sure how this separation can be reconciled, I do think a great and much-needed improvement could be made in the updating of the Wiki, it's a bit out-dated I believe for the mechanical side of things, but is still mostly fine on that regard but it really should be able to direct people towards the relevant external D&D lore they may want to digest, and exist as a font of information for any wanting to read up on the internet server and D&D lore. I would imagine there's a substantial number of people whose understanding of NWN relies on the games and a surface level skim reading of the wikis, and some depth opened to them would be great. A basic lexicon would be great too.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Straxus » Fri Mar 25, 2022 2:49 pm

Fact is, the world we play in, cannot be run like a regular table top game. Too many characters, not enough DMs, and when the DM happens to be on, I would guess they get bombarded by questions and complaints, as well as the friendly hellos from players who are around a lot.

The big groups you always see hanging here or there get attention, those soloing don't get much.
It is the nature of the game parameters really.

DMs can't be on and be everywhere, even if they could, could they keep up with all the different stories?

Some people actively engage other players, and some ignore anyone not in their ring of friends.

I found this frustrating when I started here.
I had friends who were all going to start a character here, and after two days, there were three out of the original six.

One played for maybe a month or two, the other started a character in the Underdark. I had no want of starting over, (though I did try to play down there, I just didn't find it as much fun.

When I do run into good RP, it is usually in a dungeon, and not sitting around waiting for the giant group to notice me.... and I try sometimes.

I have two characters I love, who now, I feel can actively engage anyone on the server, either through funny little emotes, or quick conversations about the topic of the day...

The best, is both my characters have seen a vast majority of the Island, and other parts as well, and so, I tend to help newer characters avoid getting themselves into trouble. Sometimes I will help, unless helping them actually hurts their progress .

I have always loved knowing everything I possibly could learn about the FR setting, more so than the actual game rules, and how to run a game.

I feel it helps me really get into my characters, in game knowledge is key to great RP.

As for Tells, they have never bothered me, unless someone is using them to gain IC information.
Then I let them know, that is not how that works.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Eira » Fri Mar 25, 2022 3:42 pm

Just to yeet my two cents, I have found that an obsession with BIG things means a lot of the smaller ones get ignored or die out really quickly. But there are some great roleplayers who never do big events or impact the island as a whole; their strength is in just always having smaller plots, scenes, or rp happening and they never seem to have the issue of lacking things to do or ways to make the world more dynamic. They just are.

Just chatting in the dungeon, exploring somewhere, doing research on some urn fixture found in some underdark ruins, inviting people over for a dinner, going out on picnics, taking someone to the library to browse books and discuss them, whatever... There is a whole world between the extremes of "24/7 crafting", "waiting around settlement center or Hub for something to happen" and "If it's not an event or a DM isn't involved, I'm not interested"

But it feels like a lot of the time, PCs feel like they are reactive only, waiting for someone to bring rp TO them, or as if they believe that "creating rp" is all about events, factions, or raids. It isn't. Creating rp is just as, and I personally feel more valid in a steady stream of little things. Whenever someone says there's nothing to do, I wonder how much they've been trying to make happen as opposed to just waiting for something to happen.

People don't do that. They don't live life waiting for things to happen to them. I have heard so many go "but my PC just has no goals" or "they don't really care about much". Why? Why don't they care? What's stopping you from making them care about things? What's stopping them from having goals? "Well, they achieved their goals." What's stopping them from getting more?

And in that note, I also strongly urge people to, just hear me out, not constantly get involved in things. Hear about a monster on the surface? Let the group of 3 or 4 go after them instead of 20. DM event happening? It's okay to let it pass by you if there are plenty of others already in it. Need to go spy on someone? Maybe recommend/hire/ask someone else to do it! The way to spread the roleplay around and treat the world like it is a world, is to not do everything yourself. Maybe there's a puzzle you can't figure out. That's okay! You don't have to know all the answers. Sure, I get that it's accurate to their personality, but we all know the tabletop person who goes "well it's just what my character would do" after they stabbed the king and got the whole party thrown into prison.

