settlements gone wild

[Bunny]

In the old tomes, there was a cartoon of adventurers roleplaying as accountants and lawyers. I understand the humor but I've noticed that these settlement roles have become somewhat exactly that. Why are we allowing players to levy fines and threats to other players where they can use the settlement mechanics to dampen another's game experience? Aren't these mechanics already engaging the player to be active and perceived abuses reportable? I have also noted not every settlement is designed equally. You have to be a pirate for a room or store in Sencliff but that isn't a settlement that I can see. Andunor is divided into neighborhoods but no one settlement controls the whole area yet Cordor is one settlement and everything is under the purview of a few? Is Burrowhome racial or is that player enforced? where as Myon is racially segregated. I would think the main city would have a lot more free space and the settlement would be a subdivision or there would be multiple ones as in the underdark.

all in all I think there needs to be a DM review of settlement usage and a technical review of each ones functionality. I expect there is a lot of room for improvement.

[AstralUniverse]

The mechanics were placed to facilitate something that resembles economy. Everything else from that point is player driven. You may not like how a settlement looks like at one point but if you come back few months later you can encounter a whole different environment.

As for Cordor needing to be divided to districts. It was simply not designed that way from how I see it. Its a city of effectively 2 large screens. Separating them to two different governments would be quite awkward.

[Bunny]

The mechanics were placed to facilitate something that resembles economy. Everything else from that point is player driven. You may not like how a settlement looks like at one point but if you come back few months later you can encounter a whole different environment.

As for Cordor needing to be divided to districts. It was simply not designed that way from how I see it. Its a city of effectively 2 large screens. Separating them to two different governments would be quite awkward.

If economy was the goal then as in Sencliff, you should be a member of the settlement to use the infrastructure. If every settlement gets 10 shops, then its easy to define their sphere of control. Cordor has much more than 2 large screens given the arena, surrounding country, and numerous interiors. Looking at how Cordor is on the shadow plane, a redesign isn't unheard of.

[AstralUniverse]

Cordor used to BE what is now shadow Cordor. Cordor was redesigned to what it is now after it was identical to shadow cordor since.... the start, I think.

[Nevrus]

The purpose of the settlement system is to facilitate roleplay and help reinforce the setting.

DMs can't be everywhere. DMs can't enforce every single law. Low-level guard work is one of the worst ways for DMs to spend their time.

Without the settlement system, and its ability to issue exiles and take back properties, the only enforcement mechanism would be systematic PVP. It would not be very fun to get killbashed every time you log in to keep you out of a certain town. It would also not be fun for, say, murderers to go around killing people in the middle of town with no mechanism by which they could be effectively removed from town.

It's also important for setting consistency. Some things are not welcome in good society: Evil gods, fiends, necromancy, murder, etc. If you want to walk around with a devil at your side, there's Sibayad, Sencliff, and the Underdark.

If you're really interested in a place without settlement mechanics, Skal is that. It's a wild west of almost no enforcement of anything. You can't get exiled, you CAN get murdered in the middle of town, and it's entirely up to the characters to manage it.

[Bunny]

The purpose of the settlement system is to facilitate roleplay and help reinforce the setting.

DMs can't be everywhere. DMs can't enforce every single law. Low-level guard work is one of the worst ways for DMs to spend their time.

Without the settlement system, and its ability to issue exiles and take back properties, the only enforcement mechanism would be systematic PVP. It would not be very fun to get killbashed every time you log in to keep you out of a certain town. It would also not be fun for, say, murderers to go around killing people in the middle of town with no mechanism by which they could be effectively removed from town.

It's also important for setting consistency. Some things are not welcome in good society: Evil gods, fiends, necromancy, murder, etc. If you want to walk around with a devil at your side, there's Sibayad, Sencliff, and the Underdark.

If you're really interested in a place without settlement mechanics, Skal is that. It's a wild west of almost no enforcement of anything. You can't get exiled, you CAN get murdered in the middle of town, and it's entirely up to the characters to manage it.

everything is to facilitate role play. reinforcing the setting is debatable.

Not sure what you are speaking too here but my DM comment was not based on implied omniscience. I think the whole system needs to be reviewed not every interaction.

I can be killed anywhere if another player decides they want to try that. I am speaking more to a very specific mechanic put in a players hands where they can affect another players experience. Many of these mechanics require DM intervention or mutual consent. I was threatened in a shakedown for coins. Pay our "fine" or face the consequences . . . Not really an appropriate setting or rp experience given the goal is everyone having fun.

