Spell-casting, Alignment & IC Reactions

[Morgy]

The spirit of the situation - is to try and make sure players /can/ still play openly as characters in that area. That they won't be immedatly threatend with death/pariahed/exiled/driven out. But some degree of predjudice/dislike is absolutly fine.

Thanks! Understanding a bit better now and glad I could express my own thoughts a little bit clearer over a few posts!

[Flower Power]

TL;DR -- Arelith's setting is moving away from highs and lows and those sorts of conflicts by making settlements more inclusive, and the net result is good characters being more passive about evil-doers than they probably ought to be, and that's not a problem we as players can fix.

𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔦𝔱𝔳𝔡𝔢

I keep telling people that just because King Edward says you're not allowed to be mean to Banites on the street anymore doesn't stop you from forming a secret society of masked vigilantes dedicated to identifying, exposing and then beating up neck-romancers. All while bribing the more pious members of the government to simply look the other way while this Holy Beatdown occurs. Embrace the Vigilante/Liberator life, join a cult and beat up a wizard today.

Nobody has done it in almost a decade, though, the absolute cowards.

Remember, kids: Lawful doesn't mean you slavishly obey every single written law. Especially if there's no reasonable recourse available under the law. You can just break the law. You just now potentially have to deal with Consequences (and consequences are fun.)

[Paint]

a lack of overall inclusiveness and excluding possibilities of roleplay from happening at all by just exiling people the moment they are accused was an extreme that Arelith did have for a while, and I'm pretty sure was the reason for Eddie's decree in the first place.

I don't disagree with this. There's consequences to everything is more what I was driving at. You make settlements more inclusive, the way people interact with one another in settlements change. It's not... a bad thing. It's just different.

[MissEvelyn]

Could it be that the admin and dev team want to consider Cordor a more neutral settlement? After all, the grand temple of the Triad (all good deities) was swapped out with a temple to a Lawful Neutral deity, perhaps signifying that the settlement desires to be more lawful neutral, than lawful good.

And now with King Edward's decree, I suspect the above to be true.

Cordor is no Elturel. Maybe we players ought to do ourselves the favor and stop treating it as such.

[Hazard]

TL;DR -- Arelith's setting is moving away from highs and lows and those sorts of conflicts by making settlements more inclusive, and the net result is good characters being more passive about evil-doers than they probably ought to be, and that's not a problem we as players can fix.

𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔦𝔱𝔳𝔡𝔢

I keep telling people that just because King Edward says you're not allowed to be mean to Banites on the street anymore doesn't stop you from forming a secret society of masked vigilantes dedicated to identifying, exposing and then beating up neck-romancers. All while bribing the more pious members of the government to simply look the other way while this Holy Beatdown occurs. Embrace the Vigilante/Liberator life, join a cult and beat up a wizard today.

Nobody has done it in almost a decade, though, the absolute cowards.

Remember, kids: Lawful doesn't mean you slavishly obey every single written law. Especially if there's no reasonable recourse available under the law. You can just break the law. You just now potentially have to deal with Consequences (and consequences are fun.)

Plot armor.

[Amateur Hour]

TL;DR -- Arelith's setting is moving away from highs and lows and those sorts of conflicts by making settlements more inclusive, and the net result is good characters being more passive about evil-doers than they probably ought to be, and that's not a problem we as players can fix.

𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔦𝔱𝔳𝔡𝔢

I keep telling people that just because King Edward says you're not allowed to be mean to Banites on the street anymore doesn't stop you from forming a secret society of masked vigilantes dedicated to identifying, exposing and then beating up neck-romancers. All while bribing the more pious members of the government to simply look the other way while this Holy Beatdown occurs. Embrace the Vigilante/Liberator life, join a cult and beat up a wizard today.

Nobody has done it in almost a decade, though, the absolute cowards.

Remember, kids: Lawful doesn't mean you slavishly obey every single written law. Especially if there's no reasonable recourse available under the law. You can just break the law. You just now potentially have to deal with Consequences (and consequences are fun.)

