Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

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Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Poll ended at Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:34 pm

Fully Automated System - Tracks things like faction size, time played, RPB, lines spoken, emotes emoted, unique items made, etc. Eventually guarantees 5%.
18
18%
Partially Automated, Partially Manual System - Automated system in addition to DM and community-based hand picked recommendations VIA in-game commands that can further expedite the progress to being guaranteed a 5%.
30
30%
Fully Manual System - DM and community-based hand picked recommendations via in-game commands that accrue and accumulate into a "point" based escrow, eventually guaranteeing a 5%.
6
6%
Leave the system as is - No changes to award system. Remain as RNG, level-based system with small increasing factor of gold.
27
27%
None of these.
8
8%
Delete Award System Entirely - Let players play whatever they want, within reason. Special requests can be made to DM team.
12
12%
 
Total votes: 101

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The GrumpyCat
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by The GrumpyCat » Sat Apr 03, 2021 3:30 pm

I'd also love more mundane awards. But finding balenced ones- and also getting people to implement them - is supremely difficult.

I do quite like the idea of limiting 5% (at least 5% going forward) to one per person, as with MoDs - but it does come up with sone small issue when you have fluxuating majors (e.g. Firbolgs were once greaters but then became majors). Some sort of MoD on them after a period of time is actually not too bad an idea. Not sure how easy it'd be to implement.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Tempedius » Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:58 pm

I would argue that introducing a mandated MoD to any 5% character will not change much other than player behavior and mentality possibly. I would go so far as to say it damages agency.

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:11 am

Building off an earlier idea-

1: Everyone gets one major at 20 RPR, or X time, some benchmark to be determined by higher collective minds.
2: At 3-6 months (again, determined by higher collective minds), an MoD takes effect on this major award character automatically.
3: The character can either be allowed to expire to their MoD, or rolled prematurely. Either way a countdown of 6-12 months (yep, determined by collective) starts from the moment of rolling.
4: When the countdown expires, the player gains another major, at which point they may be neck deep in plots without an MoD- but now, perhaps, they'll have a tasty reason to consider moving on if appropriate.

Rinse, lather, repeat?

Edit: Also, regarding the topic of this poll, I voted Partially Automated. I don't see the giant fuss about adding a nomination system similar to the RPR nomination system.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Zavandar » Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:13 pm

you don't need a 5% to tell a good story. if you think you need one, then the character probably won't be as interesting as you think, but rather a trope instead

by contrast, every other person having wings and/or a tail and/or horns and/or xyz makes for a bad story.

MoD's usually just encourage people to shelve their character

we already have many issues with people chasing 30/40 rpr and producing disingenuous rp as a result. This often results in "inclusiveness" at the cost of character integrity, and/or scripted rp. It hurts encountering this, because if you're not aware of the script, you become the bad guy for going off it; so, you're forced to either be that bad guy or to just sit and watch, turning RP into a play rather than something interactive. There has been a LOT of prearranged rp lately, too, and a lot of people feeling powerless to impact the stories around them

we don't need that system to get worse
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Za-Lord~s Guard » Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:48 pm

Griefers exist on the server whether we like it or not, and any scenario that forces MoDs onto people will have them seizing the opportunity to ruin that person's day.

This will lead to a lot more work for DMs as griefers go from a problem that can be ignored to one that has to be proactively dealt with.

Forced MoDs also only matter to roleplayers, and not to griefers or PvP hounds; the latter types will not be invested in their characters as storytelling tools, only in their ability to kill other PCs - they will lose only a little time leveling a new character to resume pvp with.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Curve » Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:14 pm

One persons griefer is another’s favorite role player. People on arelith tend towards a biased opinion of others players.

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Zavandar » Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:50 pm

you're right, people are biased

makes the propositions look like an even worse idea
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by The GrumpyCat » Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:17 pm

you don't need a 5% to tell a good story.
I'm actually going to take a moment to adress this - because this is an argument that has always irritated me.

5% are like chocolate.

We all know that Chocolate isn't actually that good for us, really. And yeah, we'd probably all be better if we didn't have any. But lets be honest - I'd guess most people reading this are actually rather fond of chocolate, yeah?

And it is perfectly possible to enjoy chocolate as part of a balenced diet.

