Scared of Death

Talked to a guy that said "I die a lot it's no big deal I just embrace and get back to killing stuff and eventually die again." So I went on to explain to him that one of these days Lord Thoth is just going to get tired of sending him back and tell him to pull up a chair he will be there for awhile. Then I wondered if that has ever actually happened, and now i'm refusing to ever die again.

Comments

  • It actually happens all the time
  • Well now i'm really never dying again, ima find a box to get into, have a druid bury me to far below ground to be dug up again, and live forever
  • edited January 2015
    I'm a little hesitant about the people who don't necessarily expect to come back since most of those people still play the game far more recklessly than a person afraid of dying might. It's like the people who want to RP blindness despite having access to mindseye - but even more than that, it's like people who want to RP blindness, but hit mindseye as soon as combat starts anyway.

    It's also hard to see how someone who has died a dozen times, who is around hundreds of other people who have died hundreds of times, would still be afraid. That's like being afraid that the sun might not come up in the morning - it might not, you have no way of knowing for certain, but if you met someone who seemed very seriously worried about the possibility, you would probably think they were delusional.

    Of course, that also presents a problem since death being cheap somewhat limits the degree to which anyone can claim meaningful victory or defeat. The usual "We stomped all over you, take that!" immediately followed by "Whatever! You didn't do any lasting damage! We're too resilient" (read: the game mechanics preclude lasting damage) already gets really tiresome, but death being cheap seems to make it even worse. So I can understand that desire to act like death is more meaningful than a reasonable adventurer in Achaea would probably consider it.

    Also, regarding the "no guarantee" - adventurers do seem to have a guarantee, and the "adventurer" designator does seem to be canonical, not just an OOC thing. When large-scale destruction happens, for instance, it often does kill adventurers in the area too, but they come back, even when other people involved (denizens and the nameless multitudes contained in room descriptions) don't.

    The only really plausible IC justification I can think of is maybe characters assume that the adventurers of players who go dormant actually died and didn't come back - or died and took a lot longer to come back than usual?
  • Well, one thing that makes death a bit different from the ever rising sun etc. is the embracing sequence itself. It's been a while since I actually read it, but as far as I remember, it's not just Thoth telling you "ah, hi, well, you know the drill, back to life you go". Thoth actually judges you, determines your fate and comes to the conclusion that your journey is still unfinished. This strongly implies that rebirth isn't the only possibility, but that it is indeed possible for the journey to be finished.

    No matter if it was Sarapis, Maya, or Thoth being the master of ceremonies in the death ritual, this element of judgement was always there.
  • edited January 2015
    The issue is also offset by select groups being able to completely bypass Lord Thoth's halls. Vesios isn't afraid of death because as long as he's able to walk (or in this case, float) to his grove he has actual control over it. He rarely sees Thoth anymore. And that's in addition the immolation everyone has access to regardless of faction or belief.

    Perhaps the distinction between adventurers and denizens is the concept of a concrete soul. It's a fact that adventurers have one, as we can talk and communicate with them, and while as a soul removed from a corporeal body, adventurers seem to retain all their faculties. The souls are aware of what's happened to them, know where they are, are capable of communication, and most of the time have a general idea of how to remedy their lack of body. "Life after death" in this case is a concrete, observable thing. The body isn't a necessity and may be reforged around the soul.

    On the other hand, we never see the souls of the guards slain in a raid wandering around, bodiless. That may be why adventurers have the guarantee and the rest do not - somewhere along the line the adventurers acquired a soul that matured to the point where bodies became expendable and easily remade through whatever magic remakes them, be it the Flame or otherwise. The rest weren't so lucky and so can be compared to our real life selves: the body isn't expendable and may very well be the only one we get, depending on what you believe.
  • edited January 2015
    Absolutely, but imagine you go before a judge in RL who tries you for a crime (here we're assuming no jury), and that judge has never rendered a guilty verdict and has given thousands upon thousands of not guilty verdicts to everyone you know. Even if he makes the same big speech about how it's possible and you need to watch your behaviour (the same speech he gives every time before declaring someone not guilty), it would be pretty silly to be too worried about being "judged".
  • That's assuming we know what happens to denizens or the nameless city populations after they die. If they're judged by Thoth as well it may be that the adventurers are actually the smallest exception to the rule, and that for every adventurer that gets the innocent verdict, there are thousands more to which Thoth says, "No, you're done."