Something I brought up in my first comment in this thread that I now realize I should have expanded upon that's related to this: just because you can't exile, pariah, or kill someone because of their faith/magic source/etc. doesn't mean the law requires you to be nice to them. There is no law prohibiting other discrimination against Banites/Sharrans/warlocks/etc. You can scream as loudly as you want that so-and-so has pacted with infernal/abyssal/unseelie/eldritch powers and you refuse to hire them or work with them for that reason, even if you're a government entity.

[Flower Power]

You say this, but being MILDLY MEAN to people is treated like a war crime on Arelith.

[AstralUniverse]

You say this, but being MILDLY MEAN to people is treated like a war crime on Arelith.

[DM Monkey]

You say this, but being MILDLY MEAN to people is treated like a war crime on Arelith.

IC war crimes are encouraged. Go and be mean!

[Edens_Fall]

Are we're talking about my banite preacher and the letter from the King in not restricting their preaching?

I can say that there were a thousand ways to resolve this stuff and I think you're getting a tad tunnelvisioned. Framing someone for a clear offense, investigating the person for more offenses that would stick, and hiring outsiders to harass the person are all ways to "get around" any legal rulings that might be in effect. Hell, even counter proselytizing could work to drive the evil preacher away.

I think the Edward post and others like it are put in place to slow down the direct, boring route of "oh you can't do that here, bye bye." exiled. And that's a good thing.

I don't know this case, so I can assure you it's not from my perspective. There's ways around the law to prosecute people sure, but then you're playing a PC who might be very lawful and is having to resort to those dubious methods (and not because that's the natural development of their character, but because it's the only way due to an OOC-influenced ruling). My main issue here is it doesn't seem at all explained well in game at the moment. Perhaps that can be addressed in the near future between players and palace.

I feel there's a better middle-ground is all.

There were several interactions between the king, justicar, and Chancellor of Cordor IG about the decree. They were even allowed to debate it and attempt to change the kings mind. So in this regard I would disagree. There was a real IG and OOC reason to limit a player governments ability to pariah and exile large groups of players simply because there might be conflict. You can still reach out IG to those involved to get the IG reports and meeting notes if your curious FYI. I manged to get a copy myself for record keeping.

[Aeryeris]

Are we're talking about my banite preacher and the letter from the King in not restricting their preaching?

I can say that there were a thousand ways to resolve this stuff and I think you're getting a tad tunnelvisioned. Framing someone for a clear offense, investigating the person for more offenses that would stick, and hiring outsiders to harass the person are all ways to "get around" any legal rulings that might be in effect. Hell, even counter proselytizing could work to drive the evil preacher away.

I think the Edward post and others like it are put in place to slow down the direct, boring route of "oh you can't do that here, bye bye." exiled. And that's a good thing.

I don't know this case, so I can assure you it's not from my perspective. There's ways around the law to prosecute people sure, but then you're playing a PC who might be very lawful and is having to resort to those dubious methods (and not because that's the natural development of their character, but because it's the only way due to an OOC-influenced ruling). My main issue here is it doesn't seem at all explained well in game at the moment. Perhaps that can be addressed in the near future between players and palace.

I feel there's a better middle-ground is all.

There were several interactions between the king, justicar, and Chancellor of Cordor IG about the decree. They were even allowed to debate it and attempt to change the kings mind. So in this regard I would disagree. There was a real IG and OOC reason to limit a player governments ability to pariah and exile large groups of players simply because there might be conflict. You can still reach out IG to those involved to get the IG reports and meeting notes if your curious FYI. I manged to get a copy myself for record keeping.

There was one interaction. The IC response we got on our "We should probably not allowed warlocks in Cordor" was "Warlocks are not that bad, according my court wizard. Are they really worse than wild mages?" As for the faiths thing, we never even tried to debate that particular point. We were more concerned with animation, fiend summoning and warlocks being made legal by the King's decree.

[Choofed]

There were several interactions between the king, justicar, and Chancellor of Cordor IG about the decree. They were even allowed to debate it and attempt to change the kings mind. So in this regard I would disagree. There was a real IG and OOC reason to limit a player governments ability to pariah and exile large groups of players simply because there might be conflict. You can still reach out IG to those involved to get the IG reports and meeting notes if your curious FYI. I manged to get a copy myself for record keeping.