It feels a lot of the time like there is a pressure for PCs to never admit they can't do something or that they never have to rely on anyone else. The obvious one is people always wanting to solo (don't worry, I'm not going to preach about rp builds) even when they play in prime times.

This kind of turned out to be a lot longer than two cents, but it is a deep topic and I could probably spew for several more pages on it.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by 2d6 emotional damage » Sat Mar 26, 2022 12:21 am

Echoing what Straxus has observed, and what I have been trying to more politely express; the people who are most guilty of all this behavior that is actively suffocating atmosphere, tone, and RP potential is the majority of the server. Perhaps the most frustrating take-away of this thread is that our collective realization of these problems will not lead to change. And it isn't because the DMs won't (or can't) step in and it isn't because "it's just how it is".

The reason there will not be change is demonstrated here in this very thread; I have been suggested multiple times now to continue trying to carry on being the 'change I want to see'. In this sort of resignated, if you don't like it, change it yourself. This "bootstraps" mentality does not work, because as we have pointed out, the issue pervades the majority of players, to the point where you need to search to find the "good" role play. Yet I have heard from few people who are willing to seriously challenge themselves and recognize the bad habits they perpetuate in their own conduct in game.

This is not just me being over-invested, and it isn't just that one pale master who refuses to take the loss, or that one settlement that has bad manners. This is, literally, us. All of us are complicit in why the atmosphere is the way it is, especially because the DMs take a back seat to things. And we are eager to push the responsibility of making it better off on someone else because we are not willing to look at what we can start doing ourselves.

As VibeKings observed, character retention has always been something that wanes. I reiterate from my longer essay that the reason people don't stick to their characters is because we, the players at large, do not facilitate a world that is engaging, thought-provoking, or respectful. When players find a good story to engage with, even a joke character that was meant to be thrown away in a week can have its life extended for months, or years. And giving people the "power" to make their own RP does not make for good setting either; we ourselves do not attempt to meaningfully engage with each other in a way that is respectful, uplifting, and attentive of the other people involved.

Now I'm going to get a little spicy here.

As I pointed out earlier, it would take a consistent, frequent, constant effort by multiple members of the community to turn the atmosphere situation around. So, in theory, if the people who recognized the issues brought up here, and apply this criticism to themselves to inform their conduct IC going forward, we could really start to see an improvement.
This looks like consequences that are considerate, both by the winner and the loser. Making it fun to lose, making it fun to play with you because you're attentive and considerate of what that person's about. Being willing to lose, and losing with grace. Knowing when you're beaten. Providing interesting prompts to speculate on (which honestly could and should be something the DMs do.) Be nice, be considerate, try to pretend you're excited or have a feeling beyond exasperated and annoyed IC when something magical happens. Know when to let go, when to let someone else take the spotlight, when to let someone else 'win', to not be offended when someone tricks you IC. Change how you consider opposition, and how willing you are to lose or otherwise cooperate with your fellow player.

This is not a change any one person can facilitate themselves. So, I really invite you to look critically on your own RP and consider what you can start doing differently.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by FallenDabus » Sat Mar 26, 2022 1:17 am

To tag on what 2d6 wrote in the post above, I share the sentiment that it would be very hard to achieve a meaningful change based on player initiative alone.

However, I do think that the atmosphere and tone can be massively improved by offering player characters more agency through mechanics and scripted systems that focus on the representation of "roles" of the Forgotten Realms.

Thayan Enclaves are not abundant and successful because folks enjoy having Red Wizards around. Thayan enclaves provide a discount service of arcane services and affordable magical gear.

The Church of Umberlee does not hold sway in Baldur's Gate because folks enjoy having the faithful of this vindictive goddess about, but because it provides the city an immense benefit as sea trade tends to flourish if ships are not constantly claimed by storms and sea monsters.

I want to avoid being too suggest-y in this thread (as this is not the correct forum for it) but I believe a massive leap forward could be to create a faction system, where a faction can opt into a type (arcane, druidic, temple, thieves, etc.) that is tied into the settlement mechanics. Depending on amount of active characters they could be split into "small", "medium" and "large factions" - that provide an option of varied benefits to a settlement.