I know this sounds a little harsh, and I do apologise for this because some of the people who've said this - indeed a lot, are people who I have a humungus amount of respect and love for - but I don't want to build an award system based on eleetism. I want to build an award system that the entire server can (at least potentially) enjoy.

Yeah that means we'll get a few folks playing tieflings/aasimar and what have you in ways that's not so great. But that happens with all races. We move on, we learn, and more to the point the players learn. And they have fun. That's what this is about. Fun.

The award system I want is like this: A system where everyone has chance to gets a chance at the chocolate - even if they don't take it. And yes, those that behave better, roleplay better, and so forth get a little more/quicker chance - but ultimatly everyone still has that chance. And hopefully which we can monitor to make sure that folk don't get gorged on our metaphoical chocolate either.

It is going to be a hard balence, but I think we can - if not make that balence - at least make it a little better for some folks.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Curve » Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:30 pm

I hear you, grumpy. I am with you 100% when it comes to building a system that is not based off of elitism. I am interested to know how we prevent the server from becoming a zoo. I don’t care if 50% of 5% of the population are playing tieflings/dragons badly. But, 50% of 50%/75%/100% playing them badly, or even perfectly starts to shift the look of the server in a way that feels more like Sinfar than it does Arelith. Not that there is anything wrong with any other server, but it is just not the server I know and love.

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Zavandar » Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:13 pm

we are already seeing the server become a zoo due to award races/classes going to lower tier gifts.

you say you dont want to build an award system based on elitism, but building one that works off of -recommend does exactly, 100% that

if you dont want elitism, random is the way to go. giving everyone a 5% is no more or less fair than the random roll chance, but will dilute the server substantially
Intelligence is too important

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by The GrumpyCat » Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:18 pm

Zavandar wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:13 pm
we are already seeing the server become a zoo due to award races/classes going to lower tier gifts.

you say you dont want to build an award system based on elitism, but building one that works off of -recommend does exactly, 100% that

if you dont want elitism, random is the way to go. giving everyone a 5% is no more or less fair than the random roll chance, but will dilute the server substantially
It will not work of -recommend.

That was an april fools prank.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Za-Lord~s Guard » Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:38 pm

Zavandar wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:13 pm
we are already seeing the server become a zoo due to award races/classes going to lower tier gifts.
Basically this.

When they're easier to get, we have a sudden rapid influx of unique races and people complaining of how disruptive it is. If we want to have the chocolate treat of certain special races, they should stay at higher reward tiers to keep them from becoming overpopulated. 5% on a dice roll is a fair shot at getting a special race, and (usually) serves to keep extra special things from being too common a sight while still being a presence.

If anything came about to guarantee people a 5%, then we would need DMs to more proactively manage people handling concepts disruptively; and bluntly, with no offense intended, the DM team has been highly irregular in its activity and availability. There are people who wait multiple weeks or even months for a response at all beyond "We're reviewing it" on simple PrC requests.

DMs are volunteers of course, but their role means the community relies on them to maintain a certain level of activity and for the last few years the tendency has been for only a few members of the DM team to be consistently interested in remaining active. DM burnout is real, happens constantly, and we don't need to make any changes that rely on their policing things more until such a time as that issue is addressed.

(Idea, slap the restricted PrC class options requiring approval in as rewards. Dragon Disciple is already like that.)
Last edited by Za-Lord~s Guard on Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Zavandar » Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:39 pm

It has been suggested by other people within the thread
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Glowing Mushroom » Mon Apr 05, 2021 8:57 pm

Spitballing here:

What if the tiers of RPR were increased to 50, 60, or more?

If you have 20 RPR and you roll a lvl 30, you get 1 Normal and a 5 - 10 % chance for a major with a greater in between.

If you have 30 RPR and you roll a lvl 30, you get 1 greater and a 15 - 25% chance for a major per (insert time frame here).

If you have 40 RPR and you roll a lvl 30, you get 1 greater and a 35 - 45% chance of a major once per (insert time frame here)

If you have 50 RPR and you roll a lvl 30, you get a major once per (insert longer RL time frame here)

If you ??? you get ????

This would be a reworking of the RPR system - Which I still think should be called Roleplay Bonus, not Roleplay Rating. Rating implies objective levels of talent imo - But with more tiers, the current 10/20/30/40 RPers could be appropriately moved up or down and the awards would be attached thusly. More of a halfway point between random and tailored.

