The Amendment to Fugue Rules seems flawed

[Eyeliner]

Loser should absolutely respect the loss in character and act like someone who lost a fight. I am talking about player punishments like the idea of a 48 hour time out for a PVP loss.

[Eira]

That 48 hour timeout was purely a hypothetical used for an example of a possible, albeit unwanted and unfair, solution based on supposed assumption that it is impossible to avoid interaction with former pvp opponents.

[AstralUniverse]

I dont recall ever reading that it's on the loser to avoid the winner and not vice versa. It's on both sides to avoid one another. There's no preferences for the winner over the loser in this. it doesnt 'punish' anyone in particular and if both sides agree to weave it then it doesnt exist. The loser also doesnt need to do anything IC. They dont need to respect the loss because they arent aware they lost a fight. Lets separate the 48h hour rule from the memory loss from dying rule because one of them applies to just the character, the other applies to just the player.

[Marsi]

People are right in that this codifies how quality RPers already behave, but it's interesting how rapidly the PvP rules are being changed when they've stood for at least a decade.

Something that's changed from my heyday is the way otherwise good players moralise bad behaviour. It's no longer enough to expect quality behaviour from quality RPers. People get caught up in tribalistic conflict and want to make pre-emptive strikes or nastily respond to defeats because theyre the Good Guys and their opponents are the Bad Guys or, if we don't do it, they will, etc.

I've seen some unhinged reactions from groups of people who have conditioned themselves into thinking they are in the right, that they're just trying to play the game and do their thing, and that nothing they can do could be as bad as the group they think is persecuting them, but whose actions eventually catch up to them.

I have no doubt this kind of player will still try to skirt the rules, but it's good that it's harder to maintain plausible deniability. How you react to struggle and oppression on the server is when you are measured as a roleplayer, a good sport, and a worthy member of the community, not when things go your way and you can peacefully throw parties and all the Bad Guys leave you alone.

[MessyBaddie]

People are right in that this codifies how quality RPers already behave, but it's interesting how rapidly the PvP rules are being changed when they've stood for at least a decade.

Something that's changed from my heyday is the way otherwise good players moralise bad behaviour. It's no longer enough to expect quality behaviour from quality RPers. People get caught up in tribalistic conflict and want to make pre-emptive strikes or nastily respond to defeats because theyre the Good Guys and their opponents are the Bad Guys or, if we don't do it, they will, etc.

I've seen some unhinged reactions from groups of people who have conditioned themselves into thinking they are in the right, that they're just trying to play the game and do their thing, and that nothing they can do could be as bad as the group they think is persecuting them, but whose actions eventually catch up to them.

I have no doubt this kind of player will still try to skirt the rules, but it's good that it's harder to maintain plausible deniability. How you react to struggle and oppression on the server is when you are measured as a roleplayer, a good sport, and a worthy member of the community, not when things go your way and you can peacefully throw parties and all the Bad Guys leave you alone.

It is contagious, and insidious.

[-XXX-]

B I N G O

[Brandon Steel]

The fact killing someone just led to them yapping about it right after respawning was always baffling to me. I think it could use some tweaking but I hope the main idea stays the same.

[Aren]

Trials are a glaring example of why this change was a good thing.

“Could you point out to the court, the man who murdered you in cold blood yesterday?”

“That man over there.”

“Guilty!”

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Another thing that I hope this will lead to is more self-preservation from the victim. That people will actually try to get away so they can warn people that so and so just tried to kill them.

[Spyre]

Is the better wording to say:

Death and You
============

Players are not entitled to remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. Once your character has died you will know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning. You are allowed to know information leading up to your death but not the actual PvP and the person who struck you down. This is in effort to treat death more seriously across the server and to remove the undesired effect of people running up after respawning and stating someone just killed them.

Vs how it is written now:

Death and You
============

Players are not entitled to remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. Once your character has died you will know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning. You are allowed to know information leading up to your death but not the person who struck the final blow. This is in effort to treat death more seriously across the server and to remove the undesired effect of people running up after respawning and stating someone just killed them.

