The Amendment to Fugue Rules seems flawed

[DM Poppy]

Coming Soon

When you die, you enter a Cutscene like when using the Caravan.

You take a 5 minute journey from death to the wall via a Skeleton Steed. There, Death shall inform you of the rules.

This will happen every time you die and the journey will take longer each time you die.

[Aradin]

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.

Going to nitpick and play devil's advocate so this rule can be idiot/malice-proofed. Most of the below examples are done in bad faith; that's the point of adjusting the phrasing so players acting in bad faith directly break the wording of the rule rather than just the spirit of it.

"Players are not entitled to remember anything..."
It should be characters, not players. Otherwise someone could interpret it as saying their character still remembers it. It's a stretch to do so, but still.
Otherwise I think 'entitled' is too soft a word to use here. Just say players/characters do not know. No interpretation possible, no argument to be made, you just don't know anything about the fugue or entering it ever, no debate. If a DM ever does something different for a plot then sure, but that's a clear exception.

"Once your character has died" is unnecessary. The only way you can experience the fugue is by dying, so by being there your character has already died. I'd just remove it from the sentence entirely to just say "You know nothing of your encounters in the fugue 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."
I'd rephrase it like this:
"You are allowed to know information leading up to your death, such as where you were and why you went there, but this does not include the actual PvP encounter or anyone involved in it."
Changing 'person' to 'people' is important because if your death is the result of fighting multiple people, magically remembering everyone except the person who dealt the killing blow is allowed in the current phrasing. I think it makes more sense to just not remember the encounter. Putting in the examples of where you were and why you went there is a good way to help define just what you mean when you're making a rule that you can only remember certain aspects of events that lead to your death.

"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."
Mostly good. I'd maybe define 'running up' more to have the sentence make more sense to ESL players. Something like "...undesired effect of people respawning and immediately telling others the identity of the person who killed them."

So....*drum roll*...Spyre's Announcement: The Aradin Cut.

Characters do not remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. You know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning. You are allowed to know information leading up to your death, such as where you were and why you went there, but this does not include the actual PvP encounter or anyone involved in it. This is in effort to treat death more seriously across the server and to remove the undesired effect of people respawning and immediately telling others the identity of the person who killed them.

Hope this helps!

[Spriggan Bride]

Since it's being discussed in this thread and I think there's confusion I'd look at this line in the "rules" section

Characters who have died are expected to leave the area if the victor shows up and to not interact with them at all. In areas where this is more difficult such as Skaljard or Andunor, just do your best and try not to draw attention.

According to posts here it's on both sides to remove themselves but this suggests it's only on the loser, and since I'm always the loser in PVP I'm pretty aware of how this goes. That's how most encounters I've had are played and that's what I've been told by a DM. I've gotten pretty hostile tells from "victor" players if they arrive somewhere where I already am, like "leave now or I am reporting you"

[AstralUniverse]

Characters do not remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. You know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning. You are allowed to know information leading up to your death, such as where you were and why you went there, but this does not include the actual PvP encounter or anyone involved in it. This is in effort to treat death more seriously across the server and to remove the undesired effect of people respawning and immediately telling others the identity of the person who killed them.

Yeah this wording reflects the spirit of the rule a lot more lawyer-like. Looks good.

[ReverentBlade]

Personal opinion, but If a larger scale battle takes long enough (10+ minutes over multiple areas), I think respawned characters should be permitted to remember that they were in a battle, if not the final details. I don't like how the wording change takes that option away.

You want assassins to have an incentive to be quick and clean. You want victims to have an incentive to put up a fight instead of walk away from the keyboard. You want to give an opportunity to play out PTSD from a battle gone bad. Total hard amnesia is too sterile.

[AstralUniverse]

Personal opinion, but If a larger scale battle takes long enough (10+ minutes over multiple areas), I think respawned characters should be permitted to remember that they were in a battle, if not the final details. I don't like how the wording change takes that option away.

I dont think anyone would blame you or particularly give a rat if you RP ptsd after death, as long as you do it for your own character's depth, for flavor, and you do not gain any unfair advantage that leads to you pointing to your killer's identity. Always think about this rule as a story enabler, not a disabler. Your lack of memory of your killer's identity opens up a lot of room for story, the rest of it is really up to you and ptsd is probably fine.