This is course runs into the possible issues of the DM team actually being available to adjust RPBs appropriately to tailor to this system. The current system is unbiased, which is why it is so heavily favored. The angle I'm trying to tackle is that it inadvertently more highly awards powergrinders and awards RPers less.
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Zavandar » Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:22 pm

as suggested, let time online also factor into rolling. this rewards people that want to spend their time RPing
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Kilivin » Tue Apr 06, 2021 6:57 pm

Super new player here (only 7 months on the server), and I will say that the current format did kick some friends of mine from the player pool so I voted to remove the system entirely.. One just wanted to play a tiefling and one an Aasimar and the third wanted to be a vampire spawn (not a full vampire or anything). While the third was not a thing, all 3 were major rewards and upon reading more into it and how long it took us all to get to lvl 10 - they just stopped playing, not willing to play that much to have such a small chance at what they wanted to play. While we can all brush it off by saying, "Just play on a different server." Or "Come up with something different" - that's really disconnected to D&D where you can (within reason) do what you want.

Something that I think might be a solution would be monetization of RP that you redeem in the form of tokens. I recall an old server back in the day that was set in Baldur's Gate which had tokens like this you obtained for good RP, DM event participation, etc. Players could then collect a lot of these to redeem them on a special race/class/questline/world impact, etc.

There are problems with monetizing RP in the forum of a currency that you can redeem as well, but it would obviously encourage good RP between players and players to DMs. You'd not have a flood of rare races since those rare races would just cost more tokens, it wouldn't encourage grinding and if anything encourage playing 1 character to fruition.

Just spitballing. I don't think the 5% roll encourages non-RP characters, I think is discourages specialist type players from playing at all...which imo is more egregious. You might have a very very cool PC concept that you'd roleplay very well with others, but you're forced to do something else for so long it'll take weeks or months before you can play it. If you're going to spend 200+ hours on an RPG character, you should be allowed to play something you like or at least work towards it with system that is more visceral like an RP currency (other options are available).
Last edited by Kilivin on Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Zavandar » Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:04 pm

I don't think there are enough DMs to ensure that enough tokens are going out for "good rp", which is a metric that isnt even agreed upon

playing vamp spawn, tiefling, aasimar, and all of those things are fine in a smaller pnp group, but literally hundreds of people playing that can rapidly degrade the setting of a whole server
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Kilivin » Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:12 pm

Zavandar wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:04 pm
playing vamp spawn, tiefling, aasimar, and all of those things are fine in a smaller pnp group, but literally hundreds of people playing that can rapidly degrade the setting of a whole server
I think that's a stretch. Just because you allow an option for all players to use doesn't necessarily mean every player will use it. There are dozens of class options and race options leading to thousands of possible mixes of these. While, at first, you may have an influx of people playing 5% races - this would die off as character uniqueness and character relevance in the setting of an RP server takes precedence as an enjoyable experience over being "The best" in a game where that concept has no meaning.

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Zavandar » Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:19 pm

I'm not trying to be mean when I say you are assuming a lot of a community you have (relatively) little experience with. Many people dont see "character uniqueness" and being "the best" as mutually exclusive things.

moreover, why didnt this logic apply to your friends?
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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Curve » Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:42 pm

Kilivin wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 6:57 pm
While we can all brush it off by saying, "Just play on a different server." Or "Come up with something different" - that's really disconnected to D&D where you can (within reason) do what you want.
I hate that your friends left. That is a bummer. At the same time I disagree about what should be done about it. I think that, while it may seem like brushing off concerns, saying 'play somewhere more fitting your style' and 'try a different concept' is not rude, disrespectful, or dismissive of your friends. I do not think that the rules around race, or playing something more rare are rude either. I think they are, at odds, respectful of the setting you are playing in. In the 3-3.5 Edition of Forgotten Realms there are more humans than Tieflings, there are more Drow than vampires. We make certain concessions for what is fun for players, and we should. Very few people want to play commoners, and even those that want to play Commoners are unlikely to RP doing mundane activities and getting rolled over. People generally play the special people of the population, the adventurers and wizards. But can you imagine how different the server would feel if there were as many Assimar as humans, as many Genesi as elves, as many vampires as drow? It quickly becomes something that is not Arelith, that is not Forgotten Realms pre-Spellplague.

