Peace Out

[Anume]

A character needs an ic motivation to act the way he does. If his motivation is not to be a douch oocly, that is no ic motivation. Construct anything you like, this fact remains.

If the char chose to take the armor and is a follower of the law, why would he return it to someone sworn to destroy everything that is important for him. No, he would not.

Similar situation: undead thief loots crusader. Crusader complains, thief gives him things back (this happened not long ago and both chars suffered a rp penalty for this behavior). If the thief takes things, why would he return them. No, again, he would not.

(The autofullooting of outlaws is another matter, I think it also breaks ic reasoning to return things but we are working on an ic solution to this to give the tribune an actual choice what and how much he takes.)

And Mali: please read the forum rules. I stated once before that I am not willing to suffer rudeness and impolite behavior we would not tolerate if it was shown to players. If you go on this way you'll get a nice long forum vacation. This is not a democracy. You can disagree, but be polite about it.

Update:

We require our members to post in a polite and mature tone both when adressing other players and when adressing the staff.

Please do not confuse constructive criticism - which is of course welcome - with flaming. In the past we've shown much more leniency to members flaming the staff than flaming each other. This will end now. The staff works here without any monetary compensation and has better things to do than swallow abuse.

If you are not in a mindframe where you trust yourself to keep things polite either post on the Prayer Forum or wait till you've cooled down enough before you post.

[Mali]

Anume, you are out of line. I am closing the thread here and moving your golden star down two notches.

There will be no dinner for you tonight, and call your friends and tell them they can't come over anymore because you were bad.

If his motivation is not to be a douch oocly, that is no ic motivation. Construct anything you like, this fact remains.

You could argue this the other way, and say that if your motivation is to be a douche oocly, that is no IC motivation. Yet no one gets punished for that.

Look, the bottomline is that due to improper use of imm power, we have lost a player. That should be a red flag to you. The rules are there to promote fair play, not to discourage it.

[Anume]

If you weren't so rediculous, I might get upset with you.

As to your last statement, we have denied people for that already. Not just a clan demotion.

[tassinvegeta]

A character needs an ic motivation to act the way he does. If his motivation is not to be a douch oocly, that is no ic motivation. Construct anything you like, this fact remains.

If the char chose to take the armor and is a follower of the law, why would he return it to someone sworn to destroy everything that is important for him. No, he would not.

Similar situation: undead thief loots crusader. Crusader complains, thief gives him things back (this happened not long ago and both chars suffered a rp penalty for this behavior). If the thief takes things, why would he return them. No, again, he would not.

(The autofullooting of outlaws is another matter, I think it also breaks ic reasoning to return things but we are working on an ic solution to this to give the tribune an actual choice what and how much he takes.

Wow and wow. I'm shocked Anume. You were the reason I changed into the player I am today. Your talks have always got me thinking about how the other player might feel behind my in-character actions. Remember these words? "There is a difference between being an evil player/badass and being a trashy player." Over the years I've mellowed out severely and found myself in many of these situations you mentioned above.

On another note I truly truly feel bad for KRins' situation and hope we can all band together to put him on Anume's version of Ophrah so we can help him out

[Anume]

Re Tassin: we do NOT encourage "trashy" behavior. We do not encourage breaking of ethos and align either.

To clarify: there is a difference between not taking something or dropping it ("I do not need this junk") on the one side and actually handing things back to someone sworn to destroy everything you stand for. Think ic. Your character may do the first, but he'd probably never - with very few expections, someone mad perhaps - do the second.

[tassinvegeta]

True breaking align/ethos should be watched for. Evils going on gear trips with good is one of them. But when it comes to giving back eq? Or other situations where you feel bad for the player? That seems like a fine line where the ends justify the means when we look at the bigger picture. Yeah he probably should've left the things on the ground in the first place but anyone would've felt bad afterward if the victim returned from being dc'd to find out he lost his eq that way.

I can also think of alot of ethos/align reasons to give back eq. I don't see why a follower of Compassion can't give an evil back his gear when he wants to give them every opportunity to change or a Warmaster giving his defeated opponents gear because he feels he wants a tougher opponent.

