AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

She wasn't mocking. She was inquiring.

Metalien wrote:

TormakSaber wrote:

I'm still here too.

That's because you're an addict :lol:

I'd like to see The Banites come back like they did in the good old days. Back then they had a small foothold in a major city, nobody knew they were even there, they didn't run around in the wilderness making roadblocks and attacking innocent people. They schemed, destabilised and stayed more or less utterly secret. That in my mind is how Amian Banites should behave, not how they were towards the end with all the excessive PvP and ridiculous posturing against low level PCs minding their own business in the Skull Crags. Every time there's been a PvP heavy faction that makes roadblocks it usually spells a death knell for that faction. Look at the old Banites and the old Eternal Order. Both had road block fever and both didn't last too long before people started to hate them, now look where they are now. When was the last time you saw an E.O. member or a large group of Banites?

The EO did not fail because of it's roadblocks, it thrived for a few good years because of them. The EO fell apart when their purpose had been served and they did not change to fit the times, in addition of the core players trying out new things together on new characters and the factions they relied to in Khem vanishing. Killing a banite for being an ass is socially acceptable and even celebrated, while killing a kelemvorite for being a douche not quite as much, so they did not face the same problem, even though both were hardly loved. A kelemvorite can pretty much do the exact same thing as a banite, but with the banite everyone is looking for a reason to stab him at the first chance they have.

No one was mocking anyone, Svensk. The question may have been stated in genuine curiosity, but it seems more to be a rhetorical point that warns others to take all that is said with a grain of salt. Not mocking at all.

Other than that, I haven't anything to say about Banites.

Metalien wrote:

I'd like to see The Banites come back like they did in the good old days. Back then they had a small foothold in a major city, nobody knew they were even there, they didn't run around in the wilderness making roadblocks and attacking innocent people. They schemed, destabilised and stayed more or less utterly secret. That in my mind is how Amian Banites should behave, not how they were towards the end with all the excessive PvP and ridiculous posturing against low level PCs minding their own business in the Skull Crags. Every time there's been a PvP heavy faction that makes roadblocks it usually spells a death knell for that faction. Look at the old Banites and the old Eternal Order. Both had road block fever and both didn't last too long before people started to hate them, now look where they are now. When was the last time you saw an E.O. member or a large group of Banites?

Sometimes you just have to stay undercover for the sake of survival. Because a known Banite, is more than likely to end up as a dead Banite.

The Banites did almost all of their RP on their own prerogative, mostly without DM involvement. I'd say more than just carving your own path, don't piss off a DM in the process, as evidently we did in our case. A lot of people seem to get too caught up in the politics of the server (see below) and forget that you're actually just playing a game. And that's how and why everything felt(eels) stagnant.

I've always thought that RP that doesn't seek constant DM involvement, MSN spam, or an OOC expectation about what's "good for the server" or whats "going to happen next" is the RP that sticks with and keeps things interesting.

I think what Needled is trying to say is to stay out of OOC politics not IC politics.

I gotta say that I agree with Needled, when I ran a faction I did so in a way that wasn't entirely reliant on the DM team. I did something I thought others would enjoy and, for the most part, they did. We stuck IC and there were little OOC problems, really. People left the faction, people joined, and then we died with a whimper because personality cults never last long.

A religious faction on the other hand always has a dogma to fall back on to fuel it's IC interactions, to give it goals, and generate roleplay. Personally, I think Amia needs an evil faction parading around forcing their religious ideologies on folks. Some of my most memorable moments on the server involved the olde evil factions on Amia. Such as the Horsemen, Banites and Cyricists. I miss their press gangs.

If I had more time I might consider making a staunch priest of Bane.

I miss that kind of Evil faction too.

Oh my god. I just came up with a great friggin idea for the Church of Bane. Folks who are interested in this Church and want to be a part of it, PM me and I'll happily share my thoughts. I figure that most flowering Banites don't want their plans laid out in such a public manner. I don't think I can promise that I'll take part (Me and my altitis, in mind), but this is such a cool idea that I can't keep quiet! It has to be heard!

