Bad people Vs Bad players

If it's no bug or an idea, but it's still MUD-related, it goes here.

Moderator: Wizards

Message
Author
Olrane
Champion
Posts: 780
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 12:56 am
Location: Illinois

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#21 Post by Olrane » Sun May 15, 2011 12:09 am

Isn't part of the excitement of ownership the potential to lose?

Having something worthwhile (a horse, a custom item, whatever) is great, and there are many mechanisms in the game to protect them.

The potential for bad stuff, real or imagined, adds spice as long as it's not overdone. And I'm not yet convinced that anything here was OOCly malicious.

Selaina
Professional
Posts: 97
Joined: Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:43 am

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#22 Post by Selaina » Sun May 15, 2011 8:34 pm

As you can see this harkens back to what Ganon said. People are only "bad players" if they are breaking the rules or using OOC reasons to justify IC actions (which is part of breaking the rules anyways). Thats why what he said was simple and smart and it's annoying to see it ignored.
Also my idea of a bad player isnt someone who makes the game more miserable for a few others characters.

Its someone is does something blatently against the rules (Aragog and OOC garbage she did)

People who do not roleplay.

People who abuse OOC information.

And any wizards who abuse their power (personally, the whole yoda and phelan thing I thought was bullshit, and other things)
I don't believe the first two points is true but instead depends on your motive behind it.

Why? Because, how many people in real life, would go and scalp something? Cut open the head of the people they kill and pull it off revealing the fleshy inside with all the connective tissue clinging in strands to the skull and then collect a giant bunch of these with disgusting dirt + worse ridden hair and hold them around for a day or two? How many of our characters do it?

How many of our characters know words they should have absolutely no idea How many of them can magically read bb boards even though they don't know how to read? How many tshaharks can count past 2 in times the player forgets their character can't count and if they can't count past 2 how do they even know how numbers work? How many of our characters have taken arrows from corpses? Oh really? You want to cut out this arrow from this person and while it's covered in blood and guts and various other body parts and LOAD it onto a bow and put your hand near it to notch it? How many people use macroses to do things? Oh your character can magically run around scalping everything in less than a second, wow! Why don't he use that speed in fights!

All of these actions arn't 'roleplay' and yet no one seems to mind because doing these non roleplaying actions, does not really affect other people's enjoyment in playing this game. And thus no one cares.

In regards to ooc information

How many of our chars magically know how to do quests and where virle's book is and where quests are? How many of our second or third characters magically know where all the cities are, how to go everywhere, don't get lost and magically know how to 'focus' on some skills and don't train other ones? Again how many of our characters know words they should have no idea about since their common font is like 10 and they don't spend time reading anything? How many people have I seen who don't want to learn 'skill a' because they think it'll stop them from learning other skills as quickly? How many people eat raw meat because they can't be bothered to cook it and know that oocly their characters won't get sick and throw up everywhere? How many people have ever earned favour with a god on a new character accidentally and magically knew to ask for 5 million miracles until they arn't favoured anymore?

Again, people use ooc information to play this game all the time. Yet I don't see a Ganon against scalping thread on the forums. Or a ganon for getting sick after eating raw food thread on the forums. And that is because although these things are ooc, they don't impact upon other's enjoyment on this game much and so no body cares. If someone does something that uses ooc information and doesn't roleplay and DOES make people miserable, then you're likely to hear about it. But the point is it has to *upset* people first before you do. Which goes back to the whole thing of trying to make the game enjoyable for everyone.

I have no idea about the wizard thing so I won't really comment on it but considering the purpose of the thread is to determine what makes a person a bad person, I'd say it's really rather like someone reading a walkthrough or using cheat codes for a game. Which, in games by yourself totally don't make you a bad person. But doing something like this makes other people MISERABLE in a game with other plays and thus has negative connotations .
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.

Olrane
Champion
Posts: 780
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 12:56 am
Location: Illinois

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#23 Post by Olrane » Sun May 15, 2011 9:29 pm

Oh, Selaina.

