Taniel clerics, players acceptance, etc

[Erika]

Hello there,

I have a feeling that sometimes the role of the taniel clerics is not commonly
accepted, or atleast the roleplaying. This concerns me because I think that
it would be useless to play a role that noone agreed to make sense OOC.

So therefore, I would like to discuss the role of the taniel cleric. I've got
different impressions of what a Taniel cleric should do from different people.
I guess what I want to know is your opinion on favour checking, the cleric
role, the arguments clerics use, how they act, and so forth.

I'm fully aware of the OOC and IC separation, I'm free to do whatever I want IC,
as long as I deal with it's consequences IC. But I think that this matter goes
beyond that, because I am the sort of player that wants to know that
enemies and "not enemies" are at least friends OOC and they would see me as
playing this role right. I'm not sure what the intention is of how they should
play, but in some way, I belive it is not the only things that counts - I also
want to know what players think about it.

I guess some of you met Erika In Character, and well, she would not mind using
close to extremist reasoning even though she has not shown it very much
yet. I suppose in a modern world, the methods would
be comparable to what we would call torture and enlightend despotism.

I think of favour checking as something natural that a taniel cleric would do,
to find her enemies, without much concern for "privacy" or "intergrity", if
those words even existed in medieval times. But I have the feeling that it
isn't really accepted in terms of roleplaying among the common players. I'm
not sure, do I differ a lot here? I want to know your opinion. In case I
think different of many others, I can't see my role I have taken to have much
point in it.

Another thing is the sort of arguments that a cleric can use (once again,
I know I'm free to play as I want IC, but I want to know what people approve
of OOC, and what they would think of as the role to be played). I think a
cleric can use almost any sort of argument as long as it supports the cause
of his or her deity, be it long-term or short-term thinking.

And when it comes to acting out, I think clerics of medieval times would not
care too much about "integrity" or the value of others. In fact, looking at
history it would be the commoners that would make sure they do not stick out
so the church would become their enemy. I don't think the church is really
powerful in geas now, atleast there could be more to what there is. As it is
now you can just ignore clerics and or "pick" those who are kind to you,
not worry about anything.

I would appreciate comments on all of these things, favour checks,
reasons/arguments, acting and commoners vs church.

I repeat once again, I feel that I want to atleast be accepted in an OOC
manner for the role play, otherwise it becomes pointless and IC arguments
tend to have a lot of OOC push in them.

Erika

[valder]

I'm not sure I know what favor checking is (yet), but if I read your post correctly.... are you basically asking for everyone's permission to torture us?

[stilgar]

My original idea was about Taniel is the typical fantasy "lawful good".
Yet it has changed a lot.. they are not.

What I saw they are lately encouraged to be played out really more like medieval Jesuits. They seek evil and purge it. Not less cruel in their ways of purging evil as "evil ones" destroying the world. They make really not much difference.. just have another miracles and follow different deity. Also kill different kind of mobs.

About Favour check.. anyone who really thinks and tries to be an independent person, gets irritated by others poking in their minds. No surprise

In my opinion favour check kills a great part of the RP. Really no chance to set up a plot, make a trickery or whatever.. a favour check or a reveal and its done

Intergrity and other stuff.. I think as long as deities have control over towns priests will have no trouble from that

[lirynel]

I don't think you can really compare Geas with medieval times. Then there was basically one church so people didn't need to hide their faith. Here there are several faiths, some representing extremes.

And of course in the past there were schisms in churches. Different monarchs favoured different variations on Christianity in Europe and other factions were forced into hiding, forced to hide their faith or even flee their homelands. Isn't that the basis for the Pilgrim Fathers?

I think it's perfectly reasonable in Geas that people want to keep their faith and their alignment private, or known only to a select few. If you want to probe and see what it is, then you just have to accept people ain't going to like it and face the possible consequences. Of course some will accept it, probably those closer in outlook to you, others will become irate and possibly violent. All I can say is play your character as you see fit but don't moan ic'ly or ooc'ly about the consequences of it.

