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Comments
No offense to Occultists House, I just don't have the time or willpower to invest in intense RP like that.
My own personal whine in response to class-refund sort of situations :P
The point is that "the occultist house doesn't tolerate rogues" is an RP reason to kill rogues. Targossans have RP reasons to kill Mhaldorians. Mhaldorians have RP reasons to kill Eleusians. The problem isn't lack of RP motivation, it's that RP reasons involving simple factional alignments are problematic from a gameplay perspective because they mean everyone is open to being killed at any time without any real interaction beyond the killing.
There is a fundamental tension here between having factional conflicts that motivate PK without substantial interaction and with preventing joining a faction from being equivalent to declaring yourself open PK. It's a tension that the old system didn't pay any attention to thanks to how black-and-white they tried to make "cause", but the new system does a little better with it.
I don't think the "don't sweat one death" bit is supposed to be a way of saying "hey, you can kill people once with no RP justification". I think it's supposed to be a way of compromising between many RP motivations that would plausibly lead someone to kill someone else and the fact that we don't want a game with the constant risk of being killed without a more specific, interesting provoking incident.
Though in this case, it sounds like there was further justification too. While I'm not sure why on earth the Occultists are using the word "harrassment" here to describe what happened, it doesn't sound like what happened was particularly crazy. By my understanding, it sounds like Disraeli was soliciting Occultist-house novices to teach him his skills - so there is more to this than simply being a rogue occultist, he actually had contact with the house and tried to get novices to do something the house doesn't allow - and then they hunted him down for it. If they didn't make clear why they were doing it, that's crappy. If you weren't actually doing that and they made a mistake, that's also crappy. But otherwise that sounds an awful lot like a clear, specific RP justification to me. And it also sounds like they stopped after one death. Even if it wasn't the most satisfactory interaction, we're talking about losing a few minutes, maybe a few more to bash that experience back.
And I don't think saying "but the interaction we had aside from the killing wasn't interesting enough to me" is a particularly good argument that the killing is the sort of thing deserving of an issue. Part of playing a roleplaying game is that actions have consequences. If you don't understand why the consequences followed from the action, that's one thing (and a perfectly valid complaint), but the fact that the consequences didn't end up being entertaining to you seems like a questionable complaint.
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
1. The repeated mentions of repeatedly and regularly in HELP PK were what I was talking about. Though I guess I did need some schooling because I'm pretty sure it used to explicitly say not to sweat one death, and that seems not to be in there anymore. The overall point though was that one of the benefits of the new PK rules being "looser" is that borderline cases where you're not really sure whether or not there was "sufficient justification" can be handled in the context of what PK they lead to - a wishy-washy borderline justification is just not that big a deal when it's only one death. It's not a clear case of something worth issuing over.
2. I think that paragraph of mine you quoted was particularly badly written on my part. I meant to say that there is an RP justification, not that it's an accepted justification - that's the whole point of the tension I was describing, it's difficult to know when to accept that justification since if you accept it all the time, it's free pk for everyone, and if you accept it strictly never then the whole oppositional RP thing loses some steam. The rules err on the side of not accepting it, which is probably the right choice, but my point there was just that the tension still exists. I didn't mean to say that the game "counts" that RP justification, only that the RP justification exists - in terms of RP, Mhaldorians do want to kill Targossans.
3. In this particular case, it sounds like there was more than just factional/class status anyway.
I am of the opinion that you should never force combat on anyone who hasn't sought/compounded conflict or failed to withdraw himself from a hostile situation after sufficient warning. If possible, always leave people a backdoor to graciously slip out through before whacking them.
Much more fun to fight people who want to fight as well.
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I'm glad it has been resolved for now and I hope similar behaviour won't detract from potential player retention.
Disraeli then threatened to harass the information out of the Occultists' novices, so I branded him an enemy of the House. Unrepentant rogue occultism, plus threats of harassment toward young House members, is more than enough reason to warrant an enemy status. It is also more than enough reason, I expect, to get you killed.