A temple faction could require 3, 5, and 7 clerics / favoured soul characters respectively. They need gain X piety through one of their clerics using the ceremony praying mechanic, and are hence encouraged to gather player characters for a religious ceremony every now and again. Casting them into the role of faithful of a church, and making them of value to a settlement.

The core idea being to introduce very roleplay focused mechanics to the late game, and empower player characters to more easily contribute in a thematic, meaningful manner.

I believe this would shift the mentality of the player base considerably and lead to an adoption of much more Forgotten Realms-esque behavior, because suddenly that aspect of the Forgotten Realms is mechanically represented. Sure you can drive the Thayans out but unless you have another arcane faction to replace it, the settlement will lose its neat benefits X and Y. If the Thayan faction re-establishes itself in another settlement, that settlement will then get the bonuses instead.

The lack of something like this is why I think Guldorand has always fallen short of its potential. It has the fluff of a proper FR city, but it does not operate like one mechanically. At least not to the extend it effectively encourages player characters to treat it as one.

The benefits of tackling this with mechanics is you do not really need to ask players to please "respect the lore" and "pretend" that the thayans provide a benefit to Guldorand. They mechanically would.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Skibbles » Sat Mar 26, 2022 4:52 am

I feel like much of this stems from the module's massive population.

I don't know about ya'll but when I first bought nwn 20 years ago I totally super sucked at RP. I couldn't make or even carry a plot or maintain a cohesive character. I was quite young, totally inexperienced with roleplay, and didn't know a damn thing about D&D (I started with Greyhawk.)

Since then I've gotten better, which I'm sure is debatable, but having had many years of practice and experience in NWN-related RP I can state without a doubt that my road was paved with edgy teenage nonsense, poor vocabulary, maybe a DM warning or two, and lack of knowledge in the setting.

Today we have players on Arelith that were born literally after Bioware released vanilla nwn in 2002.

Arelith is perpetually gaining new and inexperienced players, perpetually losing experienced players, and maintaining all that is in between.

More and more I believe Arelith is less of a game and more of a hobby like home carpentry or art. These things can be taught to some degree, but only practice and dedication is going to make someone grow in the craft. Mistakes will be made, probably in abundance, on that path.

Just like a hobby there is no cap on skill, the path of learning is endless, and experience is no guarantee one will not have bad days or regretful contributions to the setting and story.

I can't think of any one solution that will 'fix' the problems enumerated here, as it appears that Arelith has reached a stage where it is suffering from success and continues to attract an audience of folks beginning their journey in the hobby of roleplay.

Essentially: be the change we want to see is the only solution I can think of besides doing something radical like an age barrier which carries its own concerns. For each player slowly learning and developing their skills we'll gain another that just started.

Otherwise I agree that the malignant rise of Discord and social media culture threaten Arelith in ways I very much doubt we can meaningfully fight. The unironic request for pvp voice chat in the official discord probably being an example of potentially terminal decline.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by TurningLeaf » Sat Mar 26, 2022 2:10 pm

^ nice post but the end feels like a bit of relocated cheese angst. Who knows maybe you will find yourself LARPing online with a fantasy voice mod someday!

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by gryggrstrkssontreelover » Sun Mar 27, 2022 10:36 am

