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serbiris wrote:

Well I don't know if you were responding to me or someone else Iron

I wasn't responding to anyone in particular, just commenting on the whole discourse about factions. The name brings to mind rather grand connotations, when in truth it's just a bunch of different social circles.

Fair enough. "Faction" just doesn't have the same connotations to me. More like clubs, because they do have some goals/directions which a mere social circle would lack.

Yoss: I guess "Be creative" was what I was trying to get at. I've felt that I've been making the most difference for my faction when I'm playing my character at his most social, reaching out to new people and thinking of ways to include them or rekindle the interest of folks who have gravitated away from the centre. So it's what I try to do myself, though I can't keep it up all the time because I am naturally shy, and I can't be doing this all the time because I have a life. So I guess I would encourage other people to do this, though in my roundabout way I never really said "People should do this! Even if you're a little uncomfortable about it, give it a go and it will help your faction/ambitions to join a faction!"

Which is what I think. It is of course easier for me because I play a character who creates those reasons as if it were a 4/day spell-like ability but that's not to say that people/characters who are more reserved could never conceive of reasons to get out there and start reeling people in.

Yossarin wrote:

So then let me turn it around. What changes do you folks feel you could make on an individual level to get factions interacting more and hiding less?

Good being willing to lose. I can't think of a single instance in which a non-good faction got the better of the allied forces of goodly order. If good starts getting their collective asses handed to them they'll have to band together, and the other side, well, they'll have a reason to sally forth.

I think some of the good guys are, and some of the good guys aren't, and even without saying so most of us with connected brain cells can figure out who is and who isn't. And those who are, as I mentioned very early on in this series of discussions, often don't have the opportunity these days to "lose" because so many evil players have decided it isn't worth the risk.

TYP wrote:

Yossarin wrote:

So then let me turn it around. What changes do you folks feel you could make on an individual level to get factions interacting more and hiding less?

Good being willing to lose. I can't think of a single instance in which a non-good faction got the better of the allied forces of goodly order. If good starts getting their collective asses handed to them they'll have to band together, and the other side, well, they'll have a reason to sally forth.

I had a really spectacular time with my elf being captured by drow and tortured in House Tinnerai a ways back. Alas, opportunities like that haven't come up lately, though. Get out there and do your job more, evil people.

It would be nice if the evil people played something other than Sharrans. I know it's comfy and secretive and cozy, but what Amia needs is a city, or a organization of evil. Not Tarkuul; Tarkuul itself has proven time and time again that the only thing that's evil about it are the undead on it. It wouldn't make any sense if that changed either. This potential organization doesn't need to 'destroy' Amia either. The Banites certainly didn't "destroy" Amia. Infact, they were building more than they actually ended up destroying. It was the "good" factions that destroyed what they built, ironically. Every single time.

No offense to the developers but if I opened the toolset, I could recreate Zanshibon's exterior in no less then 5 minutes. It's so simplistic, one area, no real good catch for it. Not to mention it's on B which is an added annoyance for keeping in contact with people.

I realized this a while ago, and I thought --well hey, we should create a city of evil, you know? -- Kind of like the Banite stronghold was before. My problem is that I really lack the motivation to do it anymore. Alot of people I was involved with on my character quit, or are doing god knows what. I was going to just throw my character's money at the project, but that doesn't solve the problem since it will not unite evil in any particular way. We had an evil faction, but it sort of dropped off. It's entirely possible for that to change, though, so we'll see.

The next thought in my head was that I could create a Banite. Then I remembered two things. The first thing, was when Fredrick came back after being gone, and the Banites essentially eradicated for months, and within 20 minutes he was PvP'd and his corpse was burned, because he literally drew breath and his character committed the crime of existing, by a bunch of LG knights. Playing with Fredrick for a long time, he's always been that LN seeming Banite. My shitty character tried to stop it, but what good is a battle of ethics and morals with those who don't have any. Then I remembered how even year(s) after the faction dissolved in effect, you still hear people OOCly upset when an open(er) evil is about, and in many chances, you see knight patrols whizzing by when certain people are on the player list.

Despite this, part of me thinks if I am going to play, I think someone, or myself should try to do something similar. When I played this game years ago, I could swear to my friends that this was an RP server. Now I would just shake my head and tell them it's a social server with a slight tinge of RP elements involved. I want to create the dynamic that was there before, but I just don't know how, and unfortunately, I think I'm probably alone in my thoughts here. I feel like everything's just moved on.

I like to point to an instance where my PC, suspected of being a generally "good" person, tried like a courageous moron to stop a drow chick from kidnapping someone. I put up a PvP fight, and even with all of my cool epic equipment from my super looting days, my 8-in-all-physical-attributes bard got killed by a Dev Crit when she was either badly wounded or near death or something. Close but no cigar.