As a person highly involved in these conversations I just want to let you know you're highly missing the context on how utterly steamrolled these conversations were. The IC negotiation basically resulted in the system we have now where we can ban organisations but not faiths.

The Court Wizard was just saying "People who sold their souls to demons are not that bad you're being silly gooses" and the first word we actually got of the DM's decision was them posting on the Cordor main board without warning.

c) What we did here - which was preventing something that we felt was harmful the player base.

The last one is the rarest but I think we do /try/ to be relitivly hands off? I'll consider in future how/if we can be more transparent about such announcements ooc.

Reference here with why the king was used by Grumpycat, or a palace official if I remember correctly, to enact this. This wasn't a nuanced conversation with our ability to really push back, and portraying it as such wouldn't be honest. This was the admins making a decision for the sake of the gameplay enviroment. But we did have an instance where the queen was blatantly saying "But why are we oppressing the fiend pacted warlocks?"

I personally am fine with the system we have now where we ban organisations, I was able to very effectively on Lefric run a oppresive police state aparatus with the tools at hand.

Lets lead this back to your original question.

Can we try to navigate back to a server culture where we don’t just ignore blatantly ridiculous alignment implicated things because it’s inconvenient, we’re OOC friends with someone or we want to use powerful new cookies? I acknowledge this may be a bit of a rehash of the old “enforce paladin alignment” discussion but a different flavor.

Do others see this as a persistent and impactful issue?

The setting has been dictated to us that the King & Queen of Cordor, highly politically influential people who set the tone for the setting have lead us to this position in Cordor where the use of such magics is kosher.

The IC argument is as follows for hemomancers to be culturally accepted currently:

• They are not animating the dead
  They are not tampering directly with other people's souls
  They are in control of their own destiny (not pacted)

Then they're probably not that bad, they're just self harming to use magic. Same with people using the harm spell, a painful spell pumping someone full of negative energy but seen as brutal and mean as stabbing someone in the chest with a great sword. They use their life energy to cast dark bolt, I use my life energy to then be alive and then manipulate the weave to cast dark bolt.

Most curses aren't producing undead, they might make someone's arm rot, but so's setting someone's arm on fire doing a similar horrible damage. The generally accepted IC position is that conflict is brutal and messy.

If you want hemomancers and other new evil subclasses to be treated differently, you'll need to ask that their lore be stiffened up to make them "Eviler." But you'll be stepping on a lot of existing people using the rather loose one line description of:

Hemomancer's looks inwards, either by research, instinct, trial and error, experimentations, curses, or bindings; they have found a way to transform life energy to focus. They usually do not have as developed a reservoir, nor are as proficient in gathering external energy as other Invokers, but have discovered their own ways to leech energy out of others, or even themselves, at the cost of their own lives.

[Anomandaris]

Lets lead this back to your original question.

Can we try to navigate back to a server culture where we don’t just ignore blatantly ridiculous alignment implicated things because it’s inconvenient, we’re OOC friends with someone or we want to use powerful new cookies? I acknowledge this may be a bit of a rehash of the old “enforce paladin alignment” discussion but a different flavor.

Do others see this as a persistent and impactful issue?

The setting has been dictated to us that the King & Queen of Cordor, highly politically influential people who set the tone for the setting have lead us to this position in Cordor where the use of such magics is kosher.

The IC argument is as follows for hemomancers to be culturally accepted currently:

• They are not animating the dead
  They are not tampering directly with other people's souls
  They are in control of their own destiny (not pacted)

Then they're probably not that bad, they're just self harming to use magic. Same with people using the harm spell, a painful spell pumping someone full of negative energy but seen as brutal and mean as stabbing someone in the chest with a great sword. They use their life energy to cast dark bolt, I use my life energy to then be alive and then manipulate the weave to cast dark bolt.

Most curses aren't producing undead, they might make someone's arm rot, but so's setting someone's arm on fire doing a similar horrible damage. The generally accepted IC position is that conflict is brutal and messy.

If you want hemomancers and other new evil subclasses to be treated differently, you'll need to ask that their lore be stiffened up to make them "Eviler." But you'll be stepping on a lot of existing people using the rather loose one line description of:

Hemomancer's looks inwards, either by research, instinct, trial and error, experimentations, curses, or bindings; they have found a way to transform life energy to focus. They usually do not have as developed a reservoir, nor are as proficient in gathering external energy as other Invokers, but have discovered their own ways to leech energy out of others, or even themselves, at the cost of their own lives.