If the store I use was under a settlement membership requirement, I would have to go to a centralized location to join the settlement to use the store. I could easily be exposed to the settlements rules and culture. I would be making an agreement to abide by the roleplaying situations that arise. Currently in Cordor, none of that exists. I never in fact had to see the message board with the out of date posting I was referred to as justification for the demands of the other character. The RP was lacking.

Setting consistency is debatable. I cant walk down a street holding a rusty dagger out without someone confronting me but anyone can pass by with a staff of power on their shoulder. Mine wont cut bread and theirs will blow a hole in the city into another plane given they save. Cordor has a horrible reputation to me as a drama fest. Being told I owe them coins cause I'm selling a piece of random loot they deem improper feeds that impression. There was no real rp or engagement rather it was curt one finger pointing to a random message board and the other hand waving for my payment. Now I thought about telling them off. My character started in Skal and believes in freedom. But as a player, I know mechanically I can suddenly be deigned my store and my storage and a lot of npc accesses by just adding my name to their list and I'm not even a citizen of their settlement.

Given the current messages in Cordor, one has to wonder what the next set of rulers will do or be like give the mechanics at their control.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

As for Sencliff, if you really wanted to make use od their shops without being a pirate, just contact shop owner in game and arrange to be a supplier. Honestly Sencliff doesnt have a lot of buyers and a third party merchant rp is a real oppurtunity Sencliff situation creates.

I think it's great all settlements arnt eqaul.

Also you can't get exiled from Sencliff, and we are more than happy to have outsiders come and trade.

[Bunny]

As for Sencliff, if you really wanted to make use od their shops without being a pirate, just contact shop owner in game and arrange to be a supplier. Honestly Sencliff doesnt have a lot of buyers and a third party merchant rp is a real oppurtunity Sencliff situation creates.

I think it's great all settlements arnt eqaul.

Also you can't get exiled from Sencliff, and we are more than happy to have outsiders come and trade.

I know, Sencliff has all the mechanics of a settlement without the settlement given the pirate ranks. But honestly, every settlement should have a similar mechanic in that you cannot use the store or storage without joining. Sencliff needs the other benefits of a settlement so that you can ensure its enemies have to go the same lengths to enter the town and shop or interact.

Ill consider hanging out more often. I travel the world over and every time I pass through Sencliff there is sometimes one other soul.

[TheRagingGoblin]

It sounds as if something completely IC occurred, and you don't agree with it because your character was negatively affected (your PC experienced loss). It could be completely kosher, but inept or corrupt settlement officials also exist, and the system involved doesn’t aim to 'dampen another's game experience'.

If you believe motives were OOC in nature you should report the incident. If you believe the other person's RP could be improved have you considered providing polite and constructive feedback?

I'm going to go off on a tangent now but Arelith has a community of players, these players being people, and we're able to develop quality OOC relationships with other players, working with them on improving their roleplay, our own roleplay and creating meaningful, interesting and enjoyable experiences. I'm certainly not saying this is a requirement as some of us prefer avoiding OOC communication, but it beats the other end of the stick in assuming the worst and being unproductive in our dealings with other players.

On Cordor. Cordor unlike Sencliff is an ordered society and unlike Andunor, Cordor has centralised leadership, therefore Cordor as a settlement and its mechanics would be different.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

As for Sencliff, if you really wanted to make use od their shops without being a pirate, just contact shop owner in game and arrange to be a supplier. Honestly Sencliff doesnt have a lot of buyers and a third party merchant rp is a real oppurtunity Sencliff situation creates.

I think it's great all settlements arnt eqaul.

Also you can't get exiled from Sencliff, and we are more than happy to have outsiders come and trade.

I know, Sencliff has all the mechanics of a settlement without the settlement given the pirate ranks. But honestly, every settlement should have a similar mechanic in that you cannot use the store or storage without joining. Sencliff needs the other benefits of a settlement so that you can ensure its enemies have to go the same lengths to enter the town and shop or interact.

Ill consider hanging out more often. I travel the world over and every time I pass through Sencliff there is sometimes one other soul.

Sencliff has none of the mechanics of a settlement.

It has no citizenship storage because it has no citizenship to begin with, which is why shops have no taxes, no way of exiling people, nor any resource upkeep for leaders to manage.

That is why many of it's features are ink privilege only, because you pay the price in being branded as "one of them". If non branded could stroll in and take shops and qaurters, it would really suck as a pirate and make taking the ink kind of pointless. Fun fact, you can still participate in Sencliff without ink. Like you can be part of a faction that owns property/shop(s) there and thus have a home and participate in economy. Its just harder for outsiders to get in. Oh i think the guild hall has qaurters inside it that do not require being a pirate, but owning the hall itself does.

Adundor also has different district governments for not only rp differences, but significant mechanical needs of underdark. Underdark has no other city. When it did have more than one city, they all had single governments as well.