I also don't know what PnP DnD tables you played at, but in the ones I have played in and run over the years there has always been a conversation when it comes to playing anything wildly out of the norm of the setting we are playing in. Every DnD table I have been apart of was based off of what the DM decides is appropriate. We are not playing PnP but the responsibility for cultivating and maintaining setting fall on the DEVs who decide what can and can not be played, the DMs who enforce the setting rules when they are out of line, and the players who can react IC to things that break the norms. We have a system that has decided these things just like an all powerful DM would at a table. And so far the Arelith community has decided that what is 'within reason' is for Assimar, Tieflings, Vampires to be very rare.

There was a time when all it took was a 30RPR to play a Tiefling and that got taken away because there were far too many Tieflings. You would be in a room and there would be more Tieflings than non-Tieflings. It was silly. A similar thing happened with Fey recently. I imagine that we will have a problem with setting appropriatness with Genesi soon. Like we did with Firbolgs.

Let's not forget our hard earned lessons of the past, please.

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Kilivin » Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:54 pm

Zavandar wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:19 pm
I'm not trying to be mean when I say you are assuming a lot of a community you have (relatively) little experience with. Many people dont see "character uniqueness" and being "the best" as mutually exclusive things.

moreover, why didnt this logic apply to your friends?
Ah, no wonder people don't post on the forums who aren't 5+ year veterans & 100+ posts with those kind of comments... I get it's not intended to be mean, but it's still an appeal to authority :cry: . I have played on two characters now that have not fit in well with the setting as a whole (being new and all), and in both cases feel like the only way to enjoy time playing is to enforce unrealistic bends to the character concept in order to fit in to the different groups/factions and enjoy the game. By that experience, I can extrapolate the concept that if 20 people made ogre barbarians and there's nothing really in the world for ogre barbarians - you are putting yourself in a box of what you can do with each character individually.

Obviously, I can only make a comment on that experience of the 5% roll and the experience of friends not wanting to continue due to the nature of the 5% roll being what it is. That is, it is a time-wall. In order to do what you want, you have to play X# of hours on the server. In that instance, I still prefer no roll even over a token/monetization system because both instances instill a sense of cultural elitism to players who have been on the server longer. E.G. your comment of me having little experience as an example of that being very VERY commonplace. xD Again no offense taken, it's just something I've noticed in the 7 months on the server that if you aren't a multi-year veteran, nobody cares about you really or takes you seriously.

That's why the 5% roll should be removed. It just encourages people to pay attention to the player that either has no life and makes tons of 26 lvl characters to get the 5% major or players who play only regularly but for a lot longer IRL time to get those "Look at me now" rewards. In other words, it's a status symbol to have angel/devil/dragon wings for example from PLAYER to PLAYER that "Hey, I'm not a newbie." I have never heard of a 5% race or character not being extremely popular, and as much as I want to chum it up to good roleplay - non 5% race/characters tend to always fall by the wayside unless they've been on the same character for 2 years+.

My friends were, admittedly, specialist type D&D players who have not very many character concepts pop into their head, and they often play similar character concepts across campaigns with some tweaks. Heck, even I prefer playing melee strength based characters over anything else. Everyone has some kind of niche they enjoy, and barring their niche arbitrarily behind a random roll makes the server community, as a whole, very exclusive to newer players for them not having access to that.

An alternative to removing the 5% roll entirely would be to make there be less common place races in the setting on the list. Almost all of the races aside from maybe Deep Imaskari, Yuan-ti, Vampire, Imp, Rakshasa, Minotaur, and Ogre don't need to be 5% oriented races. The only reason they are, I feel, is due to a fear of PC's being "the best" which again doesn't mean anything in Arelith or D&D as a whole.

I don't mean to badmouth anyone in particular, but the community can be very exclusive/elitist. The 5% roll encourages that. That's why it should be removed.
Last edited by Kilivin on Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Kilivin » Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:00 pm

Curve wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:42 pm
Kilivin wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 6:57 pm
While we can all brush it off by saying, "Just play on a different server." Or "Come up with something different" - that's really disconnected to D&D where you can (within reason) do what you want.
There was a time when all it took was a 30RPR to play a Tiefling and that got taken away because there were far too many Tieflings. You would be in a room and there would be more Tieflings than non-Tieflings. It was silly. A similar thing happened with Fey recently. I imagine that we will have a problem with setting appropriatness with Genesi soon. Like we did with Firbolgs.

