Scrying Mechanic and FOIG policy

[Void]

Why should I have this advantage over a new player?

Because it is not possible to make you forget all those things, alter mechanics every time you make a character, shuffle the areas and so on. It is also not possible to restrict you to ever only playing arelith once with a single character.

Discovering this sort of stuff for the first time is fun, and if you make the knowledge public, in essence you're depriving the new player of fun you had. Why shouldn't the new player experience the joy of discovery you had?

That's unfair towards the new player.

By this same logic we should remove all mechanical explanations outside whats available in the base wiki, and allow people to figure out whats best IG.

I'm of opinion that the less information is available in public, the better.

We don't, because that's not fair, just like this isn't fair.

THe information available online is a compromise towards people that do not want to invest as much time or want easier time playing. It is not really a matter of "fairness", however, as this is not some sort of MOBA where every class/build combination is supposed to deserve a chance.

Look, trying to argue about it with me won't make it happen. As I'm not an admin. Just saying.

[-XXX-]

Well, the everpresent kill squads and -scry being used as an instrumental tool to home them is equally anecdotal. Personally, I've never done this, never had this done to me or never even seen it happen whatsoever.

Still, even if it happens I wouldn't see it as such a big deal. Characters lose all the time, usually as a result of some mechanic that their player was not prepaired for or conscious of.
If it happens regularly, then it's a matter of excessive targetted PvP, which should be reported to the DMs.

[Drowboy]

Here's the thing: It wasn't fun. I've been playing here long enough that most of those things I mentioned, especially the earlier stuff, was directly found if not first than close to it by me, or one of my friends, and it's frankly tedious every time, especially for things with mechanical implications. The trend towards non-obfuscated mechanics of late has been nothing but a boon for the server.

Your experiences aren't universal.

[Watchful Glare]

I wouldn't mind if FOIG, so far as hard mechanics go, just stopped being a thing.

I learned how to counter scrying OOC, years ago, and I didn't even ask - because I didn't even know characters could scry either. Someone just told me while I was asking for help about clerics.

Sometimes I feel like it's a thing because it's always been a thing therefore it must continue to be a thing and to enforce it we all engage in this weird collective willful delusion. I bet every comment in this thread knows the counters.

Basically this. I learned how to block scrying IG in an unrelated way my first week on the server before I even learned scry was a thing and my character was wide eyed finding it mindboggling people could send images of themselves as message, summon people, or do anything other of the crazy things you can do in Arelith.

[Void]

Well, the everpresent kill squads and -scry being used as an instrumental tool to home them is equally anecdotal.

To be honest, PVP itself feels anecdotical to me at this point. It is something that a lot of people claim to do and a lot of people claim to be important, but at the same time, it is something I personally witness maybe a few times per year and experience even less often than that.

So it seems that only "guilds" engage in that.

At the same time both sides are usually immortal which makes one wonder what the point is, if you can't make a definitive change through the mechanic.

Well, at least there's assassination that can shuffle things around a bit in a settlement (I recall impact of Kesa Hillside being killed on surface, although) , but beyond that I'm not quite sure.

[-XXX-]

Your experiences aren't universal.

We're all referencing anecdotal evidence throughout this entire thread.
Are they valid arguments? No.
Is it worth considering another point of wiew? Probably.


I think that at this point people have issues with the notion of "missing out" on having every possible mechanical edge in every concievable situation.

IMO that's a result of overly competitive attitude that isn't necessarily suitable for an RP server. While I completely understand that players want to feel like they're on equal footing and open information helps here considerably, it also fosters this mindset that squeezing maximum from the mechanical aspect of the game is a necessity.

Suboptimally built characters that can't pull their weight in PvP because their player just doesn't care about that aspect of the game can still become more relevant than any undefeated PvP demigod simply by the sheer virtue of original character concept and interesting writing. Even if they lose every single time, their losses can turn out to be more important in the big picture than the victory streak of someone else.

[Drowboy]

I think that at this point people have issues with the notion of "missing out" on having every possible mechanical edge in every concievable situation.

IMO that's a result of overly competitive attitude that isn't necessarily suitable for an RP server.