[Kalthariam]

Well, while it's not total amnesia anymore, I'm still not really a big fan of the loss of memory thing.

There's a plethora of reasons why someone could come back to life. From allies raising them, from an friendly NPC finding the body and dragging it away and raising it. (Similar to the way some people raise killed guards, just random acts of kindness) maybe a skilled healer disguised as a rothe just happened to walk by who knows.

Leaning more towards losing large chunks of memory despite in many cases death not being random still feels pretty iffy.. intelligent characters should be able to connect dots, make inferences, be able to read patterns understand cause and effect. The idea that you just.. completely blank on the entire area feels far-fetched in some cases.

Resurrection Magic isn't exactly rare, it's a reasonable explanation, not every rise from the dead needs specifically be a god intervening (Even if mechanically that's just how it's explained) I don't think I've ever told someone 'My god brought me back to life" after a death. Usually it's RP'd off as an ally saved me, or a city guard on patrol found me and recognized me and returned my body and I was revived in some way through that.

I've had people walk up to some of my characters in the middle of relatively safe areas, and try to one line them then attack them before and be forced to defend myself. The memory loss aspect seems to just feed into random murder hobos running around and attacking people because canonically people aren't allowed to remember they died to whom. Which makes catching random murderers nearly impossible with the new set up if you just happen to be someone either too weak, or too poor at PvP.

I've seen people get upset at other people for not wanting to engage with PvP at all, and actively avoiding it at every avenue they can, yet rulings like this lead to people whom are not confident nor capable (Nor interested) in basically just being easy targets for someone to gank and you can't even go to allies to help you, because no memories mean you have nothing to provide to them.

Personally this just sort of leads me to wanting to completely opt out of PvP entirely as much as I can and avoid it at all costs. Kinda stepped back from wanting to learn how to defend myself, to back into the complete opt out and avoid it entirely zone. Just seems to be far more of a headache than any narrative is worth in my personal opinion.

[riffraff]

It seems more to me that it incentivises the attacker to actually kill someone in secret, where there are no witnesses or people who might intervene and incentivises a victim to run for help if they're out-matched, which is how it should be, surely? As others mentioned before, it also gives a lot more agency to witnesses.

As a bystander it feels a lot better that there'll be fewer instances of overhearing people talking about their own murders like they talk about the rain and hopefully fewer instances of people lashing out and murdering someone in a crowded street when they could actually be smart about it and do it in secret. I find these things incredibly hard to parse IC because it genuinely feels like players just not taking dying and murdering seriously rather than something characters would actually reasonably do.

I say all this as someone who has yet to engage or be engaged in PVP at all (I had one close encounter) and am certainly not confident nor capable. I've tried to have an (IC) escape plan for PVP since I first started playing, knowing that I'll probably get my butt kicked. Make of that what you will.

[-XXX-]

I've seen people get upset at other people for not wanting to engage with PvP at all, and actively avoiding it at every avenue they can, yet rulings like this lead to people whom are not confident nor capable (Nor interested) in basically just being easy targets for someone to gank and you can't even go to allies to help you, because no memories mean you have nothing to provide to them.

Personally this just sort of leads me to wanting to completely opt out of PvP entirely as much as I can and avoid it at all costs. Kinda stepped back from wanting to learn how to defend myself, to back into the complete opt out and avoid it entirely zone. Just seems to be far more of a headache than any narrative is worth in my personal opinion.

People shouldn't be able to spin a clear loss into a win. That discourages everybody from engaging in PvP.

[Eira]

Personally this just sort of leads me to wanting to completely opt out of PvP entirely as much as I can and avoid it at all costs

Well, characters should want to avoid dying, so that seems perfectly in line with the intention.

[Cagus]

I am just really surprised this was not always a rule and took so long to codify. On all RP servers I played this was always basic rule (if only for RP reasoning for XP loss). I don't even see it as new change, but 'finally fixed this negligence'.
But I have to say the wording is *looking for eufemism* not that great.
I will skip the the already commented "person who struck the final blow", which of course should be about events leading to the death, as stated perfectly before(e.g. by Aradin). But the rule talks about the player, not character.

Players are not entitled to remember...

For example:

Player X,Y and Z are conversing.
...