Anyway, I was totally willing for terrible shit to happen. They took me to drowtown, chained me up, interrogated me...

...and then after I played a little political fast talk to try to mitigate my damages (there really isn't much you can do in that situation!), I was...set free.

Don't even remember the players involved. I don't harbor any ill will or anything. I was having fun. But I was very confused and actually disappointed when I was freed and allowed to go back. My first thought was, "Fuck, are they letting my PC go because they know I'm a DM and think I'll get revenge or something?" And then I wondered if they were just having to shrug their shoulders and give up because of hostage rules or something? I mean I wasn't even given a particular task to perform when freed, like, "Go and deliver this message to so and so. Tell them the Spiders sent you!" or whatever.

Not only was I willing to lose, I was willing to suffer, and I kinda got the impression the bad guys got cold feet (or got scared or something, I wasn't sure.)

I tell you this because I don't think I'm alone in that experience. Which I guess leads me into another question: are there things about DM rules which would make bad guys in that situation drop the pursuit of consequences and just push things back to the status quo?

Quote:

Which I guess leads me into another question: are there things about DM rules which would make bad guys in that situation drop the pursuit of consequences and just push things back to the status quo?

Raise Dead Scrolls.

Remembering everything prior/after/during interrogation.

Death usually hurts the killer, not the victim on Amia.

I take it from the bold and italics that you feel strongly about that?

I've never been happy with Raise Dead scrolls or our rules about it for that very reason. Oh, sure, they are in place for a reason, and a very good one, but there's just never been a better suggestion that takes care of all the problems and I've not been able to brainstorm my way to one on my own. (And generally I don't trust player input on an issue like that because you all have too much personally invested in the matter, but what the hell, if you have an idea that actually fixes all the problems without creating new ones, go for it.)

Last edited by RaveN on Wed, Sep 26 2012, 18:35 PM, edited 1 time in total.

I personally think Raise Dead should be removed at least for PvP purposes, and some enforced memory loss for example, the events leading up to your death (and who was involved)

As long as someone gets up and tells all their friends how they just got beheaded, then beheading them is a waste of your time. I mean, unfortunately it hurts evil a lot more than good.

I personally wouldn't mind a system of corpses that you find on alot of other servers. Where when you die, you go to the fugue plane, and your carcass stays behind, and someone actually has to find an appropriate way to resurrect you.

Mind, there's many ways to implement a system like this, but essentially I've said what I think is important. The current death system on Amia is largely flawed (and always has been.) There's quite a few ways to fix it, in my eyes, but if you're looking for the answer to why you weren't interrogated? This is why I stopped doing it.

Needled247 wrote:

Remembering everything prior/after/during interrogation.

Death usually hurts the killer, not the victim on Amia.

I have to agree with these two. Unfortunately it's hard to mitigate what people remember before death, you have to rely on people being sensible about it. Personally, if my character had a five plus minute conversation with someone before they were killed, I'm of the mind that they will, in the least, recognize that person by sight or voice. However, if you were jumped and killed (aka an assassination/hired hit), you are going to remember jack all about the killer.

I've seen players RP things being sketchy, which always makes me happy, but it still sounds like there is a big issue with the killed automatically remembering everything upon being raised. It's one reason I balk at having an assassin type character, and I think it prevents others from wanting to make them as well. It's sad, but people doing the above limits that route of RP. I can see, however, that this would be an area that is best handled with a DM there, since they can essentially say 'hey, you remember nothing about the attack, so lol'. The only reason I made an assassin type character (they stopped going down that road, though) is because I realized you can get a DM to oversee it rather than tell the player OOC and that made me happy.

I can't say one way or another on Raise Dead scrolls, they are there for a reason but technically they should be harder to get. But that also goes back to the economy issue and gold. I honestly have no helpful input on how to avoid Raise Dead scrolls being around. I don't think they are an issue for PvP, however, because even if raised you can't get into conflict with that person for another 24 hours. Also, if your head is chopped off in RP, then they don't work anyways haha. But, that's back to people being trustworthy about things.

I had the same impression you did, Yossarin. Voronwer was tortured for going on 5 hours, then subsequently relinquished to the care of people who approached Edonil to retrieve him. The torture itself was fun to play, even if it got a bit stale during hours 3-5. I think they chucked him out with the people who came to get him because they didn't want to ruin my fun or something, when all they needed to do was ask if I was okay with being held longer (I would have said yes with the caveat of there being some different interaction besides sticking me with pointed objects and laughing about it). That 24-hour rule, while completely necessary, also affects IC habits during such encounters. If there is a way around it, I think that could/should be the first thing to look at to spice up such events.