Respectfully, you're wrong.

Suboptimally built characters that can't pull their weight in PvP because their player just doesn't care about that aspect of the game can still become more relevant than any undefeated PvP demigod simply by the sheer virtue of original character concept and interesting writing.

do i legit have to post stormwind fallacy in every thread

An extremely obvious 4th level spell blocking scry being known outside of anyone that's played the game for 20 minutes and their friends being known isn't tantamount to the entirety of Arelithian rp being destroyed and you know it. Mountains and molehills. Defending an out of date """"mechanic"""" just because it's there doesn't help anything.

[Void]

<snip>

I agree with everything said.

[-XXX-]

Respectfully, you're wrong.

Would you care to elaborate, or shall we just note that your subjective opinion (expressed as an universal statement) is different and call it a day?

do i legit have to post stormwind fallacy in every thread

Here's the funny thing about the Stormwind fallacy - it applies for the most part to more experienced players who are well-versed with both the mechanics, RP and the culture inherent to the server.

Where FOIG is concerned, NEW players are used as the crux of the argument. Well, if you take someone who knows next to nothing about RP and the mechanical aspect of the game and introduce them to it, which part would you say is better for them to focus on first?

An extremely obvious 4th level spell blocking scry being known outside of anyone that's played the game for 20 minutes and their friends being known isn't tantamount to the entirety of Arelithian rp being destroyed and you know it. Mountains and molehills. Defending an out of date """"mechanic"""" just because it's there doesn't help anything.

OK, this is not the first time this has been brought up, ...nor the second time ...or the fifth time.
FOIG info is kept FOIG, because... I dunno, looks like someone wants to keep it that way for undisclosed reasons that we keep hypothesizing about in threads like these.

[Skane]

Respectfully, you're wrong.

Would you care to elaborate, or shall we just note that your subjective opinion (expressed as an universal statement) is different and call it a day?

do i legit have to post stormwind fallacy in every thread

Here's the funny thing about the Stormwind fallacy - it applies for the most part to more experienced players who are well-versed with both the mechanics, RP and the culture inherent to the server.

Where FOIG is concerned, NEW players are used as the crux of the argument. Well, if you take someone who knows nothing about RP and the mechanical aspect of the game and introduce them to it, which part would you say is better for them to focus on first?

An extremely obvious 4th level spell blocking scry being known outside of anyone that's played the game for 20 minutes and their friends being known isn't tantamount to the entirety of Arelithian rp being destroyed and you know it. Mountains and molehills. Defending an out of date """"mechanic"""" just because it's there doesn't help anything.

OK, this is not the first time this has been brought up, ...nor the second time ...or the fifth time.
FOIG info is kept FOIG, because... I dunno, looks like someone wants to keep it that way for undisclosed reasons that we keep hypothesizing about in threads like these.

Arelith officially recommends playing the singleplayer campaign first prior to playing arelith to learn the mechanics, regardless of individual opinion, we already have that answer.

And I agree FOIG info is kept FOIG, for undisclosed reasons. I would like if those reasons were disclosed and justified, then these threads would atleast decrease in number.

[WJLIII3]

Suboptimally built characters that can't pull their weight in PvP because their player just doesn't care about that aspect of the game can still become more relevant than any undefeated PvP demigod simply by the sheer virtue of original character concept and interesting writing. Even if they lose every single time, their losses can turn out to be more important in the big picture than the victory streak of someone else.

This paragraph contains an interesting unspoken assertion, I wonder if you even realized it.

You assume that the undefeatable PvP demigod is not an original character with interesting writing. That they will ONLY have the power to kill you, not to destroy your legacy and pride and reputation. This is the Stormwind Fallacy, that mechanical power somehow damages rp. If someone is telling as interesting a story as you are, and can kill you, their story is going to win. And the best builders on this server are almost all great storytellers, too.

But the thing that really gets me about this assumption, apart from the Stormwind thing, which is just every day...

You said PvP,by which you mean combat, power doesn't matter compared to story power. That's true. But scry isn't combat power. It lets you expose schemes, uncover secret allies, secret identities.

