Arelith

I played a surface evil character for just under two years and spent most of this time as an inked pirate. Sencliff is supposed to be a haven for evil characters, but it really isn't.

I know this may be a contentious statement, but hear me out. While you won't be kicked out of town for summoning a demon on the cliff there seems to be very little truly mean spirited stuff going on. It feels like some of the metal and punk I've encountered where the music is manly and loud, people cover themselves in tattoos and bash each other in the moshpit but there's no genuine counterculture, as the silliness occurs behind closed doors and effects nothing.

A lot of these edgy sailors who like to role play Hemingwayesque hard drinking though guys are in fact hiding from the vast majority of players and game content while sailing in circles and assaulting NPC vessels for gold and tattoos. While I'm not saying that this approach is misguided or wrong and I don't think PvP should be shoved down everyone's throats, it's a little weird just how non threatening this apparent hive of scum and villainy seems to be.

One would assume the presence of pirates right near all these other in game settlements would frighten other surface characters, but in practice you almost have to bend over backwards to become a victim of piracy as sailing is an optional system and after dozens or hundreds of hours at sea I've never been involved in a sea attack against innocent PCs. Vikings were obsessed with boats, but they actually used those boats to get boots on the ground and antagonize the kingdoms of Europe and advance the plot of western history.

A friend suggested that the cliff was too vulnerable to counterattack and didn't have the vast resources of the underdark which might explain the lack of evil role play and content. I'm also wondering if the harmlessness of Sencliff stems from cultural sources like a fascination with disney pirates, with romantic seafaring tales, with words like "Arg" and "Swashbuckler".

I clearly don't have all the answers, but I think something ought to be done to encourage evil RP somewhere on the surface. Weather it's making the cliff harder to attack, networking it somehow with the underdark, adding more land based pirate jobs, etc. Maybe this is a player problem and not a game development problem. I would love to see some inked players go out on a limb and make themselves dangerous. Have some beers with a drow noble, sign a mutual aid treaty with an orog militia. There needs to be some kind of space on the surface for evil.

...but I think something ought to be done to encourage evil RP somewhere on the surface.

Isn't this done principally by the players? If you see a gap or hole in player driven content, perhaps you're the answer you're looking for?

Sencliff is currently going through a phase where there are several crews who want Sencliff to be something other than Andunor's unofficial fourth district.

This is all driven by roleplay and IC events.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

What you've described has happened in the past, Drow bargains and Underdark dealings, my old crew used to wander the settlements in what we playfully called "Harassement time" where we'd basically go around and look for trouble in typical pirate fashion. However very few players can, or will, roleplay being afraid. It is incredibly rare to see but that is the casuality of everyone being the hero in their story.

Ultimately unless you have a DM providing some grand effect to your doings, people will typically ignore any "everyday villain" type that tries to get something going, thus few bother to try.

To whatever extent the issue exists, I believe it boils down to it being a matter of players needing to step up to create what you are looking for and what you are looking for just being hard to keep going.

There is nothing in the way to build a faction that is focused on harassing or raiding settlements. Someone just needs to get the ball rolling, gather like-minded characters and you are good to go. I doubt the existing Sencliff player base is much of an obstacle towards such an effort.

The sailing system actually allows you to plunder cargo from other player ships. There is an incentive for pirates to have a capable crew and to prey upon NPC and Player ships. The character conflicts between opposing sailing factions feel more rewarding to me personally, as they are longer lasting and less repetitive. PvP encounters are sparser and less ganky, and when they happen they feel significantly more impactful.

Something I'd love to see is a bounty system for pirates and privateers settlements can hire against one another. The three crews that claim the most Cordor vessels get an automatic bounty of 500k on their head by Cordor NPCs. If all three bounties are collected, Cordor gets a -25% reduction in settlement resource cost and can make their folks happy by lowering taxes on player shops. Voila, incentive to hunt specific pirate crews at sea and a cool benefit to the settlement if you manage to do so.