We play on an RP server, therefore it makes sense to have the clerics in charge of bringing back the dead...

Yossarin wrote:

(And generally I don't trust player input on an issue like that because you all have too much personally invested in the matter, but what the hell, if you have an idea that actually fixes all the problems without creating new ones, go for it.)

Well, as I see it the whole Raise Dead issue is made up of two different questions:
1. How do you represent "death" (or more accurately defeat) in general pve, and allow for recovery.
2. How do you represent "permanent" death, due to PC or DM interaction.
--
1. PVE
"Death" in PVE happens, due to a variety of reasons. But this doesn't necessarily have to mean actual death. Would it be feasable that once a character is "killed" (that is, taken below -10 HP) they would lose an amount of XP and be ported to a safe zone? RPwise the character might have been able to crawl away, or passing NPC's happened to save the character, or some such. This would mean the character wasn't actually killed, but rather suffered a considerable defeat - and the lost XP (you might even set the "death" penalty to a full level. It would certainly make people more inclined to work together more) represents the trauma that comes with it.

For an additional kick, you could add in a percentile chance that the character actually suffers "True Death".
---
2. Death in DM events.
I'm going to lump PC interaction in here too, because IMO literally killing someone should have DM oversight to avoid OOC messiness. In these events, a character might suffer execution or another form of true, unambiguous death. The character dies True Death. That means you're DEAD.
---
3. True Death
In the event of True Death, the character is ... well, truly dead. Not just disabled or incapacitated. This has a number of considerable and very painful consequences - why should DEATH be anything less?
1. Loss of Inventory
All of it. Perhaps your character will be able to reclaim his/her things sometime, but at the event of True Death you as a player lose all claim to your character's inventory possessions. Why? Because XP can be recovered relatively easily. That super awesome special weapon you love so much can't. Again, death HURTs.
2. Raising

Remove the absurd quantity of Raise Death scrolls. Hell, pull them from the server altogether. Only clerics have the ability to raise the fallen, and it'll hurt for them.
If they attempt to Raise Dead: the fallen character returns to life (with a permanent 1 Con point loss or so, as it is in PnP) and the casting cleric loses a level.
If they attempt Resurrection: the fallen character returns to life (without any penalties, possibly) and the casting cleric loses multiple levels.

Bringing a character back from True Death is something that has to be thought trough, and Kelemnvor requires a toll to be paid. Clerics will really have to make sure they know who they are raising and why - no more of those silly drive-by raises that are so very common - and this might lead to very good RP, especially if the cleric in question is the sort to demand some sort of compensation (which may very well be conversion or servitude).

Yup. True Death sucks. Why shouldn't it?

Needled247 wrote:

I personally wouldn't mind a system of corpses that you find on alot of other servers. Where when you die, you go to the fugue plane, and your carcass stays behind, and someone actually has to find an appropriate way to resurrect you.

This also removes the chance of metagaming info when player X + Y + Z are talking over your corpse.

I also want players to loose XP EVEN if they are level 30 upon death in PVE. Why don't they? We loose XP when we're 29 and a half ...so... ?
This is also a big middle finger to the soloer's out there

Losing EXP at 30 won't happen, though an increase of gold loss at 30 could. You see we're never going to let the penalty ensure someone loses a level because it leaves too much room for abuse, that, and it's a little excessive.

I have to agree that a more interesting death system would be nice. I was on a NWN2 server, briefly, that had the Fugue Plane. When you died, you went there and your corpse would be left behind. You could respawn or someone could carry you back to appointed NPC clerics (or a PC cleric) and be brought back at no cost to yourself. Of course, you had to pay the NPC to do it and the PC might ask for compensation lol

Something like that would be nifty and I would not be against it.

Elorathall wrote:

2. Raising

Remove the absurd quantity of Raise Death scrolls. Hell, pull them from the server altogether. Only clerics have the ability to raise the fallen, and it'll hurt for them.
If they attempt to Raise Dead: the fallen character returns to life (with a permanent 1 Con point loss or so, as it is in PnP) and the casting cleric loses a level.
If they attempt Resurrection: the fallen character returns to life (without any penalties, possibly) and the casting cleric loses multiple levels.

Bringing a character back from True Death is something that has to be thought trough, and Kelemnvor requires a toll to be paid. Clerics will really have to make sure they know who they are raising and why - no more of those silly drive-by raises that are so very common - and this might lead to very good RP, especially if the cleric in question is the sort to demand some sort of compensation (which may very well be conversion or servitude).

Haha. No. Also, True Resurrection requires the loss of a level for the cleric. Why is Raise Dead the same price?