I hear you but I have to politely disagree here. The setting says Vampiric Feast is "Evil." There's no argument, grey area or opinion. It's literally, objectively, inherently just evil, same as animating the dead. Blowing someone up with a Hellball is pretty horrible. The difference? Not evil inherently. In the setting of FR this is key, there is objective morality, these things are not subjective.

Now you are correct, in Cordor the setting also says it's not illegal to be a Warlock for example. There is a whole galaxy in between where RP happens, we don't killbash each other for "being a class" but we also don't snuggybear them because, well evil spells are neat and we want them. We have conflict. The issue I see is actually the lack of "conflict" (not PvP) and overall apathy towards things that are setting defined objectively evil, by setting defined objectively good characters for largely OOC reasons.

In other words, if you cast this spell you are committing an evil action. If you do that semi-regularly, given your alignment SHOULD be a product of your actions, you are evil.

This "selectivity" of what is considered evil and the associated treatment by PC's is kind of the issue. Sure feel free to play a non-evil hemomancer, but guess what, you don't get to use Vamp Feast or any other spells with evil descriptor unless you're willing to wear the consequences and OWN that you're doing EVIL actions. The exact same way a BG/Warlock shouldn't summon their fiend unless they're willing to..... wear the consequences etc.

[Takes]

I hear you but I have to politely disagree here. The setting says Vampiric Feast is "Evil." There's no argument, grey area or opinion. It's literally, objectively, inherently just evil, same as animating the dead. Blowing someone up with a Hellball is pretty horrible. The difference? Not evil inherently. In the setting of FR this is key, there is objective morality, these things are not subjective.

While you are correct about the Forgotten Realms, this line of argument falls short when confronted with any opposition. There are hard rules about what is what alignment in the setting but our charaters do not possess a player's guide to the realms. They are real people who form their opinions on their experiences and their access to reading material, such and so on.

It's one thing to say that in an ooc forum, but when your character says it ig is really just sounds like saying "im right just because!"

If a paladin says 'hey evil spell is no big deal im watching the games' then call that paladin a heritic, tell everyone that their order is bs and needs to be torn town. If a mayor says 'hey no big deal blood drinking cleric is just out for a good time' than disavow that mayor, say the town is a broken society, drunk on gold and refuse to go there and become an activist for overthrowing the government

Generally it is better to take someone you disagree with ig seriously rather than saying their opinion is ooc wrong-headed.

[Flower Power]

There were several interactions between the king, justicar, and Chancellor of Cordor IG about the decree. They were even allowed to debate it and attempt to change the kings mind. So in this regard I would disagree. There was a real IG and OOC reason to limit a player governments ability to pariah and exile large groups of players simply because there might be conflict. You can still reach out IG to those involved to get the IG reports and meeting notes if your curious FYI. I manged to get a copy myself for record keeping.

As a person highly involved in these conversations I just want to let you know you're highly missing the context on how utterly steamrolled these conversations were. The IC negotiation basically resulted in the system we have now where we can ban organisations but not faiths.

The Court Wizard was just saying "People who sold their souls to demons are not that bad you're being silly gooses" and the first word we actually got of the DM's decision was them posting on the Cordor main board without warning.

c) What we did here - which was preventing something that we felt was harmful the player base.

The last one is the rarest but I think we do /try/ to be relitivly hands off? I'll consider in future how/if we can be more transparent about such announcements ooc.

Reference here with why the king was used by Grumpycat, or a palace official if I remember correctly, to enact this. This wasn't a nuanced conversation with our ability to really push back, and portraying it as such wouldn't be honest. This was the admins making a decision for the sake of the gameplay enviroment. But we did have an instance where the queen was blatantly saying "But why are we oppressing the fiend pacted warlocks?"

The real issue, I think, was the absolute whiplash with the sudden 180 in the directives we were being given by the team in how to handle treating Warlocks, etc. For years upon years upon years, we were repeatedly told "There are no Good warlocks. All warlocks are bad people, because they're people who knowingly accepted power from evil forces utterly inimical to polite society. The only guideline you have for warlock RP is that you voluntarily took this deal for your own reasons."

