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Flagging as "Ready to Roleplay"

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  • MithridatesMithridates
    Semantics aside, tells can be useful. Getting tells about group sizes in combat is helpful. Tellsoff isn't a good solution.

  • SarapisSarapis
    edited June 2014
    Jacen said:
    Sarapis said:

    Just a couple points.

    • Achaea is not a roleplay-mandated environment. People are free to basically not RP - that's fine. It's not interesting to some people just like PK isn't interesting to some people. We just don't want people interrupting other peoples' immersion by talking about basketball or something in public spaces/channels. It makes no difference to me whether people have fun PKing, hunting, RPing, crafting, chatting, being political or whatever - I just want them to have fun and hopefully add to the "net fun" of everyone else. 

    • I don't see special emotes as being a single bit more "RP" than standard emotes fwiw. They may be more interesting/more complete descriptions of what someone is doing, but that doesn't make it better RP to my mind, any more than flowery writing is inherently superior to or "more real" than simpler Hemingway-esque writing.

    15.6 ROLEPLAYING and OOC


    (See also: HELP ROLEPOINTS, HELP INSANITY, HELP LANGUAGERULES)


    To roleplay means to play a role. In the context of Achaea, roleplaying means

    that you play as if you were your character. Achaea is a roleplaying game: some

    level of roleplaying is expected. Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' 

    roleplay with out-of-character talk.


    When I log into Achaea, I, Chris, am assuming the role of Jacen, a Hashani monk. Chris is not allowed to publicly express, through Jacen, his opinions on this years NFL draft, nor can he talk about that stupid spider that knocked me into lava on Minecraft yesterday. 


    Beyond this, its a punishable offense for Chris to apply Achaean knowledge to Jacen that was gained through another character played by Chris, or through any OOC venue.


    Achaea is certainly roleplay-mandated, some people just have a very funny definition of roleplaying, which is explicitly spelled out in the HELP file above - playing a role.


    (Please excuse the third person :D )

    I'm unsure what help file you're reading, but Achaea is certainly not roleplay mandated, and you are absolutely free to talk about the NFL draft or whatever else you want. The operative sentence there is, "Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with ooc talk." If you want to consider the absence of OOC talk to be RP, that's fine, but I don't think merely refraining from talking about football or movies is actually roleplaying, at all. (And that's fine! No reason to RP if you're not into it.)

    Not sure why you think that applying knowledge gained OOCly would be punishable. It's certainly not. Good lord, we'd have to punish everyone who reads a help file or asks a question about combat on the forums if that was the case.

  • NaverreNaverre
    Sarapis said:

    I'm unsure what help file you're reading, but Achaea is certainly not roleplay mandated, and you are absolutely free to talk about the NFL draft or whatever else you want. The operative sentence there is, "Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with ooc talk." If you want to consider the absence of OOC talk to be RP, that's fine, but I don't think merely refraining from talking about football or movies is actually roleplaying, at all. (And that's fine! No reason to RP if you're not into it.)

    Not sure why you think that applying knowledge gained OOCly would be punishable. It's certainly not. Good lord, we'd have to punish everyone who reads a help file or asks a question about combat on the forums if that was the case.

    It took me a reread before I realized you weren't advocating complete OOC talk everywhere in Achaea. I assumed you were saying it was fine to talk about the NFL draft in says or CT or HT, when you likely only meant OOC clans or party's. The former is most certainly banned in the game, to the point your character loses credibility (and effectiveness) if they get caught.

    When it comes down to it, I think a lot of people are worried that if the RP flag comes into existence, other people will assume they CAN talk on CT or in says or what have you about 'insane' topics. They will cite that their RP flag is off, and Sarapis Himself has stated that it's okay to do, and so they'll keep on doing it, no matter what it does to our immersion. And while I know you're trying to do the best thing for the game by helping out people who want to RP by making it easier to find them, the Law of Unintended Consequences is always magnified on the Internet, and by gamers. This is an Internet game, so the magnification is going to multiply.

    Look to the past to see how often people abused mechanics of the game for their own selfish desires (and you don't have to look that far back, either), and really, honestly think about how this new policy could be abused. I can promise you, you might make a few newbies' lives easier, but you'll almost certainly alienate a large portion of your long-existing player base who likes the mandatory minimum RP feel of the game.