Dude, Voronwer, you got five hours of torture? Lucky bastard. I got fifteen minutes of interrogation and five minutes of groveling for my life.

Naivatkal hits on the major sticking point about the memory thing. There's no way to enforce it properly and we're on an incredibly slippery slope (or just forcing us as DMs to do so much more policing than is necessary) in order to make the memory loss thing fair. There are only 2 ways in my admittedly sometimes black and white mind that I can see it working out:

1) DMs utterly micromanage it. This would require us being present at all interactions where PvP or PC death/raise is a possibility, or for players to screenshot every single detail. Then, we have that log, we will be able to reference it should any "metagaming" ever occur of what the person experienced but isn't supposed to have remembered. Sound like a lot of stupid paperwork and unreasonable DM requirements? It does to me, both as a player and a DM.

2) Players be sensible about it, and realize that DMs will never be able to actually support a metagaming claim against anyone without the evidence necessary to do so above. Otherwise you could claim something that is entirely reasonable but also entirely untrue and we'd be none the wiser.

If you want the players to be more sensible about it...I dunno. My mind tells me you'd have to create a kind of player social structure amongst yourselves to make that work, where if someone violates sensibility they get ejected from the RP and shunned or something.

Yossarin wrote:

Dude, Voronwer, you got five hours of torture? Lucky bastard. I got fifteen minutes of interrogation and five minutes of groveling for my life.

Naivatkal hits on the major sticking point about the memory thing. There's no way to enforce it properly and we're on an incredibly slippery slope (or just forcing us as DMs to do so much more policing than is necessary) in order to make the memory loss thing fair. There are only 2 ways in my admittedly sometimes black and white mind that I can see it working out:

1) DMs utterly micromanage it. This would require us being present at all interactions where PvP or PC death/raise is a possibility, or for players to screenshot every single detail. Then, we have that log, we will be able to reference it should any "metagaming" ever occur of what the person experienced but isn't supposed to have remembered. Sound like a lot of stupid paperwork and unreasonable DM requirements? It does to me, both as a player and a DM.

2) Players be sensible about it, and realize that DMs will never be able to actually support a metagaming claim against anyone without the evidence necessary to do so above. Otherwise you could claim something that is entirely reasonable but also entirely untrue and we'd be none the wiser.

If you want the players to be more sensible about it...I dunno. My mind tells me you'd have to create a kind of player social structure amongst yourselves to make that work, where if someone violates sensibility they get ejected from the RP and shunned or something.

Needled247 wrote:

I personally wouldn't mind a system of corpses that you find on alot of other servers. Where when you die, you go to the fugue plane, and your carcass stays behind, and someone actually has to find an appropriate way to resurrect you.

Use Thiiiiiiis instead!
Then we don't even need to raise people in order to move them around!

That doesn't address the memory problem, Svensk. Sure, it makes sure they don't remember where they went or how they got there, but the people involved? The faces, the dresses, the physical description of the location, the sensory input, the interrogation itself if killed again? All are supposed to be "forgotten" but the player can't forget it.

Yossarin wrote:

That doesn't address the memory problem, Svensk. Sure, it makes sure they don't remember where they went or how they got there, but the people involved? The faces, the dresses, the physical description of the location, the sensory input, the interrogation itself if killed again? All are supposed to be "forgotten" but the player can't forget it.

But it solves parts of it - And that's a start. Better to solve the problem 50% than leave it unsolved to 100%

Challenge yourself to solve it all, sir. I don't care for half-measures.

Yossarin wrote:

2) Players be sensible about it, and realize that DMs will never be able to actually support a metagaming claim against anyone without the evidence necessary to do so above. Otherwise you could claim something that is entirely reasonable but also entirely untrue and we'd be none the wiser.

Naivatkal wrote:

Personally, if my character had a five plus minute conversation with someone before they were killed, I'm of the mind that they will, in the least, recognize that person by sight or voice. However, if you were jumped and killed (aka an assassination/hired hit), you are going to remember jack all about the killer.

Is my approach to PvP death in line with what the DM Team would want, or is it metagaming? I want to avoid the latter, but my feelings are just that if you have established contact for a reasonable amount of time, then you should remember something. But if it's 'quick and dirty' you are going to remember nothing.

Honestly, Yossarin, if someone is going to metagame there's nothing you can do about it. They metagame with how it is now, and they will metagame with how it will be. You can't win them all.

The biggest problem I have is how they metagame how it is now -- too often do I see characters charge into stupid and hopeless situations because their characters know that a 2000 gp paper available at almost any settlement, and OOC guidelines will have them living and breathing in no time again. -That's- what's metagamingly stupid to me.