You acted like a bit of a douche, Disraeli, so you were treated like a bit of a douche. You're right, this is the era of "free information", and soon, the renaissance will hit Ashtan and the Occultists and our oppressive secrecy RP will become completely obsolete. Until that point, however, it would make no sense in the context of the game for us to RP any other way. If you had politely acknowledged that you would not glean any information from Housed Occultists, and gone on your way, nothing more would have transpired. You chose to be a jerk, and so, you met with the consequences. Bear it in mind when you interact with people in the game in the future.
And to respond to Javolo: That is why I tried to avoid names, it held no bearing on the subject matter of the post.
Are there people who still dislike her? Yes probably.
I don't mean to say that you should abandon your standards and let everything by, but IMO there are better ways to convey to someone that their choices have violated what your organisational authority deems 'acceptable' conduct, while still playing along with them. If you can trick them into enjoying themselves then they will be more receptive to what you're saying, and while they will probably continue to be a rogue occultist, they may play that role in a way you find more acceptable.
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
Pvp is obviously a huge part of the rp fabric of the game, but it's incumbent on everyone involved to still try and make sure those rp encounters are fun for everyone. Casually killing someone as punishment for their attitude strikes me, more then anything, as just being bad, boring rp, and regardless of whether the enemy status was reasoned, the killing still seems pretty clearly against the rules.
A rogue occultist demanded information, proclaimed that their much-valued secrecy was dead, and threatened to bug novices until he found one who would, presumably unknowingly, break the rules and tell him what he wanted to know.
That's not an issue of Amunet's RP, that's an issue of the ridiculously longstanding RP of the entire occultist guild/house/whatever.
If this isn't it, exactly what earth-shaking violation would someone have to commit before we could all agree that there's sufficient justification for the incredibly minor consequence of being hunted down and killed a single time over it?
@Blujixapug:
I think a lot of this boils down to conflation of IC/OOC.
The occultist house should not be kind in order to get people to switch class. That would be a huge break with occultist RP, history, and culture. Even if, OOCly, the whole big tough organisation thing doesn't work, it's a big part of their RP. To tell them they should accept that it won't work and try to be ICly nice instead would be like telling Mhaldorians that it's OOCly obvious that they'll never actually take over the world, so they should stop being so mean and violent ICly.
Further, if Targossas were nicer to Mhaldorian players instead of fighting them, maybe they'd convert or play nice together or whatever. The exact same argument you offer applies there too. In fact, it applies to just about all conflict in the game - we should all be nice because being ICly violent (e.g., killing someone for something they did ICly) might alienate people OOCly and we know, OOCly, that it's unlikely to alter their behavior. We also know, OOCly, that killing people does virtually nothing - hardly anyone has ever stopped doing anything in the game over a few deaths. But the whole fiction of the game largely stops working if we stop pretending that we don't know these things, if we don't pretend like characters have no way of knowing that killing a rogue occultist won't solve the problem. Otherwise we're all just playing a chat room - there's no point to using force against another character ever because it will virtually never work; there's no point in any factional conflict because we know that, ultimately, it will never be fully resolved.
It doesn't make sense for the occultists to be nice to someone who acts like this. That would be a huge violation of more than a literal decade of history and culture. And I don't buy the logic that says that we know, OOCly, that the occultist house's IC actions almost certainly won't achieve their IC aims, so they should throw consistent roleplaying out the window and just be nice instead to avoid alienating anyone.
Nor does it make sense, ICly, to talk about them being a "more acceptable" rogue occultist. For the occultist house, there isn't such a thing. And, OOCly, there's nothing unacceptable about the way he acted anyway - it was perfectly fine roleplaying and created some minor intrigue for the house's players. There's nothing OOCly wrong with what he did other than the apparently poor attitude over his IC actions having undesirable IC consequences - a poor attitude made more obvious by the way that he initially acted as though he hadn't done anything to warrant these consequences other than having been a rogue occultist, when in fact he had initiated contact himself, explicitly told the occultists that their principles were outdated and wrong, and then threatened to use the house's novices to get what he wanted.
