The conflict of two styles of RP - the Story and the Exper..

[aaron22]

hoihe... impressed by your willingness to come forth like this..

maybe take a step back and reevaluate some things.

we are all friends here and the person comes before the player.

[Hoihe]

If your reason to roleplay is to lose yourself and replace that temporarily with another, losing that mask is a major knife in the gut.

This is a game, Hoihe. Not a knife fight.

Losing oneself in a game is a psychological issue. I suggest you consider this with as much passion as you are putting toward this topic.

RPing for me has always been with the goal of losing self in another identity. I consider a RP session to be successful and fun when that happens. The occurrence of such is negatively impacted by stress and OOC worrying.

Reading the book is the same - especially if the book is written in either a first person narrative or in a pseudo-first person narrative (ala Game of Thrones or the Expanse). Can be an interesting experience ranging from "feel-good" through tragedy to frightening. Seriously, reading an Amos chapter in the Expanse, especially in Persepolis Rising in the way I read books can give one the jitters at how alien that dude feels and thinks and act.

[Dagesh]

I'm talking IC actions, however. Could there be any IC actions that require IC limits despite a player not wanting the consequences?

Can these consequences be interacted with and reversed with the right interaction?

Do they limit the field of life or limit it?

It depends on the situation, of course.

To follow up, is there any circumstance that could limit "field of life" or offers no reversible interaction that you are okay with?

[chad878262]

I don't know about all this no action having permanent consequence... As an example, let's say I make a character with the goal of being the greatest assassin to ever live (let's call him Artemis). Artemis levels and kills hoards of pve mobs, maybe gets in a dm event or 6, maybe joins a faction, whatever... Artemis eventually reaches level 30 and is fully decked out in epic gear. I, the player send a pm to the dms requesting a plot to kill Belt... Should the DM staff allow the attempt? If so is like to think they would also allow for the possibility of success. However, I'd also think there would be an irrevocable cost for failure.

In the end you should be guilt until control of your characters actions. You should not ever be on control of other player characters reactions nor npc reactions. If you RP an evil, backstabbing bastard and then in the future rp redemption/ turning over a new leaf there is no way you can force other players characters to accept that your character is good now. If someone's character is one that doesn't give second chances them your character may be redeemed in the eyes of gods and lords, but to that character he will always be an evil, backstabbing bastard.
I just can't see the idea that the player should habe control of every aspect of their pc and not habe to accept any permanent consequences.

[aaron22]

what chad said except i would like to add that the server is not called: Balder's Gate, The Hoihe Chronicles. But you might be able to start another server with this idea.

[Hoihe]

I'm talking IC actions, however. Could there be any IC actions that require IC limits despite a player not wanting the consequences?

Can these consequences be interacted with and reversed with the right interaction?

Do they limit the field of life or limit it?

It depends on the situation, of course.

To follow up, is there any circumstance that could limit "field of life" or offers no reversible interaction that you are okay with?

Does the circumnstance OOCly limit the person? I.e.: You cannot be this anymore ever.

If the above is true - should never ever happen.


Want to know a place that I'm fine with permadeath?

Polaris13/Baystation 12.

The above 2 RP games work on a round based setting rather than a persistent one. Character development, interactions and events remain persistent throughout rounds, but antagonistic actions are self-contained in each round.

A round lasts 3 hours, give or take 1-2 hours depending on votes to extend or votes to evacuate.

An antagonistic action is a hostile act against another PC or the setting. For small-impact antagonism (e.g.: theft, brawl and low-key sabotage), the self-contained rule may be waived.

In each round, if you die and you are not recovered within about 5-10 minutes and not in possession of an intact brain, you are essentially permanently dead. Meaning you can no longer participate in the round. Meaning you are permanently dead.

However, because each round is antagonistically self-contained, you as a player are not punished for IC events. You merely step away for 2-3 hours, maybe 5 if you are unlucky and you can once again don the mask as if nothing happened.


The above is the only way Permanent Death can work in a persistent roleplay setting. Notice how neither the death is truly permanent, nor is the setting truly persistent.

I don't know about all this no action having permanent consequence... As an example, let's say I make a character with the goal of being the greatest assassin to ever live (let's call him Artemis). Artemis levels and kills hoards of pve mobs, maybe gets in a dm event or 6, maybe joins a faction, whatever... Artemis eventually reaches level 30 and is fully decked out in epic gear. I, the player send a pm to the dms requesting a plot to kill Belt... Should the DM staff allow the attempt? If so is like to think they would also allow for the possibility of success. However, I'd also think there would be an irrevocable cost for failure.