That's why I said the events leading up to death. I know some people disagree and think they should remember who they got in a fight with, but honestly, the fact that they exist again and have their soul reintegrated in the material plane is nothing short of a fucking miracle. Why do you need to remember everything about the fight? You're not forced into the fight, as per server rules -- so you could just run away if you value knowledge.

Yossarin wrote:

My mind tells me you'd have to create a kind of player social structure amongst yourselves to make that work, where if someone violates sensibility they get ejected from the RP and shunned or something.

Something like this already exists, though in different context. If you manage to tick off a certain clique of roleplayers, you can bet you'll be thoroughly shunned and ignored from then on out. Even if you stick them in the eye with a pencil, in character.

That aside, I'm all for harsher death penalties and I truly think that actual PvP deaths (not incapacitation, mind.) should warrant a cleric-cast Resurrection. While I am kind of on the same page with Archon Prime, one has to remember that when things like actual inventory loss are concerned, people are not going to be "afraid" of death, they'll just play elsewhere, period. There are more hardcore servers than ours out here, and from what I've gathered, Amia has no plans on going down that road. It's designed to cater to more than one category of players... Even if that is something of an utopic thought, and the concept is certainly not perfected here yet... (See: evil vs. good, grind vs. social, etc.)

Wouldn't it be entirely possible for the DM's to just say: "When you die, you forget everything X minutes prior to death. Going against this will be considered metagaming, and warrants a penalty."...? Would this be unreasonable?

Considering how draconic and convoluted the PvP rules are, and you're give plenty of opportunities to get out of a conflict, the requirement for an ooc raise is rather silly. If you die in PvP and your body is disposed of, I think you should be forced to eat a respawn. Add in another rule that the 30 minutes leading up to any respawn is completely forgotten ICly, and you've a step in the right direction.

Yossarin wrote:

I think some of the good guys are, and some of the good guys aren't, and even without saying so most of us with connected brain cells can figure out who is and who isn't. And those who are, as I mentioned very early on in this series of discussions, often don't have the opportunity these days to "lose" because so many evil players have decided it isn't worth the risk.

As an almost purely Evil based player my entire time on Amia I can provide some input and observation on some of this. While I have always continued to love playing Evil characters, and even gotten to the point where I almost sadistically enjoy losing it hasn't always been easy. Some of my characters were changed/rped to almost be more neutral than evil because I wanted to be able to find a 'group' to play with, which I admit I've learned to get over and RP my characters as true as I can to their alignments.

Amia is a predominately Neutral/Good server, and it really does show. I remember back, a year or so, I kidnapped someone with Nomed and dragged them into the Abyss. I was fully ready to take whatever was coming, as most Evil players nowadays have learned to do. It wasn't the mob of fully buffed Epics that threw me off, it was the fact that it becomes more of a, "Stab the ugly guy, ignore the fact he is holding someone hostage with a weapon, and walk off with the person after" which is repeatedly done. Not only was there no initial RP, or the gimmicky talk in the beginning of any real hostage situation but after I was killed I was left. My entire days work of getting people worked up for a reaction ended in 10 seconds with a fast pvp session and almost zero rp, interrogations, questions, nothing. Mind you I still had a blast, and some people I talked to did as well, but it was lacking.

While I have had some delightful experiences that varied from that above, it is really a reoccurring thing. Playing a Evil character you usually find yourself either part of an extremely small group, or a complete loner. My entire time on Amia there was only once, maybe twice, where a Evil fact carried any sort of influence, most notably the Banites. Even they ended up failing because from my point of few it was 80 percent of the player base vs The Banites.

I wish I could provide some input on how to improve the evil ratio, but one giant step I feel like would be to have more DM support tossed in that direction even to the point of being called unfair. Amia will always be mostly Good/neutral and will always have terrible Rp experiences along with the brilliant ones. I feel Evil is just lacking something or someone to run to, and 'form' together. The Banites use to have Gurth or Darth, and the Flight (During my time) had Saris and others. Its one of those things us evil guys rely on more so than the good guys to prosper in a server like Amia.

Needled247 wrote:

No offense to the developers but if I opened the toolset, I could recreate Zanshibon's exterior in no less then 5 minutes. It's so simplistic, one area, no real good catch for it. Not to mention it's on B which is an added annoyance for keeping in contact with people.

We've actually recognized this and are working to give Zanshibon and the Abyss in general, a major facelift as part of the Rejuvination initiative.

Disco is trying his hand at making a new tileset specifically for the Abyss, entirely custom to Amia. This will take a fair while to complete mind you, as he's "learning as he goes" but here's a sneak preview... I know I'm already drooling over it.

Tartarus Tileset

Sphinx wrote:

Wouldn't it be entirely possible for the DM's to just say: "When you die, you forget everything X minutes prior to death. Going against this will be considered metagaming, and warrants a penalty."...? Would this be unreasonable?