It takes considerable resources to do things like exile a character, and people don't do it without good reason. Furthermore, if one never had to worry about crossing the wrong people, then there would be a lack of sense of real consequences for one's choices/actions. The ability for one to get politically coerced actaully adds agency to players on the short end of the stick because it means their actions actaully have consequences which means their choices have power.

[Jagel]

I’m pretty certain that settlement mechanics etc are not meant to be used to enforce rules or other OOC issues.

[monkeywithstick]

I’m pretty certain that settlement mechanics etc are not meant to be used to enforce rules or other OOC issues.

They are not.

There is also no ooc authority to extract a fine. The consequences for not paying a fine are entirely IC. The only thing the settlement system adds to this is that rather than "if you don't give me money I will killbash you", a settlement official may also exile or evict from a property or shop if you don't pay.

[The GrumpyCat]

If you have a problem with a specific rules situation, it's best not to mention it on the forums, but rather to report it to the Dms for review. Though given what I know of the situation, no rules were broken.

One thing that people need to understand about evictions, is that bar the fact there should be some rp, there is no real onus to be 'nice' or 'fair' or 'reasonable.' Indeed if treated well, good roleplay can be made from just the opposite.

In my eyes, 'Oye you! You're from Skal arn't you? We don't want no filthy skal barbarians owning shops in our town! Consider yourself evicted. Grab your stuf and go!' is also a perfectly valid use of the settlment mechanic. It creates roleplay, argument, dissention and so on. It makes story.

“Why are we allowing players to levy fines and threats to other players where they can use the settlement mechanics to dampen another's game experience? “

Why does this dampen another gamers experience? Bad things happen to good adventurers, and the best thing to do is turn lemons into lemonaid.

If the store I use was under a settlement membership requirement, I would have to go to a centralized location to join the settlement to use the store. I could easily be exposed to the settlements rules and culture. I would be making an agreement to abide by the roleplaying situations that arise. Currently in Cordor, none of that exists. I never in fact had to see the message board with the out of date posting I was referred to as justification for the demands of the other character. The RP was lacking.

Setting consistency is debatable. I cant walk down a street holding a rusty dagger out without someone confronting me but anyone can pass by with a staff of power on their shoulder. Mine wont cut bread and theirs will blow a hole in the city into another plane given they save. Cordor has a horrible reputation to me as a drama fest. Being told I owe them coins cause I'm selling a piece of random loot they deem improper feeds that impression. There was no real rp or engagement rather it was curt one finger pointing to a random message board and the other hand waving for my payment. Now I thought about telling them off. My character started in Skal and believes in freedom. But as a player, I know mechanically I can suddenly be deigned my store and my storage and a lot of npc accesses by just adding my name to their list and I'm not even a citizen of their settlement.

So what do you do when this bad t hing happens?

*Complain to the government that the laws are not obvious enough
*Campain that whatever this 'random loot' was should, in fact, be allowed.
*Go back to Skal, gather a possy and charge to Cordor to try and become Chancellor in next election!
*Vow vengence upon the government and start an underground revolution movement!
*Hire assassins to kill the person who fined you
*Hire assassins to kill the chancellor
*Vow to make a new political movement where there is no chancellor and just an anarchy
*Move shop to Guldorand
*Move shop to a neutral space
*Run away and become a piraite
*Commit such terrible acts of vengence upon cordor that you are named Outcast and have to live in Andunor
*Talk about why the item was deemed innapropriate, change your ways, become a warrior of The Light (or of The Dark, or of Anti-Gonnes, or whatever)
*Shrug and move on.

Here's juat a few ideas of how you can take that roleplay situation, run with it, and do interesting and fun things with your character. Some of these are likely doomed to failure, mark you, but it could be fun to try and make a nice chracter arc.

Good roleplay experiences don't just come from good things happening to your character. Indeed I find just the opposite. If you come to appreciate good rp from the bad things too, to rising against adversary, to melding yourself with the setting - then you'll have a lot more fun in the long run.

[Ork]

I think I want to just reinforce what Grumpycat's said: the onus of making bad things great experiences is all on you - the player. You can turn and twist a bad event to be a productive one by roleplaying the hell out of it. Items, gold, wealth, status - these things are always in flux, and truthfully aren't the heart of what makes Arelith powerful. Bad things happen to everyone, a great roleplayer uses everything that happens to their characters to enrich their own and others' stories.

[Bunny]

If you have a problem with a specific rules situation, it's best not to mention it on the forums, but rather to report it to the Dms for review. Though given what I know of the situation, no rules were broken.

as stated, my problem is with settlement mechanics. I know how to report an in game transgression and I know how to plot and role play. I wasn't giving feedback on either.