I know you intend a certain reaction with the points you bring up: some things should just be ignored because it's too much work, and game mechanics sometimes are more important than roleplay.

I, on the other hand, read what you are saying and say "Ok, I am doing my best to avoid as many of these situations as possible, and I know a lot of people who are trying to do the same."

Bad roleplay fun times:
-People scalping just because it's lucrative. With no hint of roleplay about being a disgusting, lowly, stinking flesh carrying bounty hunter. No, instead these people are heroic. There's no roleplay either about the fact that pretty much these people are taking straight from the coffers of Elvandar for their own ends. Goodies who are killing for "honour" or for "goodness" should be nowhere near the BOUNTY OFFICE.
-People deciding that they get to use bulletin boards in game without spending the time to learn the Common Font skill. I am a huge proponent of making bulletin boards actually require skills, but I think some people think it would hurt playability too much. That's bullshit. :( Until I learned Common Font on my current character, I had others read/write for me.
-People doing things in combat that make no sense whatsoever. I try my best to avoid things like picking up missiles in combat*, and if ABSOLUTELY necessary, I try to go frontrow. I also hate with a passion seeing people go backrow then advance again quickly once the enemy has chosen a new target. There's a guard skill to accomplish this - I think that the guard skill should be fixed and there should be a code-imposed delay on the advance command after the back command...but that's for another thread. :(
-On macros: Outside of combat situations, these can be appropriate...they're essentially the same as "Taking 20" in D&D. As long as time-sensitivity is not relevant, go ahead with the macros. I think it would be some bullshit to have crafts, handling multiple corpses, etc. be confined to command, command, command. Go with your gut on this one: if it's being used to give yourself an advantage over others, it's not ok.
-On picking missiles out of corpses...I don't know if you use missiles at all, but there's a pretty high rate of missile disappearance. This accounts for the irretrievably stuck, broken, etc. missiles. Considering the weight and expense of missiles, and the fact that melee weapons don't disappear over time, I don't think it's absurd to allow missile users to retrieve their already diminishing supply.
-On quests...if you're running quests other than the newbie quests as soon as possible, then that's DEFINITELY a case of OOC abuse/cheating. If, as your character stumbles upon quests you do them perhaps a little bit easier, that's not a big deal. Many of the quests in the game kind of suck anyway because the solutions are OOC in nature (puzzles, etc.) And nothing changes the fact that quests are fundamentally bad for the game because they reward experience. They warp gameplay because the OOC incentive (character experience) is too strong to ignore, and that gets people to "cheat" roleplay just to get it.

*I'd like to see the command "get" have a high fail chance during combat or allow opponents some sort of attack of opportunity.

/ramblerant

User avatar
arxthas
Hero
Posts: 292
Joined: Sun Mar 28, 2010 4:49 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#24 Post by arxthas » Mon May 16, 2011 3:06 am

Very good discussion indeed. I think both of you (Selaina, Olrane) bring up good points. And I think different people come to the conclusion that stuff like this matter, slower or faster. Some of the newer players will come to realize first it after a year or two.

But there are people who actually do restraint themselves a bit and then about what they do. Which is one of the reasons I continue playing. There are interesting people still on the MUD.