And if you (the generic you, not you Blujixapug) are taking something someone did to you ICly, something the person and their organisation's RP totally support, as an indication that the player behind that character is "an unreasonable chode", then you are the problem. That is not the sort of person you want to bend your RP to support in hopes of future interactions.
As for making consequences entertaining - sure, of course you should try to make consequences entertaining. But that isn't, and shouldn't be, a requirement. And not being sufficiently entertained by the reaction that followed directly and predictably from your own glib disregard for major organisations in the game should not be a license to complain that you're being unfairly persecuted, that people are ruining your fun time, or that people are acting "childish".
If you walk up to Xinna, tell her that Sartan is stupid, tell her that you're going to try to convert Mhaldor's novices, and try to justify it by saying that the Bloodsworn Gods are here now and the age of Evil has passed, you're probably going to get killed for it. And I can't imagine anyone on the forums would seriously be arguing that you shouldn't be - that being killed over it isn't entertaining enough a reaction and is consequently unfair to the player, or that we know, OOCly, that the death isn't likely to change the person's RP.
The only reason this seems to have gotten any traction at all, unlike that scenario, is that Disraeli left out a number of crucial details and apparently people really, really don't like Jinsun.
First, I don't think that all PvP consequences should have to come with a warning first. That's certainly not anywhere in the rules, I don't think most players would agree with it, and I think it would be very detrimental to the game's consistency and immersion. Certainly a warning is appropriate in a lot of cases, maybe even most, but it seems hard for me to accept that it should be a blanket rule.
I think that this feeling that there should always be a warning leads to a really ugly situation in the game. And, since this is far from the first time someone has articulated that there should always be a warning and a lot of people expect a warning, I've actually seen this situation rear its head in game before - it isn't merely hypothetical. What happens when you do that is that people feel like they get a free pass on their behaviour until they get that warning - so long as they load all of their antagonism into one initial salvo, they're immune. I don't think that's good for the game. The move away from the old PK rules was to prevent exactly this sort of scenario where people could do things that should have consequences (and consequences in Achaea can and frequently do involve PK - I think that's totally inarguable), but start arguments trying to leverage the rules to keep them safe from those consequences.
Second, let's also remember that, mechanically, being killed is not that big a deal, a point which seems to be almost entirely missing from the discussion here, which I think could seriously lead a naive reader to think that the game had permadeath or something. Personally, I liked it a lot better when the PK rules explicitly pointed this out (though I guess I can see how it might prove problematic with people trying to abuse this as defining a "one free kill" policy).
Third, he did more than simply "being a jerk". I'm not even sure I would say he was being a jerk at all. He was roleplaying a rogue occultist who didn't care about the house's rules and was willing to exploit the novices to get what he wanted. That's not being a jerk, at least not OOCly. It is, however, specific RP justification for reprisal, precisely of the sort described in HELP PK.
Fourth, I'm not sure I buy that it's unfair to assume that it's "common knowledge that such behavior equals an enemy status, a bounty, and a kill with no warning". That seems pretty fair to me. The occultist house is a big-deal, mechanically-recognised organisation. In terms of RP, it's one of the oldest in the entire game and the RP in question here hasn't really changed since its inception. The help file on the house alone lays a lot of this out. And to show up to any organisation and tell them that their ideals are outdated and then threaten to use their novices to attain your goals seems like a very clear case where you should know your actions might have consequences. I don't think anyone can fairly claim ignorance here. And, in this specific case, I think the fact that these key details were left out of the original post is telling. Further, if Disraeli told the occultists that their secrecy was antiquated and futile, that indicates that he must have known about those principles and must have known what he was saying was antagonistic.
Finally, I don't understand why this is being cast as "casually killing someone" - he made threats against the organisation, they put a bounty on him. The occultists have clear, specific RP justification for what they did. I'm not sure how you're getting that "the killing still seems pretty clearly against the rules". Could you elaborate on why you think this seems like it would be against the rules to you? I'm finding it hard for me to imagine a killing that is more obviously within the guidelines set out by the rules: clear, specific RP justification, purposeful antagonism, and a single kill in response.