Which was fine. There were places (first Wharftown, then Guldorand) where Warlocks could exist slightly more openly. But now that we've about-faced suddenly from being told "There are things that are bad and you should treat them as bad" to "You will be punished for treating things that are bad as being bad", its made Arelith's Extreme Aversion to Hostility rear its ugly head quite strongly.

I can't even strictly blame people for the hostility aversion, either. A lot of the time, people are extremely uncreative and heavy handed in their approaches to dealing with navigating hostility and finding ways to still get one over on the people their characters should be opposing without being incredibly hamfisted about it. I remember saying "All right, well. Why not, instead of blanket banning entire organizations - which the King/Queen seem to be somewhat reluctant to sign off on - why don't we just say 'All right, warlocks are allowed to exist now' while just making everything that warlocks do illegal, and then slapping individual bad actors repeatedly when they inevitably break these new laws?" and just getting a lot of "Huh?" repeatedly thrown back at me.

It's a server culture thing. Mild meanness or any form of hostility immediately raises peoples' hackles, because we've gotten far too use to these sweeping, heavy-handed policies that are clearly more aimed at crushing the opposition and winning rather than tailoring bespoke responses to specific conflicts that still provide the other team some wriggle room to get a word in edgewise; I think the fact we're still having a public discourse on the issue six or seven months on (or, heck, years on if we're counting the opening of Nu-Guld as the start of this issue) proves that pretty handily.

[Anomandaris]

I hear you but I have to politely disagree here. The setting says Vampiric Feast is "Evil." There's no argument, grey area or opinion. It's literally, objectively, inherently just evil, same as animating the dead. Blowing someone up with a Hellball is pretty horrible. The difference? Not evil inherently. In the setting of FR this is key, there is objective morality, these things are not subjective.

While you are correct about the Forgotten Realms, this line of argument falls short when confronted with any opposition. There are hard rules about what is what alignment in the setting but our charaters do not possess a player's guide to the realms. They are real people who form their opinions on their experiences and their access to reading material, such and so on.

It's one thing to say that in an ooc forum, but when your character says it ig is really just sounds like saying "im right just because!"

If a paladin says 'hey evil spell is no big deal im watching the games' then call that paladin a heritic, tell everyone that their order is bs and needs to be torn town. If a mayor says 'hey no big deal blood drinking cleric is just out for a good time' than disavow that mayor, say the town is a broken society, drunk on gold and refuse to go there and become an activist for overthrowing the government

Generally it is better to take someone you disagree with ig seriously rather than saying their opinion is ooc wrong-headed.

100% agree, I feel we're on the same page. This kind of reasonable IC response is exactly what I would love to see much more of.

The issue is as others have said, OOC fatigue seems to have set in and often no one even bothers saying anything IC. If you start saying, oh look, members of (insert Gov/Noble House/Organization) are using EVIL magic at a tournament, folks often ignore you because they already knew and don't see anyone caring/doing anything about it.

[Marsi]

The setting has been dictated to us that the King & Queen of Cordor, highly politically influential people who set the tone for the setting have lead us to this position in Cordor where the use of such magics is kosher.

I just want to point out they are roleplayed NPCs, not archons of setting enforcement. They're only really as influential as you let them be.

This mightn't be what you're saying here, but I wanted to echo what Flower Power said earlier -- you don't have to do what DM NPCs tell you.

It does seem confusing to me. It used to be that DM NPCs were obvious, very thinly-veiled batons for enforcing the setting or punishing or correcting a state of play that had gotten out of hand. Nowadays settlement NPCs are more nuanced, morally ambiguous, and creatively written. Which leaves a lot more room for the character to rightfully disagree and work to undermine a DM NPC's decree as if it were any other roleplayed DM plot.

If Vetinari told my government official character to stop doing something, I, the player, would take that to mean cut it out under pain of permadeath. If a sick, old king with a Banite wife told my government official who is a paladin that warlocks and blood-magic dudes were actually cool, I'd take that as an invitation to kick off some revolt RP.