It is the power to KILL WHOLE STORIES . Not just characters. Plotlines. Character concepts. Legacies. Pride. Reputations. It takes exactly 5 spell components and a little luck to completely ruin any yuan-ti, any rakshasha, any hidden warlock.

There is a VERY GOOD REASON that Non-detection has been a spell since Chainmail, and that it works on EVERY divination but truesight, despite being only 3rd level, and that reason is:

PCs who scry ruin everyone's fun.

[WJLIII3]

How much MORE and DEEPER rp would be generated if somebody had to infiltrate? If you had to learn secrets about people by actually being near them and overhearing a secret? Instead of plucking it out of the air for a few greenstone.

I don't think scry should be removed, but at the very least character mistakes should be the reason it works, not player ignorance of mechanics.

[-XXX-]

Let me paraphrase then, so that we're all on the same page here. What I am saying is:
A player can still squeeze maximum out of the gameplay experience even if they dismiss the mechanical aspect of the game and focus on storytelling, much more than by doing the opposite.

The stormwind fallacy is an argument that disproves the correlation between mechanically savvy players and bad roleplay.

See the difference there?

If someone is telling as interesting a story as you are, and can kill you, their story is going to win.

This is all wrong. Winning and losing requires the participation of all sides involved.
You can't force RP on someone.
You can't force PvP on someone and expect the outcome to matter in the big picture.
You can inspire participation of other people on your story through RP, doing the same through PvP can be a little more challenging.

You said PvP,by which you mean combat, power doesn't matter compared to story power. That's true. But scry isn't combat power. It lets you expose schemes, uncover secret allies, secret identities.

It is the power to KILL WHOLE STORIES . Not just characters. Plotlines. Character concepts. It takes exactly 5 spell components and a little luck to completely ruin any yuan-ti, any rakshasha, any hidden warlock.

It's again the matter of winning and losing. People feel like -scry is a mechanic that can lead to them losing, which they don't like.
So what do they do? Share all sensitive information through notes, notebooks and message boards locked away in their quarters. What utility does that leave for scrying? Locating people.

TBH, I don't see why people still view this mechanic as such a boogeyman. -scry is dead. The odds of this mechanic actually doing something relevant are astronomically low. The idea of being scried seems much worse than it actually is. Get out of your head people!

[Void]

This is the Stormwind Fallacy, that mechanical power somehow damages rp.

The point of stormwind "fallacy" is that the more optimal character is, then less probable it is and less believable it ends up.

Basically, a full powerbuild requires character not only to be born with the perfectly right stats, but also be aware of which step exactly it should take during the journey, when it should learn which class, which skill, and which feat. And if the build is dependent on some sort of item, then the character should be aware that such item exists and will be available for them. All before level 1.

This sort of thing rattles suspension of disbelief pretty hard. The thing is, however, that people can't see your character sheet.

How much MORE and DEEPER rp would be generated if somebody had to infiltrate?

It simply would not occur. Because it only needs to fail once for it to be over. And because there are many opportunities to fail, it will fail.

Because if you start from level 1, most likely your affiliations will be known before you can infiltrate a t hing. If you do not start at level 1, then you'll have to use disguise, and the target almost certainlly has a spot god which will laugh at your pitiful 90 bluff and quotes around your name. So the clever spy mystery roleplaying thing simply wouldn't happen.

It is also worth questioning why, for example, Cordor implemented all seeing eye monuments instead of placing enough guards everywhere to catch criminals by looking for them and listening what people say.

If someone is telling as interesting a story as you are, and can kill you, their story is going to win.

Not really. You can become a martyr and overshadow your foe. And in death, even if your character disappears, you can end up with a much bigger impact, thus making your storyline "win".

You said PvP,by which you mean combat, power doesn't matter compared to story power. That's true. But scry isn't combat power. It lets you expose schemes, uncover secret allies, secret identities.

Well you can learn counters, or just ensure that your entire meeting is done in language they don't know. If they can't understand what you say, they can't learn your secrets. If their spot isn't up to par, they can't break disguises. And so on.

Using your argument, "Imagine how deeper and more meaningful RP was", if people were actively developing secret code languages only they know, that can't be understood with language comprehension alone.