By contrast, the Viking-inspired raiding you describe could make for a fantastic story but you can not actually make a profit. Like Baseili said, you also need folks to "yes, and" play along. Unfortunately, it is far more likely for the story to get lost once the conflict quickly devolves into repetitive one-line pvp ganking until players roll or take a break from playing. I've seen two Sencliff factions try it. Some fantastic characters in both. Neither is around anymore because it was just a gank-fest that killed any enthusiasm they had.

So in my opinion the reason there are more "profit, sailing focused" pirates on Sencliff these days is mainly that the more "overtly evil, raidy" pirates tend to not last long or move to join the UD that works better for it. I think removing that idiotic portal from the Sencliff graveyard could help enormously in that regard. Right now Sencliff is not a hard to get to refuge for skum, it is the easy one-click accessible backyard for anyone who wants to crack down on pirates on land.

You are talking about two different issues.

As far as sencliff goes, its a place for neutral and evil characters. As Fallen mentioned, if you want to start a crew that does the stuff you are talking about you are all systems go. I don't know what telling the current pirates they are not evil enough for you does for that, but maybe its a strategy to get people say "Hey I feel this way too" and you all can team up and do your thing. I can get behind that.

As far as outwardly evil goes, there really isn't a place for that on the surface. Its too easy for those that fight evil through murderous means to just come kill you where ever you are, including Sencliff. Since the surface naturally leans towards good players, they are always going to have the numbers and therefore the advantage, and if there is no place that evils are safe on the surface any kind of sticking your neck out is going to end poorly. People do it, but when they are good and ready too. Whether or not thats a good or bad thing is above my pay grade, but I do know the conversation has been had quite a few times over the five years since i have been here and its still the same so its easy to assume its by design.

I have played through several pirate eras. When I first started playing, people were REALLY afraid of sailing around. There were hardass pirates on the sea who WOULD board you and rob or kill you.

I also played through an era where pirates were “allied with” from time to time or otherwise tolerated. This actually created a LOT of conflict for one of my longest lived characters.

My personal belief is that pirates, especially those with Dread Pirate ink, should be treated with hatred and aggression by those who are capable of challenging them, and fear by those who can’t.

Pirates literally run around robbing and murdering innocent mariners. This is double true in today’s Arelith where pirates make money from assaulting merchant ships (NPC).

The current situation on Arelith is one where pirates are pretty feared at sea. Non-pirates totally take into account the possibility of a pirate attack before sailing. “Do we have a good enough crew to defend ourselves against pirates? Are we fast enough to run from them?” Etc.

The difference between today and a few years ago is that pirates seem to be total wimps on land. Back in the day, pirates used grapples and boarding to attack and they were strong PvP builds who rolled around in groups fully warded and had a lot of practice PvPing.

So not only did you have to be afraid of them at sea, you had to be afraid of them on land.

That part is different now, it seems. People who don’t sail aren’t really afraid of pirates because what are the pirates gonna do to them? Sing them to death?

This is a kind of weird juxtaposition. Pirates can be competent in PvP as well as in sailing, but if pirates aren't competent in PvP you'll get what you're describing. That's not a sail mechanics problem.

The difference between today and a few years ago is that pirates seem to be total wimps on land. Back in the day, pirates used grapples and boarding to attack and they were strong PvP builds who rolled around in groups fully warded and had a lot of practice PvPing.

The difference between today and a few years ago is that one wasn't required to invest in the sail skill. All pirates did was sail around, board those they spotted, and then jump on board with a PvP build and win. Nowadays, grappling isn't easy, so you -need- to invest in sail heavily to actually get to that point. Otherwise, you'll just be sunk. This makes it hard to have everything one needs for a PvP build while also having what one needs to sail optimally. It also doesn't help that even if pirates had PvP builds, they still are on the surface, which, as stated before, is heavily skewed towards goodly characters. They're outnumbered and outgunned, much like actual pirates were. They have to play smart and lay low at times.