[Dekhan]

I agree with Stilgar's comment about how the Taniels are "supposed" to be good and law abiding and such. However, people tend not to like their privacy being intruded upon and oftentimes dont like the way the Taniel clerics treat them. They are more Inquisitors than nice, kind folks that most people would feel comfortable going to for advice and such. Also as previously mentioned, they're not the only clerics. Most people have nothing to fear from them especially if they couldnt care less about Taniel or fitting in with their clerics and perhaps are friends with Asralites for example. I suppose Im just repeating what has already been written. In short, the Taniel church in geas just isnt like the "church" was back in medieval times. There is too much variety for anyone to expect it to be so.

[chara]

I think if you ask 10 people what the Taniel clerics should be like, you'll probably get 22 different responses.

The problem with the stereotypical lawful good in fantasy is that they are really pansies. They sit around being all heroic and radiating good, but they don't get much done. And they don't have much depth. It puts the mud into a situation where the bad guys can do everything, and the good guys can do little to nothing about it. It also makes everything very black and white.

I had a discussion about Lawful Good with a friend of mine, who pointed out that the real archetype of Lawful Good is not a hero like Zorro or Batman (who would be chaotic good), but rather someone like Javert from Les Miserables. A man who would send a starving boy to prison for stealing a loaf of bread, and then hunt him for decades for escaping - even though he had made a good life for himself and helped other people. To a Lawful Good person, the importance would be that he had broken the Law, and must be punished under that Law.

Doesn't that sound a bit like the Crusaders?

Aggressively good characters are needed to counterbalance aggressively bad characters, or the mud is crippled - especially with a small player base. And it's more interesting from a RP standpoint when evil has appeal beyond the simple allure of Being Evil. When a character can be frightened of the Good Guys, with good reason, and turn to chaos in a search for personal freedom, for example.

Personally, I like worlds composed of shades of gray. Where the good guys have a dark side, and the bad guys have their motivations.

[Kortha]

I'm not happy about the Taniels turning all inquisitiony either. They didn't used to be like that, and some of them still aren't, but I get the feeling that the current Taniels who actually act like what I consider good, may eventually get kicked out because the management wants them to be inquisitiony and not good at all. Kind of ironic, huh?

Also, as I've posted elsewhere, it annoys me that instead of preaching about what's good and right, Taniels just go around talking about smiting their enemies and cleansing them in "holy fire" or whatever. While smiting enemies is perfectly fine for an Asral, I'd think Taniels would prefer to convert ppl by educating them (Taniel IS also the god of knowledge, if I remember right) in what right action is. Also, it seems to me that Taniels consider "enemies" to mean "anyone who doesn't worship my god, whether he intends to do anything to me or not". I can understand smiting a Satho cleric, since their beliefs are firm and no amount of conversion attempts is going to help, but the way it is now just seems ridiculous to me.

Also, I think Taniels would spend more time healing others than they actually do. Perhaps that would be a good way to convert those who worship no god, or who aren't particularly firm in their faith.

Taniels trying to convert ppl by force is never going to work, at least not as long as they aren't strong enough to back up their threats. Currently we have a situation like: Taniel finds infidel > Taniel attacks infidel > Taniel gets his ass beat > Infidel hunts Taniel down to teach him a lesson. This doesn't seem to me a very effective way of converting someone, but it's a very effective way to get laughed at.

As for favour checking, it's a rather complex thing with a lot of factors involved. With Kor, these factors are: how much she likes the person, how well she knows the person, whether she's heard things about the person that indicate he may be an enemy now or in the future, whether someone has asked her to favour check the person or not, and things like that. In some situations she'll favour check without permission, and in other situations she'll ask permission before doing it. A lot of times she'll ask permission to check someone to see if her god's mad at them before casting a beneficial miracle on them. This technique seems to work well, but a lot of that is probably because she's not some fanatic who's going to kill them immediately if they turn out to worship Lilith, heh.

[Abharsair]

First at all, you are right when you say that you are free to do IC whatever you want, as long as you are willing to bear the IC consequences. Some people seem to forget the second part of that statement sometimes.

Next, I can tell you that at least one of the Admins (me) doesn't consider good and evil within Geas the same thing as it is in our nowadays society. What is "good" in Geas doesn't have to be good in the real life's 21st century. A "good" player can play as nasty as an evil player (if we apply standards such as playerkilling, intrigues, politic, etc), and he can still fit perfectly into his role as holy zealot. A common misconception seems to be that "good" players have to be nice and friendly and fluffy, because if they aren't and are mean to your character, they couldn't be "good", right? Wrong!