And -XXX- already presented a good and much simpler alternative of notes and so on.

[Void]

By the way, I'm not sure if you're aware, but scrying can teleport you to target area. This is listed on the wiki and does not seem to be FOIG.

3) Our past rulings on thw telepoftation [sic] is that it is a feature. A danger of scrying!

DM Always This Late

[Gable Morninglord]

New player here…..

What are the counters to scrying?

[Pincushion]

This is going to be slightly muddled and long as it's 5am on Christmas day, but I've been stewing on the topic of FOIG for years so I'm gonna go off.

I've always heard differing arguments as to why the FOIG policy is sustained on Arelith, and it's always confused me. Off the top of my head, I can count about five subjects that are given the FOIG treatment:

1. Puzzle solutions
2. Areas that have obtainable mechanical benefits
3. Market prices
4. Mechanical secrets baked into build options
5. Mechanical counters


1. I can understand making puzzle solutions FOIG, as it sort of defeats the point of a puzzle if you've accidentally copped the answer weeks ago from a random discussion on the discord or on the forums here. I'm not a fan of any of the Arelith puzzles I've experienced and years ago did find out the answer to the sibayad crypt puzzle through OOC means, and I will maintain that it's not a well thought out puzzle in its design, and it's in the way of completing a writ. Still, the presumption here is that the FOIG policy is to protect those who want to give it an honest shot, right? It's to protect the individual player experience, and I can understand that.


2. Restricting areas which have FOIG benefits is done, like puzzles, for the person's individual benefit. The kobold RDD path and the undead stream could have just been given to the character freely, but the dev team decided to make it something that has to be discovered. The kobold RDD path, without spoiling anything, is probably my favourite: it requires assistance, and given that we're gifted with a very active kobold community it's relatively easy to get on that path and it does generate roleplay. The undead stream is in that vein, though experienced players could do it alone without roleplaying, whereas a newer player might struggle in comparison. So it's not perfect, but the FOIG policy is strictly there to enhance the player's experience, just like the standard dungeon puzzles that are around.

(EDIT: I have a friend who speaks English as a second language and as a result types slowly and often makes mistakes. When trying out Arelith for the first time they struggled making connections IC, and when they wanted to learn the undead stream from the FOIG place they literally couldn't pin someone down to help them. They ended up finding out OOC because there wasn't anyone who was willing to engage with them. And to be fair, the FOIG method is almost impossible without assistance due to the end (no spoilers) and its somewhat arbitrary requirement. It's very tedious to go through the first time, let alone being the person leading another through it, and if you're a new player who is still finding their footing you might find it hard to nail someone down to dedicate time for you like that.)


3. So, market prices. Whilst the FOIG around puzzle solutions seems to be about maintaining the integrity of a single player's experience, gating knowledge of market prices seems to be promoting a sort of communal OOC ignorance to it. The common defences of it that I see are that it promotes RP by making characters ask other characters instead of the player asking out of the game and that it allows characters the opportunity to 'con' each other in various ways. I'm not sure if these arguments hold up, in practice.

It would be fine to say that each player keeps the IC economy IC, but I can't magically remove the knowledge that X costs this, and Y costs that out of my mind. And I don't see many people trying to either. You'll commonly see rare materials sold in Skal, a low-level area, for suspiciously accurate prices in comparison to the greater surface. Similarly, low-level characters will often be incredibly resistant to being swindled for a fake or misleadingly sold item and will know the name, value, and rarity of the things they find out and about. If communal ignorance is the intent behind market FOIG, then it doesn't work. What it does do, is that it sets the precedent that newer players will be more vulnerable to IC swindling than older ones, and will be worse off when they participate in buying and selling with other players. I've never had meaningful RP generated from going up to someone IC and asking about prices which couldn't have been done from me approaching them with any other (far more interesting) excuse, though if others have then I won't deny them that.

It's not like you can have some sort of ridiculous OOC grand exchange lookup situation going on, but it doesn't seem fair to block out new players and tell them it's for their own RP good. Especially if it means that the player leads their character into a situation that doesn't make sense for their IC personality or skills, and may potentially leave them with a bad taste in their mouth regarding Arelith's attitude towards newer players. The server doesn't sell itself as a brutal 'trial by fire' experience, we roleplay here. It'd be nice if we could put a little more faith in ourselves and tell off people who go too far, instead of blanket FOIG policy implementation.