  • SarapisSarapis

    @Naverre No, I'm just saying don't inflict your OOC on unwilling parties, that's all. If you and a friend want to sit at NoT and discuss the draft in tells, we don't care. If you're doing it in says, and other people see it who would rather not, we'd have a problem. Some people don't like to RP, and they're completely welcome in Achaea - we just ask they don't ruin the RP for other people with in-your-face OOC talk.


  • AveriAveri
    edited June 2014

    Achaea is unique because a lot of rp is dependent on what your character does and the rep your character builds not so much on how great you are at emoting at each other.  I think this feature would be bad because it would add the hidden assumption that anyone who doesn't follow a specific rp style isn't role playing.  

    For example,  a lot of people think averi doesn't rp. My style is kind of to convince other people that I am averi irl.  I'm not going to sit down and write out long and unique expression unless they actually add to my character.  If this feature was added in, I would not be sure if I should put it up or not because I am playing a very casual, action oriented, and chaotic neutral character who just doesn't do the whole serious political talk/life experience talk thing.  

    Just my two cents. Idk if anyone else has said something similar because I didn't read the first few pages. 

    Commission List: Aesi, Kenway, Shimi, Kythra, Trey, Sholen .... 5/5 CLOSED
    I will not draw them in the order that they are requested... rather in the order that I get inspiration/artist block.
  • TharvisTharvis The Land of Beer and Chocolate!
    Sarapis said:
    Jacen said:
    Sarapis said:

    Just a couple points.

    • Achaea is not a roleplay-mandated environment. People are free to basically not RP - that's fine. It's not interesting to some people just like PK isn't interesting to some people. We just don't want people interrupting other peoples' immersion by talking about basketball or something in public spaces/channels. It makes no difference to me whether people have fun PKing, hunting, RPing, crafting, chatting, being political or whatever - I just want them to have fun and hopefully add to the "net fun" of everyone else. 

    • I don't see special emotes as being a single bit more "RP" than standard emotes fwiw. They may be more interesting/more complete descriptions of what someone is doing, but that doesn't make it better RP to my mind, any more than flowery writing is inherently superior to or "more real" than simpler Hemingway-esque writing.

    15.6 ROLEPLAYING and OOC


    (See also: HELP ROLEPOINTS, HELP INSANITY, HELP LANGUAGERULES)


    To roleplay means to play a role. In the context of Achaea, roleplaying means

    that you play as if you were your character. Achaea is a roleplaying game: some

    level of roleplaying is expected. Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' 

    roleplay with out-of-character talk.


    When I log into Achaea, I, Chris, am assuming the role of Jacen, a Hashani monk. Chris is not allowed to publicly express, through Jacen, his opinions on this years NFL draft, nor can he talk about that stupid spider that knocked me into lava on Minecraft yesterday. 


    Beyond this, its a punishable offense for Chris to apply Achaean knowledge to Jacen that was gained through another character played by Chris, or through any OOC venue.


    Achaea is certainly roleplay-mandated, some people just have a very funny definition of roleplaying, which is explicitly spelled out in the HELP file above - playing a role.


    (Please excuse the third person :D )

    I'm unsure what help file you're reading, but Achaea is certainly not roleplay mandated, and you are absolutely free to talk about the NFL draft or whatever else you want. The operative sentence there is, "Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with ooc talk." If you want to consider the absence of OOC talk to be RP, that's fine, but I don't think merely refraining from talking about football or movies is actually roleplaying, at all. (And that's fine! No reason to RP if you're not into it.)

    Not sure why you think that applying knowledge gained OOCly would be punishable. It's certainly not. Good lord, we'd have to punish everyone who reads a help file or asks a question about combat on the forums if that was the case.

    I think he meant knowledge gained from alts/forums/ooc clans and using said knowledge as reasoning for ingame actions, such as enemying/killing/stealing

    Aurora says, "Tharvis, why are you always breaking things?!"
    Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
    Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."

  • SarapisSarapis
    edited June 2014
    Jacen said:

    @Sarapis That excerpt came from HELP ROLEPLAYING, which I was pointed to in the HELP INSANITY file as well.