[Anume]

If there is an acceptable rp justification, there will not be a penalty. It's pretty much case to case. However some things some chars just would not do. If it goes too much from the original align/ethos, that means outcast. If it is minor, it might be an exp penalty (as opposed to a bonus), if it is something going agaist the goals of your cabal/clan, it might be a demotion, penalty or yelling-at.

[tassinvegeta]

Ahh I see. I guess in Krins case it was a bit outta the rp justification box.

[Mister E]

Sometimes players actually don't know they did something really bad, or even bad at all. When a player believes they are doing what is right within their character and RP and then get harshly punished out of what seems "left field" this probably exacerbates what would normally be not so bad a situation. I think Imms might consider having some sort of policy whereby they actually speak with a player, IC or OOC if needed, before handing out severe punishments. I am pretty sure this might prevent a lot of the rage that is going around.

[Twinblades713]

Hrm, it seems like judgment of another characters RP was made for that character. (your character wouldn't do that. He's evil.) i think krins specified that his character had done similar things of less than pure wicked nature, like not slaughtering obviously bumbling noobs. But he wasn't reprimanded for that. I respect imm judgment on actual ooc play and intended rulebreaking 100% but this seems like a suspiciously dictation of -his- chars rp. Overall i think the imms are doing fine, just an unfortunate hiccup. It even seems my boy has cooled down on it too.

[Mali]

Twinblades, enjoy the forum vacation and ban you just earned yourself.

[Twinblades713]

Actually starting tomorrow morning I will be gone. D: bye mali.

[Imoutgoodbye]

Came home read this.

Thank you to everyone who participated and made this a great exploration and educational moment. Thank you all for keeping this nice and civil.

Thank you to Anume for allowing us to open this can of worms. If I could, I'd wash your feet for you.

[Erana]

The punishment was so minor it was laughable and the character in question was explained to exactly what was going on and why, in terms of the IC punishment vs OOC classiness, right when the punishment was enacted. He even stated that in his forum posts here.

From an OOC point of view, the punishment was extremely minor, earned back in a single RL day and had zero effect on the overall progress of the character. Furthermore, as stated to the player, had no OOC influence on the player either. Clan demotion on a lowbie is absolutely nothing.

From an IC point of view, he was slapped on the wrist for breaking clan RP.

Just like he himself mentioned, he is taking the very minor IC punishment in an OOC player-punishment way.

Especially considering he was warned ICly not to do it before he went and did it.

Re Mali: It was funny once maybe, but enough is enough.

Re EQ loss through losing connection: Shame on the 50 for going half-ooc to explain that he forgot to log out and thus died. It is a sad story, but really, you probably should have just scratched it off to stupidity/bad luck. Even if it were something completely out of your control, it happens that you lose EQ. Call it a fluke or whatever and keep moving on.

Those that argue that the IMM punishment here caused a player to abandon his character, please think about how the lapse in RP from the other character had a collateral effect. If player A hadn't gone ooc to cause player B to go ooc, there wouldn't have been any problem.

The real cause of the loss of the char was failing the quest.

[Mali]

Ok Anume, I hear you, but you could have posted all that under your original forum name

[Pali]

A human is never all evil' date=' all good, or all neutral. People change based on circumstance and environment. Not only that, but a good man may do evil things, and an evil man may do good things, and such things are often seen as good or evil based on the eye of the beholder.[/quote']

While I agree with this assessment (although you seemed happy to label bin Laden and plenty of others as simply evil, so I wonder how much you actually believe the above) - this is also an assessment that applies to real people in real situations, but often NOT to fictional characters in fictional situations. Where in Lord of the Rings does anyone feel a need to care about how a goblin or Uruk-hai feels? You'll have the disagreements and the insanity amongst good characters, and you'll have evils who range from wanting to kill things for fun to far more complex and subtle plotters. Sure, there's the instance or two of the guy who used to be good going bad (Saruman)... but for the most part, the lines are clearly drawn between good and evil, and mostly along racial lines.