Let's not forget our hard earned lessons of the past, please.
Having a few dozen of these special races on an island does not make them any less rare world wide in the setting. While I understand that there aren't hundreds of human/dwarven/elven NPCs walking around on the server - I can assume Cordor's population isn't limited to maybe 20-30 NPCs. There being a dozen tieflings in a tavern is certainly a rare sight...but it's Arelith. The setting concept has always seemed like the island is a bit of an Evermeet (I.E. Super magical and mystical place). Having a Ancient Red Dragon, Vampire lords, beholders, ancient white dragons, liches, demi-liches etc in such a small area geographically is also very very very rare. That doesn't mean it's not very very very cool and totally okay to have.

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Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by The GrumpyCat » Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:15 pm

Kilivin wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:00 pm
Curve wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:42 pm
Kilivin wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 6:57 pm
While we can all brush it off by saying, "Just play on a different server." Or "Come up with something different" - that's really disconnected to D&D where you can (within reason) do what you want.
There was a time when all it took was a 30RPR to play a Tiefling and that got taken away because there were far too many Tieflings. You would be in a room and there would be more Tieflings than non-Tieflings. It was silly. A similar thing happened with Fey recently. I imagine that we will have a problem with setting appropriatness with Genesi soon. Like we did with Firbolgs.

Let's not forget our hard earned lessons of the past, please.
Having a few dozen of these special races on an island does not make them any less rare. While I understand that there aren't hundreds of human/dwarven/elven NPCs walking around on the server - I can assume Cordor's population isn't limited to maybe 20-30 NPCs. There being a dozen tieflings in a tavern is certainly a rare sight...but it's Arelith. The setting concept has always seemed like the island is a bit of an Evermeet (I.E. Super magical and mystical place). Having a Ancient Red Dragon, Vampire lords, beholders, ancient white dragons, liches, demi-liches etc in such a small area geographically is also very very very rare. That doesn't mean it's not very very very cool and totally okay to have.
Haya, so uh, welcome to the server. I'm really worried now I'll come across as eleetish or nasty or something so if I do I am very very very sorry. Please don't hate me.

And welcome to the forums! And uh, yeah. I'm sorry if this all comes across as A Lot.

So I find your argument really facinating because we're pretty much approaching it entirely from the opposite end of the spectrum to the argument I mentioned earlier.

Which is to say - those saying 'We should get rid of all the 5% races. You don't need to be 'special' and play one of those, they're surpefluous to the server...' ect, ect, ect...

And I've already covered why I don't quite follow that - and honestly the reason is folk like you! I mean - Your friends quit because they saw that it would take them ages to reach their concepts - would they have even considered the server at all if the concepts weren't there?

There are some concepts which are, what I'd term (and I do hope I'm not breaching forum rules with this' "sexy." They're desirable. You can tell what they are by logging into a server that doesn't tend to police this sort of thing -which allows all these sorts of ideas
*Aasimar
*Tieflings
*Elves
*Surface Drow
*Vampires
*Dragons
*full on Angels
*Full on Devils/Demons

Beautiful/dangerous folk with different but interesting and EPIC backstories/concepts, super special folk who wander around freely with their angst/braud stroke concepts/Awsome Power.

I've seen servers that allow this and I've been playing NWN for... fifteen years now.

I'm not saying this as a position of eleetism. I really am not. I'm fine with people doint this. I've played Aasimar/Tieflings in the past* so I'm really in no position to judge. I'm saying this as a simple fact in the same way that one might say 'A lot of people like chocolate.' 'A lot of people enjoy TV.' 'A lot of people would like more money if you offered it to them.' IF we opened up all these concepts, without any restrictions - then plane ol' humans would become pretty rare. Dwarves would be almost none existant. Elves owuld still be around. Most Drow wouldn't live in the underdark.

And a lot of the specialness is gone. Not all of it, but a lot of it. The 'oh wow that's a Vampire!?!?' becomes.. 'huh. A vampire. Ok.' Instead of your hope of sweeping in as the arleith equivilent of Vlad the Impaler, you end up being 'oh you're vamp mook no. 12.' That... can kinda suck.