    To be perfectly honest, I'm quite stunned with your stance on this. If roleplay isn't enforced, why is HELP SECONDS even a thing? Why do people get punished for logging off one character to log onto a character in a city that's currently raiding/being raided? Why would I (Chris) get punished for using information gained on my alt to further Jacen's aims?

    Achaea holds characters to standards. I would get shrubbed if I transferred all of Jacen's credits to an alt. I would get shrubbed if I transferred Jacen's bank accounts to an alt. I'd get shrubbed if I logged on to multiple character simultaneously. How are these laws not enforcing RP?

    Yeah, I know which file it actually came from. I just don't understand why you'd think Achaea is an enforced RP game based on it. It wasn't created to be and never has been. 

    None of what you mentioned has much to do with RP from our perspective. Achaea's designed to be played by a single account, and there are too many loopholes that affect gameplay if you're allowed to use multiple accounts for the effective benefit of a single character. Rather than ban alt characters, which would both be unnecessary limiting and negatively impact our revenue I suspect, we simply limit how you can use them in conjunction with each other. That is, I should add, not holding characters to RP standards. It's creating OOC rules for you, the OOC player, to follow.

    I doubt there's ever been an alt in the history of Achaea that didn't benefit substantially from knowledge gained from playing another character. Alts rarely to never RP out discovering the wider world for the first time, never sit around pondering how to complete a quest their player already knows how to complete, rarely to never RP out figuring out combat beyond the most trivial attempts at it, etc. Not much we can do about that, and it doesn't negatively affect the game anyway, so there's no reason for us to care. However, transferring stuff from one character to another does cause harm at least insofar as you're ending around the system design.

    You'd literally be the only person in the history of Achaea that plays an alt and RP'd out gaining all its knowledge for the first time if you did that....and I know you didn't, as why the heck would anyone do that? You, the player, already climbed the learning curve. Simulating the long difficult climb up that curve again does not sound fun, at all.
  • AchimrstAchimrst Nature
    Tharvis said:
    Sarapis said:
    Jacen said:
    Sarapis said:

    Just a couple points.

    • Achaea is not a roleplay-mandated environment. People are free to basically not RP - that's fine. It's not interesting to some people just like PK isn't interesting to some people. We just don't want people interrupting other peoples' immersion by talking about basketball or something in public spaces/channels. It makes no difference to me whether people have fun PKing, hunting, RPing, crafting, chatting, being political or whatever - I just want them to have fun and hopefully add to the "net fun" of everyone else. 

    • I don't see special emotes as being a single bit more "RP" than standard emotes fwiw. They may be more interesting/more complete descriptions of what someone is doing, but that doesn't make it better RP to my mind, any more than flowery writing is inherently superior to or "more real" than simpler Hemingway-esque writing.

    15.6 ROLEPLAYING and OOC


    (See also: HELP ROLEPOINTS, HELP INSANITY, HELP LANGUAGERULES)


    To roleplay means to play a role. In the context of Achaea, roleplaying means

    that you play as if you were your character. Achaea is a roleplaying game: some

    level of roleplaying is expected. Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' 

    roleplay with out-of-character talk.


    When I log into Achaea, I, Chris, am assuming the role of Jacen, a Hashani monk. Chris is not allowed to publicly express, through Jacen, his opinions on this years NFL draft, nor can he talk about that stupid spider that knocked me into lava on Minecraft yesterday. 


    Beyond this, its a punishable offense for Chris to apply Achaean knowledge to Jacen that was gained through another character played by Chris, or through any OOC venue.


    Achaea is certainly roleplay-mandated, some people just have a very funny definition of roleplaying, which is explicitly spelled out in the HELP file above - playing a role.


    (Please excuse the third person :D )

    I'm unsure what help file you're reading, but Achaea is certainly not roleplay mandated, and you are absolutely free to talk about the NFL draft or whatever else you want. The operative sentence there is, "Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with ooc talk." If you want to consider the absence of OOC talk to be RP, that's fine, but I don't think merely refraining from talking about football or movies is actually roleplaying, at all. (And that's fine! No reason to RP if you're not into it.)