This leads to great confusion, for example for this guy~~

...
The amnesia rule regards CHARACTERS
The 48hrs rule regards PLAYERS

^There's a clear distinction here. While the character might be subject to amnesia after a PvP defeat, the player is not.
...

~~~seems to think it is about characters, but the rule is worded about players.

Next change should be something like 5% of xp current exp, so the death can really have some weight for players.

P.S. I was always confused here by the 'PvP' term. I was used to CvC (Character vs Character), or even PCvPC(Player Character vs Player Character, but this is long, so CvC was used), to separate from PvP, which is about players. Similar with misuse of these separate terms in this new rule, this is often confusing here on arelith.

[The Rambling Midget]

Next change should be something like 5% of xp current exp, so the death can really have some weight for players.

All that does it take us back to where we were fifteen years ago. Not remembering how you ended up in the fugue WAS a rule, but it was unwritten and only enforced when the DMs noticed or there was a complaint. Because it wasn't formally written, it was gradually lost over time as successive regimes cycled through and had to reinterpret the rules, or, in some cases, slim down the rules, because there were not enough staff members to handle all of the ensuing complaints.

Death XP loss (which was 50xp/lvl up to L20 and 100xp/lvl at epics) meant that grief cliques could (and, with alarming frequency, would) use death to punish their opponents by repeatedly extracting XP (and thereby RL time) from them. Of course, this would have a far less meaningful effect with adventure XP and other new passive XP gain methods, but it would still be creating another problem for DMs to deal with.

The former promotes good RP, while the latter encourages poor sportsmanship. Mechanical punishments will harm casual players far more than career troublemakers, who will already have the means and the assistance to quickly recover from them. OOC cliques will render any punishment short of deletion or a ban meaningless, so I'm in favor of providing guidance rather than punishment.

[TurningLeaf]

Can my character investigate this fuzzy period, eventually conclude he was whacked, then investigate his own murder like some kind of Altered Carbon scenario?

[Kalthariam]

Well, characters should want to avoid dying, so that seems perfectly in line with the intention.

If that's the case, then people shouldn't be surprised when people hard opt out of PvP, Stonewall PvP threats by just leaving without comment, or refuse to engage in anything that remotely approaching PvP Conflict.

I've seen on several occasions people get outright hostile at the idea people do not have any intention of considering PvP or Engaging with it at all, and belittle people for finding no interest in conflict or combat obsessive storylines.

[TroubledWaters]

Well, characters should want to avoid dying, so that seems perfectly in line with the intention.

If that's the case, then people shouldn't be surprised when people hard opt out of PvP, Stonewall PvP threats by just leaving without comment, or refuse to engage in anything that remotely approaching PvP Conflict.

I've seen on several occasions people get outright hostile at the idea people do not have any intention of considering PvP or Engaging with it at all, and belittle people for finding no interest in conflict or combat obsessive storylines.

Well, yes. If you are uncomfortable with conflict, you should avoid it. There is more to PvP than mechanical fights, and you seem to be indicating that players should be free to pursue whatever kind of conflict or aggressive RP, which is a player-vs-player action, and then magically “opt out” of paying the consequences for their actions once someone comes knocking for them.

The reason I think you see why people are disgusted with this idea is that the server is full of players that love to taunt and do whatever they want to promote their own aggressive storylines, yet take whatever OOC means possible to avoid IC consequences for IC their actions by logging off, calling for help via discord, silently running away, etc. It’s people who want to magically be able to boss other characters around yet are surprised when they have to actually fight for the things they want. That’s a cool character development/flaw story IC, but some act that way OOC and it’s extremely frustrating to play with these kinds of people.

Eira said it very well: if you are not comfortable with potentially fighting someone, I think you should take IC actions to avoid conflict and RP that accordingly.

[-XXX-]

If that's the case, then people shouldn't be surprised when people hard opt out of PvP, Stonewall PvP threats by just leaving without comment, or refuse to engage in anything that remotely approaching PvP Conflict.

I've seen on several occasions people get outright hostile at the idea people do not have any intention of considering PvP or Engaging with it at all, and belittle people for finding no interest in conflict or combat obsessive storylines.

Pointedly ignoring hostile behaviour of other characters and walking away is actually a form of interactive roleplay.
Not typing =/= shield against PvP.

If other players are sending you hostile tells, I'd suggest reporting it.

[TroubledWaters]