As you will notice from the way I worded things, it is reasonable to request this, but unreasonable methods are required to enforce it. And in general you should never make a rule you can't enforce!

NinjaClarinet wrote:

If you die in PvP and your body is disposed of, I think you should be forced to eat a respawn.

When killed in PvP you do not loose anything if you respawn, unless I am wrong. And I don't get how they are convoluted, either, but whatevz.

Also, I'm against a blanket 'everything 30 min prior is forgotten'. I can't wrap my mind around completely forgetting 30 solid minutes of IC actions leading up until death. It just doesn't make any sense to me. You also have to remember that afking and such will interfere with that, so how can you fix that issue? I know that even when I am playing, my attention can be dragged away by my wife and/or family.

Hell, that's most of the reason I avoid PvP. If I have to leave, sorry I have to go. Oh, you want to give me 'be captured or PvP' five minutes before I have to log? Sorry, not going to happen (really only was a concern when the Slavers were around, though I'm 99% sure the players would have understood since they were all decent people).

Glim wrote:

Tartarus Tileset

HRRRRRNNNNNNNNG

Memory Loss: Upon dying, your character forgets all events and people involved leading up to death. The last known memory was before you first encountered your killer(s).

It's about as enforceable as the Metagaming the guards thing.

Most of the examples I see being thrown out there, including Yoss', are all things I consider "petty" evil. Hostages, small PvP skirmishes, kidnapping, eating babies, that's all very...simplistic. That's not worthy of any real villains, just thugs! DM-sponsored evil groups have a lot more potential than any one individual being evil, I think.

Example time. A very long time ago, in a galaxy fatr, far away I used to play an evil mage. Back then, myself, Glim and Azure had tried to take over the village of Guldorand, and I think we were being pretty damn clever about it. Problem is...we couldn't get ANY DMs to provide the NPC responses of the town to see how we were doing. We finally start getting really pushy, and BAM, some super-vampire eats the entire town. Okay, well, that sucks. I try to salvage the situation, try to join forces with this super vampire. Maybe we can get some cool RP being this guy's lackeys before the inevitable Good Army kills him. We are completely, utterly ignored by this NPC. What kind of villain turns down willing bitches? If he had collaborated with the evil PCs, that story would have turned out rather drastically different, I think.

Now, the current DM team is much better about those sorts of things. The Living City is bloody amazing right now. Bobo has a group of people working with the Herald. That scale evil is much more interesting, but it takes some active participation from the DMs, just like how the Kohlingen people have -their- NPCs that they report to. I'd like to see more of it, more powerful, Dm run evil NPCs and factions that can give their minions and employees work and tasks, and the risks and rewards that come with failure and success.

I'm curious where this notion of resurrection-related amnesia has come from. It's not part of any spell description I've ever read, neither in NWN nor in PnP, nor is it anywhere in the Rules folder. So far as I can tell, it's a complete fabrication, invented out of thin air, maybe in an attempt to give PvP a little more IC weight than it has currently. Maybe this point shoult be in the "Unwritten Rules" thread, but it seems to be under discussion here, so I'll ask:

Why is this imposed amnesia thought to be a good thing? It's completely arbitrary, entirely unenforceable, and (in my opinion) really, really lame.

NinjaClarinet wrote:

Most of the examples I see being thrown out there, including Yoss', are all things I consider "petty" evil. Hostages, small PvP skirmishes, kidnapping, eating babies, that's all very...simplistic. That's not worthy of any real villains, just thugs! DM-sponsored evil groups have a lot more potential than any one individual being evil, I think.

Example time. A very long time ago, in a galaxy fatr, far away I used to play an evil mage. Back then, myself, Glim and Azure had tried to take over the village of Guldorand, and I think we were being pretty damn clever about it. Problem is...we couldn't get ANY DMs to provide the NPC responses of the town to see how we were doing. We finally start getting really pushy, and BAM, some super-vampire eats the entire town. Okay, well, that sucks. I try to salvage the situation, try to join forces with this super vampire. Maybe we can get some cool RP being this guy's lackeys before the inevitable Good Army kills him. We are completely, utterly ignored by this NPC. What kind of villain turns down willing bitches? If he had collaborated with the evil PCs, that story would have turned out rather drastically different, I think.

Now, the current DM team is much better about those sorts of things. The Living City is bloody amazing right now. Bobo has a group of people working with the Herald. That scale evil is much more interesting, but it takes some active participation from the DMs, just like how the Kohlingen people have -their- NPCs that they report to. I'd like to see more of it, more powerful, Dm run evil NPCs and factions that can give their minions and employees work and tasks, and the risks and rewards that come with failure and success.