For me personally, the good characters I play,

- Do write notes unless they have the skills, but there is an OOC part of keeping the game alive and information others. So I excuse that with the "for the greater good" argument and I do somewhat disagree with you Olrane. It's more about keeping the playerbase higher. But yes, I agree in principle and with more people around and better communication I would do this too.
- Arrows. I do pick them up because I consider the system that breaks/destroys them to make the unreal part of picking them up from a corpse go away. However, I also frequently argue that it should be impossible to pick things up while busy in combat.
- Do not talk to other people while reading/writing books because it makes no sense..
- Do not drop things (litter) on the streets because it does not suit their up-bringing.
- Do not eat/drop raw meat lying around because it's supposed to be non-hygienic.
- Do not loot corpses because it is immoral.
- Do not scalp because it is disgusting, twisted and the "wrong" way to get money for a good person.
- Do not backstab because it's sort of cheap and the background for knowing it is suspect.
- Do not go do/know all the quests.
- Do not go "hunt" with the hidden agenda to train skills. If one character of mine goes, it is to actually achieve killing some enemy and try to take that seriously. Like making a story behind that. Involve someone else. And _then_ go. Or at least pretending there is a story to that the orcs have respawned again.
- Do not hang around and chat with people that are too different because people normally do not cross too-big borders IRL.
- Do not question stuff which I know could not be true because I know how the game mechanics work.
- Give disguised people a good chance even though I understand OOC that they are thieves.
- Give people who put themselves at risk just to make RP some slack.
- Do not take up a huge of of gold lying around (I actually once picked up ~70gc lying in the Elvandar forest, but out of good morals, tried to find its owner and "gave it back" [i.e. let reboot eat it up] - and it was very satisfactory to me)
... and the list goes on.

So these are some examples of my standards for my good characters and I must say that nowdays I follow them pretty consistently. The longer time I played, the better I follow this. And the more I feel that I get out of the game. It is the only way I can play to still make this game interesting.

But it is of course disheartening to see everyone keeping to a lower standard.. Of course they all benefit from doing stuff like that and in comparison to me will get more influental characters - which to me feels unfair.

And of course not many seem to notice that people act like this. But I'd like to challenge the idea that "everybody" does this. If that was the case I would not play. There are still people who RP in this world.

Zehren
Overlord
Posts: 1057
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 7:50 am

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#25 Post by Zehren » Mon May 16, 2011 5:32 am

arxthas wrote: For me personally, the good characters I play,

- Do write notes unless they have the skills, but there is an OOC part of keeping the game alive and information others. So I excuse that with the "for the greater good" argument and I do somewhat disagree with you Olrane. It's more about keeping the playerbase higher. But yes, I agree in principle and with more people around and better communication I would do this too.
- Arrows. I do pick them up because I consider the system that breaks/destroys them to make the unreal part of picking them up from a corpse go away. However, I also frequently argue that it should be impossible to pick things up while busy in combat.
- Do not talk to other people while reading/writing books because it makes no sense..
- Do not drop things (litter) on the streets because it does not suit their up-bringing.
- Do not eat/drop raw meat lying around because it's supposed to be non-hygienic.
- Do not loot corpses because it is immoral.
- Do not scalp because it is disgusting, twisted and the "wrong" way to get money for a good person.
- Do not backstab because it's sort of cheap and the background for knowing it is suspect.
- Do not go do/know all the quests.
- Do not go "hunt" with the hidden agenda to train skills. If one character of mine goes, it is to actually achieve killing some enemy and try to take that seriously. Like making a story behind that. Involve someone else. And _then_ go. Or at least pretending there is a story to that the orcs have respawned again.
- Do not hang around and chat with people that are too different because people normally do not cross too-big borders IRL.
- Do not question stuff which I know could not be true because I know how the game mechanics work.
- Give disguised people a good chance even though I understand OOC that they are thieves.
- Give people who put themselves at risk just to make RP some slack.
- Do not take up a huge of of gold lying around (I actually once picked up ~70gc lying in the Elvandar forest, but out of good morals, tried to find its owner and "gave it back" [i.e. let reboot eat it up] - and it was very satisfactory to me)
... and the list goes on.
I wonder if you mean that those are characters roleplayed well, or morally upright characters. It seems a bit mixed. I agree with the OOC-based ones, though, and the IC ones would, as pointed out, depend on morals.

I have held conversations IRL while being occupied with reading something. They were not superiorly focused conversations, but they were easy enough to accomplish.

As for notes, some tshaharks IG make it apparent the guards transcribed their notes for them. I love this.

Zehren has often eaten raw fishes, even though he knows there's a risk for disease: They just taste so good...