Skibbles wrote:
Sat Mar 26, 2022 4:52 am
I feel like much of this stems from the module's massive population. I don't know about ya'll but when I first bought nwn 20 years ago I totally super sucked at RP. I couldn't make or even carry a plot or maintain a cohesive character. I was quite young, totally inexperienced with roleplay, and didn't know a damn thing about D&D (I started with Greyhawk.)
I can agree that new players will often lack the ability to coherently roleplay with others around them, there's always a learning curve to actually getting invested in the environment, but I disagree that they're a primary cause of a stagnant environment. Rather, new players are necessary to breathe new life into the server, they have no OOC grudges to speak of and haven't been 'corrupted' if you would by any external influences yet. The majority of newcomers I've encountered (who don't just turn out to be PVP griefers lol) are very happy to attempt to roleplay better and with others around them. However, those who need help with their roleplaying I don't believe are given the guidance they need.For these new players to properly get into a roleplaying environment there needs to be a strong server culture and guiding players who can contribute to this which I don't think really exists right now. As an example, a friend of mine played with a pretty new player recently who was mixing IC and OOC as his character spoke. My friend sent him a tell and said people will frown on saying OOC things like 'levelling rn 1 sec' and he should try to be a little bit more in-character about it and then the guy says something along the lines of, 'Ah, a moment, I've made a revelation. A spell I was stuck comprehending has suddenly become a lot more clear to me'. Obviously a huge improvement, and I'm not convinced that most people bother to spend the energy to do this. As far as I've seen, most people can't really be bothered investing themselves in others around them.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Snake2512 » Sun Mar 27, 2022 1:49 pm

The sad reality is the absolute height of satisfying Arelith RP will always be low level writ dungeons with people you've never met before.

Keep your Skaljard bros close........

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by TavernRoleplayer » Sun Mar 27, 2022 4:40 pm

People not taking, what is lore wise, serious.

Travelling to *ahem* literal HELL, Abyss or even the Underdark should not and should never be a joke.

That's a small gripe I have and I will admit I have fallen down to complacency and comfortableness that I ignore the problems. Reading this thread made me realize how many people actually care for the atmosphere of the server and tone is revitalizing to me and will look to improve on myself.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Arigard » Sun Mar 27, 2022 5:19 pm

FallenDabus wrote:
Sat Mar 26, 2022 1:17 am
The benefits of tackling this with mechanics is you do not really need to ask players to please "respect the lore" and "pretend" that the thayans provide a benefit to Guldorand. They mechanically would.
This is a very valid and well observed point.

Part of the issue with roleplay is that it's often expected there is a level of "suspension of disbelief" even when playing a character. It's impossible for the world to actually be a true world. There simply are not the working parts required to represent something akin to a true DnD game where the DM is constantly filling in the holes of where the party want to go and what they wish to do.

However, where these systems can be well thought up and integrated, they almost always (unless they are just an unecessary grind) have a positive effect on the vibe/feel of immersion. In the early days of NWN, we had a lot of players who had a very heavy DnD background, who could substitute the lack of features using imagination, but I think more and more players expect almost a WYSIWYG feedback from games.

But even 15-20 years ago, it was still not perfect. Take languages for example. I've played on worlds where people had to 'pretend' they were speaking in Elven/Gnome etc way back in the early days of NWN. People metagamed the information all the time, even for things their character shouldn't understand, or reacted to things differently because they'd seen it typed out. Personally i'd say it's almost impossible to regionalize information in your brain to a point it does not impact your choices in some way. No mattter how good you think you are as a role player, the fact you have seen a piece of information that your character shouldn't know, will influence your decisions in some way. It's like solving a puzzle where you know (and by definition, your character knows) the final solution. It -is- going to change the way you approach solving it. So systems like language etc aid with this exact problem and the side effect? The world feels more like a world.

Now, the good thing, for newer players, is that as long as they approach these systems like new adventurers, they don't have to be clued up on the lore, or the systems in question. They can simply find these things out through their character as they go. If they're RPing an aspiring crafter and they don't know how crafting works.. then they are solving two problems at the same time, because their questions as a player, will be the exact same as their questions as a character will be.

I think, the issue with a lot of characters is that even really new players tend to jump to the grandiose "Hero of the world" angle the moment they make a character, which is somewhat ingrained in all of popular culture at this point in time, so I get it. Instead I think we as a community should really be giving advice to newer players, or even those that dislike certain aspects of danger within the world, to pick characters they feel comfortable with, rather than trying to change the world to fit their expectations.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing:

-A simple bartender, if what you like is to social RP and hanging around talking to people over the bar/campfire.
-A complete novice to the lands who knows nothing and needs to learn their way, if you are new to Arelith.
-A pacifist, who dislikes conflict and escapes at the first oppurtunity the moment any kind of hostility arises, if you do not particularly enjoy PvP.
-A trainee warrior/mage etc, who is looking to others to aid his training and development, if you have zero ideas about how to build a character.