[Kuma]

The setting has been dictated to us that the King & Queen of Cordor, highly politically influential people who set the tone for the setting have lead us to this position in Cordor where the use of such magics is kosher.

I just want to point out they are roleplayed NPCs, not archons of setting enforcement. They're only really as influential as you let them be.

This mightn't be what you're saying here, but I wanted to echo what Flower Power said earlier -- you don't have to do what DM NPCs tell you.

It does seem confusing to me. It used to be that DM NPCs were obvious, very thinly-veiled batons for enforcing the setting or punishing or correcting a state of play that had gotten out of hand. Nowadays settlement NPCs are more nuanced, morally ambiguous, and creatively written. Which leaves a lot more room for the character to rightfully disagree and work to undermine a DM NPC's decree as if it were any other roleplayed DM plot.

If Vetinari told my government official character to stop doing something, I, the player, would take that to mean cut it out under pain of permadeath. If a sick, old king with a Banite wife told my government official who is a paladin that warlocks and blood-magic dudes were actually cool, I'd take that as an invitation to kick off some revolt RP.

100% this.

[Eira]

The setting has been dictated to us that the King & Queen of Cordor, highly politically influential people who set the tone for the setting have lead us to this position in Cordor where the use of such magics is kosher.

I just want to point out they are roleplayed NPCs, not archons of setting enforcement. They're only really as influential as you let them be.

This mightn't be what you're saying here, but I wanted to echo what Flower Power said earlier -- you don't have to do what DM NPCs tell you.

It does seem confusing to me. It used to be that DM NPCs were obvious, very thinly-veiled batons for enforcing the setting or punishing or correcting a state of play that had gotten out of hand. Nowadays settlement NPCs are more nuanced, morally ambiguous, and creatively written. Which leaves a lot more room for the character to rightfully disagree and work to undermine a DM NPC's decree as if it were any other roleplayed DM plot.

If Vetinari told my government official character to stop doing something, I, the player, would take that to mean cut it out under pain of permadeath. If a sick, old king with a Banite wife told my government official who is a paladin that warlocks and blood-magic dudes were actually cool, I'd take that as an invitation to kick off some revolt RP.

100% this.

I would bring up that it is a legitimate concern where it stands in the staff thinking of this. It has been stated that there is an OOC component to the change, to prevent warlocks and animators from just getting bodied if they stand in the middle of the square and go "HA-HAH I DO FOUL EVIL THINGS".

So when a change is made ingame to reflect a staff decision made out of game, players who would gladly revolt otherwise... honestly that seems like a non-starter. It's like how all drow players know they'll never succeed in actually razing myon to the ground; while some things are made "heck around and find out", there are some truths of the server that are "no matter how hard you try, this won't change". So those drow go into it knowing that it's unlikely they'll ever get close to removing that big ol' elven settlement.

Where does that leave you? It's very hard to want to revolt against something when all you know is that this was a Decision From The High and since it was made for an OOC reason, all that really could be achieved is ruining your character's place in the settlement for good.

I honestly think no mention of staff decision or OOC reason for this change should have been made if players really were encouraged to revolt. And I think that's why the behavior is so awkward about it; people feel like the only way to deal with the City Law That Is Actually Lowkey Server Rule (speaking on perception) is to pretty much ignore things.

No one wants to be that annoying one rocking the boat to no result. After all, it has been said that being mean is a war crime on arelith.

[Ork]

It seems like this whole thing was a corrective action to halt or at least disincentize the paladin police state from exiling/killing warlocks at early levels. Sad that it had to come to that.

[Edens_Fall]

There was one interaction. The IC response we got on our "We should probably not allowed warlocks in Cordor" was "Warlocks are not that bad, according my court wizard. Are they really worse than wild mages?" As for the faiths thing, we never even tried to debate that particular point. We were more concerned with animation, fiend summoning and warlocks being made legal by the King's decree.

There were several interactions between the king, justicar, and Chancellor of Cordor IG about the decree. They were even allowed to debate it and attempt to change the kings mind. So in this regard I would disagree. There was a real IG and OOC reason to limit a player governments ability to pariah and exile large groups of players simply because there might be conflict. You can still reach out IG to those involved to get the IG reports and meeting notes if your curious FYI. I manged to get a copy myself for record keeping.