"You want to cut out this arrow from this person and while it's covered in blood and guts and various other body parts and LOAD it onto a bow and put your hand near it to notch it?"

I don't speak for everyone, at least, but my most played characters do not care much for gore. But that is a valid point, I will have them wipe stuff away henceforth.

As for the cities, there are rather good road signs... Knowing their geographic location might be uncommon.

Now, a large problem is that directions are given by east, west, north, south and those mixtures. Unless you are superb at astronomy or carry a compass, this makes little sense. *must avoid* *must begin pointing at things more often*
Drayn wrote:Zehren, the Karmassassin!

User avatar
arxthas
Hero
Posts: 292
Joined: Sun Mar 28, 2010 4:49 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#26 Post by arxthas » Mon May 16, 2011 8:20 am

Zehren wrote:I wonder if you mean that those are characters roleplayed well, or morally upright characters. It seems a bit mixed. I agree with the OOC-based ones, though, and the IC ones would, as pointed out, depend on morals.
I'm talking about what I believe the combatination of the two, a morally good well role played character should be like. I consider the setting of the world to basically enforce nearly all of them as a bare minimum if you intend to play a good character - but a lot "good" characters do not follow them. This is the most annoying part and for me it nearly ruins the entire game when I see it. Maybe not littering.
Zehren wrote:I have held conversations IRL while being occupied with reading something. They were not superiorly focused conversations, but they were easy enough to accomplish.
It's quite a different thing to stand around in the market place and writing a book while having a discussion with someone. I would question a) the reason for doing that and b) what it adds to the game.

Also, you can justify basically anything with some poor reason. It's simly not specified anywhere what is right. So therefore I think a "common sense" has to be applied, preferably in cases where the choices of a character actually matters.

Zehren
Overlord
Posts: 1057
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 7:50 am

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#27 Post by Zehren » Mon May 16, 2011 8:43 am

arxthas wrote:It's quite a different thing to stand around in the market place and writing a book while having a discussion with someone. I would question a) the reason for doing that and b) what it adds to the game.

Also, you can justify basically anything with some poor reason. It's simly not specified anywhere what is right. So therefore I think a "common sense" has to be applied, preferably in cases where the choices of a character actually matters.
I have worked on unrelated things while discussing things with someone in public in real before. :shrug:

Either way, some characters may be supposed to have poor IC reasoning. This would be realistic, no? I am just offering this up as a thought, and won't delve further into this at the moment as I fear I would come across as rather mean.
Drayn wrote:Zehren, the Karmassassin!

amrat
Apprentice
Posts: 24
Joined: Wed Oct 10, 2007 3:09 pm

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#28 Post by amrat » Mon Aug 15, 2011 11:06 am

Hello,

It has been some years since Amrat “died for good”. My plan was always to tell his story in the form of the logs I had kept and posting them on the wiki but I never got around to putting all the effort into it that it would have needed. I consider Amrat an interesting experiment though so that now that I happened to stumble upon the forums again and read through some of the threads (including this one) I felt motivated enough to at least try to “show the results” (and tell the story, not that I expect it to be that interesting to anyone)

For those who never met Amrat (which I would expect to be the majority by now), he was an elven fighter from somewhere far to the west. Coming from an isolated, shamanistic and nature worshiping tribe, the fundamental idea of the character was the cultural clash between that world and most of Geas. To most people he appeared as a rather incomprehensible, especially when it came to the most recent developments of the society or things like religion or deities. His belief system was very different from the normal Geas split between the gods (built with the assumption that the normal view is the fundamentally correct one, not this “different interpretations none of which of more correct than others” stuff), the aspect of worship and respect of nature's and ancestor spirits was strong but fundamentally he was a very strong Evrenite (although chaotic as in the opposite of the druidic calm approach). In practice he would always appear as not worshiping any god as he was never given access to the evren shrine which is fine as such. The tribe shaman had foreseen that he would become a great craftsman but this did not appeal to him (or the particular females he was interested in) so he left and would claim to be a “warrior of his tribe” to anyone he met. He is the clearest goodie char I have ever played in a list of chars that includes Taniel clerics, gwenites etc.