The trick is to find the character that matches with a) What your experience level is and b) what your expectations are from playing Arelith. There are places for all kinds of characters and players in Arelith, if it is understood that when you pick a character you are making a choice about the kind of interaction you want from the world. I think a big issue is that often, players want everything. They want everyone in the world to bend to their expectations, without having to make any compromises about the kinds of characters they wish to play. It's a complete contradiction to be trying to play a character that is going to cause a lot of potential hostility and push conflict within the world (Necromancers, would be a good example) and to then get upset OOC that conflict/hostility is occuring. It's part of the choice you have made as a player. That's not to say there aren't poor taste ways for that conflict to happen, but simply understanding that there are levels of RP "Risk" you are entering - by picking certain personality types/backgrounds etc is a conversation I don't think is broadcast enough.

I think alongside more layers of mechanical systems to help aid with the functional part of the world (and to ground characters in the world at large) this idea of communicating player responsibility about choices they make for their characters is one of the things that really needs to be communicated to a greater extent to help with some of the issues that have been outlined in this thread.

The issue with players not taking certain monsters/lore creatures seriously, is as much a mechanical issue as it is a RP one. Should characters be in awe? I suppose, by the lore, yes. But, they are actually doing these things mechanically in game. So the solution, rather than to pretend is to -actually make these monsters formidable- mechanically.

Make Abazuur a young Dragon/or take dragons out of dungeons entirely. At least rebalance the older Dragons/take them out of the server and make them only appear in large DM events. Change EDK so we're not literally summoning dragons etc. Change some creatures of the hells so they are not the actual "big boy" demons etc and make those ares right on the outskirts and then when the proper dragons/demons/devils start to show up, make it so they make even our level 30 chars feel like childs play. Until the server actually mechanically matches expectation, there will always be a disconnect like this. The solution is not to play pretend, but actually mechanically enforce it.

If level 30 on Arelith is not supposed to feel like level 30 in DnD, then the rest of the world needs to scale to match what it is supposed to be.
Last edited by Arigard on Sun Mar 27, 2022 5:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sun Mar 27, 2022 5:20 pm

Amateur Hour wrote:
Wed Mar 23, 2022 12:44 am
2d6 emotional damage wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:24 pm
Amateur Hour wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 10:24 pm


I'll bite, then.

A lot of people on Arelith do fight ancient dragons literally daily. How should they present their activities? Should they just...never do it again after they've done it once, and count their lucky stars that they survived? Or should they simply lie or never ever talk about what they do on a daily basis?
Curve hits the nail on the head. You just have a little class. I can't think of why you would boast or talk about killing dragons in a casual conversation.
Am I seriously the only person who asks or is asked "How was your day, did you do anything interesting?" in character? When every day the honest answer is "It was a good day; we killed a dragon. How was yours?" you get into a trap: either you have to downplay the Grand Dramatic Feats you performed (which isn't preserving the atmosphere where the feat is supposed to be big and important), or you play it up every time to make it sound like a Grand Dramatic Feat, which makes it not feel like one because you're doing it daily.
2d6 emotional damage wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:24 pm
Even if you like weight lifting, you don't treat lifting carelessly. There's always spotters, safety equipment, and (at least the mature) are conscious of the risk of very severe injury. This is the same for mountain climbing or any kind of sport that puts you in danger.
That's true, but if you're a habitual weightlifter and your friend asks how your day was, you're going to mention that you went to the gym.
I wanted to highlight this sentiment, and point out that, yes, you've slain a dozen (or hundreds!) of dragons while playing your character- but this is an aspect of MMO mentality that bleeds into IC, IMO, erroneously, on persistent world servers.

Your character has killed hundreds of dragons due to the video game magic of "respawns." Things respawn so that the hundreds of characters behind you some day also get a chance at the challenge of a dragon.