If you are "evil" (let's say you worship Sathonys and sacrifice now and then a faerie by slitting his/her throat while alive) and sit at the crossroad near Naga's Inn, and a Taniel Cleric comes in, attacks without warning, beats the heck out of you, ties you to a pole and burns you alive, then he is still "good". Would I want to meet such a guy in reality? Not at all. Would I call such a guy "good" in reality? Not really. But in Geas he is good, because unlike "evil" players he usually doesn't harm the innocent, doesn't kill without reason, doesn't steal or lie.

Just like you shouldn't confuse the "good" of Geas with the "good" of our reality and time, you shouldn't confuse it with "stupidity" either. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And after all, no one prevents anyone from playing a Taniel Cleric who hates violence and preaches all day long. But that brings us again to the beginning of the post: you are free to do IC whatever you want, as long as you are willing to bear the IC consequences.

[valder]

Sounds to me like Javert is more Lawful Neutral than Lawful Good. If the rule of law is THE most important thing in one's ethos, superceding even the well-being of the people the law is meant to protect, then one is not a good person. Just a fanatically lawful one.

EDIT: Wow, two long posts snuck while I was writing mine.

[stilgar]

Next, I can tell you that at least one of the Admins (me) doesn't consider good and evil within Geas the same thing as it is in our nowadays society. What is "good" in Geas doesn't have to be good in the real life's 21st century. A "good" player can play as nasty as an evil player (if we apply standards such as playerkilling, intrigues, politic, etc), and he can still fit perfectly into his role as holy zealot. A common misconception seems to be that "good" players have to be nice and friendly and fluffy, because if they aren't and are mean to your character, they couldn't be "good", right? Wrong!t

Looks like there is only one deifference left besides the miracles between goodies and badies

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[Kortha]

The problem with the stereotypical lawful good in fantasy is that they are really pansies. They sit around being all heroic and radiating good, but they don't get much done. And they don't have much depth. It puts the mud into a situation where the bad guys can do everything, and the good guys can do little to nothing about it. It also makes everything very black and white.

You have a point. However, there's also little the good guys can do if they're so aggressively inquisitionist that they die a lot and end up barely able to kill a rabbit. There needs to be a variety of good guys, just like there needs to be a variety of bad guys.

Aggressively good characters are needed to counterbalance aggressively bad characters, or the mud is crippled - especially with a small player base.

True. But *every* good char shouldn't be an inquisitonist, otherwise "good" loses all its meaning.

Personally, I like worlds composed of shades of gray. Where the good guys have a dark side, and the bad guys have their motivations.

I like shades of gray too, but if you don't have at least a little bit of black and white, you end up with a world with only one color.

How my ideal goes is something like this:

Crusaders=violently inquisitiony good guys
Taniels=helpful good guys who get mean as hell when faced with true evil
Asrals=neutrals who don't care who they have to beat up to follow their purpose
Zhakrinites=neutrals who prefer reasonable discussions to violence
Sathos=obvious bad guys who think being called bad guys is a compliment
Lilithians=bad guys who prefer to work from the shadows so they can't be blamed

I don't pretend to understand Evrenites and Gwennies well enough to categorize them.

According to this setup, each major alignment (good, neutral, evil) would have extremely violent and less violent forms. This seems to be balanced and provide a good amount of variety. Of course it's only an ideal, and ideals have a habit of never actually happening. But hopefully you get where I'm coming from with my argument about Taniels.

[chara]

I believe that there can be a variety of levels of fanaticism within most guilds, without forcing some guilds to be entirely easy going.

I never meant to imply that every character in a guild should act exactly the same way. What fun would that be? Only that your typical do-gooder good-guy is not the only, or the best, way to play good. Likewise for evil and your typical slavering mass murderer.

[Kortha]

True. But I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of currently active Taniels are the inquisition type. Maybe this is part of why the others are inactive at the moment...I really don't know.