Making Sencliff more remote would help. It should be a place that's difficult to get to unless you're in the know, and its port should be well-defended against incursions from enemy navies, much like Nassau was during the brief time it was a pirate republic. Right now, as FallenDabus said, there's a portal that a gank squad can take to show up and pick off pirates as they check shops. There are points to fall back to, but if you're caught with your pants down, or if they have a traitor with them (this is surprisingly easy to have happen, since being a greenhorn isn't hard to accomplish), then you're dead.

Ork wrote: Mon Mar 07, 2022 3:43 am This is a kind of weird juxtaposition. Pirates can be competent in PvP as well as in sailing, but if pirates aren't competent in PvP you'll get what you're describing. That's not a sail mechanics problem.

I don’t think it’s a problem with mechanics, I think it’s right and proper.

It’s difficult to hit overwhelming sail numbers on most of the traditional strong melee builds. Of course there are exceptions to this (cleric comes to mind as an obvious example). And you can hit decent, competent sail numbers on most any build.

The fact that it’s very difficult for a pirate crew of 5 or so characters to be hitting 80-90 sail AND simultaneously running PvP powerhouse builds is a good thing.

I mean, my last pirate that could get well over 80 sail in the right group, which was fine as a fourth sailor to take on just about anything. They also could hit low sixties ab with minimal wind up (just had to hit divine wrath), crit 55% of the time for over 200 damage, and while that build was nerfed shortly after that had nothing to do with their ability to take 33 ranks in sail and have some gear and a bard with them. The idea that you can't be a good pvp build -and- have sail is false.

Its also false to say that just because you can't go 1v1 vs the builds that try to do everything your build is bad at pvp. If you had a school yard pick for teams with one of every class for a giant team battle and I'm a captain, my first pick is a bard. There's not even a doubt in my mind about that. And that's the truth about nwn mechanics in general, but especially in pvp. A group of characters that are highly specialized at what they do are going to be way more powerful then a group of rangers, swashy loremasters, and divine builds/dips all trying to cover all the bases for one vs one pvp.

This both supports your op and doesn't. Recently team UD were such prolific pirates, that I dont even touch the sailing system. This may be because they have a large, unscrupulous population and only one ship. Sencliff has a modest population of ne'er-do-wells on their best day, split between any number of ships. It's just logistically harder to put together what Babylon describes.

But really, do we actually want more of this? I left off the system because its basically nightly team death match, couched in alot of unsatisfying RP.

This has included killbashing and being eaten (great for continuing the story, thanks), none of which can be reported because they shouted "yar" first.

I even took a rental out with one other mid-level player just for an RP lark. While we were travelling, we happened to read the board on boat on which was posted the pages of victory notes posted by ravaging pirates. Within minutes, you can guess what happened.

Tl;dr: We have more than enough pirating going on, that in no way should be structurally enhanced so that there is actually MORE of it.

I remember the old days of constant Sencliff civil war.

ah the bad old days, how i only sometimes miss you

I'll give my thoughts on this.

I personally do not enjoy PvP as much. Which is also why I am on Arelith and not on an Arena server.

Now I could of course roll a commoner, sit in a city and RP.


But I want to RP a Pirate.
So I did as Tim Biscuit.


Now Tim was no powerhouse. Sure as an umberlant cleric he could do some serious damage, could solo most PvE content etc. But as a caster on board of a ship with nowhere to run. There are times where things did not go his way.

In my ~six months of playing Tim I died a total of 2 times to PvP.
Once after a "Halt" and a 10 second countdown in Cordor and Once while boarding the Merchant Navy.

He has bluffed himself out of many near PvP situations and had some accorrrrds running with people.
He was CN though. Just there to Sail and Plunder to keep his Queen satisfied, and was opposed to slavery as he vouched for Freedom of choice. Leaning heavily on the "Freeport" to not care about anything but his main purpose, offerings to Umberlee.
He would grins at you as he swiped your coin from altars or considered how to swindle you next.