A weightlifter doesn't have to wait 500 years when he breaks the dumbell for a new one to grow. The sentiment that your character has, in fact, slain hundreds of dragons, is one that you understandably could enjoy role-playing, because most of us want our characters to be successful dragon hunters, not something a dragon dips in ketchup.

But, it's extremely disruptive to the setting, and I'd argue there's a certain merit in not acknowledging that you've slain/beaten a specific spawn more than once - in the same way that we're not doing the setting any favors when we say 'just hurry up and kill me, but I'll be back tomorrow.'

You've met Abazurr in battle- and you can tell an epic tale about it IC! That's awesome, revel in it. But a light touch here is the order of the day- after all, how impressive is your engagement with Abby, if you and everyone else has done it a hundred times? You as a player may have done it hundreds of times, but how much sense does it make that the character has, and why draw attention to that aspect of the narrative?

Edit: All instances of 'you' are Royal, not individual.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by MischeviousMeerkat » Sun Mar 27, 2022 8:28 pm

This is almost always a development problem.

If you want people to take hell seriously, you make hell an actually dangerous place.

You want me to take dragons seriously? Then actually make them dangerous and not something I farm dragon oil for.

We don't treat other players with fear if we know they're bad at PvP or lower level than us, so why is this any different?

Bear in mind though that the dungeons are a myriad of different developers with different levels of understanding of mechanics. A lot of the areas are cool and dragons are cool, but mechanics informs our role-play more than the wiki does or any amount of R.A. Salvatore books do. We make frequent compromises to lore in the name of mechanics and Arelith is hardly 1:1 to the fluff.

edit: It's also to get really lost in the weeds but a lot of the stuff is really old and we definitely are facing power creep.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Sun Mar 27, 2022 9:12 pm

MischeviousMeerkat wrote:
Sun Mar 27, 2022 8:28 pm
This is almost always a development problem.

If you want people to take hell seriously, you make hell an actually dangerous place.

You want me to take dragons seriously? Then actually make them dangerous and not something I farm dragon oil for.

We don't treat other players with fear if we know they're bad at PvP or lower level than us, so why is this any different?

Bear in mind though that the dungeons are a myriad of different developers with different levels of understanding of mechanics. A lot of the areas are cool and dragons are cool, but mechanics informs our role-play more than the wiki does or any amount of R.A. Salvatore books do. We make frequent compromises to lore in the name of mechanics and Arelith is hardly 1:1 to the fluff.

edit: It's also to get really lost in the weeds but a lot of the stuff is really old and we definitely are facing power creep.
I disagree that this is a development problem, and rebut with my theory that it's a player perspective problem.

Arelith is not an MMO. It is an RP-focused world with an emphasis on the setting of Forgotten Realms. Dragons are scary, and as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, just because killing a dragon only entails a few clicks for you as a player, doesn't mean the character doesn't have room to still RP it as having been incredibly difficult - yeah, your character swings 5/round at +55/+55/+50/+45/+40, but how many times can YOU swing a scythe accurately in six seconds? I'd argue that's a channeled burst of super-human adrenaline against a 100 foot dragon.

If this were a development problem, the solution would be to give Abby 150 AC, +100 AB, 100,000 HP, and 55 to all stats across the board, and the first time she died, she would never respawn again, nor would any of the lesser dragons you killed to get to her. But that would suck for everyone else who didn't get to fight against her, and deprive people of a challenging dungeon that they can use to gain XP. Which would be fine if you had one DM for every three to five players that could constantly populate the world with unique spawns; but that's not Arelith.

I would encourage people not to think of their character as having slain five million of any kind of monster that would otherwise be much rarer and frightening in a world where respawns weren't a necessary part of design. (Except for maybe goblins, kobolds, and orcs, because they breed like cockroaches.)

Finally, referencing the weight-lifting analogy from earlier- just because you know you can bench press 250 lbs, and you do it every time you go to the gym, doesn't necessarily make it 'easy.' It's a bit of a leap to get from that mentality to killing monsters, but I feel like if everyone kept this in mind you'd get a lot less of these immersion-breaking moments we've been talking about.