    Not sure why you think that applying knowledge gained OOCly would be punishable. It's certainly not. Good lord, we'd have to punish everyone who reads a help file or asks a question about combat on the forums if that was the case.

    I think he meant knowledge gained from alts/forums/ooc clans and using said knowledge as reasoning for ingame actions, such as enemying/killing/stealing

    Or something like alt speculation which leads to people being banned from organizations.

  • HalosHalos The Reaches
    edited June 2014
    Santar said:

    Your experience with the game is only going to improve as you learn the game and develop your character. Think about it like this: You're just starting a new job/new school/whatever. Do you expect to go in on day 1 and have tons of people buddying up to you? Probably not. People are standoffish at first but warm up to you after a while.


    I don't think these particular problems are something that would be "solved" by any sort of "RPwho". It's just a reflection of how the player base and society works. People generally are more willing to interact with players in the game that they respect, so the more you accomplish, the deeper your interactions with others is probably going to be. This doesn't mean you have to be super-good at the game overnight, but if you maintain a positive interest in the game and interacting with others over the long-term, people will notice and take interest in you.

    This.

    @Eratta, I want to echo the sentiment Achaea is not a single player game designed for instant gratification. Achaea is a multiplayer game best played for a few hours over the course of days, months, and yes, sometimes years if you really like it. Some players maintain only one main character during this time, developing them through the various plots of a single, personal storyline (which always involves interaction with other people and lots of time). Other players create dozens of characters, learning about all sorts of different factions and social circles before finally settling into one that they really like. 

    Yes…you can join and have fun within minutes of starting; many of us love newbies and will bend over backwards for them. But don't expect the sort of deep and rewarding experience of long time interaction which Achaea is known for on the first day or even the first week. You'll get lost in what's going on! (I've tried this starting a new character on Lusternia. It was frustrating starting out but sticking around, asking questions, and talking to people really helped). Give it a bit to become integrated into it. Bash. Go on quests. Explore. Level up. This is what newbie areas are for. Some long-time players may rebuff or ignore you until you've proved that you aren't just one of hundreds of 5-minute characters (throwaway alts) that they might be wasting their time with. It's unfortunate, but not unusual.

    Bluef said:
    Mithridates said:

    I like the idea of the opposite. Such as 'don't RP with me' I'm not a huge fan of the RP, play the game for the combat, and having a way to not RP with random people who are sending me RP tells in the middle of a fight would be sweet. 

    I think this already exists: TELLS OFF. You even have the luxury of adding names to an ALLOWTELLS list if there's a need to send/receive tells from specific people while fighting. 

    I also just wanted to point out that people who are solely in Achaea "for the combat," are roleplaying. You chose a side and you're fighting for it. That's one of the most basic roleplay forms in Achaea.

    The term "RP" has a lot different connotations to it in Achaea. I think Sarapis is referring to RP in terms of single instances of meaningful, emote-heavy(or not) character interaction. I consider this a narrow definition (when looking at the larger, ongoing story of Achaea), but it seems to fit for the purposes of this thread.


    A frenzied cleric screams, "Like more than one halo!"
  • BluefBluef Delos

    I know quite a few people who, like me, roleplay gaining knowledge as we go along with our new characters. Does it mean that we can completely and wholly be free of what we already know? No. But it does mean that we make a conscious choice not to have our alts behave or roleplay in ways that hint that we possess that knowledge. 

    That said, this is a far, far cry from what Tharvis and Jacen are talking about - using the knowledge gleaned on alts or in an OOC manner to advance your character. That has, for as long as I have played Achaea, been frowned upon.  It very much surprises me to learn that the Garden could care less about maintaining such minimal RP standards. 

  • BluefBluef Delos
    Sarapis said:
    In another thread I suggested that perhaps we need a way to flag yourself as "Ready to RP" and also have a way to see who has flagged themselves this way.

    Helping people, especially new players, find people to RP with more easily than now would be great.

    One question is whether people would just leave themselves permanently on "Ready to RP" even when they're not.

    Discuss please!

    If such a thing were instituted..could it work like SPARWHO? For example:

    RPWHO toggles it on and you appear on a list with some basic information to help someone who might also be looking for a RP situation. RPOFF then toggles it, well, off. If I'm first on the list, someone might even be able to look for some more information about me or my desired RP with something like RPWHO INFO 1.