4. Some build secrets are neat, like divination auras and aspects. That's a really cool thing to learn, as it doesn't directly impact the character's mechanical power in PvE or PvP and it's pretty easy to learn from any IC library or fellow diviner. FOIG, it's there again to enhance the player's experience. It's designed to be a mystery and I'm happy I learned the way I did, but I wouldn't feel the same way if it was something directly tied to my character's mechanical power. If I have a level 30 character with 33 spellcraft, I'd like to know that I can reliably roleplay that without someone who is level 3 schooling me about a subject because they have prior OOC knowledge. There's room for lore gathering roleplay, but I don't want it to be silly or to detract from my personal experience. Because we've established that FOIG exists to maintain the quality of RP individually and between players, right? (EDIT: I'm pretty sure half the divination auras are bugged and no longer work, but I've got no way of verifying or reporting that because it's FOIG :^))


5. Mechanical counters, specifically counter-scrying, are arbitrary. An early-level rogue with UMD taught me how to counter-scry many years ago, and he did it wordlessly like I would've already known. When I asked about it IC and how he knew, he gave a vague answer and we moved on. Experienced players know about this stuff and won't pretend like they don't, because scrying is an overwhelmingly powerful ability if the scrier gets lucky. Whole concepts get binned when a scrier catches them, and then continues to spam-scry them whenever they're both online. If that scrier goes public with anything they've said and you deny it, you're now going to get spam-scried by multiple scriers. Good luck being secretive if you don't know the mechanical defence that all the experienced players know OOC. There's no puzzle to learn it from, no secret area. You either learn it in the library or a character casually tells you about it. And if you don't do that, and you're a new player who is trying a secretive concept and get caught out, you're gonna get frustrated. You are given one chance to hide your nature as an evil-doer, and if you flunk that then your whole RP situation changes, even if you've done everything right IC. Because you didn't know this one thing OOC, which doesn't correspond to how tabletop D&D works and feels like a cheeky OOC secret you learn offhand most of the time. Roleplay is not enhanced, it's frustrated.



TL;DR: FOIG as a blanket policy doesn't work and takes a lot of trust and agency out of the hands of new players, and makes huge divides between the inexperienced and the veterans. There are times when FOIG is useful in maintaining a new player's sense of wonder, but it often comes off as incredibly condescending when someone earnestly wants to know something OOC. And if they try hard enough, they'll find out OOC anyway and no, that doesn't make them a bad roleplayer. It makes them someone who wants to know stuff so they can accurately roleplay their character and not feel disadvantaged. If the FOIG policy is to the benefit of the player who doesn't know, let them choose whether that's the experience they want. The mystique attached to some of these things, especially mechanically important things, is superficial. Literally everyone in this thread knows what the counter-scry method is unless they joined Arelith in the past few weeks. The FOIG policy around counter-scrying is not for our benefit. It only serves to make Arelith, an already very difficult thing to get into, harder to learn.


no disrespect to the dev team i love you guys, sorry i don't like ur puzzles, merry chrimbo x o x

[WJLIII3]

This is all wrong. Winning and losing requires the participation of all sides involved.
You can't force RP on someone.
You can't force PvP on someone and expect the outcome to matter in the big picture.
You can inspire participation of other people on your story through RP, doing the same through PvP can be a little more challenging.

This I don't understand. You can absolutely force RP on someone, absolutely force PvP that matters. Any low-level necromancer who dares to use their summons can tell you that, any pirate who lived when Greenhorn tats were visible. Other character's actions can absolutely force consequences on you whether you agree to them or not.

This isn't an RP-by-agreement server. It's a persistent world. You don't have to accept your exile to get exiled, and your bones can only litter up the Hub so many times before no one is going to take you seriously. The entire history of the module demonstrates this a thousand times, from the vassalization of Guldorand, to the purge(s?) of Sharrans from Andunor, to Wharftown. I don't understand what you mean by denying it.