After some wandering around (and getting rejected from everything because people didn't know what he was about) things started to go south for him after he scolded some elven lady for kicking a fox inside Arborea (probably failing to hunt it properly). This led to a young elven gentleman challenging him to a duel, which Amrat won. The challenger would however flee to the protection of the crusaders who would in turn “keep an eye on Amrat for his aggression”.

The next set of events would take a place after Amrat was taken captive by a group of Sathos (whom Amrat had been fighting from the beginning, as the natural enemy of anything living and Evren). While captive he would prevent the sacrifice of a human traveller (a newbie, with some nice RP with Jezz). Him being seen with the Sathos was however seen as reason enough to hunt him down and torture him by the crusaders. After dying of thirst at the pole, being recaptured and tortured more, he would finally be kicked out. This is when he would perform the only physical aggression against anyone other than a Satho and allies in his life, he attacked in retaliation one of the crusaders who had been torturing him (unarmed if I remember correctly). After this moment he would be an enemy of the crusaders basically until his permanent death, with Taniels declaring him a long time enemy as well and him being banned from Elvandar.

He would pretty soon after this be banned from Arborea as the guards took Jezz's side, this leading to a more permanent ban by the judge as he was a known aggressor after all. Having no other place to go he would live with the gypsy caravan (his tent still being there I believe).

The following @year or so he would be considered an enemy of at least the crusaders, taniels, rangers and druids. Despite this he would always try to protect those individuals from any aggression by Sathos and would always for example take part in defence of Arborea and the Asral temple against the insects (most of the time this leading to accusations about him attacking Taniel clerics for instance as the area spells would harm his as well thus leading to auto-attack). He would be attacked, tortured or killed on sight during this time and accused of strange things that he hadn't done. Often when he was captured and tortured people would make something up that he had done (as he had in reality done nothing and I guess it is embarrassing to notice that as you are torturing) and thus those things would then live on as truths. Other times he would be attacked by a group of young crusaders and taniels for instance, would be victorious but spare their lives, only to be then accused of attacking that said group by the guilds and that being used as a reason to continue hunting him.

On four occasions he would be challenged to a duel by the crusaders to resolve the issue once and for all, by Mathias and a human crusader and another tshahark whose names I can't remember. Amrat won all those duels, only to be re-added on the enemy-list by someone else for whatever reasons that I am not aware of.

Meanwhile, after being able to return something to the Shaos that they had lost quite a while back Amrat would be accepted finally to the guild, his progression being severely affected by everything happening around him (with > black belt skills I don't think he ever got past yellow). The shao guild would negotiate with Taniels from time to time in order to get Amrat's reputation cleared but with Amrat not agreeing to confess things he hadn't done they rarely led to anything. These would finally come to an end as he was being accused of sneaking into Elvandar against his ban (which he hadn't done). This also led to increased attacks against him (and increased rate of dying) and was eventually kicked out of Shaos (assumption being for the sneaking accusation but I am not sure). The last months he would spend hiding in the sewers of Arborea, finally having found his crafting calling. Even there he would be constantly hunted by crusaders, rangers, druids and taniels especially until the wizards started hinting me that “apparently some people don't take dying seriously enough and we might need to make some changes”. Thus I decided that it was time for the character to finally meet his end (as he did finally find his calling and all that).