Edit: It's also worth noting that respawning monsters can never change, because XP awards on Arelith do not come close to matching XP awards of a typical pulpy table-top session. In an entire dungeon run on Arelith it's not out of the realm of possibility you might only get the same amount of XP as you'd get for a single encounter in tabletop- or frequently significantly less than. Food for thought.
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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by Hazard » Sun Mar 27, 2022 9:19 pm

I don't see it as a development problem. I see it as a culture problem. Some people are happy to do enough roleplay to count as 'in-character', others want to be totally and utterly immersed and an infinite amount of things inbetween those two. Neither are 'wrong', obviously. I don't expect everyone to want to cry while playing video games just because I do, but I don't think it's healthy for a server to have too much of any one type of roleplayer than another. I just feel (and it's only my personal opinion) that Arelith gradually tends to shift towards being more accessible and therefor having a more casual-lite-roleplay server culture, and we might have gone in that direction a little too much, to the point where it can be difficult to even find that immersive deep RP when you want it, outside of your already pre-established roleplay friends.

Personally, I know that when I find someone willing to get into it deep with me, I am genuinely surprised and very happy and will keep trying to roleplay with that person.

Just to reiterate there's nothing wrong with taking things less seriously too. Some of my characters can get pretty silly when alone with friends for a little too long. If it's with a bunch of people I know are into that sort of thing for small increments, then I see that as fine, it's not being forced on other people.

It can be a lot of fun to take the setting seriously. I still manage to find a way even on characters that have been around forever. Don't stagnate and get bored, because bored people become boring people.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by 2d6 emotional damage » Sun Mar 27, 2022 9:32 pm

I'm going to say it.

People looking to push off responsibility for improving the IC atmosphere on Devs is an example of what I was talking about. We are always eager for 'someone else' to step up and be the change, or for someone else to step in and make changes to problems we see and all acknowledge are issues. It is incredibly difficult to be honest with your self-criticism, so I understand the aversion to it. However, I retain that reflection on your own conduct and how you can rediscover the magic in yourself is how you can best help server atmosphere.

Though I concede, FallenDabus has some excellent ideas. It would definitely help if the server had more built in systems that facilitated RP and made it harder to be dismissive of player efforts as they have some kind of tangible value. Though this is incredibly hard to codify and would require a lot of brain storming and puzzling to invent systems that allowed for dynamic play and treat dispensement to reward participation.This leads me to a more minor observation that Arelith's development has been very focused on mechanical aspects; new classes, new spells, new adventure systems (ships), balance changes, and so on. There have been very few additions that focus on the RP element; i.e in line with the suggestions FallenDabus was throwing around.

People like to touch and play with new things when they come out (for better or worse, as some have argued). So I won't say it's out of hand to look for development changes that could be done to help improve the atmosphere. If a new system were put in place (I like the idea of a dynamic faction system that gets writs made by the government leaders to go fulfill, like the ship system right now) I am certain it would see a ton of use as players went to go check it out.

Codifying these things is obviously the most efficient way to fix these problems, but they are very difficult to design, and further, push personal responsibility off the player. Unless you're on the dev team and you're making these systems reality, the best way to help the atmosphere is to start fostering that mentality yourself in game.

addendum,
and codifying things is not a catch all solution either. if the players have a flippant or uninterested attitude about Role Playing (literal participation in the Fantasy World) then it doesn't matter how robust your systems are. people are going to find ways around taking it seriously.
i admit a sort of irritated confusion in hearing some feedback from people finding it difficult to take adventure/fantasy seriously. the assignment is literally to create a character and speculate on what their story would be inside of this fictional setting . that is why "would" pervades a lot of the language in RP styles because you are saying what your character 'would' do in this hypothetical pretend situation. playing pretend is sort of a critical corner stone for this whole persistent role play world to work.
Last edited by 2d6 emotional damage on Sun Mar 27, 2022 9:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by MischeviousMeerkat » Sun Mar 27, 2022 9:41 pm

I'm shifting the blame to development because it just seems to be the case. If it weren't for everything put in place and were made utterly non-negotiable then we'd have a different server than we do: Outcasts are evil, show up on the surface, and do everything but elections on the surface. Pirates are evil and rarely allowed anywhere but Guldorand and that's only through perpetual reinforcement from mechanics/DM intervention. Radiant Heart is good and you know they're always on a certain side.

