To help me understand the issue, from the RP perspective, could you give me some insight into the character's situation? I've been trying to respond to this post for a few minutes now and keep fumbling over what I feel is a fundamental difference of expectations of what being Perverse means.

I mean, from my point of view, affiliating with the Perverse essentially is screaming it from the rooftops. What does a Perverse who does not act Perverse look like? Why is taking cover under the aegis of the Philosophers if a character doesn't want the exposure of full on public demon worship not a good option?

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

I am hoping a change could be made to let Perverse be guarded as well. You could perhaps design it so that certain profane actions lock us open for a limited time.

Unless, Lichdom provides an extreme mechanical advantage to make a hlc player think twice about trying to take one down. But even then maybe hold back on 'locked open indefinitely mode' until Lichdom comes out.

I want to rp a Lich but ugh, I dont want to PvP every day. I've been more of a PvE Perverse, leaving players alone and mostly just doing demonic rituals and trying to defy the Immortals.

>>I am hoping a change could be made to let Perverse be guarded as well.

While I'm not going to make a promise one way or the other yet, I will say very little we've done today is like Moses coming down the mountain. If things need to be adjusted after additional information and discussion, they will.

I am genuinely interested in what people perceive the Perverse to be and their role in both the game (mechanically) and the story.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

Yeah I want to rp a Perverse, but not have to worry about these bought hlc players that go around and randomly gank other players simply because they are open, which has nothing to do with rp.

Hello Armifer,

I think the complete understanding is that pvp open and pvp guarded is handled with major differences. PvP guarded asks for rp before someone attacks, while pvp open allows for anyone anytime anywhere to attack you (this is not exactly true as I've been told only other open people can do this). The reality is that you are opening up people with OOC issues with a person to attack their character if they are open with no reason needed for that. Unless you plan on changing the rules in the situation it makes sense to keep both guarded and open for profane just more for the factor that certain people like to abuse the system in a negative way.

Perverse place in the realms has been and currently is a hard thing to pinpoint. You have those who cause chaos and destruction, and are purely there to be trouble makers and nothing more. You then have a group who prefer the rp value, and do things hidden away working on connecting to demons, researching, and learning things that could one day lead them to their goal of whatever reason they choose to worship a demon. Not all of those reasons are purely power to destroy all their enemies. There are some looking to find a way to Revive their dead family, and many other different examples that is not places in this square box of destroy all living things. As you have posted in the past, our knowledge of what Demons can do is very very limited.

Making every profane open means you are pushing them into one rp style of the profane, and one that has been very abused in the past by many people. Guarded exist to stop the abuse of the pvp system to cause the many issues that have had happened. So it would not make sense to remove guarded from the selection process and allow for profane to be limited to only Open or Guarded.

Thank you for your time,

Totenus

As someone with more than one necromancer for RP reasons and I truly enjoy the guild play style, I am extremely unhappy about being forced open. At this stage in my character's development (much of it public) it is utterly unbelievable she's suddenly not Perverse so just choosing a different affiliation is not a comfortable option. The primary reason being it opens the door to an aspect of the game I am sincerely uninterested in - nonconsented pvp.

Being forced Guarded? Completely understand and support. Necros aren't fluffy bunnies. They're fiddling with the fabric of reality. If someone has a story they want to run out and want to involve conflict/combat then so be it. We all knew that going in.

Being forced Open? Not acceptable that someone who wants to run around and do murder for giggles can mess with me just because they're feeling cranky. As much as we would like to think otherwise, more often than not open combat seems to arise from OOC reasons or no reason at all. Everything about this a huge ginormous gargantuan colossal turn off for me. If I can't train/develop my character because someone else has an issue and I have no recourse to them repeatedly hunting me down... why would I pay for that?

Perhaps a compromise could be a lock similar to the punishment lockouts. If seen participating in a truly Perverse activity (in my experience tends to include GM involvement) then be locked open for a period of time. For example, those disrupting the devices at this event, in my opinion, would have been great targets to lock open for the duration be they necro or not. Willful and visible aiding of demons. My character works very hard to maintain appearances and nothing about LOOK would tip off even the most observant passerby. To me that means from an RP standpoint the average Elanthian wouldn't know her on sight for what she is which (again to me) translates to they have no reason/cause/justification to attack.

At the same time, I do want to say a giant Thank You for having a big RP event that pulled in so many people and went on for a few days. I've been around a long time on various accounts and appreciate/enjoy any break from the daily grind. Now if we could just have some real dragons....

