Death Amnesia - Bad wording, and feedback it needs to be stronger.

[good man of god]

This new ruling is very odd and confusing, to me, it seems to be poorly worded, self-contradicting, and irritating.

We cannot remember anything from the RP leading up to the death?

• How long is 'leading up to'?
• Any bit of logic is going to tell you that a character would remember something intense such as an altercation, argument, or fight
• Why should my character suddenly forget where they were, what they did, and who they were with? Just because my character died doesn't make him a moron
• What does this mean for diviners?

Characters do not remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. You know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning.

- This one makes perfect sense, and was kinda already the case.

Characters do not remember any participants in the roleplay and in the surrounding area leading up to their death. This includes witnesses, attackers and traveling bystanders.

- This one is poorly worded and frustrating, why can't my character remember the RP?

Characters do not remember conversations, names, or any information that they obtained in the roleplay that lead up to their death.

- ??? what madness is this? If my character is kept in a cell and interrogated, tortured, and then killed, he will remember who was there and what happened, for example, I mean... c'mon guys.

Characters are allowed to remember three things. Where they were going, why they were going there and who they were traveling with.

- this is a direct contradiction of the rule itself.

Can we please get this rule reviewed and rewritten so that it actually makes sense? I'm a native English speaker and even I am struggling to make heads or tails of it, I weep for our non-native speaking players.

I feel like I'm in bizzaro-world.

How long is 'leading up to'?
Any bit of logic is going to tell you that a character would remember something intense such as an altercation, argument, or fight
Why should my character suddenly forget where they were, what they did, and who they were with? Just because my character died doesn't make him a moron
What does this mean for diviners?

1. When in doubt, remember less. Leading up to is intentionally vague because roleplay scenes can encompass many areas and a long period of time. Instead, we're asking players to use good faith to determine what that might mean and adhere to the intention of the rule which is that they forget things.

2. Narrative balance and flow is more important than logic. It's a fantasy world where the dead come back to life, dragons, spells that alter time and vampires. In our particular iteration of our fantastical world, characters now forget things when they die.

3. Explained above!

4. I don't know what this one means.

"This one is poorly worded and frustrating, why can't my character remember the RP?"

You answer your own question about the confusion, your character can't remember it because they died.

"- ??? what madness is this? If my character is kept in a cell and interrogated, tortured, and then killed, he will remember who was there and what happened, for example, I mean... c'mon guys."

He died, he won't. This would involve roleplay leading up to the death.

"- this is a direct contradiction of the rule itself."

I don't personally think so. The rules are summarized and are all consistent with those two final statements. I'm happy to read more specifically what you mean, though!

So based on this then, we are left to basically decide for ourselves what the PC remembers and doesn't because we have to:

• rely on "common sense" - ??? try harder to define the rule
• "when in doubt remember less" - this is not a policy, this is guesswork, people are going to do this differently, get upset, and so on
• create more issues than we are solving by shadow-governing ourselves because the rule isn't clear enough
• dispute what we remember and not remember because the ruling is illogical and self-contradicting

I mean, someone explain to me, how does this make sense?

If you want to implement a new, large, and impactful ruling like this, you've got to break it down for the community, who will each have different levels of understanding and knowledge of the current rules, game, and world/setting.

[Cataclysm of Iron]

Pedantry and nitpicking like this is the only reason we need the rule at all.

Stop looking for "where are the gaps and technical loopholes I can exploit to get ahead even if I die" and start thinking about the wider story being told.

[DM Monkey]

Pedantry and nitpicking like this is the only reason we need the rule at all.

Stop looking for "where are the gaps and technical loopholes I can exploit to get ahead even if I die" and start thinking about the wider story being told.

This is basically the reality of the situation. Arelith's rules are based on the spirit, not the letter. Players should be thinking about the fact that they are part of a larger story - it is not YOUR story. It belongs to everyone. Taking advantage of a situation to try and get the upper hand in some perceived competition within the roleplay is usually not helping the story along.

Here's some tips that might help if you discover something and want to live to tell the tale:

• Run away!
• Hide!
• You don't have to win the fight!
• If you get known for killing + bashing a body every time, it's much more likely that your enemies will do the same to you. If you knock people out and provide some awesome roleplay that goes alongside it, people will be more likely to do the same back.
• Be charitable to the story that other people are trying to tell as well.

[perseid]

• If you get known for killing + bashing a body every time, it's much more likely that your enemies will do the same to you. If you knock people out and provide some awesome roleplay that goes alongside it, people will be more likely to do the same back.

In general I agree with the rest of the earlier sentiment in the original quote that you were responding to. There's a profound amount of pedantry going on here when imo the presented guideline "The spirit of the rule is that the victim should be almost completely removed from the narrative of their own death. They are not investigators, detectives or reliable sources of information into the mystery of their own murder." is fairly clear.

I would criticize the part of the post I quoted however. The point of the initial rule change prior to this further revision was already that people are playing to the letter instead of the spirit of the law, this has been said in various ways across this thread as a whole. If people are killing+bashing at a higher rate than before and their enemies reply with the same in kind then as laid out by the rules that seems like it would be illegal since if the victims are thoroughly eliminated there should be no one who remembers enough to actually justify a shift in character behavior.

In my opinion, whether a lot of the arguments are good or not, this is ultimately the heart of a lot of the criticism around the more restrictive memory rules. That in reply to players apparently following the wording of the rules too closely we've now worded the rules to such a degree that they've become an extremely effective tool for controlling the flow of a scene and the scenes that will come later as a part of it. When a player can look at the rules and think "If I act now and kill them I'll have a stronger control over the flow of information down the line" I think we've reached a point the rules are not only passively encouraging certain kinds of behavior but are also actively rewarding it.

[DM Monkey]

[DM Vivec]

So based on this then, we are left to basically decide for ourselves what the PC remembers and doesn't because we have to:

rely on "common sense" - ??? try harder to define the rule
"when in doubt remember less" - this is not a policy, this is guesswork, people are going to do this differently, get upset, and so on
create more issues than we are solving by shadow-governing ourselves because the rule isn't clear enough
dispute what we remember and not remember because the ruling is illogical and self-contradicting
I mean, someone explain to me, how does this make sense?

If you want to implement a new, large, and impactful ruling like this, you've got to break it down for the community, who will each have different levels of understanding and knowledge of the current rules, game, and world/setting.

We're certainly trying to make it easy to understand for everyone! This is what the feedback thread is for, after all, to talk and work out the issues. I mentioned previously that we're applying broad strokes because nobody wants to have a separate wikipedia section specifically for the amnesia rule which covers dozens and dozens of different hypotheticals. I hope by the time we finish talking here you can come out of it with a better understanding and we'll have discovered a better way to phrase the ruling on the wikipedia!

rely on "common sense" - ??? try harder to define the rule

"When a character dies, they lose memories relating and leading up to their death as well as their time in their fugue plane. The effects on your memory from death are as follows:

Characters do not remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. You know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning.
Characters do not remember any participants in the roleplay and in the surrounding area leading up to their death. This includes witnesses, attackers and traveling bystanders.
Characters do not remember conversations, names, or any information that they obtained in the roleplay that lead up to their death.
Characters are allowed to remember three things. Where they were going, why they were going there and who they were traveling with.
The three things characters are allowed to remember should not implicate anyone in the murder or definitively answer the mystery of their death. When in doubt, remember less.
These rules apply immediately when you enter the fugue plane. No matter the means you are bought out of the fugue plane, these rules immediately apply and your character loses memory.

The spirit of the rule is that the victim should be almost completely removed from the narrative of their own death. They are not investigators, detectives or reliable sources of information into the mystery of their own murder.

You should forget entirely any important information you learned in the roleplay or the roleplay leading up to where you died as well, such as that someone was a necromancer, vampire or assassin. You can not die to learn information for the purpose of exposing someone.

If you can not answer a question without doing one of those things, simply determine that your character can not remember it and avoid providing the answer.

Characters can not behave in such a way that they have the ability to avoid memory loss. Even if your chararcter might have access to information, as a player, you should know to refrain from using it in a way which circumvents memory loss or turns you into an investigator, detective or reliable source of information.

If something is unclear, please reach out to a Dungeon Master. We're here to help!"

This is the full ruling taken from the wikipedia page. There's several lines in particular which were included to put emphasis on the concept of broad strokes over specific scenarios.

The spirit of the rule is that the victim should be almost completely removed from the narrative of their own death. They are not investigators, detectives or reliable sources of information into the mystery of their own murder.

This is our attempt to convey that we don't want characters reporting who murdered them, posting on message boards as soon as they were killed who did it (because they can't remember who), and that we'd like characters other than the victim to be the leading drive in a narrative. We don't like it when characters are witnesses in a criminal investigation of their own death or can stand trial as an individual who witnessed the attacked and can inform investigators confidently who did what, how, when and why.

rely on "common sense" - ??? try harder to define the rule

I haven't specifically told anyone to use common sense myself. If I did, that was certainly a terrible mistake on my part. I don't like to do that. I'm sorry that I communicated that to you in our discussion, though. I'll try to do better.

"when in doubt remember less" - this is not a policy, this is guesswork, people are going to do this differently, get upset, and so on
create more issues than we are solving by shadow-governing ourselves because the rule isn't clear enough

You're certainly right that some people will be upset and not understand it. I think with time that we, and also the community, can eventually learn specifically what is and isn't working and take away, adjust or add more as real examples of these issues come into play and not just hypotheticals. I'm interested in hearing about your personal experiences as you play with the new rule in mind!

"when in doubt remember less" - this is not a policy, this is guesswork, people are going to do this differently, get upset, and so on

shadow-governing ourselves because the rule isn't clear enough

You're right that 'remember less' isn't a policy, I just thought it was good advice that made sense to me, personally, and that others might benefit from keeping that in mind when they tried understanding our new system. I suppose it was a little presumptious of me to include that in a ruling update!

I'm not entirely sure what you mean about shadow-governing, but I'm happy, as I mentioned before, to go over specific hypotheticals with you if you aren't sure about something and see how we can relate them to the rules as currently written. If we can discover some common situations you can imagine which can't be covered with the broad strokes approach, that's certainly worth reviewing the language we've used and the words we're using to describe it.

Characters are allowed to remember three things. Where they were going, why they were going there and who they were traveling with.
The three things characters are allowed to remember should not implicate anyone in the murder or definitively answer the mystery of their death. When in doubt, remember less.

I personally felt that these two snippets from the rulings illustrated much of what the spirit of the rule was and much how someone can expect to behave when in game. You've been murdered and the only thing you remember is where you were going, why, and who you were with.

I agree, reading now, that the line, 'shouldn't implicate anyone in the murder' can be very confusing. After all, if you were on your way to see Bob and Bob was the one who killed you, can you not just talk about Bob? That line in particular is worth adjusting I've realized as I'm writing this.

More specific criticism would go a long way to helping! I wish we'd received all of this helpful feedback while it was still being drafted.

[good man of god]

So based on this then, we are left to basically decide for ourselves what the PC remembers and doesn't because we have to:

rely on "common sense" - ??? try harder to define the rule
"when in doubt remember less" - this is not a policy, this is guesswork, people are going to do this differently, get upset, and so on
create more issues than we are solving by shadow-governing ourselves because the rule isn't clear enough
dispute what we remember and not remember because the ruling is illogical and self-contradicting
I mean, someone explain to me, how does this make sense?

If you want to implement a new, large, and impactful ruling like this, you've got to break it down for the community, who will each have different levels of understanding and knowledge of the current rules, game, and world/setting.

We're certainly trying to make it easy to understand for everyone! This is what the feedback thread is for, after all, to talk and work out the issues. I mentioned previously that we're applying broad strokes because nobody wants to have a separate wikipedia section specifically for the amnesia rule which covers dozens and dozens of different hypotheticals. I hope by the time we finish talking here you can come out of it with a better understanding and we'll have discovered a better way to phrase the ruling on the wikipedia!

rely on "common sense" - ??? try harder to define the rule

"When a character dies, they lose memories relating and leading up to their death as well as their time in their fugue plane. The effects on your memory from death are as follows:

Characters do not remember anything related to the fugue or entering it. You know nothing of your encounters in the fugue even after respawning.
Characters do not remember any participants in the roleplay and in the surrounding area leading up to their death. This includes witnesses, attackers and traveling bystanders.
Characters do not remember conversations, names, or any information that they obtained in the roleplay that lead up to their death.
Characters are allowed to remember three things. Where they were going, why they were going there and who they were traveling with.
The three things characters are allowed to remember should not implicate anyone in the murder or definitively answer the mystery of their death. When in doubt, remember less.
These rules apply immediately when you enter the fugue plane. No matter the means you are bought out of the fugue plane, these rules immediately apply and your character loses memory.

The spirit of the rule is that the victim should be almost completely removed from the narrative of their own death. They are not investigators, detectives or reliable sources of information into the mystery of their own murder.

You should forget entirely any important information you learned in the roleplay or the roleplay leading up to where you died as well, such as that someone was a necromancer, vampire or assassin. You can not die to learn information for the purpose of exposing someone.

If you can not answer a question without doing one of those things, simply determine that your character can not remember it and avoid providing the answer.

Characters can not behave in such a way that they have the ability to avoid memory loss. Even if your chararcter might have access to information, as a player, you should know to refrain from using it in a way which circumvents memory loss or turns you into an investigator, detective or reliable source of information.

If something is unclear, please reach out to a Dungeon Master. We're here to help!"

This is the full ruling taken from the wikipedia page. There's several lines in particular which were included to put emphasis on the concept of broad strokes over specific scenarios.

The spirit of the rule is that the victim should be almost completely removed from the narrative of their own death. They are not investigators, detectives or reliable sources of information into the mystery of their own murder.

This is our attempt to convey that we don't want characters reporting who murdered them, posting on message boards as soon as they were killed who did it (because they can't remember who), and that we'd like characters other than the victim to be the leading drive in a narrative. We don't like it when characters are witnesses in a criminal investigation of their own death or can stand trial as an individual who witnessed the attacked and can inform investigators confidently who did what, how, when and why.

rely on "common sense" - ??? try harder to define the rule

I haven't specifically told anyone to use common sense myself. If I did, that was certainly a terrible mistake on my part. I don't like to do that. I'm sorry that I communicated that to you in our discussion, though. I'll try to do better.

"when in doubt remember less" - this is not a policy, this is guesswork, people are going to do this differently, get upset, and so on
create more issues than we are solving by shadow-governing ourselves because the rule isn't clear enough

You're certainly right that some people will be upset and not understand it. I think with time that we, and also the community, can eventually learn specifically what is and isn't working and take away, adjust or add more as real examples of these issues come into play and not just hypotheticals. I'm interested in hearing about your personal experiences as you play with the new rule in mind!

"when in doubt remember less" - this is not a policy, this is guesswork, people are going to do this differently, get upset, and so on

shadow-governing ourselves because the rule isn't clear enough

You're right that 'remember less' isn't a policy, I just thought it was good advice that made sense to me, personally, and that others might benefit from keeping that in mind when they tried understanding our new system. I suppose it was a little presumptious of me to include that in a ruling update!

I'm not entirely sure what you mean about shadow-governing, but I'm happy, as I mentioned before, to go over specific hypotheticals with you if you aren't sure about something and see how we can relate them to the rules as currently written. If we can discover some common situations you can imagine which can't be covered with the broad strokes approach, that's certainly worth reviewing the language we've used and the words we're using to describe it.

Characters are allowed to remember three things. Where they were going, why they were going there and who they were traveling with.
The three things characters are allowed to remember should not implicate anyone in the murder or definitively answer the mystery of their death. When in doubt, remember less.

I personally felt that these two snippets from the rulings illustrated much of what the spirit of the rule was and much how someone can expect to behave when in game. You've been murdered and the only thing you remember is where you were going, why, and who you were with.

I agree, reading now, that the line, 'shouldn't implicate anyone in the murder' can be very confusing. After all, if you were on your way to see Bob and Bob was the one who killed you, can you not just talk about Bob? That line in particular is worth adjusting I've realized as I'm writing this.

More specific criticism would go a long way to helping! I wish we'd received all of this helpful feedback while it was still being drafted.

I agree, reading now, that the line, 'shouldn't implicate anyone in the murder' can be very confusing. After all, if you were on your way to see Bob and Bob was the one who killed you, can you not just talk about Bob? That line in particular is worth adjusting I've realized as I'm writing this.

Well this is it, yeah, I think this is moving towards the middle-ground we need to strike. if my character is interacting with A, B, and C, he is naturally going to have some inkling that either B or C was the one who killed him (unless maybe we're playing a 6 int half-orc oonga boonga, in which case, bong-bong!).

I think we just need to reconsider the wording. I know we are here for a bit of creative freedom and that we are creating a shared story, I've been here long enough (I'm feeling old).

More specific criticism would go a long way to helping! I wish we'd received all of this helpful feedback while it was still being drafted.

Include us in drafting! Why not? We want to see Arelith improve and flourish as much as the staff do. Let us help, and we can add more insight.

You're right that 'remember less' isn't a policy, I just thought it was good advice that made sense to me, personally, and that others might benefit from keeping that in mind when they tried understanding our new system. I suppose it was a little presumptious of me to include that in a ruling update!

I think advice is fine, but a rule is a rule, not advice, right?

I think we're getting closer to a solution here!

Pedantry and nitpicking like this is the only reason we need the rule at all.

Stop looking for "where are the gaps and technical loopholes I can exploit to get ahead even if I die" and start thinking about the wider story being told.

Nobody is being pedantic or looking to find loopholes and gaps to exploit.

We're/I'm trying to get things clearer for myself.

Thanks for the assumption though.

[DM Vivec]

If you look back I think this thread was kept up for a week or just under before the change was implemented. There wasn't anyone really replying to it so I figured it was okay to go in, I got approval from staff afterwards. I actually mentioned on Discord several times as well for people to take a look at it and share their thoughts. In the future if such a large change is being discussed I'll look at a method for reaching a wider audience for their opinions

Well this is it, yeah, I think this is moving towards the middle-ground we need to strike. if my character is interacting with A, B, and C, he is naturally going to have some inkling that either B or C was the one who killed him (unless maybe we're playing a 6 int half-orc oonga boonga, in which case, bong-bong!).

I think we just need to reconsider the wording. I know we are here for a bit of creative freedom and that we are creating a shared story, I've been here long enough (I'm feeling old).

I think the situation you've described there needs to be elaborated on. I'm not sure what you mean by 'interacting with'. Was A, B or C the killer?

Was he planning on meeting with any of them? Were they all involved in the murder? Were they just friends who happened to be there and someone else killed them? I can't really reply to the scenario and consider the ruling in relation to it because it doesn't have enough details except that B and C are implicated somehow because of character intuition.

I think advice is fine, but a rule is a rule, not advice, right?

I think we're getting closer to a solution here!

Yep! I can see why you thought it was. The wikipedia is full of general advice and rulings intermixed. There's a lot of language like that used in our rules page.

[Amateur Hour]

Looking at the "you can't implicate" and "you can't be an investigator" bits, I think the following examples probably cover it? If I'm wrong, someone please correct me.

Alvin Animator and Bernie Blackguard meet in Bendir Dale and agree to do writwork in the Forest of Despair. They die to the Malarites while working on the writ.

Alvin and Bernie remember they were going to the Forest of Despair to do a writ. They aren't entirely sure if they arrived there or not (sure, they have writ papers, but who knows how that magic works and whether it's completely reliable), and they don't know how they got to Whidershin Edge. They've still got the writ to finish, but the Weave's doing weird things that they popped up several miles south of where they intended to be - everyone knows the Weave is weird on Arelith, randomly teleporting several miles is certainly plausible - so they'll try again in a few hours.

Alvin Animator and Bernie Blackguard meet in Bendir Dale and agree to do writwork in the Forest of Despair when they run into Pamela and Percy Paladin. They get into an argument over Alvin's zombies, and Pamela and Percy kill Alvin and Bernie.

Alvin and Bernie remember they were going to the Forest of Despair to do a writ. They aren't entirely sure if they arrived there or not (sure, they have writ papers, but who knows how that magic works and whether it's completely reliable), and they don't know how they got to Whidershin Edge. They've still got the writ to finish, but the Weave's doing weird things that they popped up several miles south of where they intended to be - everyone knows the Weave is weird on Arelith, randomly teleporting several miles is certainly plausible - so they'll try again in a few hours.

If Bernie/Alvin runs into Pamela or Percy later on (48+ real life hours later, because within 48 hours Percy/Pamela is a massive blind spot) they remember nothing of the incident. If they didn't know Pamela or Percy before, they'll be strangers, and if they did, their previous impression of Pamela or Percy is unchanged.

Alvin Animator and Bernie Blackguard meet in Bendir Dale and agree to do writwork in the Forest of Despair. They complete the writ, but there's a disagreement over how the loot should be split. Bernie turns traitor and kills Alvin to ensure a greater share of the loot.

Alvin's writ paper says his writ was finished, and he remembers being in Bendir Dale thinking about doing the writ but can't remember anything about how it got done - or even if it got done (who knows how that magic works and whether it's completely reliable). He also has no idea how he got to Whidershin Edge. Did he maybe get incredibly drunk celebrating victory and blacked out? Maybe it's the price of trying to cast a spell to trick the writ paperwork? Every time he tries to think about what might have happened he gets a splitting headache, so weird as it is, Alvin's just grateful he's going to get paid and move on with his day.

Alvin Animator and Bernie Blackguard meet in Bendir Dale and agree to do writwork in the Forest of Despair when they run into Pamela and Percy Paladin. They get into an argument over Alvin's zombies, and Pamela and Percy kill Alvin, but Bernie manages to escape just after Alvin was killed.

Alvin remembers that he was going with Bernie to the Forest of Despair to do a writ. He isn't entirely sure if they arrived there or not (sure, he has writ papers, but who knows how that magic works and whether it's completely reliable), and he doesn't know how he got to Whidershin Edge. He could ask Bernie about it if he wanted to. If Alvin runs into Pamela or Percy later on (48+ real life hours later, because within 48 hours Percy/Pamela is a massive blind spot) he remembers nothing of the incident. If he didn't know Pamela or Percy before, they'll be strangers, and if he did, his previous impression of Pamela or Percy is unchanged.

Bernie remembers everything that he saw, including that Alvin was struck down. Bernie can tell Alvin all about it (though Bernie is not under obligation to tell the truth, and Alvin is under no obligation to believe Bernie)...or not, which Bernie may choose to do if he happened to have been responsible for gathering all the loot.

[Marsi]

Why not just make death a KO? It's weird that we insist on a condition where death is serious but we are a multiplayer persistent world where there is no permadeath and we are entitled to easy respawn.

It's a system that has always operated on the good faith of honest roleplayers. Clearly we have become too big to rely on lightly enforced cultural expectations.

No idea how I'd approach PvP now. For me, this makes subdue the standard for "I win, but let's keep this going", while killing becomes a resounding "go away, the story between us is over".

[Subtext]

I am not sure what to think of that all, really.

I get the intent of the rule. It is to prevent people from respawning and immediately making a big fuss about the attackers and calling the cavalry to stir up a huge drama. I get that and i agree with that notion, in most cases this really isn't appropriate behaviour. Especially not all that uncommon "Talk shit, get hit" scenario.

On the flipside however, I think this massively disincentivizes people from using subdual. Subdual someone? There might be unwanted IC ramifications to your behaviour. Kill them outright? You get to complain to a DM if someone calls you out on your actions.
If I did play someone particularly murderously inclined, I could very much use that to my advantage...and I don't think that is overly healthy either!

I don't really know. Perhaps an element of randomness would be healthy...something you can't particularly plan for.
One idea that comes to mind would be a dice rolled in case of PvP death, determining how much the victim is allowed to remember. Which could in theory range from "You have absolutely no memories of the circumstances of your death." to "You wake up with a very clear image of the person who killed you as well as everyone else involved in your mind." (and of course varying grades of detail in between).
Such a roll should automatically be made serverside of course, with the result being sent to the victim and to the killer as an OOC notification (to hopefully cut down on potential metagaming reports). And if possible also stored in the logs.

[Old Lies Die Harder]

No idea how I'd approach PvP now. For me, this makes subdue the standard for "I win, but let's keep this going", while killing becomes a resounding "go away, the story between us is over".

This has always been my issue with PvP on Arelith, and I think addresses the core of the issue that prompted my prior post.

Thank you, Vivec, for replying to that and also for clearing up how much time is/was spent on given tasks. However to be clear, when I said "Unfortunately, this adds greater weight not only to death, but to pvp and mechanical capability", my point was not that this adds greater weight to death.

My point was that this adds more weight to pvp and mechanical capability over storytelling than it does to the weight of death.

Almost every aspect of mechanical aspect of PvP in the time I have been here has only lent itself to "go away, the story between us is over."

When a character is killed, they are transitioned to an area away from almost all other characters.
In most cases, you will be alone in the death area and thus unable to interact.
If you are not alone, anything occurring in the death area is not remembered, so there is no incentive to interact beyond commenting on having just died.
You are barred from further interaction for 48 hours (unless specifically waived).
Your character is prevented from interacting with other server features effectively for 1-2 hours due to debuffs. Assuming a worknight with only about five hours to play, that is 20 to 40% of your playtime.

This rule update makes more explicit when you respawn, all narrative interaction and progression from the scene before is meaningless to anyone who has respawned as it is wiped away and undone, unless you really fancy meeting with any survivors and having them relate to you a story you were present for.

When your character dies, you are physically removed from the roleplay you were in, put in an environment that de-incentivizes investment and engagement, and then returned to life with a ban on interaction and a requirement to ignore what you might have spent the last half hour doing.

The caveats here are that players can voluntarily agree to waive the 48 rule and expend resources to resurrect someone who has been killed.

Why then, would any player use this system as an 'enhancement' tool to roleplay when it only actually allows roleplay between parties in the conflict if both go 'above and beyond' and waive the rule, or simply wait two real days? If we are playing a game where characters are supposed to narratively develop, how can my character learn/develop from death if the experience is erased?

"Go away, the story between us is over."

I understand that the intent is to add greater weight to death, but nothing about this system actually encourages what we should be doing here, which is roleplay conflicts interactively, and I believe that expanding/explicitly codifying death amnesia is simply going to expand the phenomenon that makes the death area so silent. People are not going to take death more seriously narratively because of this, they are going to take focus more seriously on ways to avoid further inconvenience because if a system or situation isn't engaging, people avoid, minimize, and ignore. To put it bluntly, getting softlocked out of a game/social activity doesn't make people behave, it pisses them off and discourages them.

If the main goal here is to make death more impactful, the team needs to focus less on penalties, policies, and debuffs that take things away from players and focus more on thing that actually incentivize interaction and add meaning or give tools to do so.

The following are improvements made over the years that I feel have contributed to actual interaction in player conflict:

Reducing XP loss from death and preventing delevel. When you would lose 3,000-4,000 XP (at a time when this was multiple days of XP for many) and lose class features, anxiety and anger around being killed was higher, and regular people acted worse in response. I believe reducing this penalty helped the mindset.

Introducing Subdual. Subdual partially addresses the KO suggestion Marsi made by allowing you you 'lose' a fight, but remain present for interaction. If I get subdualed, I can emote groaning in pain, begging for mercy, or straight up emoting the-light-fades-from-her-eyes-delete-character-x-2 where it can become a part of the story. Can't do that in the fugue, and if I did no one would remember it.

De-penalizing subdual. When introduced, subdual had the PnP holdover of an AB penalty if enabled, and could not be used with many (or most) spells. This meant that the option that allowed further interaction was mechanically penalized. Removing the malus/prohibition has meant that using this system for further interaction is no longer penalized and is now available to all characters.

Making Subdual Default. As a player, you now have to make a specific choice to turn off subdual, which presents one more barrier to the click-kill problem. It also helps make use of this feature more commonplace as a baseline.

More changes like this that encourage dramatic storytelling, less changes that make the game suck and encourage people to handwave the (OOC) obnoxious experience.

Death should be scary and miserable In Character, and fun to play through out of character. Enforced amnesia rules to hamhandedly prevent cheesy "guards this man killed me" roleplay do nothing to encourage either of these. Why not just stick to pulling those players aside and saying, "Hey, that's cheesy, we don't do that here. Don't do it again", and then taking the correct ooc punitive measures if they don't heed the warning?

[mash]

I'm acknowledging the need for a ruling here and the rule update appears to solve the "X murdered me" issue at hand. However, as I thought about it, I noticed something which I consider a severe problem with the "no memory at all" rule.

Noone ever remembers losing a battle. Noone can ever be impacted by their loss.

In the new rule, it is explicitly impossible to create any narrative from losing (when you were killed). Effectively, the losing party is denied any opportunity to implement the fact that they lost into their roleplay.

Let's consider some situations outside murder cases - my first character, a paladin, used to get into a lot of battles. We won sometimes, we lost other times. Actually my most favourite encounter was a huge impromptu battle over Guldorand. Andunor players improvised a raid on Guldorand to free a certain ogre prisoner. We (the defenders) got our asses kicked and we lost big time. But it was one of the most amazing experiences I had on Arelith. The battle and how we lost was a huge plot point for my character and the faction, influencing our actions for weeks to come. The new rule would make this (almost) completely impossible - none of the losing party would even remember there was a battle at all. Now granted, you could interject there could be special situations (single survivors who fled, everyone subduals and there is no killing) but let's be real - none of these come even close to the impact of a real loss that you remember - as opposed as having to be told everything second hand (if you are very lucky)

Yes, Death on Arelith is cheap - this is because the engine doesn't really support retreat or being knocked out, or any other situation which would reasonably allow characters to lose a battle and survive. But I think the solution, which is designed to address the specific problem of murder situations, has wider implications on battle-style PvP that may not have been taken into consideration.

I'd urge to find a way to allow players to properly integrate a battle loss into their roleplay. This necessitates that they remember at least parts of the fight.

[Azensor]

I'm acknowledging the need for a ruling here and the rule update appears to solve the "X murdered me" issue at hand. However, as I thought about it, I noticed something which I consider a severe problem with the "no memory at all" rule.

Noone ever remembers losing a battle. Noone can ever be impacted by their loss.

In the new rule, it is explicitly impossible to create any narrative from losing (when you were killed). Effectively, the losing party is denied any opportunity to implement the fact that they lost into their roleplay.

Let's consider some situations outside murder cases - my first character, a paladin, used to get into a lot of battles. We won sometimes, we lost other times. Actually my most favourite encounter was a huge impromptu battle over Guldorand. Andunor players improvised a raid on Guldorand to free a certain ogre prisoner. We (the defenders) got our asses kicked and we lost big time. But it was one of the most amazing experiences I had on Arelith. The battle and how we lost was a huge plot point for my character and the faction, influencing our actions for weeks to come. The new rule would make this (almost) completely impossible - none of the losing party would even remember there was a battle at all. Now granted, you could interject there could be special situations (single survivors who fled, everyone subduals and there is no killing) but let's be real - none of these come even close to the impact of a real loss that you remember - as opposed as having to be told everything second hand (if you are very lucky)

Yes, Death on Arelith is cheap - this is because the engine doesn't really support retreat or being knocked out, or any other situation which would reasonably allow characters to lose a battle and survive. But I think the solution, which is designed to address the specific problem of murder situations, has wider implications on battle-style PvP that may not have been taken into consideration.

I'd urge to find a way to allow players to properly integrate a battle loss into their roleplay. This necessitates that they remember at least parts of the fight.

this is a large reason why i just ignore all deaths at this point.
One of my last characters i had used death to ic change his class.
I had started them out has a bard then eventually wanted to shift them to ranger so easiest way to do that was have a pack of displacer beasts hunt em down and get mauled by them
Pretty sure with the current death ruling i couldnt pull that off now

[ReverentBlade]

I'm acknowledging the need for a ruling here and the rule update appears to solve the "X murdered me" issue at hand. However, as I thought about it, I noticed something which I consider a severe problem with the "no memory at all" rule.

Noone ever remembers losing a battle. Noone can ever be impacted by their loss.

In the new rule, it is explicitly impossible to create any narrative from losing (when you were killed). Effectively, the losing party is denied any opportunity to implement the fact that they lost into their roleplay.

Let's consider some situations outside murder cases - my first character, a paladin, used to get into a lot of battles. We won sometimes, we lost other times. Actually my most favourite encounter was a huge impromptu battle over Guldorand. Andunor players improvised a raid on Guldorand to free a certain ogre prisoner. We (the defenders) got our asses kicked and we lost big time. But it was one of the most amazing experiences I had on Arelith. The battle and how we lost was a huge plot point for my character and the faction, influencing our actions for weeks to come. The new rule would make this (almost) completely impossible - none of the losing party would even remember there was a battle at all. Now granted, you could interject there could be special situations (single survivors who fled, everyone subduals and there is no killing) but let's be real - none of these come even close to the impact of a real loss that you remember - as opposed as having to be told everything second hand (if you are very lucky)

Yes, Death on Arelith is cheap - this is because the engine doesn't really support retreat or being knocked out, or any other situation which would reasonably allow characters to lose a battle and survive. But I think the solution, which is designed to address the specific problem of murder situations, has wider implications on battle-style PvP that may not have been taken into consideration.

I'd urge to find a way to allow players to properly integrate a battle loss into their roleplay. This necessitates that they remember at least parts of the fight.

I've made this exact argument before and agree wholeheartedly. My characters don't see much violence because they tend to be polite and pacifist, but the handful of times I've been assassinated have been total RP voids. No monologue from the baddies, no witnesses to tell the tale, no clues or follow-up, no memory of -why- she was killed or who she crossed. No point in complaining to anyone about it or making RP around it because there's nothing anyone could do, and trying just makes you look like a drama queen. As far as she was concerned, the roleplay impact was about the same as waking up in the grass with a massive hangover, and that's exactly the result the rules encourage.

[PowerWord Rage]

I'm acknowledging the need for a ruling here and the rule update appears to solve the "X murdered me" issue at hand. However, as I thought about it, I noticed something which I consider a severe problem with the "no memory at all" rule.

Noone ever remembers losing a battle. Noone can ever be impacted by their loss.

In the new rule, it is explicitly impossible to create any narrative from losing (when you were killed). Effectively, the losing party is denied any opportunity to implement the fact that they lost into their roleplay.

Let's consider some situations outside murder cases - my first character, a paladin, used to get into a lot of battles. We won sometimes, we lost other times. Actually my most favourite encounter was a huge impromptu battle over Guldorand. Andunor players improvised a raid on Guldorand to free a certain ogre prisoner. We (the defenders) got our asses kicked and we lost big time. But it was one of the most amazing experiences I had on Arelith. The battle and how we lost was a huge plot point for my character and the faction, influencing our actions for weeks to come. The new rule would make this (almost) completely impossible - none of the losing party would even remember there was a battle at all. Now granted, you could interject there could be special situations (single survivors who fled, everyone subduals and there is no killing) but let's be real - none of these come even close to the impact of a real loss that you remember - as opposed as having to be told everything second hand (if you are very lucky)

Yes, Death on Arelith is cheap - this is because the engine doesn't really support retreat or being knocked out, or any other situation which would reasonably allow characters to lose a battle and survive. But I think the solution, which is designed to address the specific problem of murder situations, has wider implications on battle-style PvP that may not have been taken into consideration.

I'd urge to find a way to allow players to properly integrate a battle loss into their roleplay. This necessitates that they remember at least parts of the fight.

I've made this exact argument before and agree wholeheartedly. My characters don't see much violence because they tend to be polite and pacifist, but the handful of times I've been assassinated have been total RP voids. No monologue from the baddies, no witnesses to tell the tale, no clues or follow-up, no memory of -why- she was killed or who she crossed. No point in complaining to anyone about it or making RP around it because there's nothing anyone could do, and trying just makes you look like a drama queen. As far as she was concerned, the roleplay impact was about the same as waking up in the grass with a massive hangover, and that's exactly the result the rules encourage.

Pretty sure that i don't see any problem here. RP need to be two-sided. Perhaps, the assassinator does not actually want this RP to continue and hence why, it's a full stop.
In the instance of the settlement raid to free the ogre prisoner, it does not matter if you don't know that you've died but most -important- is, simply whether or not, the prisoner is rescued. This is something easily found out via word of mouth from -anyone- or even when you've returned and realised that the cell is already empty. RP begins from then because you wouldn't know you've died but you're sure that you've been defeated because you have somehow woke up at another place.

As far as i'm concerned with regards to RP aspect of PVP, Subdual is a more superior choice if i wanted the continuation of something. We should not ignore the existence of Manacles which was recently added. It's not wrong to say Death marks the full stop of mostly everything except those who are alive, such as your ally when the PVP begins and perhaps survived or nothing if it's a complete annihilation.

[Yma23]

Ok so, I want to go through how I plan to roleplay with this ruling. I'm fine with the ruling, in principle, but want to make sure everything is on the up and up.

*If I die to pvp, and I believe that the pvper wanted the death to be a secret - e.g. an assassination - I absolutly will not remember anything to do with it, basically nothing that instigates my killer. Following the rules entirely as written.

*If I die to PvP, and I want to remember what happened - because I feel it makes more story that way, and I feel that my killer(s) might actually want me to remember some details of my death - I might those involved and go 'Haya, that was neat. I'd like to remember some aspects of what occured. How much do you feel comfortable with?' (I'm thinking examples like, being captured and interrogated by Drow for example. But again - going by who's there, why they're there, ect.)

*If I die to PvP - and it's bloody obvious that everyone is ok with me remembering how I died, well... I might still check to be sure, but generally I'll rp remembering some of what occured. (e.g. a death to monsters mid dungeon, death by accidental missclick. I really don't think Dms are worried about that. )

*If I DO PvP and I want someone to RMEMBER said PvP and give MEANING to the PVP - then quite simply I'll have subdual on, and I /won't kill/ the person. That simple. Want people to remember your evil bad guy? Sweet. Don't go around murdering all your witnesses then. Leave one- or better yet all - alive but badly beaten to show your triumph!

*If I Do PvP, and I want someone to remember- but they type -release instead and die - well they're presumably opting in for not remembering and I won't worry about it, because honestly if they're like that they probably wouldn't run with any rp I threw at them any how. So it goes.

*If people start weaponising this ruling - to say that said pvp doesn't matter. (E.g. If I want to make sure Evil mc Evilsome stays out of Cordor - and I subdue and then rp dragging him out- but he just uses -release, then repeatedly comes back in 48 hours going 'lol i don't remember dying! I'm fine 2 b in cordor') - I'll report it to the Dms, especially if it gets egregious.

Does all the above sound fine?

[AstralUniverse]

Also sometimes you want to kill someone... you dont really mind using subdual but because there are many witnesses you decide to kill-bash to make your character look merciless. The person you killed might not remember it, but everyone else in sight sure do, and it affects your future interactions with them.

[Cataclysm of Iron]

I've always taken the view that subdual is subdual, and killing is killing. There's space for both in some hostile roleplay (e.g. it might not be consequential to a villain whether they pummel their victim within an inch of their life, or actually to death) but imo if IC you intend to roleplay using lethal force, you should kill them and send them to the Fugue. With or without subsequently resurrecting them, as roleplay dictates.

If IC you intend to only non-lethally subdue them, you should use subdual mode.

I see no basis for how the rules interact with those two options in respect of death amnesia informing which one you opt to use in a PVP situation.

[good man of god]

Did the ruling get updated yet?

[Choofed]

Did the ruling get updated yet?

Since you're asking, what do you believe the ideal wording should be?

I gave a few examples when I was discussing with Vivek, maybe to move this forward a bit more solidly you should show what you think the rule should be.

[great balls of fire]

I'm just going to say it.

It seems to me like the rule is designed to address one primary concern: bad faith actors who will respawn immediately after PvP and continue the conflict by pursuing revenge/justice/punishment of the winner(s) by telling all their friends, informing law, sending retribution, etc. I'm talking about people who, either maliciously or unintentionally, have prioritized getting the "win" in the conflict -- the "last word" -- over accepting defeat and roleplaying about the loss/death/defeat/injury with at least a modicum of interest in what that means for the character's story.

I don't think there's any amount of rules clarifying or rewording that's going to fix people making emotionally (buttmad) decisions. Sure, it's helpful for the people who are just trying to figure out how to approach portraying the death and return of their PCs, but those people are not the people who are causing the kind of issues this rule is meant to address.

Personally, I'd rather the DMs start handing out 1-2 day temp bans to encourage that player to go outside, touch some grass and cool off before before getting back into the conflict when it's clear there's rulebreaks and bad sportsmanship. The stories we tell can often be extremely compelling, and sometimes that means we have strong emotional reactions to conflict that we feel close to. Normalize temp bans as non-punitive time-outs to let players chill out and get some space between them and the story.

There's no one universal rule or perfect wording that's going to account for every kind of story that's coming out of PvP, and trying to make one that's both flexible for authentic and sincere stories/oopsies and firm on the stuff that harms the immersion/community/etc is a fool's errand. I'd rather take a one day ban even if I felt I was in the right then get booty blasted by Bad Faith Actors while the DMs tell me there's nothing they can do and take it on the chin because it technically wasn't a rule break, just a crappy thing to do.

The Conflict Culture on this server is not going to improve with players self-policing. If the DMs want the players to treat with conflict/death a certain way, they need to be active in cultivating that culture, which means sometimes handing out some temp bans and Marks of Despair until people get the memo.

[DM Monkey]

We’re limited in that we don’t always see this happen. Players need to report for us to be able to take appropriate action. What appropriate action is changes depending on the context of the situation, sometimes that is a time-out and other times it’s just some encouraging words to do better.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

We're certainly trying to make it easy to understand for everyone! This is what the feedback thread is for, after all, to talk and work out the issues.

...

More specific criticism would go a long way to helping! I wish we'd received all of this helpful feedback while it was still being drafted.

There is quite a lot of hostility in this thread against people who see how the rules, as written now, are going to be abused. Where even Grumpycat and Monkey are being hostile to people. If you want feedback it might be good if the team isn't hostile towards people providing it.

[DM Monkey]

I haven’t intended a hostile tone in anything that I’ve written here. What came across that way?