[Delia]

Should good be "good" and "evil" evil? I think that is up to the invidual in question.All in all, if someone is good or evil is a subjective question. I tend to think in the terms of "law" or "chaos", as pure good or evil are somewhat incomprehensible terms in my opinion. Most people are after all, self-serving and tied to a some form of community, and what that community is defines their moral and ethics to a some degree.There just is many kinds of "good" and "evil" most of the times taking properties of each others opposites.

[tessa]

Kortha -

Definitely. The three active Taniels I know right now seem to be the inquisition type. I dunno why the others are inactive, though I know at least poSheela doesn't log as much as she would because she doesn't want to be hunted for the war/things other Tanielites did to P.O. people.

IMO, it's a pretty dangerous time to be a Tanielite. Almost all the characters I know hate or dislike them IC, and I know there's a few people hunting the three inquistor ones, so I can understand if the peaceful Tanielites avoid coming out so they don't get slaughtered for it.

[cathal]

First of all, I am going to make the egoistic assumption that at least part of the opinions in messages on this forum about the Taniels have been directed at Cathal (at least the ones about dying a lot)

Let me start with a bit of history. When I created Cathal, my intention was to create a so-called fundamentalist or extremist. It turned out that I really did not have to play him as I had planned. Already after attacking the known priests of Sathonys a couple of times, Cathal was generally considered a fundamentalist and a wacko. He was attacked both physically and verbally not only by the so called "evil" people, but also by most of the "neutrals" who were defending their Lilithian or Sathonite friends against Cathal. Do not get me wrong, I did not mind.

And the truth is, he still hasn't turned into a fundamentalist (IMO). The only exception where he has ever harmed a "neutral" char that I can think of is accidentally hitting a certain Shaolin halfling with a smite when he attacked Cathal in order to defend a Lilithian darkelf (I am not saying that he did not have good reasons to do so). So my question is, why is he even considered to be a "inquisitor" or somehow "fundamentalist"? As a matter of a fact, I created him as a sage-type, not a fighter and I still play him more as a sage-type than a fighter (my poor excuse for all those deaths)

What I saw they are lately encouraged to be played out really more like medieval Jesuits. They seek evil and purge it. Not less cruel in their ways of purging evil as "evil ones" destroying the world. They make really not much difference.. just have another miracles and follow different deity. Also kill different kind of mobs.

Also, it seems to me that Taniels consider "enemies" to mean "anyone who doesn't worship my god, whether he intends to do anything to me or not". I can understand smiting a Satho cleric, since their beliefs are firm and no amount of conversion attempts is going to help, but the way it is now just seems ridiculous to me.

Two things that I completely disagree on. I can only speak for my own char, but knowing the other Taniels, I doubt they are "more like medieval Jesuits" than Cathal. I repeat what I said before, Cathal has never attacked anyone else than well known evil chars (and the Asrals when the war is on). True, he is not the nicest person. He is arrogant, somewhat self-centered and comes from a noble family and is well aware of that, but he has never done anything that I would consider in any way evil (against anyone but the evil chars, if you want to count that in). On the other hand, he has given his own life repeatedly protecting the innocent (often they have been NPCs, but also PCs). So I would certainly claim that there is a big difference between the "good" and the "evil".

Crusaders=violently inquisitiony good guys
Taniels=helpful good guys who get mean as hell when faced with true evil

Well, first of all, why would the guild have an effect on peoples' believes and moral values? As most of the crusaders follow either Taniel or the more pacifist Evren, why would they be more "inquisitiony"? And secondly, yes, Cathal gets mean as hell when faced with true evil, like Sathos or darkelves, and only then.

They didn't used to be like that, and some of them still aren't, but I get the feeling that the current Taniels who actually act like what I consider good, may eventually get kicked out because the management wants them to be inquisitiony and not good at all. Kind of ironic, huh?

Which management are you talking about? As the "highest ranking" Taniel who has been active lately, I certainly have not pushed anyone to this direction (expect maybe "by example"). On the contrary, I believe I have made it clear already when taking people into the guild that there are many ways to serve Taniel (I am sure the other Taniels can confirm this to you). If you are talking about the wizzes, I have not at least been given any orders or instructions how to play the char.

Also, I think Taniels would spend more time healing others than they actually do. Perhaps that would be a good way to convert those who worship no god, or who aren't particularly firm in their faith.