To be fair I agree with you completely, but large schemes and big plans don't put fuel in the RP engine. We do need small even 'petty' evil stuff to keep us going for the time needed for the big plans to start to take hold.

Actually, when you lose XP you lose experiences, which is in most cases supposed to be that exact particular explanation. When you die, you're supposed to lose XP. Just because we don't lose XP at level 30 due to a mechanical restriction doesn't mean the same logic shouldn't apply.

It's not lame -- what's lame is getting up and using the information you learned about your death to your advantage while the killer gets screwed all the same since you just got resurrected without penalty.

So is that your way of saying that if there is a penalty on the resurrection then the memory retention isn't as much of a downer?

Last edited by RaveN on Wed, Sep 26 2012, 19:41 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Define what the penalty is? The memory retention is always a downer, in my view. It kind of makes assassination/killing secretly a joke.

That alone answers my question. It was a way in which you phrased it that gave me pause. I have always been of the mind that since we like to oversee assassination attempts anyway that we should temporarily rename the assassin to something else (including bio) to preserve their anonymity. It is very, very easy for us as DMs to change a name and a bio. We can do it even faster on the bio than you can yourself, I do believe.

The assassin having "non-descript clothing and appearance" is up to the player, of course.

Problem is, I've always been alone in this thinking.

Yossarin wrote:

That alone answers my question. It was a way in which you phrased it that gave me pause. I have always been of the mind that since we like to oversee assassination attempts anyway that we should temporarily rename the assassin to something else (including bio) to preserve their anonymity. It is very, very easy for us as DMs to change a name and a bio. We can do it even faster on the bio than you can yourself, I do believe.

The assassin having "non-descript clothing and appearance" is up to the player, of course.

Problem is, I've always been alone in this thinking.

I've seen some questionable DM rulings involving players who've "spotted" through disguises without actually rolling for it, and metagaming the name over people's heads later on, and the DM saying it was OK. (in recent times too). This kind of stuff always make my head spin 360 degrees.

I for one love servers that have disguise kits. I don't see how you'd really be able to see someone so easily. Nametags add too OOC information, IMO.

Needled247 wrote:

Just because we don't lose XP at level 30 due to a mechanical restriction doesn't mean the same logic shouldn't apply.

Actually, you do! Remember you get 1 XP per kill still at max level XD So it's still a viable reasoning

Yossarin wrote:

That alone answers my question. It was a way in which you phrased it that gave me pause. I have always been of the mind that since we like to oversee assassination attempts anyway that we should temporarily rename the assassin to something else (including bio) to preserve their anonymity. It is very, very easy for us as DMs to change a name and a bio. We can do it even faster on the bio than you can yourself, I do believe.

The assassin having "non-descript clothing and appearance" is up to the player, of course.

Problem is, I've always been alone in this thinking.

... If I ever have to assassinate someone I am either kidnapping you to aid me or asking this to be done! :mrgreen:

But, seriously, that's a good idea. Actually any character I have that might be involved in something shady uses a different set of clothing anyways. I just don't trust people haha. Eliminate the ability to metagame outfit by wearing something completely different, then the bio is changed (typically with the provision that their face is blacked out with charcoal or something, so skin color and features are harder to see), all that have is a name and that can be called out for metagaming. That's how I handle it, at least (or plan too, rather).

I need to be clear. Are you saying the idea I presented there has no merit because a DM is involved because we might be prone to making mistakes?

The same might be prone to abuse exists in the form of handing out disguise kits to everyone.

At least with a DM around, you also have someone on hand to guarantee that PvP rules are followed, as well. (Not the rules of engagement, since those changes for assassinations, but the other ones like transition abuse and stuff).

This is not meant to sound accusatory or like my nose is bent out of shape or anything. I'm just fishing for clarification.

I think that your method is a pretty ironclad method of preventing metagaming during an assassination. With people having to apprise a DM of the impending assassination attempt anyway, it seems like it's easy enough to ask for DM-presence during the attempt itself.

Yossarin wrote:

That alone answers my question. It was a way in which you phrased it that gave me pause. I have always been of the mind that since we like to oversee assassination attempts anyway that we should temporarily rename the assassin to something else (including bio) to preserve their anonymity. It is very, very easy for us as DMs to change a name and a bio. We can do it even faster on the bio than you can yourself, I do believe.

The assassin having "non-descript clothing and appearance" is up to the player, of course.

Problem is, I've always been alone in this thinking.

Say a DM is overseeing an assassination, the RP is nice and the attempt goes well-- the target player is killed and the assassin gets away.

... Now what? That player isn't permanently killed (and shouldn't be) but... aside from making someone forget he was ever assassinated...?