Settlements are not consistent nor equal. They give too much unregulated power to individual players given the rules. The exile mechanic dampens another's gaming experience given there is no admin or dm regulation nor player to player consent. In my example, the threat of exile mechanic was used to solicit coins. My point is it would be a better system if I opted into that situation rather then being subjected to it given the rules. Sencliff is a great example of an opting in system. Settlements already have the ground work in that you buy in and participate. Having the stores and residences within a settlement require you to be a citizen would establish the opting in. A blanket exile from Cordor is terribly imbalanced to all other settlements. As it reads, I would be denied access to a ton of infrastructure and game play where that is not true in other settlements but they all have various issues with this mechanic. My guess is the wiki needs to be updated.

[Nitro]

Why should there be consent? There's no need for any consent before PvP after all. In fact, settlement Exile and Pariah systems are a good example of a non-combat conflict system that actually inflicts consequence. Someone pisses off pirates in sencliff? The only consequence they can face there is repeated trips to the fugue, which on Arelith is a mild inconvenience at worst. Whereas in a settlement, pissing off the government can land you on the no-fly list and inconvenience you mightily in a way that you can't just ignore.

So in short, I think it's great that we have these systems. Don't want to get exiled, play ball with the ones that have the power to exile. Don't like how they're using their powers to exile? Get more people mad about it and oust them in the next election. Can't get more people mad about it? Respect the hustle and concede defeat in this conflict.

[Nevrus]

Trying to get unexiled is gameplay too

This is a roleplaying server. Convenience of gameplay takes a back seat to immersion and player agency.

Your opinion that you were shaken down for coins is a valid IC opinion to play off of but not a valid OOC consideration. The characters in the settlement who convinced other characters in the settlement to vote for them made a rule and the guards, which are characters appointed by other characters, did the thing that guards do and enforced the rule that the characters made.

That is the concession of role-playing, and living it as what is real, being inside the 'magic circle' if you will, is much more fun than trying to arbitrate it for your own mechanical victory.

Look through my post history for my "You will lose" post if you'd like philosophy for how to make the most of it.

I hope you continue to enjoy the server to its fullest!

[The GrumpyCat]

My point is it would be a better system if I opted into that situation rather then being subjected to it given the rules.

With all due respect, you did opt into the system. You opted in when you bought a shop in Cordor. You could have gone 'Oh, Cordor's a little chaotic when it comes to rulership, and it's current ruler is a Paladin - they're sticklers for the law. I won't get a shop there, I'll wait for one in Guldorand, or in Sibiyad.' But you went for that one. You opted in for that.

[AstralUniverse]

Why should there be consent? There's no need for any consent before PvP after all. In fact, settlement Exile and Pariah systems are a good example of a non-combat conflict system that actually inflicts consequence.

This. I gotta echo this. This is good.

[Archnon]

This is a roleplaying server. Convenience of gameplay takes a back seat to immersion and player agency.

I wanna echo this. It is important to keep in mind that this is not a single player game. Too often we play these games expecting to have total autonomy and be able to power-build our character into the flawlessness we associate with a character in a single player RPG. The reality is you have to move and react to other characters in this game. Maybe you get the shakedown, or robbed on a boat, or by a pirate. Sure, some people engage in ooc conversation to make sure it goes well, but not always. The best thing you can do is play your character ICly and accept the fact that you don't have total control. Be okay with losing some coin or a shop location, or if your character is not timid, pick the fight and face the exile. Most importantly, be prepared to roll the character and start fresh. Exiles don't carry over, and before you accuse me of being a speed leveler, know that I have yet to have a character hit level 30.

[JubJub]

Guess a lot depends on why something was taken, was it a valid reason or is it a we just want the prime locations for our group. I will agree that there is nothing worse then putting a lot of time into say a shop only for a new government to decide we want that place and take it simply because some players want the best places. Which is why so many people now want shops and homes outside of the towns. But the way I see it is if you take people stuff just because you want your pals to own it, then chances are when you aren't in power anymore the same thing will happen to you.

[theCountofMonteCristo]

Why are we allowing players to levy fines and threats to other players where they can use the settlement mechanics to dampen another's game experience? Aren't these mechanics already engaging the player to be active and perceived abuses reportable?

Why are we allowing pladins to kill Necromancers and threats to other players where they can use the PvP mechanics to dampen another's game experience. Aren't these mechanics already engaging the player to be active and perceived wrongs reportable?

Sarcasm over, the settlement mechanics aren't any more forceful than the PvP mechanics. They are both tools given to players to create a story with. If either get abused; then there is the DM to right the wrong. Simple as that.

[Nekonecro]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZlpsneDGBQ