Arelith

My understanding of outcast is that human outcasts make up a sizeable fraction of the UD community and became a thing in order to beef up UD player numbers, which I feel is fair! People prefer to play humans over monster races for many reasons: you can customize their appearance, the base-race allows you to adapt it to the vast majority of builds, you don't have to learn any monster-specific lore to play one "properly", you don't have to figure out how to work around the decidedly-not-T-for-teen monster lore bits. The players of outcasts probably wouldn't be playing UDers, or would be playing them less often, if outcasts weren't an option.

This said, if we accept that we need "monster but aesthetically and mechanically human" characters for the sake of balancing the eternal conflict to not-silly ratios, there needs to be something that clearly identifies them as monstrous - i.e. the outcast tag. I do like the idea of requiring people to explicitly state - select from a list, type it out, whatever method works - why they are an outcast at character creation so people can react accordingly. I applaud those outcast players who are already telling me that I might see "Wanted" posters with their face on them in Cordor accusing them of being a chicken-farmer serial killer, or that there's a "Traitor" brand on their face.

I have no strong feelings on pirates; I've never personally seen roleplay where a Dread Pirate saw consequences exclusively for being a Dread Pirate (as opposed to doing evil pirate-y things, or hanging out with people who have been caught doing evil pirate-y things), but that's probably a consequence of where I roleplay. I can see the argument for having Spot checks on the tattoos, with increasingly-high ranks have lower DCs (representing the tattoos being larger/more elaborate and therefore harder to hide).

I don't know if things have changed a lot since I last played a pirate, but when I did I think I was thankful for forgotten realms having a respawn system otherwise we would have wiped out the population of Amn 4 times over. In fact, I'm surprised there isn't a bridge between arelith and Faerun at this point made from sunken ships piled on top of each other from the sea floor. Now the one thing that does suck is that anyone can kill amnian ships, even the cordorian navy if they wanted to, without any consequence...so it does kinda take away from being a dread in that regard. But that massive flaw aside, a dread still has had to do lots of evil stuff to get to where he is, even if it is crimes against the AI and therefore not really a crime in the mentality of many who play here. In other words, Dread pirates should be scary and well known, and that part is spot on on Arelith.
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I'm sorry - I'm not saying that there arn't other good points to whatever your argument is, or even that some of your other points in this post may have validity, but this one is not one of them.

Ultimatly we have to sacrifice some parts of 'realism' or whatever you want to call it to the fact that this a game, and a game meant to be enjoyed. Ships 'respawn' for the same reason that dungeons respawn, because people want to roleplay being an adventurer or yes, being a priate without neccesarly engaging in never ending pvp and that's honestly not a bad thing IMO, for ANYONE.

The GrumpyCat wrote: Mon Jan 08, 2024 4:33 pm

I don't know if things have changed a lot since I last played a pirate, but when I did I think I was thankful for forgotten realms having a respawn system otherwise we would have wiped out the population of Amn 4 times over. In fact, I'm surprised there isn't a bridge between arelith and Faerun at this point made from sunken ships piled on top of each other from the sea floor. Now the one thing that does suck is that anyone can kill amnian ships, even the cordorian navy if they wanted to, without any consequence...so it does kinda take away from being a dread in that regard. But that massive flaw aside, a dread still has had to do lots of evil stuff to get to where he is, even if it is crimes against the AI and therefore not really a crime in the mentality of many who play here. In other words, Dread pirates should be scary and well known, and that part is spot on on Arelith.
Top

I'm sorry - I'm not saying that there arn't other good points to whatever your argument is, or even that some of your other points in this post may have validity, but this one is not one of them.

Ultimatly we have to sacrifice some parts of 'realism' or whatever you want to call it to the fact that this a game, and a game meant to be enjoyed. Ships 'respawn' for the same reason that dungeons respawn, because people want to roleplay being an adventurer or yes, being a priate without neccesarly engaging in never ending pvp and that's honestly not a bad thing IMO, for ANYONE.

Im not sure I get where you are coming from here. I'm not against ships respawning despite my joke about the piles upon piles of slaughtered amnian sailors at the hands of pirates, I'm just saying that's a lot of murder, and that much murder gives someone notoriety. So the dread thing is kinda spot on.

What I was referring to as a flaw is the fact that "good guy" sailors can go amnian murdering for maps too without consequence, which you would think wouldn't happen anyways but...

Anyways, I hope this clears up your misunderstanding on "whatever my point is."

Amateur Hour wrote: Mon Jan 08, 2024 12:26 pm

My understanding of outcast is that human outcasts make up a sizeable fraction of the UD community and became a thing in order to beef up UD player numbers, which I feel is fair!

It is fair. It's just that if you give a random thing (outcast) two benefits (language, portals) and leave it a blank slate, people are going to take it for those two things exclusively. Then when you impose a consequence for taking said thing for said benefits, people are going to push back against the consequence with "But my character never did anything for people to know hes an outcast" because they never bothered to fill in blank slate.

So yeah, I'm not against humans in the underdark, it's even backed up by forgotten realms lore, there just has to be a better way to do it.

Amateur Hour wrote: Mon Jan 08, 2024 12:26 pm

I can see the argument for having Spot checks on the tattoos, with increasingly-high ranks have lower DCs (representing the tattoos being larger/more elaborate and therefore harder to hide).

I removed these several years ago because people were being jerks to lower level people.

I can see someone trying to turn this around on with a what-about-ism on Outcasts, but there is quite a huge difference there. Pirates have Sencliff, Outcasts have Andunor--that is a massive difference in terms of availability of people/players, role play, services, etc. If there was enough of the server built up so that they had the same level of things, then this wouldn't be as necessary to hide those lower level tattoos.

Xerah wrote: Mon Jan 08, 2024 5:32 pm

Amateur Hour wrote: Mon Jan 08, 2024 12:26 pm

I can see the argument for having Spot checks on the tattoos, with increasingly-high ranks have lower DCs (representing the tattoos being larger/more elaborate and therefore harder to hide).

I removed these several years ago because people were being jerks to lower level people.

I can see someone trying to turn this around on with a what-about-ism on Outcasts, but there is quite a huge difference there. Pirates have Sencliff, Outcasts have Andunor--that is a massive difference in terms of availability of people/players, role play, services, etc. If there was enough of the server built up so that they had the same level of things, then this wouldn't be as necessary to hide those lower level tattoos.

I was about to say I thought this was the case a while back. It was somethign like... 80 lore to see a Greenhorn's tats and understand they were a pirate, and like... 25 for a Dread Pirate.

Anyways, I hope this clears up your misunderstanding on "whatever my point is."

My apologise, I think i did misunderstand a bit there.

I don't really like tags but I understand why we can't have nice things.

However I think it would be cool if the tags were dynamic based on location as a middle ground.

Standing in the middle of Cordor, or any civilized area, and your tag is visible to all.

Knee deep in snow climbing the skull crags, far from any posters, side eye glances, suspicious whispers, or anyone really? No tag.

This idea is mainly for outcast. Pirate tattoos seem like another animal entirely.

I like collecting new pirate ranks whenever I play a pirate character and the easy infamy they bring, but I have mixed feelings about them.

I feel like the tags are too much of a 'Game' aspect, and thus slowly and discreetly has moved a lot of roleplay towards 'Gaming' culture.

I see this in how many in game factions also like to use coloured 'Badges' in their description. The badge becomes the most prominent thing in a character's description, signifying which Team they belong to. Even I have found myself occasionally skipping through a character's description only to check for their badge. (On the same note I advocate for the removal of colourful text, take away the temptation)

Pirates and Underdarkers are Reds, Paladins are Yellows, Cordorians are blues. Etc.
In itself it's just fine but I feel that a lot of nuance has been eaten away from roleplay and replaced by what seems like capture the flag- only there's no flag.

Or you could also enable people with high bluff/perform to fake Radiant Heart Insignias or Pirate tattoos- Maybe restrict it to require a lot of rogue/assassin/harper/Zhentarim levels. Making them more vulnerable to subterfuge.