Post by ShadowCatJen on Dec 27, 2007 14:26:23 GMT -5
brian333 said:
This does not imply any justification for 'good' characters to kill off or otherwise attack/harass any 'evil' characters. My thesis here is simply that as a player, your choices have consequences. You should take it upon yourself to roleplay the consequences of those choices, regardless of faction or alignment.As far as I've seen a good deal of the evil aligned players have taken their lumps when they are caught. I'm certainly not disagreeing with your statement, but maybe because you and other players on the "goodie" side can't see all of it happening on a bigger scale that there is this assumption that those on the "evil" side are always getting away with everything.
I will expand on that in a moment.
The evils are indeed persecuted, hunted, ostracized, and have the majority of the player base turn their back on them. And the evils put up with it because they know it's coming due to their own actions. I don't think I've seen here once any of those that play evil aligned characters complaining about being punished for the evil acts they commit.
What they will complain about -- and is what this thread was originally started for -- is when punishment coming from other PCs reaches to the point of harassment. There is a fine line and it seems, unfortunately, that some are taking it upon themselves to harass someone to the point of wanting to stop playing.
It all refers again to rule number 1. That's all that is being got at here.
Since when do feudal-era criminals rely upon the Law to protect them from the persecution of the masses? Yet to a large degree this is the current situation. Is it too much to ask our villains act like villains?
The criminals are not using the law to avoid persecution so much as the crew has to take the OOC consideration that the PC criminal still has to be able to enjoy the game after all is said and done. Here is where the Multiplayer Persistant World bit comes in and what many seem to be conveniently ignoring.
From a true feudal-era mentality many crimes committed by 'evil doers' would be punished by death. Death by beheading, death by drowning, death by burning at the stake, ect. ect.. For some of the other 'lesser' crimes you have the punishment of cutting off a hand or some other extremity of the body. These are punishments that can't be carried out to a permanent end on a Persistent World server.
Two reasons for this. One, is the existence of magic. Second, is the continued enjoyment for the player involved.
On the sentence of death, you have resurrection to almost immediately counter act it. Having this done once is fine, but to have it done time and time again begins to stretch the borders of believability. How many different ways can you RP others finding the person's body or finding a bit of him/her and casting resurrection or true resurrection if it's needed.
Some here have mentioned permadeath as a way to get around the RP Cheesehole of resurrection. That, however, runs into the second part of it not catering to the continued enjoyment for the player. It is not the right of anyone except the player themselves to decide if a character is permadeathed or not. It is one of the few things that even a DM can not decide for someone.
On the punishment of cutting off of body parts, once again magic gets around it with the various healing spells and potions. It almost seems moot to have it done. Aside from the pain factor -- which when RPed right can certainly come across as a fitting punishment -- not much else is lost.
If you take it to the extreme where the part is cut off, then magic is used to have it never grow back again, then it goes into the part of the continued enjoyment for the player with that character. Some body parts are passable. An earlobe, a nose, even a fingertip. But if it's something like a whole arm, or a leg, or something else that would hinder that character from ever picking up a sword or casting a spell then you take away the adventure part for that player.
They would be forced to sit and never take part in the other half of this game of adventure and exploration (yes, even the evil doers like to explore and adventure sometimes, it's not all causing pain and suffering for them either ). For many that takes away a good part of the enjoyment from the game.
The crew has very much taken all of this into consideration. This is why the maximum punishment for some crimes that should be death is exile from a particular town instead.
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This entire discussion isn't about how faction A or faction B is/isn't RPing things correctly/incorrectly. This discussion happens to be about a little mantra that I hope the crew is still adhering to:
"Is it fun and is it fair?"
Many of the PoVs I've been reading here seem to only be seeing it from one side, forgetting that they are not the only ones here playing this game. What may be fun for one, may not exactly be fair to everyone else.
Group A maybe having fun constantly hunting and harassing Player B, but how fair is that exactly to Player B? Especially when there are others out there exactly like Player B who do not receive this same sort of treatment from Group A. Also, Group A is doing this to the point that Player B is no longer having fun and his/her only course is to stop playing. When put in this context, regardless of the specific situation/group/player, people are having fun at someone's else's expense.
That is simply wrong and the thought of the possibility that a DM has sanctioned this hunt is, quite frankly, extremely disheartening.