    I'd much prefer this to any kind of "flagging" system that was visible in-game as I saw some others describe it. My fear would be that such a system would be most widely used mainly by people seeking...pleasurable situations. 

  • JacenJacen
    Sarapis said:
    Yeah, I know which file it actually came from. I just don't understand why you'd think Achaea is an enforced RP game based on it. It wasn't created to be and never has been. 

    15.6 ROLEPLAYING and OOC (See also: HELP ROLEPOINTS, HELP INSANITY, HELP LANGUAGERULES) To roleplay means to play a role. In the context of Achaea, roleplaying means that you play as if you were your character. Achaea is a roleplaying game: some level of roleplaying is expected. Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with out-of-character talk.

     :\ 
    image
  • SarapisSarapis
    Bluef said:

    That said, this is a far, far cry from what Tharvis and Jacen are talking about - using the knowledge gleaned on alts or in an OOC manner to advance your character. That has, for as long as I have played Achaea, been frowned upon.  It very much surprises me to learn that the Garden could care less about maintaining such minimal RP standards. 

    Every time an alt goes to an area he knows how to get to because his main went there, he's using knowledge gleaned from alts or in an OOC manner to advance his character. Every time someone uses SVO to make combat decisions for her, she's using knowledge gained in an OOC manner to advance her character. Every time someone logs in because he heard via forums or Skype or whatever that something interesting/rewarding/whatever is going on, he's using OOC knowledge to advance his character. We have no fundamental problem, at all, with using knowledge that you gained while playing another character to help another, and in fact don't believe it's possible or desirable to stop. Asking people to feign ignorance is just annoying for most people most of the time, and insisting on some purist, fundamentalist view of it would be annoying to 100% of players almost 100% of the time. 

    We have some very narrow rules around alts not helping each other where we feel that doing so is damaging to the game though, which may be what you're referring to, but learning what an org is up to via an alt is, from an RP standpoint, not at all different from learning how to get to a particular area on your main and then just going there as your alt, or firing up SVO and suddenly because of a program running on your computer your main or alt is suddenly good at combat. The difference is that the first feels kind of unfair and shitty to the organization in question, whereas nobody is hurt by your alt suddenly knowing how to get to area X because your main knew. Scripting systems are different, and I'd ban them all if I could, but that's not possible so we just roll with it.

  • SarapisSarapis
    Bluef said:
    Sarapis said:
    In another thread I suggested that perhaps we need a way to flag yourself as "Ready to RP" and also have a way to see who has flagged themselves this way.

    Helping people, especially new players, find people to RP with more easily than now would be great.

    One question is whether people would just leave themselves permanently on "Ready to RP" even when they're not.

    Discuss please!

    If such a thing were instituted..could it work like SPARWHO? For example:

    RPWHO toggles it on and you appear on a list with some basic information to help someone who might also be looking for a RP situation. RPOFF then toggles it, well, off. If I'm first on the list, someone might even be able to look for some more information about me or my desired RP with something like RPWHO INFO 1.

    I'd much prefer this to any kind of "flagging" system that was visible in-game as I saw some others describe it. My fear would be that such a system would be most widely used mainly by people seeking...pleasurable situations. 

    Working like Sparwho is exactly the implementation that I'm considering. Well, sparwho along with the ability to include a bit of basic info about what you're looking for.

  • SarapisSarapis
    Jacen said:
    Sarapis said:
    Yeah, I know which file it actually came from. I just don't understand why you'd think Achaea is an enforced RP game based on it. It wasn't created to be and never has been. 

    15.6 ROLEPLAYING and OOC (See also: HELP ROLEPOINTS, HELP INSANITY, HELP LANGUAGERULES) To roleplay means to play a role. In the context of Achaea, roleplaying means that you play as if you were your character. Achaea is a roleplaying game: some level of roleplaying is expected. Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with out-of-character talk.

     :\ 

    Achaea is also a PK game, and a crafting game, and a sailing game, and a political game, etc etc etc.