On the inverse, you will never see a Halfling taking up space in the UD unless they had an outcast label somehow. This doesn't matter whether or not that Halfling in particular is shunted off from every city and hunted down by would-be heroes, they're still "surfacers" by all metrics.

Warlocks are always evil and willingly pacted. Palemasters are always evil/neutral and willingly undergone the pale arts.

Our mechanics dictate our role-play and it seems to be the ultimate point of reference anything stems from. The Thayans are never loved and will never gain traction unless it affects someone's bottom line, somehow, some way, and good aligned-players are just as good votes, crafters, and everything else than the obviously evil, slaving, bald red magi.

It's honestly a wonder they aren't swept up in Andunor like everyone else.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by 2d6 emotional damage » Sun Mar 27, 2022 9:58 pm

Re Mischevious:

The issues you've outlined are part of the issues I'm talking about. The people who enforce the binaries of good and evil being separate are the players, not so much the DMs, who we have accepted are largely absent.

These extreme binaries of Good and Evil are part of the problem that are perpetuated by players. Evil people can totally co-exist with Good people, because morality is really complex. You can have someone who is Evil who is Evil because they are totally willing to glass a town if it means saving the people they're responsible for. Or someone who is Good but is a total jerk wad because being Good requires being selfless and non-personal motivation. Or a slew of other reasons because Good/Evil is an extremely nebulous topic that no one can agree on in any consistent fashion (due to a confusion on source books, a muddling of interpretation, a lack of clarity by DMs, and the general problematic nature of Cosmic Good and Cosmic Evil).

You're not supposed to be getting run out of anywhere because of the morality on your character sheet-- Bad Guys don't get run out of Celestia despite being Evil, and Good Guys don't get jumped on when entering Dis. Consequences and RP are supposed to occur from your In Character decisions and behavior, and being challenged on being a pale master or a warlock is typically also discovered by in character RP. I.E, being forced to take ownership of being a pale master or a warlock is intended so you actually engage with your class and its implications in our pretend world. these are all atmosphere/RP dynamics that the players themselves create.

So, someone being 'evil' does not mean you can't RP with them. Having 'evil' on your character sheet should not be informing any decisions made by anyone else. They should be looking at the RP, finding the nuance, and exploring what that means to that character on a case by case basis. These binaries are an example of why codifying things can be counter-productive, because people get lazy. Instead of trying to engage with each other, we rely on mechanisms to tell us how to respond.

The charter is in Guldorand allowing pirates to come through town PRECISELY for the reasons you have described. It is precisely to help alleviate the radical responses to 'conflict cues' and try to encourage people to just chill out and be nice to each other. But even now we see that it doesn't always work out and we still have a lot of people who don't really 'get it' and fall back to "Well the Charter says this" instead of saying "Let's give this guy a chance to RP with us and show us what he's about."

edit:
i was very passionate. I'll summarize;
the radical reactions to Good and Evil that Meerkat has observed are perpetuated by the playerbase and are not otherwise enabled by the mechanical functions. Being 'Good' does not give you any mechanical recognition, nor does being 'Evil'. Even the script that prevented 'evil' from entering the Myon Mythal was removed. Good and Evil are concepts that exist in the player's domain of atmosphere and tone, not the Mechanical functionality.

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Re: atmosphere and tone

Post by MischeviousMeerkat » Sun Mar 27, 2022 10:26 pm

I probably came off a bit too cynical as well and I think there are things I could do to be better. I hardly RP a red dragon casually and I'm honestly not sure if I would want a 100% lore accurate hell dungeon because the deep wells is mechanically terrifying and that's not particularly fun to go down either. Even that said, I can do better as a role-player in certain aspects.

I think we're so heavy-handed with scripts for similar reasons as well. It's easier to code a solution instead of policing other players.

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