So why am I writing this here? It is not just to whine.
luminier wrote:As you can see this harkens back to what Ganon said. People are only "bad players" if they are breaking the rules or using OOC reasons to justify IC actions (which is part of breaking the rules anyways). Thats why what he said was simple and smart and it's annoying to see it ignored.
I think comments like this are very naïve. You make a lot of assumptions about how much you actually know about the situation and people involved in it. In the story of Amrat above it seems a lot of characters acted like there was some big conspiracy against him. I do not believe that to be the case at all. I think there were maybe two crusaders that were consciously borderline breaking the rules for OOC motives but I believe even they also though that Amrat was actually a baddie and thus “he probably did some bad things anyway so I can just mention something here, it is just part of the game”. Most just assumed he was evil, went with the flow and the whole thing got a life of its own. I would expect almost everyone to have believed OOC that Amrat actually did at least some of the things that he was accused of and this belief does reflect to the game to a very large extent (Of course it didn't help that Amrat's defences weren't exactly coherent and that I refused to whine about any of it OOC, I could have done that and try to correct the common OOC perception of him but I didn't). Some of the game mechanics like karma don't exactly come to the rescue either.
luminier wrote:"unwritten" rules
In a MUD you will only have very few facts that can be proven in the few cases where the code actually supports it. A roleplaying game is always based on “unwritten rules and agreements”. We make things up within that framework of agreements and assume that others will accept those things we create as truths unless there is a good reason not to do so. If you want you can basically question anything that anyone says, creates, is or does. If you want you can abuse this aspect and never actually break the rules. The crusader guild could start killing random NPCs, loot their corpses and claim they are possessed by demons (and actually take that as the truth both IC and OOC if they want). There's no actual way to prove them wrong. There has been some cases of wizard intervention but short of that...

Am I upset with what happened to Amrat? Not really, he was an experiment after all. But the result is that clearly the OOC perception of people plays a huge role in how things turn out in practice and unless you correct these perceptions things will live on. Am I accusing half of the MUD of breaking the rules when it comes to using OOC information? Not really, I am just trying to point out that these rules are very idealistic and naive. If you try to claim you are not affected by OOC assumptions you are fooling yourself. If you think just following these written rules makes you a good player you are again fooling yourself. It is not about loopholes, there are holes big enough for demons there if you want to find them. Do I have better rules? Nope.

Now, the thread started with a horse. I agree completely with what some have already mentioned in the thread. I think there is a huge difference between what I consider a bad player and a good player even if they are both following the rules and most of it comes down to OOC. You can justify almost anything IC if you really want, come up with some excuse, most of it comes down to player integrity anyway. It is not that action of killing the horse but whether it served some purpose.

In the case of Amrat I would like to mention two people: Mathias, even if he was the semi-leader of the crusaders and thus hunting Amrat throughout his whole life was his usual awesome self. The temporary human leader of the crusaders (whose name I can't remember), a sadistic lying bastard who would make up things about Amrat simply because he enjoyed torturing people. I think he was later banished from the guild or so. I liked the character very much, he was the only one doing it IC and with the idea if it being noticeable and with the possibility of getting caught. That's the difference between a good bad character and a bad bad one.

@Amrat

User avatar
rafael
Professional
Posts: 93
Joined: Thu Oct 25, 2007 11:35 pm

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#29 Post by rafael » Mon Aug 15, 2011 8:04 pm

@amrat

Your character had a lasting if subtle impact on mine. I might well be ignoring the rest of the thread, oversimplifying, and glossing over valid points, but for me the mark of a good player is that they leave a lasting impression in the game and not on stat tickers, etc. Amrat achieved that.

An excellent story of a marginal/unorthodox character persecuted by orthodoxy.

User avatar
Desiderea
Master
Posts: 221
Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2009 7:59 pm

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#30 Post by Desiderea » Tue Aug 16, 2011 1:54 am

!! Is Rafael back?

User avatar
luminier
Overlord
Posts: 2732
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:40 pm
Location: Manitoba Canada

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#31 Post by luminier » Tue Aug 16, 2011 3:03 am

Desiderea wrote:!! Is Rafael back?
it's posts like this that make me wish i had forum moderation powers. lol
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

User avatar
Desiderea
Master
Posts: 221
Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2009 7:59 pm

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#32 Post by Desiderea » Tue Aug 16, 2011 7:00 pm

luminier wrote:
Desiderea wrote:!! Is Rafael back?
it's posts like this that make me wish i had forum moderation powers. lol
? :?