Hawhaw, this is perfect. :twisted:

I think people are afraid to play in evil factions because of the following things repeated every 6 months in those threads.

If you want evil, you're going to have to make death meaningful. Otherwise, they get sent to Alcatraz and have to RP their way through living hell, while the 'good' people just run around beheading them and sending them there.

Of course that's just satire and a twisted joke from another thread (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=70112), but it's sadly true in my experience. People who ignore all consequences of death (see the viewtopic.php?f=2&t=70472 topic) render most capture RP as penalizing for the captor. People on amia are unable to roleplay consequences of death because there aren't any.

It's as if the majority of you must want fairy-tale island, and the ones who don't are too caught up in the servers looming stagnant gaze of.. "oh we can't change that, because someone might bitch." Well, if you want to make the server better, make it better. Those people will bitch no matter what.

I've noticed the only way for an evil faction to prosper is to work behind the scenes until you have large enough of a force behind you. If there's like three or five of you, nobody will ever take you seriously. (I guess it works that way in real life too, though!)

Stagnation is the main issue of Amia. Truth to be told, though, I feel that this thread has breathed some life into a certain scene and it's been pretty cool. I'm just hoping things won't die down, as they tend do.

Also, the whole 'meaningful death' argument is entirely valid. It falls into the purview of stagnation. This's an issue that needs to be solved, somehow.

Said it before say it again; lack of perma death sucks. Without.it evil chars will only ever turn out as the guys that.get.mocked by immortal goodies due to their inability to deal with the biggest threat to an evil faction something I like to call "the mob". One of the things I see people fearing most about permadeath is the loss of their hardwork. With an wefficient enough safety net in place they can be protected from meaningless wanton slaughter and only be threstened when delving deep enough to evoke such endings. Death also promotes rp.

Mr. Hackums wrote:

Oh my god. I just came up with a great friggin idea for the Church of Bane. Folks who are interested in this Church and want to be a part of it, PM me and I'll happily share my thoughts. I figure that most flowering Banites don't want their plans laid out in such a public manner. I don't think I can promise that I'll take part (Me and my altitis, in mind), but this is such a cool idea that I can't keep quiet! It has to be heard!

Hawhaw, this is perfect. :twisted:

I would totally PM you if I had the time to devote to a Banite :< I want one, but I can't spread myself that thin.

Also, the topic of permadeath is old and worn out. It's not going to happen, and I'm more glad for that. As if the majority of the server, I believe (including players of evil characters, like myself), so why would it change for the minority? What would be a thought, perhaps, is making it harder to come back (mind, there are ways to do this, and I know some easy ways to give Evil the upper hand when things turn out in their favor, but those are my secrets to use when I can dedicate time to my Evil Dude).

People are welcome to permakill their own characters. Hell, you can permakill mine if you've got a good enough reason to do so and you extend the same courtesy my way. It's a decision a player makes not one the DM team will force on players fighting out individual disputes (DM plots are a different matter entirely.)

Wow, this sure did spring out like wildfire. All I did is ask if there was still a Baneite faction because I noticed there wasnt a listing on the faction boards....lol.

You got your answer, plus some, lol.

Life is funny you know.................*snickers to himself*

Welcome back Arcane Crusader. We've interacted in the past and it seems like we will again in the very near future.

I was thinking about bringing back an old toon from the Darthion days, (hint, hint) and who should appear? You with Maal. Look me up I'm still around. I look forward to some very interesting, intense RP soon.

Baden

P.S. It seems to me two things mitigate our time here in this crazy world we call Amia. The time that RL allows us to play and how much fun we are having here. When you don't have enough of one or the other you leave. Which is just human nature.

