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