    But unfortunately we don't know that, so we're stuck with the belief of an overly benevolent god of death. And that's if we even have to see the guy, which in most cases we don't. Immolation is a thing and it's possible to enter the Flame and be granted a new body without ever entering those halls. Why take the chance for the guilty verdict, however small it may be, if you can just bypass the process entirely and use a "get out of jail free" card?
  • My first go at Achaea went like : Complete Trial of Rebirth -> A druid picks me up and takes me to a forest and tells me how to use druid abilities -> at level 5 I charge forth into Actar having an epic battle with a deer -> deer wins a druid brings me back to life -> repeat previous deer battle and outcome a few times druid still saves me -> epic battle with a goat and goat wins -> I meet Thoth get thrown back into the world -> epic druid vs bunny fight -> and of course bunny wins I see Lord Thoth again and I immediately ragequit/suicide -> 3 months later I rediscover Achaea and read a little bit and have a wonderful time

    I look back at it and see it as young druid has epic battles with a few deers and bunnies and loses everytime, eventually Lord Thoth looks at the young druid and says "Little one you fail at life, your wasting everyone's time including yours, and your not goin' back this time."

    Hence I now have a fear of death too many repeated deaths right after each other I feel I have failed at life and suicide myself and now i'm more careful than I was before because I don't want to rage quit and lose all the progress I had
  • OceanaOceana North Sea
    Hmm, that sounds vaguely familiar.....
  • Oceana i remember you a bit from my brief attempts at being a druid, wouldn't of had so many attempts if y'all weren't so friendly and fun to be around
  • edited January 2015
    I die many time that Thoth is starting to get sick of seeing me over and over.

    2015/01/12 Tecton, the Terraformer has bestowed His divine favour upon you. It will last for approximately 1 Achaean month.
  • Vesios said:
    The issue is also offset by select groups being able to completely bypass Lord Thoth's halls. Vesios isn't afraid of death because as long as he's able to walk (or in this case, float) to his grove he has actual control over it. He rarely sees Thoth anymore. And that's in addition the immolation everyone has access to regardless of faction or belief.
    Don't forget starburst tattoos, which are functionally a Get Out Of Jail Free card for anybody who has one (including, as I actually saw for the first time myself in LHG a couple of days back, those ^@#$ing werewolves). You die, your tattoo flares, and suddenly you've got another chance.

    I personally like to think of it as that Adventurers are noticeably "special" in some sense and can noticeably resurrect themselves, but that there are many others who are born, live and die because their time is up. Including denizens that get bashed - rather than making their own journey and resurrecting, it's just that more "step out" from those background multitudes. Except for named characters, perhaps.
    - (Eleusis): Ellodin says, "The Fissure of Echoes is Sarathai's happy place."
    - With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
    - (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
    - Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
    - Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."



  • Tael said:
    Absolutely, but imagine you go before a judge in RL who tries you for a crime (here we're assuming no jury), and that judge has never rendered a guilty verdict and has given thousands upon thousands of not guilty verdicts to everyone you know. Even if he makes the same big speech about how it's possible and you need to watch your behaviour (the same speech he gives every time before declaring someone not guilty), it would be pretty silly to be too worried about being "judged".
    This mostly just tells me that there must be some form of suspension of disbelief involved somewhere. If we take that whole judging act perfectly serious, but at the same time also take the fact that every adventurer we have seen dying has come back to life as an in-game truth, we end up with a somewhat silly situation. Since I doubt the embracing sequence is supposed to be read as a silly farce, I conclude that either the death sequence doesn't in fact always happen as it is portrayed, or that we're supposed to assume that true adventurer death is in fact possible and does happen occasionally. We can take our personal picks there.

    A similar thing can be said for the whole adventurer/denizen separation. There are good reasons to believe that the distinction between the two is indeed an IC fact, but at the same time, we have to concede that where exactly the distinction lies and how pronounced it is is very much left open by the game.

    These are questions that probably don't have a single correct answer and I think that's a good thing. Lore and transparency are great, but there should also be room for some mysterious corners within the game that remain vague.
  • edited January 2015
    My character believes this: the soul is the actual self - it's what keeps the shape, you can see what people look like when you look at their spirit, etc. The body is kind of a protective shell, and it's also why reincarnation and rebirth work - your own personal mental image is what you are, it's what your body is forged as by your soul. Which is why so few people have scars etc.

    That quality is what my character believes to be the reason as to why they come back so easily - anyone who has that strong a sense of self has a greater destiny, something like another Bal'met thing in the future since they're -also- invariably incredibly skilled at burning entire villages to the ground.

    It's a pretty nice way to pass off the blase attention to death, and also neatly explains why some things come back but others don't.



    Putting it even more simply:

    The body is a soul's version of clothes. A zombie is what happens when you don't do your laundry in god damn ages.
    image
  • edited January 2015
    +-Statistics
    Denizen Kills           Your Deaths                
    Slain    : 11728        To Adventurers   : 2        (both for reincarnation purposes)
    Levels   : 627430     To Denizens       : 0       
    Avg Level: 53           To Misadventure: 0

    :s

    (Killed way too many gnolls <60, else my avg level would be alot higher :( )       

  • AustereAustere Tennessee
    Cynlael said:
    +-Statistics
    Denizen Kills           Your Deaths                
    Slain    : 11728        To Adventurers   : 2        (both for reincarnation purposes)
    Levels   : 627430     To Denizens       : 0       
    Avg Level: 53           To Misadventure: 0

    :s

    (Killed way too many gnolls <60, else my avg level would be alot higher :( )       
    This post makes me want to lolpk you next time I see you. I think I can take one lost issue without being permashrubbed...
  • Sure, if you can find out which of my five characters that is. :)

  • AustereAustere Tennessee
    Cynlael said:
    Sure, if you can find out which of my five characters that is. :)
    Challenge accepted. Guessing level won't be to hard, since no negative experience, so I will just need to kill 20-30 people before I get the right one. Assuming in the 80s, with zero math done. Need to reference a few characters to see where you fall exactly. .. this could be fun. When I get shrubbed, I am totally going to tell them it was justifiable because "forums challenge".
  • Trileobe said:
    Well now i'm really never dying again, ima find a box to get into, have a druid bury me to far below ground to be dug up again, and live forever
    Protip, get Logosian.

    image
  • Austere said:
    Cynlael said:
    Sure, if you can find out which of my five characters that is. :)
    Challenge accepted. Guessing level won't be to hard, since no negative experience, so I will just need to kill 20-30 people before I get the right one. Assuming in the 80s, with zero math done. Need to reference a few characters to see where you fall exactly. .. this could be fun. When I get shrubbed, I am totally going to tell them it was justifiable because "forums challenge".
    I'm going to begin a campaign to recruit every character in the 80s.


  • Just skimmed over this, and I have no idea if it's been suggested before...but here it goes.

    SUGGESTION: Every time you die, you suffer a 1 point loss to each stat for X amount of time before it will go back to the original value. The time is not based on "online" time, but time spent actively doing something.

    Should I have posted this elsewhere?
  • edited January 2015
    1. How do you determine "actively doing something"? Is it time spend off-balance, because then people are just going to AFK with a trigger to writhe over and over. And a ton of activities in the game (especially RP-focused activities) don't have any balance loss or anything similar to use as a metric.
    2. This means that there's pretty much no coming back from a failed engagement in a raid - every time you lose, it becomes even harder to overcome people who beat you when you didn't have a disadvantage.
    3. This essentially just amounts to time that can't be spent playing the game since no one is going to want to fight at a big disadvantage.
    4. It's weird in that it would mean that people who fight a lot (and consequently die more frequently) pretty swiftly become killable by relatively weak characters.
    5. If somehow you did find a way to enforce "actively doing something", you would be punishing people who play primarily for combat, who don't have other things to be doing. Their only option would be to do something they don't want to do or to go fight at a disadvantage, die, and accrue a worse penalty.
    The only time I've seen wounds systems like this work is when there was some way to mitigate the wounds relatively quickly and that mitigation method was used as a way to drive players into closer proximity with one another - specifically in Star Wars Galaxies where you had to go visit a cantina and listen to musicians (other players) to heal the wounds. I don't know how well that would work in Achaea though and even in SWG, mostly people just walked into cantinas and walked back out a minute later with no interaction, and most of the musicians were just bots.
  • edited January 2015
    @Zengo‌ That seems like a pain in the rear end, say going from 12 to 11 constitution doesn't sound like much but if you test it out you'll notice 1 point could be the difference between killing denizen_001 and denizen_001 laughing at you because he just sent you to Lord Thoth
  • I agree, it has many flaws....

    Just figured it made more sense than:

    LOL i died LOL lets go back and die again LOL because i might get our experience back LOL i am such a brave badass LOL i fear nothing LOL
  • MasarykMasaryk Sangre Plains
    Cynlael said:
    +-Statistics
    Denizen Kills           Your Deaths                
    Slain    : 11728        To Adventurers   : 2        (both for reincarnation purposes)
    Levels   : 627430     To Denizens       : 0       
    Avg Level: 53           To Misadventure: 0

    :s

    (Killed way too many gnolls <60, else my avg level would be alot higher :( )       
    Does the average really mean anything to you? I kill lots of low level things, just because I know people probably haven't hunted them recently and they give quick and easy experience.



  • I really don't care about average denizen kill level. It doesn't even matter if you mostly bash high level mobs - ratting for a while will undo all of that very quickly.
    Average adventurer kill level I consider slightly more significant, at least to a certain degree, since it does actually point out pure newbie-killers.
  • DaslinDaslin The place with the oxygen
    Just introduce wounds and empaths. Let's just make this dragonrealms.
  • Tael said:
    It's weird in that it would mean that people who fight a lot (and consequently die more frequently) pretty swiftly become killable by relatively weak characters.
    I don't find that weird at all. It makes sense that a skilled fighter, weakened by injuries built up from their recent fights, might lose to someone who's normally a lot weaker but is uninjured.
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