Some of us realize our limitations in terms of the amount of time we can spend here, such as myself due to my family obligations. As far as Tormak goes, I have yet to find another on this site that cuts to the heart of the matter in so few words as Tormak. If all he has time for is to post and not play, so be it. Just beware of his sharp saber-like cutting words.

I had a Banite once. Once.

Join the dark side, we have cookies. Cookies baked with evil.

Seriously, to anyone considering playing as a Banite - I say go for it. I've enjoyed every single encounter my character has had and this includes the fact that a good lot of them ended with her dead. I think I'm being just a little bit (a great deal ^^) heavy handed in my approach but it's hard to find my feet, so it's a learning game, a work in progress. I am discovering things just as my character is and so far it's been nothing but fun.

Make a poison-specialized bureaucrat of Gargauth instead. Seriously the coolest and most under-represented evil deity in the setting. The fact that almost nobody's heard of him IC might even let you build a credible, socially accepted church for the Wise Counselor!

I can vouch after researching the guy that Gargauth is awesome.

Bane is cool.

Gargauth has always been cool. But I think what's more appealing about the Banites in the current times is their general openness. We have an amazing presence of Evil on Amia, doing absolutely cool things that.. most likely no more than 3 people will ever know about. Which is fine-- don't get me wrong. Hell, I played a character who acted in similar fashions (To varying degrees of success, of course. :wink:

) But it has a way of being behind closed doors and drawing conflict only much later after it occurs. That's just the nature of sleuth Evils.

Again, I'm not saying this is bad. I'm just explaining why there's even a mood that's looking for a more outwardly evil faction. And there's a large difference in nature between a more political evil (Gargauth), and Bane.

Let's make bane badass again? Can't A DM take the reins?

Very_Svensk wrote:

Let's make bane badass again? Can't A DM take the reins?

Bane has kind of become a bad joke on the server, which makes me sad because as a deity I like him. I doubt a DM can take the reigns, though (to avoid cries of favoritism, which is why DMs are in charge of areas instead), but I'm sure the DMs would be glad to help out a new Banite movement. It just needs to be handled right player-side.

Well I don't know Svensk, if maybe you would just PM me like I saaaiiiddd...

Got to say I agree with Naivatkal about the Banite rep. Some of my first RP on Amia was with a character who got peripherally involved with the Banite faction of the time, and it was pretty much my least favorite week or so on the server. Godgaming, stupid pointless PVP, constant OOC whining, pretty much everything that's come to define the negative Banite stereotype. It soured me on the character I'd been playing, and nearly soured me on the server as a whole. Maybe it's unjust of me, but the experience left me with absolutely no desire to seek out RP with Banites. Some of the current Banite players may be an entirely superior breed of RPer, but the faction will have to do more than just grow in numbers for me to want to engage with their RP and schemes again. I doubt anything short of a Banite renaissance, a true flourishing widespread enough that my characters are forced by unavoidable IC circumstances to take note, will tempt me to take the faction seriously again.

I also wanted to just clarify that while my comment was pegging on the negative stereotype it was not meant to be condescending. I want there to be an awesome Banite faction. I want good, smart evil again. Just in case anyone read that and was offended ^_^

Pm hackums. I was inspired. Verrrry.

Naivatkal wrote:

... not meant to be condescending.

Yeah, me neither, really. Only just agreeing that the Banites faction has a lot to overcome, having been stuck with the legacy of their predecessors. A fun Banite faction would be pretty awesome, but there's more weighing on them than there would be on a faction of Cyricists or Gargauthans or Maskarrans or whatever. But yeah, a faction of Banites that was awesome enough to throw off the OOC reputation and redefine Bane as the stupendous badass he should be... that would be good times, indeed.

Darthion was fuckin' awesome.

Oh, and ummm if you want to play evil, I highly encourage you. There's nothing better than a rockin' evil faction. LOVE IT!

DARTHION WAS AWESOME! And swedish. Did you know that ... ?

Why yes, yes I did! Svenska Killar e sexiga!