TBH, I don't see why people still view this mechanic as such a boogeyman. -scry is dead. The odds of this mechanic actually doing something relevant are astronomically low. The idea of being scried seems much worse than it actually is. Get out of your head people!

I actually have been maining an ESF divination Wiz for some three years. I get a convenient yellow overhead pop-up whenever I am scried. She was also trained by some of the best in defending herself. To the best of my knowledge, I have never suffered anything of significance as a result of being scried.

But I have many times been put in a position to make other people suffer, by things I have scried. I have ruined whole characters, cut off entire plotlines before they could start. I felt at the time that the server was better without them anyway, and it served my ends. Was I right? I have come to regret it. Your "Astronomically low" odds have made me millions of gold and three careers at the expense of people who didn't know how to stop me from ruining their story.

The point of stormwind "fallacy" is that the more optimal character is, then less probable it is and less believable it ends up.

Basically, a full powerbuild requires character not only to be born with the perfectly right stats, but also be aware of which step exactly it should take during the journey, when it should learn which class, which skill, and which feat. And if the build is dependent on some sort of item, then the character should be aware that such item exists and will be available for them. All before level 1.

This- you've- nailed it accurately, but you seem to have missed a critical element. It's a fallacy. it's wrong. None of our characters are "realistic" or "believable" this world has dragons and even the frail old ladies can eat an axe to the face and come back for seconds. Thats the fallacy, that making a stronger character is somehow hard to believe. The people who make the right choices excel. In doing so, they become the kind of people you want to hear stories about. This does not mean playing suboptimal characters is bad. It just means playing optimal ones isn't. The Fallacy is that playing optimal characters is bad rp, that mechanics and RP are a trade. They are not. Each can complement the other, and the more they do so, the better.

It simply would not occur. Because it only needs to fail once for it to be over. And because there are many opportunities to fail, it will fail.

Because if you start from level 1, most likely your affiliations will be known before you can infiltrate a t hing. If you do not start at level 1, then you'll have to use disguise, and the target almost certainlly has a spot god which will laugh at your pitiful 90 bluff and quotes around your name.

It can, it does,and it is happening all around you right now. Not sure what else to say. You realize only four classes get spot and none of them have wisdom as a prime attribute or blend particularly well with cleric or druid?

Not really. You can become a martyr and overshadow your foe. And in death, even if your character disappears, you can end up with a much bigger impact, thus making your storyline "win".

This, again, is assuming that while dead you will somehow be better at glorifying and continuing your legacy, than your enemy will be at destroying it and ending it while alive. They might also be able to weave a good story, one that ruins you.

Using your argument, "Imagine how deeper and more meaningful RP was", if people were actively developing secret code languages only they know, that can't be understood with language comprehension alone.

This is correct, and based, and thank you for the idea. Everyone should do this.

[Void]

This- you've- nailed it accurately, but you seem to have missed a critical element. It's a fallacy. it's wrong.

Some people think it is wrong and some people think that it is a fallacy. Just because it is called a fallacy by some, that does not mean it is fallacious. Only that some people think this way.

I think that this "fallacious" idea had a point.

even the frail old ladies can eat an axe to the face and

A frail old lady will have under 10 hitpoints. So no. A frail old lady that had intersting youth can have more.

The people who make the right choices excel. In doing so, they become the kind of people you want to hear stories about.

No, that one's false.

I do not want to hear about character who was born at exact right moment with exact right ability, and make every exact choice.
They're not interesting.

I want to hear about character who overcame their shortcomings instead, and fought tooth and nail to earn their victory. Or didn't even earn their victory and died horribly.

Because a perfect character risks being a Mary Sue/Gary Stu. And Mary/Gary are the last type of character you'd ever want to see in fiction. The main issue is that a "perfect character" is close to some sort of saint or ideal. And the problem with saints/ideal that they aren't real and so far removed from real people that they become difficult to relate to. Take someone imperfect and flawed and made mistakes, and that one becomes more alive.