As I see the alignments are such:

Perverse (Big Bad Guys)
BURN ALL THE BABIES! Openly and actively working with the Demonic, or plotting the downfall of society for personal gain/glory.

Necromancer (Catch all alignment)
I want to eventually burn all the babies, but I cant handle making everyone my enemy yet. Or...
I dont know what I want yet, so Im listening to what everyone has to say. Or...
Im not sold on the Philosopher thing, I think they might be deluded. Or...
Etc etc.

Philosopher (Almost the good guy, if you can get past all that murder.)
We need to kill death, even if it means I have to sully my soul and turn my back on the Immortals.

Elusive
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

I can't help but wonder how many of the people crying about the supposed dangers of being Open have never actually done it. I've been open for years but I can count on one hand the number of times I was attacked out of nowhere.

I've heard this "players run scripts to see who is Open" thing a lot, but I've been playing a low-level Empath open for months and months now, and not a single random gank to show for it. My character is also a huge jerk who is racist, xenophobic and virulently anti-necromancer and she's only ever been killed for things she brought on herself.

If you don't want to openly align your character with the perverse and deal with the accompanying PvP consequences, then don't. You're not going to be posting fliers for your "Baby Buffet Luncheonette and Tea Room" until you feel confident that the pitchfork-wielding mobs can't just run you out of town. Keep the baby buffet invitation only until you're ready to deal with the consequences.

-- Player of Qihhth

<<Also, character continuity for those RP fans: When I developed my characters this was not a concern.>>

That's exactly the point and you hit on it here too.

<<Do I think a necro, at any stage of taint, should be able to go closed? Eh. Not so much. That was made pretty clear up front.>>

Guarded and Closed say essentially exactly the same thing to me as an player who might run into your character in the game; it tells me if any interaction with you results in violence, I risk a warning or lockout with my character. No big deal, I have had lots of great RP and conflicts with Guarded/Closed folks, but I certainly am aware of their stance and those two are treated the exact same. This has been beaten to death though.

<<Why should I, now a year + later, have to pretend to make a wildly different choice to avoid some potential extra metagaming BS? None of my characters could believable turn up as Philosophers without me the player having to endure some OOC crap I didn't sign up for based on information present to me at the outset.>>

It wasn't a concern for you because you were mechanically able to pursue a wildly "evil" path while managing the mechanics in a way that would allow you to play without social danger in a multi-player game. And some people want that (a lot of people from what this thread shows). I get that. The flip-side is that a lot of characters have put a ton of time and work into opposing that exact same path you took your character down and now they will have to adjust to accommodate the desire from some players to play without player-based repercussions. Other players have gone through a lot of hard work because they didn't duck the natural repercussions of their necro RP and might think this cheapens their work.

Looking at the consistent concern by almost every poster in this thread, I think the problem isn't even necromancer related, I think it's related to Open and policy. For as long as I've played, there's always been 1-3 active characters that blow up newb Opens from time to time and gave rise to this whole terror that Open equals terrible experience. I'd like to see the hammer drop on those people for harassment or something. Maybe a flag for killing more than 1 person under a certain amount of skill on you in a certain amount of time. I don't know. They're not hard characters to pick out and I'm positive staff knows them.

Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the
other shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice. —Inferno

I'll be honest, at least from a Necromancer Perspective (Philo, not terribly interested in the orb gameplay) I'm mostly just annoyed that we don't have States of Being yet. You may feel like this taints the current wondrous conversation about policy, but I'm willing to deal with that to get this out in the open. I'm suspicious that subconsciously a lot of folks are just upset because this event didn't end up releasing States of Being.

In an effort to help Armifer not be lost under a deluge of posts -

>I'm a circle 16 necromancer who just started playing the game who will now likely have to endure more-than-a-handful of non-consenting ganks that have no obvious IC grounding

As a general consideration, RP having consequence is a good thing. Including, the choice of when to declare yourself a Perverse Necromancer. Remember that you are part of a larger game world and setting, and the choices you make regarding your RP may have consequence. If this consequence influences how you RP, that is also a good thing. There are a number of ways to be involved in Perverse RP, and we hope to expand on this area of the lore.

>Other than having up a single buff in town, I can't find that I did anything so terribly wrong to go from nothing to exile in a blink.

While we understand that this change is sudden, and are sympathetic to people caught off guard by it, it was never intended that Necromancers reside in town with Transcendental buffs up. Please note, however, that the situation you described would have previously occurred exactly as it did anyway had someone had ACCUSEd you to a guard.

>My only question is what in the world are some of you people doing that being Open is an immediate death sentence?

