[Sarinpa1]

Putting it here, despite the fact it may look like a suggestion, because it's pretty obscure and I'd just like to hear opinions regarding this.

As we all know, currently the roleplay in Sigrogana in terms of villainy, etcetera is pretty poor.
I'll put some examples - Guilds that were made and despite having some sort of an evil plot behind them, such was known only OOCly

Dark Void : These folk wore creepy armors, some of them were pretty polite, some less, but they were in the eyes of public a Mercenary Group. Something pretty common.
There was a bit of villainy-ish plot to it which I won't really disclose but it was known only OOCly. And they got ganked horribly, as some people began to just spread rumors villynilly, fucking them over sideways before they could even do anything. ( As some may recall, they simply overtook Laws End, but given they provided aid and some law to the region, it wasn't even...evil.)

Host of Enma : It was simply a religious group. Later it devolved into nonsense because things, but when there were like three members and neither of us did anything, anything wrong at all, we had people invade shrine, claim brainwashing againts -all- evidence and slandered the guild wherever they went, until it eventualy got demonized in the eyes of public.


Just two examples, despite there being many more.

Point of these examples was, whether they seem remotely evil or even hint at there being a possibility of that, crowds began to go againts them, effectively making villainy impossible to play out proper. And then everyone and their mother resorts to lethal force, absent a proper logical reason, aside from "They're clearly evil!"

I know that some players do more or less private villainy plots, but that eliminates this issue by targetting just a small portion of the community.
And there surely are ways to ensure that you don't just get metad', characters that are somewhat built specificaly againts those villains go to fuck you aside before you do anything.
Almost nobody wants to villain. Because it's doomed to fail before it begins.
I've seen this on Eternia (throw rocks at me pls), where as we know power is granted by sucki- err. Providing good roleplay for the people and bonuses are added to those that even go and create conflict.

Now given how SL works, I know that system isn't entirely applicable, however....
Conflict creates RP that everyone can get involved in. It doesn't necesairly involve any authorities aside from guards, therefore it'd not change a thing in terms of large scale NPC hierarchy.

I think this would be fixed up were villains, or very good roleplayers, or perhaps, some sort of event chars got a power boost, that'd allow them to effectively survive an attack from random casuals that decided to do their good deed for the month.

I realize that with power, comes the responsibility, for someone stronger than others by a noticable amount would likely have the option to eradicate people, fuck up their personal roleplays, etcetera. Which is what brings me to the idea that it could/should be moderated by someone responsible. /stares at GMs. Aaand maybe some help. Idk. I could see it work with some characters that had a clear goal, restrictions on how they can use their power, oocly specified and while immune to random gank because of the power, they'd not just go willynilly abuse players.

muh random brainstorm.


thoughts?

[Sawrock]

I dislike the idea of event characters, as it takes away from normal players who wish to play villains- no one will consider them a threat as event villains will be way more powerful/etc. I'm not sure how I feel about power boosts, either- could work, could not. Many likely would whine. Villains, in the end, are doomed to fail not just from the dogpile-and-rumor effect, but from the world being so static. No matter what we do, Sigrogana will stand. We can't destroy cities (and we can't make them, either), we can't go into the political system to influence things from the inside, and such. Ultimately, this is Dev's world, and we're just guests. We're not the villains, or even the heroes: we're side-characters to a world he controls.

Rant aside, what I do think is a good idea is that the Gamemasters should, when creating events, look for villains in the community to help with the event. Include them a bit in the event, maybe have the event involve them a lot, 'unno.

[Sarinpa1]

Hmm, true. You raise some good points.


To influence the world in a larger scale is something we can't really expect that we'll be able to, but I'd also like to roleplay with a larger part of the community, without having to get involed in the "I'm a Dullahan, time to cuddle a mechanation that pretends to be a felidae that pretends to be a cat."
Which seems nigh impossible, because even being a jerk gets you deaththreats.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

Now this is a topic I can get behind.

I think the idea is lovely despite the nearly endless amount of ways it could go wrong. Sigrogana is comparable to a brick. It doesn't change, like Saw said, not for us or anything at all, except for Dev, who ultimately holds all power over everything that happens. The idea that the common player could interact with the world on a large scale can be scary to a game where the standard for said average player is quite... Low, shall we say?

For the more experienced players, however, this would be an opportunity like no other to create RP, especially for villain-characters, who, as Sarinpa points out can't do anything at all without getting knocked down by someone who had no business with the villain to begin with. Being more important than other people isn't a sin, it's needed for a proper society. That's why it would be awesome to have actual threats walking around the land, played by people who obviously know what they're doing. Perhaps a branch of the Staff could be added that was in charge of events/RP? These people could play more powerful characters, or characters with actual political presence which would allow them to spread RP around, and create new and exciting situations in the world as they gather followers or cause enough distress to warrant the playerbase to end them.

[Chaos]

First and foremost: With how statistics and classes go in this game, it is practically impossible for any sort of regular player character to be a brute force villain. Clever plans and quality manipulation is a regular villain's best chance in this setting, and even then, it can fall apart as long as just one person decides to be a little shit and ruin it through OOC knowledge. (Or if they try to involve someone unwilling) Sure, you could 'act' your made-up plot out with a group, but where's the fun in that?