Your characters alignment, build, classes, skillpoint distribution represent character's life choices. When you have two people with exact same abilities and exact same choices in life at key moments, that rattles suspension of disbelief a lot. There is also room for personality changes, but the stats are going to limit you. What's more there's a good chance that some people simply ignore penalties, like having 6 charisma, 8 wisdom, or 10 or 8 int. And separate their vision of character from their stat sheet.

mechanics and RP are a trade.

They are. Optimal stats limit your character choice. By playing optimal build you will be playing clones. Now, there's some wiggle room for different personality, but there are heavy limits on it.

It can, it does,and it is happening all around you right now. Not sure what else to say.

I'll believe it when I see it. Lots of things are said to happen behind closed doors, but if a tree fall in a forest and there's nobody to witness it, did the tree even exist in the first place?

Using your argument, "Imagine how deeper and more meaningful RP was", if people were actively developing secret code languages only they know, that can't be understood with language comprehension alone.

This is correct, and based, and thank you for the idea. Everyone should do this.

Have fun. Language and cipher code construction can be enjoyable. I made some characters like that in the past. Thinking about how much you're enraging all the scrying people with the incomprehensible gibberish can be also very entertaining.

[DM Monkey]

As things currently stand: Some info is available OOC, some is available IC, there's a bit of a mix for everyone. You don't always have to know everything or be the best at everything. There's enough information for roleplay to take place, and for people to learn along the way.

[-XXX-]

This I don't understand. You can absolutely force RP on someone, absolutely force PvP that matters. Any low-level necromancer who dares to use their summons can tell you that, any pirate who lived when Greenhorn tats were visible. Other character's actions can absolutely force consequences on you whether you agree to them or not.

This isn't an RP-by-agreement server. It's a persistent world. You don't have to accept your exile to get exiled, and your bones can only litter up the Hub so many times before no one is going to take you seriously. The entire history of the module demonstrates this a thousand times, from the vassalization of Guldorand, to the purge(s?) of Sharrans from Andunor, to Wharftown. I don't understand what you mean by denying it.

Don't you realize that that necromancer who conjures undead on your character's turf probably does that because they ~want~ to create a story including your character? That greenhorn pirate waltzes into Cordor because they agree to RP with you?
Treat them like second-grade characters and you risk losing them altogether. They might just end up rolling their characters and avoiding you and all your future characters like a plague.

And yes, you can't just PvP brute force your way into someone else's RP. They'll probably just respawn and go about their business.
Bottom line, if you want meaningful RP with someone, you need to work with them not against them and this includes conflict RP and PvP too. The goal is for everyone to have fun. Try to have all the fun for yourself and you'll end up gradually having less and less of it as the opportunities start diminishing with the number of players willing to participate.

Also, you can litter the Hub with someone's bones only so many times before the _house calls.

TBH, I don't see why people still view this mechanic as such a boogeyman. -scry is dead. The odds of this mechanic actually doing something relevant are astronomically low. The idea of being scried seems much worse than it actually is. Get out of your head people!

I actually have been maining an ESF divination Wiz for some three years. I get a convenient yellow overhead pop-up whenever I am scried. She was also trained by some of the best in defending herself. To the best of my knowledge, I have never suffered anything of significance as a result of being scried.

But I have many times been put in a position to make other people suffer, by things I have scried. I have ruined whole characters, cut off entire plotlines before they could start. I felt at the time that the server was better without them anyway, and it served my ends. Was I right? I have come to regret it. Your "Astronomically low" odds have made me millions of gold and three careers at the expense of people who didn't know how to stop me from ruining their story.

When was this?
I ask because I admittedly did the same, but now I claim that scrying is over.
The mechanic itself has been considerably toned down with the introduction of the cooldown. Furthermore countermeasures also became much more widely known.
Let's be honest here, the FOIG part of scrying countermeasures is most likely FOIG precisely because had it been open information, scrying would have become borderline useless. It's all about the gotcha moments and there needs to be a certain degree of ignorance for gotchas to be able happen.
But we're practially there already as far too many people spilled the beans simply because of their utter contempt for the mere idea of this mechanic.

[Skane]

As things currently stand: Some info is available OOC, some is available IC, there's a bit of a mix for everyone. You don't always have to know everything or be the best at everything. There's enough information for roleplay to take place, and for people to learn along the way.