The big problem - the connundrum that is going to be a matter of discussion and disagreement between everyone here - is where the line is between. 'I can never ever play that cool DnD concept and y'know what? I should be able to play that!' And 'When everyone is special, no one is special.'

And if your friends want a server where Vampires/Tieflings ect are more common - if it genuinly doesn't matter to them that because of that some of the specialness is gone (and to be fair that doesn't always mater to some folk either!) then that's fine, I respect that as a position to take but... I don't think Arelith is that server for your friends. And I am sorry about that, it's always a little sad to loose out on new people, but it'd be sadder to /force/ new people here when they didn't enjoy it. Or to make the server into something that, whilst your friends might enjoy, the majority of the current player base wouldn't.

And again that's no disrespect to you or them. It's a perfectly valid taste to have but its... not the one the people here enjoy. I'm sorry that's just... kinda how it is.

* Note - one tiefling and one aasimar were played when rpr was the limiter. The other was taken when the reward was a greater. I've never actually managed to get a 5% in my years of playing. :(
This too shall pass.

(I now have a DM Discord (I hope) It's DM GrumpyCat#7185 but please keep in mind I'm very busy IRL so I can't promise how quick I'll get back to you.)

Xerah
Posts: 2036
Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2015 5:39 pm

Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Xerah » Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:17 pm

Kilivin wrote:
Tue Apr 06, 2021 7:54 pm
Ah, no wonder people don't post on the forums who aren't 5+ year veterans & 100+ posts with those kind of comments... I get it's not intended to be mean, but it's still an appeal to authority :cry: . I have played on two characters now that have not fit in well with the setting as a whole (being new and all), and in both cases feel like the only way to enjoy time playing is to enforce unrealistic bends to the character concept in order to fit in to the different groups/factions and enjoy the game. By that experience, I can extrapolate the concept that if 20 people made ogre barbarians and there's nothing really in the world for ogre barbarians - you are putting yourself in a box of what you can do with each character individually.
Everyone has their stories of when they came, but I showed up only a few years ago without knowing anyone and played by myself. The thing that amazed me was how many concepts I felt I could create and be successful with given the sheer amount of players and different play styles. I was lucky to be playing a wizard at the time and fell in with a big wizard faction. Never once did I feel that I wasn't taken seriously because people didn't know me; and, additionally, most people make a new account for each character so people don't know who they are.

I am someone who dislikes seeing tons of crazy things around (I'd prefer to remove them entirely). I know a lot of people like to play them, but Arelith is really not the place for it. Even in the PW I played on for many years before this, you had to be an active member for a while to make sure the player could handle playing strange the concept. Different people see things in different ways; I saw the vets as people to learn from over time and understand how they go and I saw the 5% roll as something positive that wouldn't overwhelm how many weird things we see.

There are so many concepts that you don't require someone being a tiefling or aasmair (or a vampire thrall; which anyone can actually do with RP in game). It seems weird that you when people can't figure something else out.
Katernin Bersk, Chancellor of Divination; Kerri Amblecrown, Paladin of Milil; Xull'kacha Auvry'rae, Redcap Fey-pacted; Sadia yr Thuravya el Bhirax, Priestess of Umberlee; Lissa Whitehorn, Archmage of Artifice

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Zavandar
Posts: 785
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 2:12 am

Re: Award System Remastered - What Would You Prefer?

Post by Zavandar » Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:22 pm

I dont see how the 5% award is elitist when you dont have to be an established "good rper" to obtain one. you just need to delete a character and, depending on the race, submit an application for a whole team of DMs to read

I think people want to call it elitism to make it look worse than it actually is.

it also wasnt appeal to authority. you have other people in this thread who have personally witnessed the inflation of certain races and classes when the "flood gates" are opened. You have not been here long enough to witness this (except you have, because RDD and genasi were opened up within the last 7 months and there are definitely a lot of them around now).

I think a lot of people come to arelith with a pnp mentality. I'm not out to talk poorly about people that want to play those extra special characters with involved backstories and out of the norm race choices. This is fine in a small setting. It's not in a server with hundreds of players. I suppose I dont see the current dynamic as a problem because I came here after RPing on an mmo, where claiming to be involved with NPCs in your backstory and being odd races was generally frowned upon. Of course, the dynamic in mmo rp is totally different, but that facet of it overlaps with Arelith.
Intelligence is too important

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