THIS ……..SO MUCH THIS.


This has been my question for a long time.

When an unconsented death happens, it has always been the moral policy to say "yeah that sucks it shouldn't happen" because well that's right. And im going to say the majority majority… the 95% have this feeling. I'll even go so far as to say, not because you lost skill, but because we just want to play this game in an adult friendly way were people can have fun.


We tend to shy away from the above question, because we know your frustrated, you have a leg to stand on with your anger and on paper things didn't go your way.


But there is a further question that dosnt get asked all that often, because I know for me, I don't want to sound like an insensitive person when your frustrated....

If it was a ganking where you got killed more than once.... What was your behavior like? Ok yes it does not make the ganking right. But im talking and asking you the question about how you responded, on discord in game what ever. Were you killed and just departed and walked away, or did you let loose with your frustration and start saying things?


Again I know this dosnt make what happened right. But do you have a certain personality that can be reactive when things don't go your way? Do you feel over victimized by someone. Do you find it difficult to see that Yeah, in this game somethings just suck? How do you respond to this?


What is your understanding and trust of the community and fear of someone coming a long and being able to kill your TxT. Everyone has read horror stories, my experience is they are rarely one sided, even if the initial interacting was not their fault. But there have been rare instances in my opinion where yes someone was horribly harassed. I have my personal feelings about these perpetrators.

But is it possible that there is an over reaction to finding yourself in this situation? And that is causing you undue stress?



I'll use myself as a example, if anyone should be getting open killed ganked etc its my character (Christ for the typo's ive made alone) But I have been open since the stance came out, and my characters behavior has changed very very little. Ive always been opinionated, ive always said what I feel, and ive always tried to push certain buttons within RP. But I can count on less than one had the times ive been open killed, and ive never once camped.


So please.... Tell me your secret. What are you doing to have this kind of attention that people are paying you so much attention when you remain innocent. What are you doing or saying to people that they feel the need to always kill you, just because your open?

So I will say this, it is a little arrogant of you to claim you will incur this type of attention from other players.

I know this may sound harsh. And im really not as insensitive as this dribble I have typed out might appear.

But if we are going to ask for us all to be adults. If we are going to cry about how some of these changes are effecting us, we need to make sure and ask the question...

"In asking people to play as adults am i including myself in that statement"

Part of being an adult is knowing "there are times you need to fight, times you need to let things go, and times you need to turn the other cheek"

Rifkinn

>Yes Rifkinn blame others for getting killed. They must be doing something wrong in order to get attention it cant be that people like Nidaeye go around hunting anything open and killing them multiple times just because.

If you read my post with the kind of open minded attitude that I alluded to, that constitutes being an adult, you may not feel the kind of angst your feeling when someone points out another POV to a situation that is often not as black and white as described by the victim. And this topic is terribly difficult to navigate and have people able to stay seated at the mediation table.
Especially when people feel they have a moral set of principles based solely on the assumption that everything stays rosy and people do and play the way their own self entitled demands they should.

I wont get sucked down the rabbit hole of PvP stance with you, mainly because again, your missing the point of my post, and that being, sometimes *stuff happens* but, how often does it happen really? And how are you handling it?

I did not blame them, at all.... I made it perfectly clear that its a sensitive topic, and that I regret if what I said sounded harsh. That is not my intention.

But from what I have gleaned from your reply, I feel quite strongly that your reply is a prime example of why I wrote out my original post.

I do not want this thread to be stopped. And tote, if you have opinions on my behavior your more than welcome to take it to the conflicts folder, but please do not use that as a way to derail this thread or to try to excuse yourself from seeing the entirety of a heated and difficult subject.

Rifkinn

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Helje
DragonRealms Senior Board Moderator

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~ L

I just wanted to give my perspective. My character has very involved in the Perverse plots, yet he is never the one screaming from the rooftops. He is the behind the scenes manipulator of those who seem to have gone over the deep end (The other Perverse, to Xzean's mind).

My question to Armifer is, should my character have stayed Philosopher aligned? He was kicked out of the monastery when forced to show his allegiance publicly. Is that enough that I should be "punished" by being locked PvP Open forever? I do not desire to be pvp open, as when I did it in the past (several times) I was simply ganked with no role play happening. I want RP with my pvp. That is what guarded means to me, and that is what I shall be staying (and I guess I will have to change my RP to facilitate that).

---

"If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself." ~ Martin Heidegger

I'm not going to engage, but just ask that this stay on topic. Thank you.

---

"If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself." ~ Martin Heidegger