I think a huge portion of the Banite reputation stemmed from behavior that was dictated on the belief that Bane's followers are exlusively overty, hyper aggressive, overbearing assholes. This is not at all true and as some people currently out there (you know who you are) could attest, there is an arena for subtlety, manipulation, assassination, bribery, and subversion within the Church of Bane, in fact its a big part of what Bane does. Without governments to control and support them, Banites are essentially just a group of bandits running around the island causing trouble. A smarter thing to do might be to try to subvert the government of some settlement or another so that you have at least token support from a city, or subvert factions or the like, instead of just be like "Rawr crush all who oppose bane!" and promptly find yourself on th losing end of a fight that breaks out every time you walk up to someone over level 10.

DolphinRacer wrote:

I think a huge portion of the Banite reputation stemmed from behavior that was dictated on the belief that Bane's followers are exlusively overty, hyper aggressive, overbearing assholes. This is not at all true and as some people currently out there (you know who you are) could attest, there is an arena for subtlety, manipulation, assassination, bribery, and subversion within the Church of Bane, in fact its a big part of what Bane does. Without governments to control and support them, Banites are essentially just a group of bandits running around the island causing trouble. A smarter thing to do might be to try to subvert the government of some settlement or another so that you have at least token support from a city, or subvert factions or the like, instead of just be like "Rawr crush all who oppose bane!" and promptly find yourself on th losing end of a fight that breaks out every time you walk up to someone over level 10.

+1

The thing is, people could pick up cues and play around what's already in the setting. Creating a church from nothing and trying to force lasting influence is somewhat counter-productive. Banites are still a relatively vanilla, archetypical evil faction so they're justified, but playing to the strengths of Amia's context might lead to more awesome and longer story arcs. But yeah: you can do that even as Banites, and create contacs in a huge web of scheming to make stories take on a life of their own.

Hm, yes. That -would- be a good idea..

*Shifty eyes*

By the way, peice of advice, admitting that you are just trying to build up influence for Bane...NOT a good way to get accepted into factions >.>

Yeah, haha. Although I do get tickled at the notion of sitting on a curb, "Will terrorize for food? Spread the word of Baaanne."

And there's always the Zhentarim to exploit...

The Zhents started ignoring the Church of Bane on Amia a long time ago. ._.

Perhaps a good start would be showing the Zhentarim why they should reconnect with the Amian segment. Or even, start off Amia isle and then spread to it. That way the faction can be separate from the 'failures of the past'. Not everything has to start on Amia ;3

666WaysToHell wrote:

The Zhents started ignoring the Church of Bane on Amia a long time ago. ._.

I am aware, and aware of why. However, if you're an ambitious little Zhent, there's always a chance of reversal.

Before I went the Tarkuul route, I was informed that the Zhentarim would -never- have anything to do with an Amian Banite faction, fullstop. I was told that you could be a -former- Zhentarim Banite, but the Zhents themselves were out of the picture so they could remain a DM tool that's still taken seriously. Granted, Tormak isn't on the team any longer, but I haven't heard of the stance changing.

PS: Dead elves with BANE carved into them aren't a very compelling start. Sorry.

There is still some merit to that. The Zhentarim was embarassed by the Amian Banites behavior (not their defeats so much as their inherent failures; we were understanding about the defeats because at the time the good/evil ratio was 10:1 or whatevs), and they've never proven themselves worth investing in.

I would love to see Baneites on this server again!

:mrgreen:

I absolutely adore that Yossarin refers to the Zhentarim Banites as "we."

Quote:

PS: Dead elves with BANE carved into them aren't a very compelling start. Sorry.

Unless you're an elf.

Liz wrote:

I absolutely adore that Yossarin refers to the Zhentarim Banites as "we."

He's referring to the DMs.

Hush, you! Don't splode my cute little delusions.

How 'popular' would Amias CoB be, anyway? Would they be a common knowledge (or a common joke, rather) around the whole Zhentil keep?

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