[Morgy]

I would like to suggest a reminder prompt in the action log both when you enter the fugue, and when you respawn/are raised. These OOC reminders for things like death/disguises are very helpful.

[-XXX-]

Death and You
============

Players are not entitled to remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. Once your character has died you will know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning. You are allowed to know information leading up to your death but not the actual PvP and the person who struck you down. This is in effort to treat death more seriously across the server and to remove the undesired effect of people running up after respawning and stating someone just killed them.

I think this one is better.

PvP doesn't always happen 1v1 - being merely unable to remember the character who struck the finishing blow might not be sufficient.

[AstralUniverse]

"strike the final blow" is not a very good wording. Characters shouldnt remember who killed them. Remembering the entire scene leading to the fight and some of the fight up to the final blow is too close to just remembering the whole thing and easily pointing to their killer. We should go with wording that properly reflects the spirit of the rule aka you do not remember the person who killed you. simple as that.

[Arienette]

Another thing that I hope this will lead to is more self-preservation from the victim. That people will actually try to get away so they can warn people that so and so just tried to kill them.

I really hope this is the case.

It has always happened, but in the last 6+ months or so, it seems to have come to a peak. Most of the recent weird/poor/strange RP I have experienced recently has stemmed from people having no sense of preservation, and zero inclination to back down from anything, ever.

At this point, when it comes to potential conflict RP, I have to ask myself OOCly “do I really want to kill this character right now?”. Because that’s how it always ends up, it seems.

Your options are to:

1. Call out someone for behavior your character would dislike, and inevitably end up in a death match, because they WILL NOT back down in any circumstance.

2. Just ignore the behavior your character has a problem with because you don’t feel like killing someone in PvP right now.

The frequency of “kill me if you wish, I will always do what I want” is too damn high.

[-XXX-]

At this point, when it comes to potential conflict RP, I have to ask myself OOCly “do I really want to kill this character right now?”. Because that’s how it always ends up, it seems.

Your options are to:

1. Call out someone for behavior your character would dislike, and inevitably end up in a death match, because they WILL NOT back down in any circumstance.

2. Just ignore the behavior your character has a problem with because you don’t feel like killing someone in PvP right now.

The frequency of “kill me if you wish, I will always do what I want” is too damn high.

So are you saying that you never lose at PvP and it's always the other character who needs to fear defeat?

[Arienette]

At this point, when it comes to potential conflict RP, I have to ask myself OOCly “do I really want to kill this character right now?”. Because that’s how it always ends up, it seems.

Your options are to:

1. Call out someone for behavior your character would dislike, and inevitably end up in a death match, because they WILL NOT back down in any circumstance.

2. Just ignore the behavior your character has a problem with because you don’t feel like killing someone in PvP right now.

The frequency of “kill me if you wish, I will always do what I want” is too damn high.

So are you saying that you never lose at PvP and it's always the other character who needs to fear defeat?

I usually win in PvP, but it’s because I don’t pick pointless fights I cannot win.

If I am playing a Bad Guy and run into a pack of 5 Good Guys who give me “an out”, I take it. In part because I tend to play my characters with a healthy sense of “I don’t want to be killed.”

But it seems when I am on the other side of that equation, where me and my 5 Paladin buddies run into a lvl 20 animator, they tend to commit Suicide by Paladin by refusing to budge an inch.

-eliminate your undead and leave
- nobody can ever tell me what to do obviously lol
- hopeless attack that results in their death

Thats just one generic example of what I see almost weekly.

The same applies to evil o good, good on good, and evil on evil in the UD.

- Your crew is wack and lame
- Well there is 4 of us and one of you. Maybe chill out and peace out of this conversation?
- Nah, I will never back down. Kill me if you must, losers.

HPpens way more frequently than it should if people were playing their characters with any reasonable fear of death.

[TroubledWaters]

I feel similarly to Arienette and I mostly play bad guys.