Personal opinion, but If a larger scale battle takes long enough (10+ minutes over multiple areas), I think respawned characters should be permitted to remember that they were in a battle, if not the final details. I don't like how the wording change takes that option away.

Hypothetically, if it were a larger scale battle, the losing side would likely have at least one person who managed to escape and can then tell the story of how their side was defeated. The slain characters could then learn about that battle afterwards pretty easily.

[Marsi]

I am just really surprised this was not always a rule and took so long to codify. On all RP servers I played this was always basic rule (if only for RP reasoning for XP loss). I don't even see it as new change, but 'finally fixed this negligence'.

RE: all the people like "why wasn't this just a rule to begin with"?

I can't speak to the time when this *was* a rule, but for the decade or so it wasn't, it just didn't seem necessary. Arelith was smaller, less automated, and had a healthier monoculture (things were still bad in other ways, don't get me wrong). The rules were purposefully brief, with the idea that good RPers would rise to the top and bad players would reveal themselves as much with or without those rules.

At the time I was skeptical of death amnesia. It seemed to be a rule based on wishful thinking, and the only people pushing for it were blatantly biased assassin players. You could be sure that any "DAE think we should make death a huge PITA for the loser? just curious" posts were by assassin players.

[ReverentBlade]

Making death "meaningful" by erasing any memory of the trauma seems counterintuitive, is all. Death has meaning in the real world because its permanent. In a world where you're going to get raised, the only meaning -is- the trauma of the experience.

[Nurel]

Making death "meaningful" by erasing any memory of the trauma seems counterintuitive, is all. Death has meaning in the real world because its permanent. In a world where you're going to get raised, the only meaning -is- the trauma of the experience.

I believe "giving death meaning" should trascend the IC and act as a medium to encourage Players (not player characters) to actively try and avoid being killed. This could mean using more consumables, employing better tactics, cowering away from imbalanced fights in PVP etc.

Loss of XP and death debuffs are the only drawbacks to death currently. I believe it is enough as is, nobody likes being punished for pouring hours in a game in 2023.

Like previously discussed, an extended Fugue period could also work towards that direction, but at this point I'm convinced it's not gonna matter that much if it is 30mins or 1hour or whatever. 5minutes is enough

[Eira]

An event can have traumatic effects in the days, weeks, years after, without necessarily being recalled perfectly or even at all. Someone may not recall ever being bitten by a dog, but when they were a toddler, a dog knocked them over and now as an adult, they go "I just have an irrational fear of dogs".

I personally have experience with traumatic events that affected me in ways I didn't even realize were connected until someone reminded me of the actual details (sometimes even when someone does remind me, I have no personal memory of the experience still).

Think of it like your character's mind protecting them from even more trauma that experiencing or reliving their own death may inflict. Your character can still have nightmares, inexplicable feelings of fear or discomfort, panic attacks, and anything else you can think of without being able to give a play by play of the pvp.

[JustMonika]

Forgetting the moment of death doesn't mean you're going to magically think it isn't horrific. Being stabbed, melted by acid, electrocted, consumed by a dragon, mauled to death by badgers, etc is /painful/, regardless as if you live or die, and no-one is just going to shrug of the possibility of that happening because they might not remember it.

[Biolab00]

Forgetting the moment of death doesn't mean you're going to magically think it isn't horrific. Being stabbed, melted by acid, electrocted, consumed by a dragon, mauled to death by badgers, etc is /painful/, regardless as if you live or die, and no-one is just going to shrug of the possibility of that happening because they might not remember it.

Absolutely correct.
Living people instinctively reject the extremes. Because it's too horrific, too real and torturous, the body remember the feeling but the Mind often rejects it. This is part of the reason, generally in most Novel, that the person who had undergone extreme tortures often had nightmares but simply just can't remember the face or rather what they will often see as "fogged, misty face".
And death is simply, in reality, nothing esle can surpass this extreme.
I really think that no one, can probably overcome the feeling or even remembrance if they actually died at all. It's a feeling or thought that the Mind will absolutely reject because otherwise, why esle alive?

In fact, it will be absolutely a joyful RP if the PVP has RP purpose and the winner/attacker (because they should only be the person who remembered it) taunted the person(lost the memory) who died, "If they remember the pain, the horror" and the description of such, to generate a wonderful horror RP.