As a person highly involved in these conversations I just want to let you know you're highly missing the context on how utterly steamrolled these conversations were. The IC negotiation basically resulted in the system we have now where we can ban organisations but not faiths.

The Court Wizard was just saying "People who sold their souls to demons are not that bad you're being silly gooses" and the first word we actually got of the DM's decision was them posting on the Cordor main board without warning.

Ah, sorry if I misunderstood then. As I was not part of the event, I based my knowledge off IG written records of the meetings. The first being with an agent of the King and the last meeting being the King himself. Apologies if a mistake was made.

[Edens_Fall]

I personally am fine with the system we have now where we ban organisations, I was able to very effectively on Lefric run a oppresive police state aparatus with the tools at hand.

I'm so glad you pointed this out for a few reasons. One it shows player creativity in working around IG limitations and two, the ability we have as players to affect the world. I feel alot of times the citizens of Cordor tend to forget where they are. Cordor is a feudal city-state with a King whose God is the Red Knight and a Banite Queen. At best it is (and should be in my opinion) a Neutral starting settlement with a lean based on whatever the player government is. To often I get the vibe that surfacer palyers in general view every settlement as the same thing but with different aesthetics. Celestial Bastions of pure and holy intent. Instead, each location (settlement) should have its own unique feel and place on the spectrum. From good to Neutral to darn near evil.

So yeah, while the decree was a big change of direction, it wasn't necessarily a bad one. Merely the staffs attempt to bring things more into line with the servers intended direction. Does it mean we are locked in our individual actions? Of course not. Still be that settlement gate keeping Paladin or "just trying to raise a family meme" necromancer. All that really changed is how much non-pvp or settlement enforced mechanical effort one must put into it.

Edit for spelling naturally.

[Marsi]

So when a change is made ingame to reflect a staff decision made out of game, players who would gladly revolt otherwise... honestly that seems like a non-starter. It's like how all drow players know they'll never succeed in actually razing myon to the ground; while some things are made "heck around and find out", there are some truths of the server that are "no matter how hard you try, this won't change". So those drow go into it knowing that it's unlikely they'll ever get close to removing that big ol' elven settlement.

Where does that leave you? It's very hard to want to revolt against something when all you know is that this was a Decision From The High and since it was made for an OOC reason, all that really could be achieved is ruining your character's place in the settlement for good.

The drow require the team to change the map. You don't require the team's permission in how your government official deals with other players.

I've personally experienced a DM NPC handing the player government a very awkward fiat ruling to enforce, and it was a lot of fun creatively flanking it with new laws and procedures.

It is "fraught" in that you can't take away what King Edward said. And a lot of players love ignoring player government roleplay and throwing DM NPC words in their face. But that won't save their characters if the secret police decide to come knocking with trumped up charges.

[AskRyze]

It's a server culture thing. Mild meanness or any form of hostility immediately raises peoples' hackles, because we've gotten far too use to these sweeping, heavy-handed policies that are clearly more aimed at crushing the opposition and winning rather than tailoring bespoke responses to specific conflicts that still provide the other team some wriggle room to get a word in edgewise; I think the fact we're still having a public discourse on the issue six or seven months on (or, heck, years on if we're counting the opening of Nu-Guld as the start of this issue) proves that pretty handily.

I think it goes a bit deeper than that.

Rule 4 is listed as "Be Nice". This rule used to be... Really, really ambiguous. I know that it has since been made quite specific on what actions are covered under the purview, but the fact still remains that most of us don't look at the rules very often. So the only part that sticks out in our heads... is Be Nice. An ontological switch which dictates "If I don't have an explicit, ontological reason to be mean to this person (at which point no holds are barred and all but the most basic rules of engagement are lifted) then I must be nice". So Joe Neverwinter used to have a free pass to killbash anyone he caught walking around with glowing eyes, but now that King Ed said that he can no longer do so without perhaps himself suffering such a repercussion... bam. Be Nice.

[Flower Power]

No one wants to be that annoying one rocking the boat to no result. After all, it has been said that being mean is a war crime on arelith.

You'll never burn Wharftown to the ground with that attitude.