    The operative line around the minimum expectation is right in your quote.  "Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with out-of-character talk." That's the level of roleplaying that's mandatory. If you want to consider that rp-enforced I'm not going to stop you, but I don't think it would really fit with what most people who play rp-enforced games think of as rp-enforced.

  • AchimrstAchimrst Nature

    Sarapis said:

    Jacen said:
    Sarapis said:
    Yeah, I know which file it actually came from. I just don't understand why you'd think Achaea is an enforced RP game based on it. It wasn't created to be and never has been. 

    15.6 ROLEPLAYING and OOC (See also: HELP ROLEPOINTS, HELP INSANITY, HELP LANGUAGERULES) To roleplay means to play a role. In the context of Achaea, roleplaying means that you play as if you were your character. Achaea is a roleplaying game: some level of roleplaying is expected. Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with out-of-character talk.

     :\ 

    Achaea is also a PK game, and a crafting game, and a sailing game, and a political game, etc etc etc.

    The operative line around the minimum expectation is right in your quote.  "Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with out-of-character talk." That's the level of roleplaying that's mandatory. If you want to consider that rp-enforced I'm not going to stop you, but I don't think it would really fit with what most people who play rp-enforced games think of as rp-enforced.

    @Sarapis‌

    So basically your saying I can make an alt and make-up some book about dreams and say that I read it and it told me everything Don has ever said is wrong and then. Then I can send a message to someone in Don's order or city or anything and start telling that person. "Don is wrong I read a book about this and I know he is wrong because I am a serpent and I can see illusions." Than once the person proves I can't see illusions I can continue to accuse the person of doing the illusions themselves?

    Because this is the type of alt shit and OOC metagaming I'm always complaining about. 

    Not to mention someone telling another person OOC that people 'like me' spy on other organizations with alts in order to keep me from ever becoming a member of their organization. 

    What are the thoughts on this kind of stuff, because this shit happens to me all the time and it disrupts my RP all the time.... I'm sorry if I'm trying to RP and join organizations and play the game and it angers some people that I do that. Yet it sounds like they can do whatever the fuck they want to me and ruin my RP and than try to rub it in my face later to make me quit playing altogether. 

    Not stuff like, oh well I am now 18 and my parents took me to Targossas when I was a kid so now I am going to live there and remember where everything is. I mean that's usually how I RP an alt knowing where places are, we start the game at 18 not 5, sometimes 17 I have seen it!

  • SarapisSarapis
    I don't even know where to start with that post, Achimrst. I can't parse your example at all I'm afraid. You'll have to be more specific. 
  • AchimrstAchimrst Nature

    What @Nellaundra said basically. It's all the crap I put up with so far in this game and all the stuff I have just come to ignore really.

    Like let's take me trying to play the game for one. I tried to join Vastar's order, and some people who I did issue against basically metagamed the situation and made it so that I would never be able to get in there. They stacked the deck against me from the beginning claiming some BS story about how someone in the Curia, clearly Bluef, did seconds abuse to harass people in certain cities. Than he tried to make it better by saying that he wasn't accusing me and wasn't saying I did anything. He was just using that information about someone else to keep ME from joining Vastar's order. There was an issue about it in which the people involved lost RP points for like two days. Yet it still doesn't explain why my RP was disrupted for some stupid OOC BS that one person told another during some "investigation" about the Curia. 

  • NimNim
    dawww how can I stay mad at silly NINGEN when there's such an adorable starspawn flailing about, I want to pinch its cheeks :3

    Also I think the mudsex thing could be a bonus. Less chance of newbies being creeped on, etc.
  • AchimrstAchimrst Nature

    Mudsex ads, yes.

  • LyndeeLyndee
    RPWHO is better than an active RP flag that shows all the time..as long as it also has a bit of a safety valve so that people don't toggle RP on and then stay that way thru log out/go afk etc. I imagine that could be frustrating for newbies instead of encouraging, and I know I would easily forget about something like that!