This all sounds like a problem of death not being serious enough IC, aside from any mechanical consequences. I think making people care about the life and death of their character more than their items and numbers is really the trick here.

I phrased what I said poorly. I don't want to give disguises to everyone. I just want them to be available with DM supervision. (A tried and true way to change name would be nice.

Also

Quote:

Say a DM is overseeing an assassination, the RP is nice and the attempt goes well-- the target player is killed and the assassin gets away.

... Now what? That player isn't permanently killed (and shouldn't be) but... aside from making someone forget he was ever assassinated...?

This all sounds like a problem of death not being serious enough IC, aside from any mechanical consequences. I think making people care about the life and death of their character more than their items and numbers is really the trick here.

Assuming you're using my idea as a guideline, about forgetting things -- the idea is that you wouldn't forget that you got killed (or died. It could be anything-- the person raising you could even lie.). You just don't know anything about it. That alone should have a relatively big impact about how you go about your business.

Needled247 wrote:

Assuming you're using my idea as a guideline, about forgetting things -- the idea is that you wouldn't forget that you got killed (or died. It could be anything-- the person raising you could even lie.). You just don't know anything about it. That alone should have a relatively big impact about how you go about your business.

That's entirely backwards, though. If there's a possibility that the person I'm targeting in PvP is going to be forced by the rules to forget that I had anything to do with the fight, to not know who to try to take revenge against... that's going to encourage people to treat PvP *more* lightly, not less. If I can kill someone and be able to get away with it scot-free, with no chance that they'll try to come back at me later, then frivolous PvP becomes even more tempting.

Last edited by RaveN on Wed, Sep 26 2012, 20:18 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Lizzie wrote:

Needled247 wrote:

Assuming you're using my idea as a guideline, about forgetting things -- the idea is that you wouldn't forget that you got killed (or died. It could be anything-- the person raising you could even lie.). You just don't know anything about it. That alone should have a relatively big impact about how you go about your business.

That's entirely backwards, though. If there's a possibility that the person I'm targeting in PvP is going to be forced by the rules to forget that I had anything to do with the fight, to not know who to try to take revenge against... that's going to encourage people to treat PvP *more* lightly, not less. If I can kill someone and be able to get away with it scot-free, with no chance that they'll try to come back at me later, then frivolous PvP becomes even more tempting.

Why do you need to have revenge? I always thought killing people secretly was about sending a message. Not trying to get that person to endlessly slam sword and shield and chase you around.

Mercedes wrote:

This all sounds like a problem of death not being serious enough IC, aside from any mechanical consequences. I think making people care about the life and death of their character more than their items and numbers is really the trick here.

This is the crux of the matter. And mechanical 'fixes' aside, proper perception of death is what is needed. While that Raise Dead scroll works 100% of the time, there is no IC guarantee it will work. Death is not something that should be hand-waved or flaunted (unless, of course, if you are a nihilistic or have a death-wish...in which case, why accept a rez if you die anyway?). But this is up to the individual player. I have seen some spectacular RP stemming from the consequences of death and resurrection, so it is not as blatantly bad as it seems to be made out here.

In essence, 'change begins at home.' This is my admittedly laissez faire take on the matter.

Mercedes wrote:

This all sounds like a problem of death not being serious enough IC, aside from any mechanical consequences. I think making people care about the life and death of their character more than their items and numbers is really the trick here.

That's the trick, and no one can do that but the players themselves. My Sharessin had fallen in battle several times over the course of her adventuring career, and it was always somewhat of a shock. Of course, she mostly stays out of battle but has to run in to help with healing and such as well, so when she did bite it, she was shaken somewhat and had to take a few moments to gather herself.

Salema, the Sharessin, actually never end-of-the-line died (ie respawn) until she was into her epic levels and fell in Domi's room. When she respawned in Cordor she was visibly shaken, pale, scared, and at least a bit confused. One of her friends actually had to carry her from the docks to her room in Gabilgathol's. Heck, I still am moved by the emotions that she was feeling after that. From that day, she refuses to step foot into that chamber. Normally she can be persuaded by her close friends, and Emilly, but I don't know if anything will get her to go back in there. On a lesser extent when fighting in Mulhorand with the Khem peeps she was killed in the middle of a demon horde and all but freaked out upon being raised.

I like RPing stuff like that, because it brings added life to a character. I think that if someone neglects that sort of thing, then they are missing out on the Big Picture of their character.

Needled247 wrote:

Why do you need to have revenge?

Myself? I don't, because I basically never get into PvP. I was using the first person rhetorically there. But asking why someone would want justice for being murdered is a little bit hollow, I think.

Amia... what happens next? (cleaned)

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