This isn't the real world - we're allowed to have unrealistic rules governing the nature of the beings that inhabit it.

[tassinvegeta]

Thanks for the clarification Erana. I figured something like this must've happened by my earlier observations. However I still want to apologize if some of us overreacted and right away thought negatively about the staff. I know it can be dissappointing when you work so hard for us and to see this happen.

[Twinblades713]

Thanks for the clarification Erana. I figured something like this must've happened by my earlier observations. However I still want to apologize if some of us overreacted and right away thought negatively about the staff. I know it can be dissappointing when you work so hard for us and to see this happen.

If I came across this way, I will second this notion.

[Mali]

While I agree with this assessment (although you seemed happy to label bin Laden and plenty of others as simply evil, so I wonder how much you actually believe the above)

Those men were defined by their actions and their infamy, not by being born chaotic evil. Furthermore, I am like all humans subject to bias and interpretation based on my world-view and value system. Practical application of my morality is not inconsistent with my theoretical understanding of good and evil, nor my intent to give such ideas context in this fantasy setting.

Twinblades, where are you off to tomorrow morning?

[Anume]

It also had zero to do with being evil in this case but with being Militia and handing stuff to a Watcher.

I think anyone can see that this is not something the clan would appreciate. Thus an IC minor penalty.

[Pali]

Those men were defined by their actions and their infamy' date=' not by being born chaotic evil. Furthermore, I am like all humans subject to bias and interpretation based on my world-view and value system. Practical application of my morality is not inconsistent with my theoretical understanding of good and evil, nor my intent to give such ideas context in this fantasy setting.[/quote']

This is mostly a fair distinction (it certainly applies in the cases of those individuals), and certainly applies when discussing races (at least, assuming all races would have an instinctive style of morality that closely mirrors that of humans - EDIT: retracted)... except for two things.

First: When we create our characters, we are not creating infants. We are creating young-to-middle age adults - at this point, we tend to have a fairly established personality and ethical nature. It's by no means unchangeable, and I agree that one-word descriptions like "good" or "chaotic" don't do them justice, but in my experience these haven't been held to all too literally and are more used as guidelines - you stay within them, but there's a BIG road between the markers with all sorts of paths to take. Short version: your appeal to "being born" doesn't apply - our characters have been alive for at least a dozen or so years before we take control of them.

Second: In many respects, fantasy races are a metaphorical reflection of cultural divides between real human societies. Different societies have different moral codes, and many societies would consider perfectly good and just actions you and I would consider evil and completely unjustified (honor killings, for instance). Now, while I agree that it is a vast simplification to then take the concept of such divisions and give them good/evil/lawful/chaotic/neutral descriptions (particularly as individual personality traits), it serves a purpose RP-wise and gameplay-wise by keeping the races from being too similar - the old complaint of Illithids who act like humans comes to mind. It helps enforce a minimal level of diversity in the character base. EDIT: It also helps keep a certain general narrative at play throughout Aabahran... this isn't a world of political intrigue and subtlety, it's a world of large-scale conflict between well-defined sides. It's Lord of the Rings, not Game of Thrones.

And a third thing I like about it came to mind while writing this up: it gives people who aren't imaginative geniuses or experts at RPing a basic path to follow while they take their time figuring things out. This can be extremely helpful to newbs, more casual players, or people who are more PK-focused.

[The-Nameless]

Didn't you tell me once that you completed it only thanks to mana shield?

No, I told you Festy only completed it because of illithid shock. Mana shield has 0 bearing on it.

[Mali]

It's Lord of the Rings

Ok, Frodo

[f0xx]

Ok Anume' date=' I hear you, but you could have posted all that under your original forum name [/quote']

I really think he is handicapped sometimes

[P_body]

So are all qclass quests (Psi, Lich, Undead, Vampire, Demon, Crusader, Avatar) doable without OOC (this also means previous characters') knowledge? Is there a quest that seems a bit harder than the others or might require some "random guessing" or a previous run-through or two (likely to be failures) before you really can figure out how to get the quests right?