This isn't about being the 'best' infact I would say the people who are the 'best' with regards to this. That being knowing the ins and outs of scrying have already given their thoughts on this. Largely that the current state of affairs isn't a good one.

If the people who know how the system works think it's a good idea for that information to be published, I think they, we, should be taken seriously.

If it was about knowing everything or being the best, this thread wouldn't exist. We'd use the advantage we have of knowing how to counter scrying and not tell anyone new.

[WJLIII3]

This I don't understand. You can absolutely force RP on someone, absolutely force PvP that matters. Any low-level necromancer who dares to use their summons can tell you that, any pirate who lived when Greenhorn tats were visible. Other character's actions can absolutely force consequences on you whether you agree to them or not.

This isn't an RP-by-agreement server. It's a persistent world. You don't have to accept your exile to get exiled, and your bones can only litter up the Hub so many times before no one is going to take you seriously. The entire history of the module demonstrates this a thousand times, from the vassalization of Guldorand, to the purge(s?) of Sharrans from Andunor, to Wharftown. I don't understand what you mean by denying it.

Don't you realize that that necromancer who conjures undead on your character's turf probably does that because they ~want~ to create a story including your character? That greenhorn pirate waltzes into Cordor because they agree to RP with you?
Treat them like second-grade characters and you risk losing them altogether. They might just end up rolling their characters and avoiding you and all your future characters like a plague.

And yes, you can't just PvP brute force your way into someone else's RP. They'll probably just respawn and go about their business.
Bottom line, if you want meaningful RP with someone, you need to work with them not against them and this includes conflict RP and PvP too. The goal is for everyone to have fun. Try to have all the fun for yourself and you'll end up gradually having less and less of it as the opportunities start diminishing with the number of players willing to participate.

Also, you can litter the Hub with someone's bones only so many times before the _house calls.

You misunderstand. The consequences you're proposing already happened. Those characters were killbashed out of existence. These are players that didn't know being a pirate would make them KoS in Condor, that didn't know necromancy was The One Evil, made the mistake, and had their story ruined. They weren't trying to drum up conflict,they were trying to survive to level 10 on a new server. And regardless of their intentions, they got killbashed into normal awards.

And you can litter the Hub with bones infinity times. Ask Welby. The implications of one person's bones repeatedly in the Hub is that someone started some trouble, died, and didn't agree with the RP path of them losing so they came back. and died again. And again. It's a thing that happens every now and then. Eventually,the guy who keeps dying is forced to stay away. This is not good RP.

(Welby didn't do this, Welby's bones glitched an unreasonable number of times. Just a joke. I don't remember the names of the people who actually do this)

The ones who DON'T die in that circumstance, become Duvain. Legends. A source of years of great RP. Power matters to story. And having power doesn't make a bad story.

[DM Monkey]

Ask Irongron. I don't think this policy will change without his say-so.

[Void]

Those characters were killbashed out of existence. These are players that didn't know being a pirate would make them KoS in Condor, that didn't know necromancy was The One Evil, made the mistake, and had their story ruined.

You can't killbash anyone out of existence, unless they have MoD.

And "ruining" the story is your interpretation of events. Normally it is "I made a mistake, I rolled with it".

The ones who DON'T die in that circumstance, become Duvain. Legends.

Here's the thing. I don't think I ever heard this name in the game.

What often happens is that we have two groups in conflict and for them, that conflict is the whole world. And when maybe one side wins, they might think itself as legend. If you step outside of that group however, there's a whole world of players that might be unaware of the conflict and both groups existing. So the legend turns into a distant rumor and fades in time.

Many conflicts from outside look like few people bickering on a message board and then vanish. While from inside it looks like a grand thing, a guy hunting bats in a rothe cave will not even know that those groups exist, because they don't have sufficient presence to make themselves known to him.

I'm not sure there's anyone that is known as a legend at this point on the server. That would be someone that even a new player would be aware of. I can recall few older names, but I'm not sure if any of them qualifies.

In the end all stories vanish without a trace. Some leave a footnote in history books.

"This too shall pass"