Again, I can speak only for Cathal, but he is willing to heal any "non-evil" who asks him for help. He has even walked around a lot, looking for people to cure. So far, he has earned no gratitude for this, but almost got him on the Shaolin enemylist (the vote might still be on). It's a long story When it comes to telling people about Taniel, I have spent 2+ hours telling someone about Taniel 10-20 times, countless shorter discussions and I have always answered any questions (He does not consider Asral clerics as possible "targets", althought he did talk with Kortha about Taniel before he joined Asrals, if you still remember). On the other hand, Cathal has never forced Taniel on anyone (which would surely be criticized if he had for being "inquisitiony")

Looks like there is only one deifference left besides the miracles between goodies and badies

Well, this is a bit off the topic but I thought I could respond to this too. Cathal has been banned from Arborea from the second day after he was created. There was a short period of some hours in between when he could enter the city again, but has now been banned continuously for several @months. Needless to say, this has hurt his "sage" carrier significantly. The only city that he can enter is Elvandar. OK, maybe there is one more layman guild in Elvandar than in Asador, but I would not call this a big difference. On the other hand, when you are evil you can try to sneak into cities, force your way into them or bribe people to use the services for you. Cathal respects the law. He won't bribe anyone, threaten anyone, kill anyone or somehow break the law of Arborea unless it is in conflict with the higher law of Taniel. What got him banned was attacking Sathonites, which is one example of such. The baddies also claim that most people don't like them, they are hunted and shunned by the society. Well, isn't that how it is supposed to be? But on the other hand, they have been given much more power to defend themselves (The Taniels are not exactly fighters), more places to hide and less responsibilities or "moral" rules (A big percentage of those deaths are because of RP). I can assure you that Cathal has been hunted by members of almost every guild in the game (the only exception that I can think of are the druids). Also, Cathal has been rejected from the Scribes guild by most of the masters because of his "fundamentalism". They do not believe that he would happily co-exist with all the other members. A reasonable assumption, he probably would not. The baddies can always "play good" to get the benefits for themselves. I don't really see Cathal having this option. (But well, it is my RP and I suffer for it)

Now this is starting to sound like a defensive speech of Cathal and a lot of whining, which was not my intention. I was completely aware of the consequences of my actions, like the bans and the massive amounts of dying. I am just trying to respond to the posts on this forum.

So maybe it is time to turn to the real topic of this thread.

Like Erika, I have tried very hard not to offend anyone OOCly, I do not know how well I have succeeded in this. The ones from which I have received OOC "feedback" from are the ones who were not even involved in the situation itself, but rather just watching and listening and did not like me "being nasty" to the nice darkelf. If I really have annoyed someone OOCly, I apologize, but there is not much that I think I can do differently if I really plan to play the character. Most of the complaints I have received are from one incident when I attacked Jezz at the crossing, after he had just sacrificed several NPCs to Sathonys and turned them into undeads.

As for the role of the Taniels, well.. Even if I somewhat agree that this is not the medieval catholic church (don't mean to offend any religious people with this sentence either), the Taniels (with the crusaders) are the counterforce to the evil. As Chara said, aggressively good characters are needed to counterbalance aggressively bad characters, or the mud is crippled. I would go as far as to say that if there was code support for such, even the current situation would mean the destruction of both Elvandar and the Taniel temple. The only reason all those neutrals can stay neutral is that the MUD does not support such things (Unless of course they prefer a completely dead world with only undeads and trolls walking around. In my opinion it is not the morals and ethics of the Taniels that is questionable, but those of the "neutrals", who really do not seem to care at all if the world is completely overrun by hordes of evil, happily talking and trading with those members of the church of Death who sacrifice innocent people to their Gods and destroy everything that lives, not to mention having their flesh rotting and falling off them. The only thing that seems to matter is whether someone openly attacks another playerchar).

Taniel finds infidel > Taniel attacks infidel > Taniel gets his ass beat > Infidel hunts Taniel down to teach him a lesson.

And yes, current situation and balance being what it is, it will probably mean a lot of deaths to Cathal at least, but he will continue to protect the innocents against these clear threats. I would consider it rather bad RP from my part if I just started to ignore them and go happily jumping on the strawberry-fields or hunting trolls with Lilithians.