Which leads me to my actual point (sorry to drag this out).
I am -very- opposed to the underlaying message of this thread stating that: "all "evil" should know how to, and parttake in, PvP or consider to not play that "evil"".

As is the trend on Arelith, it has turned black and white.
There are -many- evils. And not all will align to what you or your character expects that evil to be.

If I am misunderstanding the purpose, then I apologise. But I do believe Sencliff is in a great spot currently. People can litteraly be all across the spectrum of alignments and behaviours and get away with it since the current Pirates believe you should be able to do what you want to do. There can be infighting, sure. Since not agreeing is also an option. But you get the point I think.

You want pure evil slap happy min/maxed pvp build pirates? Make it happen. It's a freeport.

By reading a few posts here it seems obvious to me that some people mistake the concept of a pirate/piracy with land-based bandits or just being a murderous maniac that fled from an asylum.

Sure, pirates in Earth's history would raid cities and do "land-based banditry".
But they weren't able to make 300k gold split across all members of the crew in the span of 6 to 9h (2 to 3 rl hours). Also raiding a town IRL back then wasn't subject to rules imposed by the elder gods, and they had 1 life to play with.

Another point I have is... pirates and outcasts are still a separate thing for a reasons.
All pirates are outcasts (In the long run, that doesn't really apply for Greenhorns) but not all outcasts are pirates.

My pirate is CN leaning toward chaotic "good" (Take it with a pinch of salt). That includes :
Refuses to side with monsters,
Despises slavers, greedy merchant/nobles and animators.

There is absolutely no reason for her to go raid the main island. None. Nada, niet, zero. And that's true for some other characters.

Finally, am I reading it wrong are people sad that they don't see more PvP trigger-happy pirates?
Make up your mind, I thought PvP had no real purpose/positive outcome when it comes to building a story

I absolutely despise the idea that oocly the pirates of Sencliff should be seen as some kind of monolith that should follow a default set of behaviors and largely be identical to one another. Sure, that may be your LG character's *impression* of what a Sencliff Pirate should be, but to think that there should be some kind of ooc enforcement on the exact playstyle that constitutes a Sencliff Pirate is very misguided.

We don't even do that for Paladins on this server, and they're the one class most notoriously required to follow strict RP guidelines on pain of losing the ability to level up and their class powers.

It turns out that all of the pirates of Sencliff are Characters. They have different motivations, worldviews, and RP angles. Some are even sympathetic to land authority, and some would throw down in favor of nominally good-aligned factions out of principle, a divine belief, or having a common enemy. Some are murderous reavers, out for blood and wanting to go out in a blaze of glory, but others are simply misfits who have nowhere else to be and found in Sencliff a family and a home.

Some are murderhobos that treat Arelith like a pvp arena server with color-coded teams and a thin veneer of RP to keep up appearances, but fortunately most of them take RP first and PvP second (at least for the current generation).

I would like to count myself among those who take RP first and PvP a very distant second.

I don't like how this is always a discussion about evil. It impacts all antagonists regardless of alignment. Including good aligned people if they stand up against the status quo.

I also don't like how the interpretation of evil is "must pk people." Sometime I'm going to make an infernalist lawyer and set up shop in Guldorand.

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: Mon Mar 07, 2022 4:54 pm I don't like how this is always a discussion about evil. It impacts all antagonists regardless of alignment. Including good aligned people if they stand up against the status quo.

I also don't like how the interpretation of evil is "must pk people." Sometime I'm going to make an infernalist lawyer and set up shop in Guldorand.

I have to comment on this: please, please do. Infernalist lawyers are a wonderful source of evil RP that doesn't get violent. There's so many opportunities for evil that don't require hurting people physically (aka PvP).