To be perfectly honest, Dev's original idea of, "Give the GMs toolboxes and I'll double-check anything they plan to do," was the best option to change this. It would've been mostly me or Sly taking requests from players anyways. (Maybe an idea of mine every once a blue moon; Sly didn't have a lot of ideas either) It would've beat going through the pains of having to select people that could do the whole shebang right when you already had two parties that would check over whatever plans came in.

But I digress; that was dissuaded a long time ago. At this point, I don't see a whole lot else that wouldn't either unbalance the game itself nor go straight into the same, "no one makes an impact on the world beyond being a very minor side-character," argument that we're currently looking at.

[Ryu-Kazuki]

I'm surprised and glad to see some people understand what I went through when I attempted in any manner to provide conflict amongst the populace; granted it wasn't always perfect because, the villain to an hero ratio is always vastly outnumbered, scheduling of course, lack of help from other people OOC , and among other things. I'm acknowledging nothing I did was perfect, it didn't always go how I planned it either, but it was the best you could make due back then with lack of help, time, and lore. But, anyway..

I'm completely in agreeance with Sarinpa's OP about how people go from

"I'm bored, there's nothing to do, and any villains we see suck because I'm so great"

to

"OH MAN THERE'S A BAD PERSON, EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY BE ACTUALLY JUST A MISGUIDED PERSON LOST IN THE DARKNESS OF THEIR OWN WAYS WHO NEEDS HELP; IMMA KILL EM AN TBAG THEIR SOUL"

It's really a turn off because people either whine when the plots don't go their way (IE a villain may escape; or the "hero" tries to force the antagonists' player to kill their character and turn around to whine about it because the antagonists didn't die); and when the first action people think to do instead of a solution, is killing someone who disturbs "the peace".

I always wanted to do open plots (as much as I tried to play them out like a sub-story with X (insert any player who actually tries) to be a protagonist, and I'm just the story characters; while [protagonists] influence how things go, while it still follows the skeleton design of the "story". Why? Because I'm an idea person, and I wanted to help create those things to entertain people; but on the off hand, people have to chill, understand that currently all we can do is work with what we have (our brains; and thank God grinding is easier now), and not try to be so pushy with their protagonism. I hate the thought of having to exclude people from things because I find that unfair; and it doesn't give everyone a fair chance to become a protagonist, if they try to.


I am completely in favor of doing what used to be done on SL1 and giving some "tools" to event characters in order to actually provide a challenge, especially for tactics in combat (although all an Evoker would need is HP/FP boosts; NOTHING ELSE), but on the off hand, people are going to fuss because they can't be a special snowflake with all that uber power.

All in all, as much as events would liven things up, bring people together, and make the game less boring, they're not going to solve anything if people aren't going to at least be somewhat less hostile over every little thing.

[Neus]

Metagaming is against the rules; any OOC information used as IC information is not valid. If it happens, tell a GM and it can be verified if the information was passed ICly or if it needs to be 'retconned'.

[Ryu-Kazuki]

Neus » Sun Feb 22, 2015 3:29 pm[/url]"]Metagaming is against the rules; any OOC information used as IC information is not valid. If it happens, tell a GM and it can be verified if the information was passed ICly or if it needs to be 'retconned'.

Well most of that is pretty obvious Dev; but with Skype and the way people act around here, it's not beyond people to pretend to be another person just to get IC information and make all their characters act upon with with some sort of pulled out of their ass IC reason to back it up. It's just difficult to provide information since Skype is like a message system between people and some of them like to be spiteful and relay information to people who have no business with it in the first place. Without any proof of that, there's nothing you can really point out to a GM unless you somehow knew who was telling who and had some logs or something.

Not that I'm arguing with you, Dev; I'm just saying it's not always possible for us to prove that it's really metagame or not.

In light of the discussion though, we can't really provide any impact on anything because everyone has to have the spotlight on them, and the moment you step in with a challenge or conflict, the masses will swarm you until you're literally dead (I've had people try to force me to kill antagonists before). So, honestly it's a combination of both; gameplay mechanics, and playerbase that contributes to things not being able to actually do anything interesting in terms of chaos or peace disturbance.

But; even if there was, it shouldn't be something stupid like a case of Ameratsu and Allaina syndrome from SL1 again. Even the big bads should have some structure behind their reason for being an event character, and a weakness of course.

[Sarinpa1]

Metagaming is just a slight problem in this particular topic. (I mean, DV died because people attacked when they knew half the players were asleep. Curiously the strongest ones, too. )

But yeah, people can bullshit their way to IC knowledge so incredibly poorly that there isn't anything one can say againts it other than "thats dumb"

To add, people rely on the fact that one can't even present logs, aka fabricating slander is the strongest weapon there is. You can't even show any sort of evidence that it's untruthful, ICly.

Either way, that's not the point of the topic.


I'd really be supportive of the option for GMs to have some slight control over RP, to whip up some events. There's only so much players can do.

[MegaBlues]

The main issue with this is how frequently the ability to alter power was abused in SL1. I won't provide any examples, but the people who have played SL1 know what I'm talking about.

Once bitten, twice shy, and all that.