When it comes to favour checking, I must say that I do agree with the criticism. I think it is too simple to check someone's faith (and that is why I have not used it much, in addition to the fact that Cathal does respect people's privacy unless they seem like a threat).

What I would recommend is turning this procedure into a longer ritual, perhaps requiring even several clerics to take part. This would prevent at least the "AFK checking" that is known that have happened at least a couple of times. On the other hand, it would probably increase the amount of "inquisitory" actions, as you would need to make the other person go uncon, tie him and drag him to wherever you need to be to do this ritual (unless he goes voluntarily of course). This would probably make the Taniels even more hated.

True. But I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of currently active Taniels are the inquisition type. Maybe this is part of why the others are inactive at the moment...I really don't know.

I am sorry to say this, but based on the discussions I have had with the older Taniels, one of the main reasons for being less active seems to be that they simply got tired of being criticized for everything they do and being hunted down by the rest of the MUD(not the only reason though). And yes, I know that poSheela is not excited about the war, but the war predates any currently active Taniel by @months so we can hardly be blamed for that..

[jezz]

Just a note regarding Cathal post...

Taniels as it is right now, can be much better fighters than sathos... for simple reasons:
1) Sathos don't have buffing miracles (if you call bloodlust a buff, then I lied)
2) Sathos have much weaker armours than taniels

Maybe we are better attackers, but not better fighters overally and not better supporters. The main problem is that much sathos are human or dwarf (or were, when there was any of them) and thus they looked stronger, because elves are pansies fighting but don't blame Taniel, blame their "transexual bodies"

As for the role of a cleric, I think it's pretty different if you are evil or good. Because a "good" cleric will try to talk to those surrounding him and trying to redirect their paths to the light of his god While I have always thought about dark clerics to be sneaky guys who simply appear now and then, and somehow (depends on the creativity of the cleric) show a part of the power of their god, or behave in a way they know they'll get the attention of some people surrounding them.

Otherwise, we have the dark cleric who stands at inn crossroads and starts preaching the word of his god. That ends usually in a quick death or the goodies appearing quickly to kill him/her, which is perfectly right

And about the OOC approvement of players... When you spend some time playing an evil char, you start to lose interest in what other players think about you, because in fact, they'll tell you oocly: "you are an asshole", but then they will log 3 times more that week just for the goal of killing you back or taking vengeance in one or other way.

You goodies just don't know what you want

[chara]

IMO, it's a pretty dangerous time to be a Tanielite.

But see, I don't think playing a Taniel cleric is what you should do if you want to be safe. If you don't want to get involved in the epic struggle of Good vs. Evil, you should be a neutral char, not a good or evil one. Not that every Good or Evil char has to be hellbent on murder, but it is a consequence of taking a stand that you're going to be a target sometimes. Having the good players sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing against the evil (or vice versa) because it's safer for their character is... not something I'd really want to see in the mud, personally.

[tessa]

Well, I know it's dangerous to pick any alignment. I just feel Tanielites are more disliked right now than they were for a short while.

[Abharsair]

About the "old" Taniels, I'd like to tell you what happened to them as far as I know: two Taniels (one moderate, one fanatic) are still around, but lack the time to play due to other obligations in Geas. One (fanatic) completely left Geas with all his chars (good and evil alike). One (moderate) very rarely plays anymore due to RL reasons (studies), and the last one I am aware of (moderate-to-fanatic) stopped also temporarily due to real life reasons.

There might have been IC reasons as well, but at least in the cases I am aware of the above posted reasons were the main ones. And most of the times when I talked to a Taniel, they actually complained about not being "fanatic" enough, and the others (especially those who were supposedly good) being a bunch of "darkelf-hugging fluff-balls", who don't support the good side enough, so I don't really think that many Taniel Clerics were mobbed for being too "nice". I would say they were instead demotivated by the lack of roleplaying among some of the "good" people, and the lack of contempt by the majority of characters for those who actually commit appalling IC crimes, but get away with it, because they like to sit at the crossroad and chat with everyone who is willing to.

Don't get me wrong, I do not condemn anyone's way of playing as long as they stick to the rules. But you wanted to know the reasons why some of the old Taniels stopped playing, and I thought it might be informative for you to know what I have seen and was told.