Like i've said, body will not forget but the Mind will never stop rejecting the extremes.
Death is the most extreme amidst all extremes.

This is how i view it.

[Kalthariam]

Well, characters should want to avoid dying, so that seems perfectly in line with the intention.

If that's the case, then people shouldn't be surprised when people hard opt out of PvP, Stonewall PvP threats by just leaving without comment, or refuse to engage in anything that remotely approaching PvP Conflict.

I've seen on several occasions people get outright hostile at the idea people do not have any intention of considering PvP or Engaging with it at all, and belittle people for finding no interest in conflict or combat obsessive storylines.

Well, yes. If you are uncomfortable with conflict, you should avoid it. There is more to PvP than mechanical fights, and you seem to be indicating that players should be free to pursue whatever kind of conflict or aggressive RP, which is a player-vs-player action, and then magically “opt out” of paying the consequences for their actions once someone comes knocking for them.

The reason I think you see why people are disgusted with this idea is that the server is full of players that love to taunt and do whatever they want to promote their own aggressive storylines, yet take whatever OOC means possible to avoid IC consequences for IC their actions by logging off, calling for help via discord, silently running away, etc. It’s people who want to magically be able to boss other characters around yet are surprised when they have to actually fight for the things they want. That’s a cool character development/flaw story IC, but some act that way OOC and it’s extremely frustrating to play with these kinds of people.

Eira said it very well: if you are not comfortable with potentially fighting someone, I think you should take IC actions to avoid conflict and RP that accordingly.

Not remotely.

There's plenty of people that like to talk garbage and run away or just stay in neutral zones that your not allowed to start fights in and continue mocking and ridiculing people. I've never been one of those people, I personally just find PvP to be too prevalent, and I find it to almost always be most people's first response to conflict, whether it be through ganking unprepared or under leveled characters, or constantly pushing hostile actions against people.

My characters have never been hostile and only have had hostile actions imposed upon them. I've been heavily in favor of completely avoiding PvP entirely, and I've had people outright tell me that my disinterest in PvP to not "even prepare for it" in my builds and such was stupid and lead to them refusing to further talk to me on ideas.

I frequently build level 30 pure classes, despite people constantly telling me I should multi-class because of PvP and "Important" skills needed for such, which I have zero interest in doing. Even just trying to discuss RP ideas with people has lead to some people getting hostile with me and refusing to speak further to me because I refused to give a damn about PvP, I seriously do not care if my cleric has discipline, I'm not cross classing her, and I'm not spending 30 skill points for a measly 15 points on a 8 str cleric whose going to fail discipline checks anyways.

I was convinced to at least learn to protect myself a few weeks back and get a basic understanding of mechanics, but this change simply has me back in the mindset of "Just completely avoid it entirely, don't give people pushing PvP the time of day. Avoid it entirely and just move on with your life." because frankly at least if I run away I get to know who tried to attack me, if I try to defend myself and die because I'm not good at PvP? Guess who now gets to have zero idea who is attacking them! Which just seems to promote people being murder hobo's because if they die they don't get to know you killed them. How convenient.

These changes, in my opinion, do not bolster storylines, it just puts people whom get attacked on the backfoot severely. Having zero recollection of someone attacking you in many cases doesn't even make sense. there's so many different avenues someone can take to deal with a "Foggy memory" whether it be through divination magic, potions that help patch up memories, or perhaps simple common deduction that most intelligent characters should be able to do. The setting is a setting where there's literally rocks that can bring the dead back to life commonly found, and books that can do the same, and people doing extravagant forms of magic all over the place, but apparently a slightly foggy memory is just too much for anyone to fix?

The idea that you literally just have a blank part of your memory, period end of discussion no further elaboration allowed, and no way to recover said memory is just as bad for anyone's story as it is to have jim bob respawn and tell a guard the bob jim killed him five minutes ago. Both scenario's don't really make sense, in my opinion, for the setting giving what is accessible to people rather easily.

[Xerah]

Some things don’t need to make 100% logical sense because of how we’re playing the game. This can be one of them and it’s not as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be.

This is another one of those posts that you write which makes me thing you’re playing somewhere other than here with these complaints. I’m not sure how you continue to do that.