This afternoon I got a message that I was taking too long to complete my next rank, and to hurry to do so or there would be consequences.

Not even 10 minutes later I got a message that I had been demoted 3 ranks.


Are you freaking kidding me? I'm not complaining about the mechanics of getting demoted for not hurrying along - which I still think is stupid - but the fact that I didn't have more than 10 minutes after the warning was issued before I was demoted.

I just fail to see in any way how this is enjoyable or adds anything to the society. I don't mean to gripe too much, but this is just absolutely stupid and is very frustrating to have put time into something and have it stripped away in this manner.

>And from a player's perspective, once you're aware of the true nature of the Council, one could avoid dealing with the downside of CoL entirely by sitting on step 19... receiving all the benefits of membership without any of the RP burden.

Actually you could stick on step 20. You can even go round doing the tasks again at step 20, but I haven't found a way to get promoted to step 21 after doing that.

>Not even 10 minutes later I got a message that I had been demoted 3 ranks.

If you are waiting for the warning you are leaving it too late. If you are doing CoL in Shattered you need either script the whole thing, or stop your script if you can't pay attention to it for more than a couple of hours or so. Hunting without doing CoL tasks gets the Pooh-Bah annoyed in what seems like a short time if you are just leaving a script running while you sleep or work.

>I just fail to see in any way how this is enjoyable or adds anything to the society.

Congratulations, you have just seen through the Pooh-Bah. Tell him to stuff his society and go and do something enjoyable instead.

>It's kind of sad that in 13 years I've never seen anyone really roleplay what the Council does at rank 20 (possibly for good reason, keep it quiet, etc.). I'm betting 95% of the characters created would be incredibly unsatisfied with the result of mastering.

If you're interested in an instance of someone roleplaying that, feel free to read Harnen's story (my character):
http://gsguide.net/index.php?title=Harnen
(Warning there are mild CoL spoilers in it.)

Chapters 1-3 are backstory. But 4-8 were largely roleplayed (in Platinum). I purposefully left it somewhat vague in terms of what the Council does. But it plays a large role in the story regardless - whether actually spiritually or simply as a part of larger events.

- Greminty

>>.It's kind of sad that in 13 years I've never seen anyone really roleplay what the Council does at rank 20 (possibly for good reason, keep it >>quiet, etc.). I'm betting 95% of the characters created would be incredibly unsatisfied with the result of mastering. Moving up the ranks >>myself currently (for the first time in awhile) and having conversations with another character I'm moving up the ranks with about the Poohbah >>and the powers granted, it's going to be hard to try and reconcile what's about to happen with what my character would do upon finding out


I'd speculate and say because over all Gemstone is not a cvc/pvp sort of game, and when CoL was designed and how it was designed with its ties to the Unlife/Iron Wind that indeed directed you towards a strife situation potentially with other characters. Something most players just didn't handle that well.

Don't get me wrong I actually enjoyed the hidden only Masters section of the GEnie bbs and the role-play that did occasionally crop up around things going on with masters. Even Greyslayer Ap'Davion being murdered by those fanatical fiends from House Phoenix while a guest in said House was fun but for most the cvc/pvp conflict wasn't handled well. I dont think that most players or GMs for that matter were ever that comfortable with role-playing around the Council.

To bad to in my opinion, because I always thought it would have made for some really fun, challenging role-play scenarios for both players and staff. Of course that was then and now I couldn't role-play my way out of a wet paper bag with a script handed to me to follow. At least not cold right out of the box. Hell I can't even recall my macros, verbs, etc just to operate in the game let alone trying to fluidly do so while role-playing. lol

Again though, there have been a few role-play events over the past two decades that dealt with or around the Council in some aspect. Though nothing comes to mind in the past ten years.