Zehren
Overlord
Posts: 1057
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 7:50 am

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#33 Post by Zehren » Wed Aug 17, 2011 4:46 am

Desiderea wrote:
luminier wrote:
Desiderea wrote:!! Is Rafael back?
it's posts like this that make me wish i had forum moderation powers. lol
? :?
If Rafael is back, both Zehren and I will perform a weird gleeful dance.
Drayn wrote:Zehren, the Karmassassin!

User avatar
luminier
Overlord
Posts: 2732
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:40 pm
Location: Manitoba Canada

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#34 Post by luminier » Wed Aug 17, 2011 3:07 pm

Zehren wrote:
Desiderea wrote: ? :?
If Rafael is back, both Zehren and I will perform a weird gleeful dance.

Guess I wasn't clear enough? This topic had really good discussion and you two are messing that up!! Come on guys, get it together!
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

User avatar
glasp
Professional
Posts: 84
Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2010 6:55 am

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#35 Post by glasp » Fri Aug 19, 2011 6:11 am

amrat wrote: In a MUD you will only have very few facts that can be proven in the few cases where the code actually supports it. A roleplaying game is always based on “unwritten rules and agreements”. We make things up within that framework of agreements and assume that others will accept those things we create as truths unless there is a good reason not to do so. If you want you can basically question anything that anyone says, creates, is or does. If you want you can abuse this aspect and never actually break the rules. The crusader guild could start killing random NPCs, loot their corpses and claim they are possessed by demons (and actually take that as the truth both IC and OOC if they want). There's no actual way to prove them wrong. There has been some cases of wizard intervention but short of that...
I believe this is a good point.

The world of GEAS is sometimes a bit short on setting, and this void must be filled by "agreements" and "unwritten rules". This content is what we build when we RP; in-game context, stories, characters and "made up stuff". Seeing that such exist and then consciously ignoring them sounds in my mind like simply lowering the ambition and dumbing down the game, while killing the potential for interesting tales to develop in the process.

The idea is not to reduce your behaviour to what can be absolutely proven. Especially not as means to maximize your own benefit and excuse it with "but I'm following the rules". With that said, the more which can be proven is of course better for the game, but that is a different topic.

To the horse as an example (and I know nothing about the details, mind you): It is allowed to kill it and it does meet the minimum requirement that the rules enforce. However... this is not the point. The true question is of course if there is a reason for doing so. This reason should also have a certain quality in it. Just excusing your actions with anything made up along the way is not good enough. You preferably make up your mind about your character _before_ you start acting and then your only focus should be on acting like him/her consistently. "I dislike the owner" or "it was fun" alone as a reason seems to be a prime example of a quite unambitious and inappropriate level of roleplay, as does "I'm evil so I can do anything I want". So if we are in fact going to be strict about enforced roleplay: a reason with too low quality might not actually be enough to qualify as roleplay (which is mandatory), and in that regard killing a horse might in fact be disallowed.

The question to qualitative reasons is of course subjective. I personally believe it should at least have a component of conformity to the setting, to the plots (there must be one), to the characters and have some sort of finesse or idea behind it. But plainly killing a horse for fun or as revenge with zero point to it is something I believe we can all agree on is bad/pointless. That said, I have no idea what actually happened.

We could of course put the attacking player against the wall and interrogate him. But unless a very poor answer is given, it would be hard to claim that there was bad reason to perform said action. In here lies the difficulty that the right to define your character is completely in the players hands (which is a good thing), but it makes it hard for anyone to assert whether the line of actions are consistent with what the imagined character should be like.

One idea is to introduce a system where you could document what your character is about so that this could be compared with the characters actions, or to make players give reason-log for important PC-PC interactions, which could then be checked by the wizards and admin. If write that you dislike tomatoes and are found eating them all the time, we could then catch you. I'm not sure that's desired, though. Wizard interventions happens, but those are time-consuming.