People don't take outs because not only is death not respected, it's treated as an advantage. If you get killed in PvP, you may lose a trivial amount of gold and get a short amount of rez sickness, but you get to carry on and round up a crew to get vengeance, which is now justified as your character has suffered an IC attack that everybody knows about. You lose nothing, but gain an RP advantage.

I think this change is a great step towards a culture of respecting death and actually RPing that actions have consequences, as well as brings Arelith in line with almost every other major RP PW since NWN was released. Thanks to the team for making this change.

[AstralUniverse]

Arienette is spot on here

[-XXX-]

These are all valid points.

When character PvP defeat is regarded as preferable to them appearing weak, getting humiliated or backing down and losing face, something's wrong.
It usually hints at a "must win", or rather "my character doesn't lose" mindset.
Then again, same could be said about playing such a tight game that losing doesn't even occur as a distant possibility in a discourse such as this.

I'd like to link Scurvy's fantastic post here, because it describes much of what I'm hinting at : viewtopic.php?f=18&t=31343&p=246941#p246941

[Royal Blood]

I like the announcement. I think it's putting into words what we have all agreed is good form for roleplay. But, without it being formally put into words it's like a shadow rule. Now it's definitive and you know what to do!

There are two sides to this kinda stuff, disregarding death and in my opinion a more common issue, killing everything that doesn't submit to your narrative. I think lately, where I've been playing, there's been a lot of good faith. From groups who are very potent at PVP allowing narratives to flourish while exercising their PVP potential with logical story lines instead of just annihilating everything that isn't compliant.

There's always a tug of war between like too much PVP and then players who don't respect PVP. I think most of us are in the middle there trying to respectfully act as our characters would.

So I like the announcement. Only change I think is that a dialog should come up when you resurrect stating what you should remember. There's a lot of RP etiquette to keep in mind and in the heat of things having that reminder would be beneficial I think.

[Aradin]

I'll throw in my support for a reminder about the rules regarding death/memory when you enter the fugue. Not only as a reminder for those who have seen the announcement, but because not every player looks at the announcements on the forum/discord.

[Amateur Hour]

There really does need to be a reminder once you enter the fugue:

• Not everyone is on the Discord.
• Not everyone reads the forums.
• The chances that someone starting to play the game in January is going to read back and see the announcement is vanishingly low.
• While it is in the rules page on the wiki, it's not yet in the player handbook that new players are much more likely to start with (granted, I think the player handbook requires a complete rewrite since so much of the information is now outright wrong due to server changes).

[MissEvelyn]

There really does need to be a reminder once you enter the fugue:

• Not everyone is on the Discord.
• Not everyone reads the forums.
• The chances that someone starting to play the game in January is going to read back and see the announcement is vanishingly low.
• While it is in the rules page on the wiki, it's not yet in the player handbook that new players are much more likely to start with (granted, I think the player handbook requires a complete rewrite since so much of the information is now outright wrong due to server changes).

+1
A floating text or similar in the Fugue would be excellent.

[Spyre]

We will look to add a text. As well, please read up to my last post and let me know which of the two is preferred.

[Amateur Hour]

Is the better wording to say:

Death and You
============

Players are not entitled to remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. Once your character has died you will know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning. You are allowed to know information leading up to your death but not the actual PvP and the person who struck you down. This is in effort to treat death more seriously across the server and to remove the undesired effect of people running up after respawning and stating someone just killed them.

Vs how it is written now:

Death and You
============

Players are not entitled to remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. Once your character has died you will know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning. You are allowed to know information leading up to your death but not the person who struck the final blow. This is in effort to treat death more seriously across the server and to remove the undesired effect of people running up after respawning and stating someone just killed them.

I think "You are allowed to remember information leading up to your death but cannot remember anything once combat begins" may be slightly better, along the lines of version 1. Version 2 means something very different to me, because if I was fighting Adam the Animator, Barry the Blackguard, and Waldo the Warlock and Barry the Blackguard struck the final blow, Version 2 would still let me run back to town and say "I was just attacked by Adam, Barry, and Waldo, and they tried to kill me! The next thing I know, I was in a graveyard with the mother of all headaches."