    Also still a little concerned that it would add confusion if its made to be worldwide in scope at all times, for the reasons I laid out before (and not just because I'm afraid @Taraus would steal my novices). :)
  • BluefBluef Delos
    Sarapis said:
    We have some very narrow rules around alts not helping each other where we feel that doing so is damaging to the game though, which may be what you're referring to, but learning what an org is up to via an alt is, from an RP standpoint, not at all different from learning how to get to a particular area on your main and then just going there as your alt, or firing up SVO and suddenly because of a program running on your computer your main or alt is suddenly good at combat. The difference is that the first feels kind of unfair and shitty to the organization in question, whereas nobody is hurt by your alt suddenly knowing how to get to area X because your main knew. Scripting systems are different, and I'd ban them all if I could, but that's not possible so we just roll with it.

    I can see how learning what an organization is up to on an alt isn't any type of abuse. I have characters in most Houses in Achaea and whenever something interesting happens I like to log in to see if it might be worth my while to spend more time in one place more than another. That is the point of having alts after all - to experience the different organizations and events in Achaea. 

    But when someone joins an organization for no other purpose than to log in and then use that information on another alt, that isn't right. I think that's more of the type of thing that Achimrst is pointing toward. 

    For example, if Eleusis has a super secret can of dirt with magickal seeds that is buried in a different spot every month and my main is a Mhaldorian, it seems wrong to log in to my Eleusian alt to get that information and then use it to recover the can in a city raid. If someone wants to roleplay being being such a spy, then roleplay it, otherwise it seems like they are just abusing a second character to advance the goals and agenda of the first. 

    That type of thing, to me, goes beyond simply being unfair and shitty - it's a breach of HELP SECONDS, which is still enforced, right? Or am I totally misunderstanding the scroll?

    Thank you by the way for taking the time to respond to me and others here - the forum interactions and behind the scenes views on these things are really appreciated. Plus, I'm warming to the idea of Roleplay flags now that you confirmed what they may be like. It would be fun to use something like that! 

  • TarausTaraus The Gypsy Wind

    I would never do that. Novices are gross.

    Established individuals, however...

    Also, on topic, I'm a little chagrined that this would even have to be a thing. The necessity to advertise willingness to roleplay in ... a roleplaying game ... enh*. If anything, I'd say consider making the reverse an option, an 'individuals unwilling to roleplay' directory. Beyond that, character-to-character interaction should be, and is generally best left when it is, both spontaneous and organic. 

    * Yes, it may well also be a PK game, a sailing game, a crafting game, et cetera, but when you do those things, you're also assuming the role of a fictional character and doing those things.


  • SarapisSarapis
    Bluef said:
    Sarapis said:
    We have some very narrow rules around alts not helping each other where we feel that doing so is damaging to the game though, which may be what you're referring to, but learning what an org is up to via an alt is, from an RP standpoint, not at all different from learning how to get to a particular area on your main and then just going there as your alt, or firing up SVO and suddenly because of a program running on your computer your main or alt is suddenly good at combat. The difference is that the first feels kind of unfair and shitty to the organization in question, whereas nobody is hurt by your alt suddenly knowing how to get to area X because your main knew. Scripting systems are different, and I'd ban them all if I could, but that's not possible so we just roll with it.

    I can see how learning what an organization is up to on an alt isn't any type of abuse. I have characters in most Houses in Achaea and whenever something interesting happens I like to log in to see if it might be worth my while to spend more time in one place more than another. That is the point of having alts after all - to experience the different organizations and events in Achaea. 

    But when someone joins an organization for no other purpose than to log in and then use that information on another alt, that isn't right. I think that's more of the type of thing that Achimrst is pointing toward. 

    For example, if Eleusis has a super secret can of dirt with magickal seeds that is buried in a different spot every month and my main is a Mhaldorian, it seems wrong to log in to my Eleusian alt to get that information and then use it to recover the can in a city raid. If someone wants to roleplay being being such a spy, then roleplay it, otherwise it seems like they are just abusing a second character to advance the goals and agenda of the first. 

    That type of thing, to me, goes beyond simply being unfair and shitty - it's a breach of HELP SECONDS, which is still enforced, right? Or am I totally misunderstanding the scroll?

    Yep, you're interpreting me correctly.

    (One reason we have HELP SECONDS, btw, is to outlaw one class of behavior we consider kind of shitty and unfair. Otherwise there'd be no reason to ban it!)

This discussion has been closed.