For now the best is probably if the players can regulate this by themselves. We're all invited to the same house and a mutual respect is required across the table. So maybe a few hints:
- If you see RP that others do, tag along with it instead of rejecting it. Explore it and nurture it. If someone actually made a creative effort to create something good, it is probably good to accept it.
- If you find yourself doing actions which are without difficulty or reason, it is probably not that much worth for the game.

User avatar
luminier
Overlord
Posts: 2732
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:40 pm
Location: Manitoba Canada

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#36 Post by luminier » Fri Aug 19, 2011 6:46 pm

amrat wrote:
luminier wrote:As you can see this harkens back to what Ganon said. People are only "bad players" if they are breaking the rules or using OOC reasons to justify IC actions (which is part of breaking the rules anyways). Thats why what he said was simple and smart and it's annoying to see it ignored.
I think comments like this are very naïve. You make a lot of assumptions about how much you actually know about the situation and people involved in it. In the story of Amrat above it seems a lot of characters acted like there was some big conspiracy against him. I do not believe that to be the case at all. I think there were maybe two crusaders that were consciously borderline breaking the rules for OOC motives but I believe even they also though that Amrat was actually a baddie and thus “he probably did some bad things anyway so I can just mention something here, it is just part of the game”. Most just assumed he was evil, went with the flow and the whole thing got a life of its own. I would expect almost everyone to have believed OOC that Amrat actually did at least some of the things that he was accused of and this belief does reflect to the game to a very large extent (Of course it didn't help that Amrat's defences weren't exactly coherent and that I refused to whine about any of it OOC, I could have done that and try to correct the common OOC perception of him but I didn't). Some of the game mechanics like karma don't exactly come to the rescue either.
I remember Amrat's case. The human you can't remember is Redentes and the tshahark you can't remember is likely Adanath. Redentes did roleplay being a bastard pretty well and Mathias was no slouch either.

That being said perhaps my comment was a little naive but still partially correct. People are bad players if they break the rules. Like Glasp said if someone killed a horse "just for fun" or wanted to give someone a hard time, like Amrat, "just for fun" with no IC backing, that's a lack of RP and that's against the rules because this is a RP enforced MUD.

I shouldve clarified my sentence a bit more.

To clear up any misunderstanding you might've had or still have I might be able to help clear that up since I was a slave Crusader at the time due to Redentes reign as LM ... I was not allowed to fight you... just RP shoveling unicorn poop (surprisingly not rainbows like the legends would have you believe).

The Crusaders thought you were bad because you "randomly" assaulted someone and then things got from bad to worse when you would challenge people and fight them and you were winning (Crusaders hate losing). So they would make you an enemy for killing Crusaders and then once that happens people just start to indiscriminately kill you and purify you until you pretty much join them (which people rarely do) and if you don't then you have to turn evil for support.

There was no grand conspiracy or use of OOC info, you just pissed Crusaders/other goodies off so they wanted to kill you. Except Mathias, he was never mad at you.
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.

Blizt
Hero
Posts: 263
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2005 12:14 pm
Location: Tennessee

Re: Bad people Vs Bad players

#37 Post by Blizt » Sat Aug 20, 2011 12:46 am

I remember some critical parts of this incident as well.

You say parts of the reason Amrat was hunted were "made-up" or lies.
I don't know if they were or not, but I know the people saying this were found highly credible. I also remember the Crusaders exhibiting good Crusader roleplay by following the orders of their Lord Marshall without questioning him.

I also remember that at times, Amrat was up for a fight just as much as the Crusaders were. If you want to fight the Crusaders, they are going to fight you. They are chaste, so they have to exhert that man-energy some how.

I also remember that Amrat was unique, and quite entertaining.

Sorry that things didn't work out so well for you, and I would like to see you bring Amrat back. Things may be much different now, who knows? But it would be enjoyable for all I think. A lot of good roleplay was shown during these events from all parties.

You tell a sad story, but it yielded positive results in the end. It would be nice if you tried again though. Times are different now.

Post Reply