In the end you should be guilt until control of your characters actions. You should not ever be on control of other player characters reactions nor npc reactions. If you RP an evil, backstabbing bastard and then in the future rp redemption/ turning over a new leaf there is no way you can force other players characters to accept that your character is good now. If someone's character is one that doesn't give second chances them your character may be redeemed in the eyes of gods and lords, but to that character he will always be an evil, backstabbing bastard.
I just can't see the idea that the player should habe control of every aspect of their pc and not habe to accept any permanent consequences.

I don't see how this is relevant?

Can you play Artemis?

Yes. Is it harder because you have a poor reputation? Yes. But can you INTERACT with the world, although with a different set of conditions as was previously? YES.

If Artemis is dead, then there is nothing more to be gained from it either as his foe, as his ally or as his player. It's as if Artemis never existed.

So Artemis alive - gives opportunity for numerous interactions and reactions. Artemis dead - might as well never have existed.

The "might as well never have existed" has a flipside. Given enough time, people forget why they hate you in the first place unless someone makes it their life goal to ruin Artemis's life and doesn't tire out.

Barring someone trying to ruin Artemis's life, save for if he decides to disguise and assume a new persona, within a year everyone will have forgot why they hated Artemis. If Artemis gets a benefactor, that year can be shortened even.


Regarding "If artemis is dead", my hatred for permanent death extends to all PCs. More often than not, when someone retires their PC or kills it off, I often find their new characters less relatable and fun to interact with.

I once even had someone consider their old character "boring", while considering the new one "good quality." From my perspective, the old character was more life-like, relatable and interactable. The new one felt like a character that's fit for a book and not a living breathing person. This conflict of views was born from them trying to play a character that fits "Story" more than "Character", and is a proof that the two styles are in conflict.

[aaron22]

without the spectre of death, then what is the point of anything that we do at all. all the idle RP and cookie dances are just a puppet show and the subterfuge and conflict RP is nothing more than tough talk at a checkers board. who cares if you are level 30 and been playing the same toon for 7 years.. its a effing carousel.

with permadeath there is something to being alive long enough to reach 30. even more so if you can play that toon for 7 years. to retire a toon after such a tenure on your terms would be a remarkable achievement worthy of some praise. it makes RcR so much more dangerous. it makes playing in groups important for survival. it makes the game MORE LIKE DnD.

What???

that sounds terrible.

[Hoihe]

without the spectre of death, then what is the point of anything that we do at all. all the idle RP and cookie dances are just a puppet show and the subterfuge and conflict RP is nothing more than tough talk at a checkers board. who cares if you are level 30 and been playing the same toon for 7 years.. its a effing carousel.

with permadeath there is something to being alive long enough to reach 30. even more so if you can play that toon for 7 years. to retire a toon after such a tenure on your terms would be a remarkable achievement worthy of some praise. it makes RcR so much more dangerous. it makes playing in groups important for survival. it makes the game MORE LIKE DnD.

What???

that sounds terrible.

Here's a simple thought process.


1. Playing a live character gives you an infinite amount of options to interact with the world as.
2. There is an infinite amount of options to interact with a live character.
3. There is exactly 1 option by which you can interact with the world as an indefinitely dead character. Be Resurrected.
4. There is exactly 1 option by which you can interact with an indefinitely dead character. Resurrect them.
5. There is exactly 0 ways to interact with the world as a permanently dead character.
5. There is exactly 0 ways to interact with a permanently dead character.


A dead character might as well not exist and never have existed.

A retired character has 0 intractability as well.

And what is the point of anything we do at all? To live in Forgotten Realms as a character or another.


To do that, you need to have interactions. Not actions. Not reactions. Interaction. A dead or retired character is unable to react or act.

And yes, this also means I hate the notion of retiring characters as it steals them away from being interacted with. People I RP with can note that I often try to interact with their retired characters.


Edit: And before anyone remarks

"But X died and cause my PC to do Y" - that is not interaction. That is a reaction to something.


To live with a previous commentator's question...Why play a multiplayer game when all you do is react? Singleplayer games literally provide that.

Interaction and life-like sandbox is the key to a persistent multiplayer RP game.

"DnD" as a game design works only in finite campaigns with clear end points for the campaign and small playerbases.

[aaron22]

then do your damndest to stay alive so you can have option 1 and 2. how can your character really live if it cannot really die?

are you proud of your character(s)? why? are you also really proud of beating your 8yo niece in one on one, because that is about what it's like. the challenges this game provides are not at in the interactions with people because it is tee ball without permadeath.

lets do whatever we want without any repercussions so we can all live forever in the happy hunting grounds of BGtSCC.

its like i have said before. there are no heroes on the server because nothing heroic has ever been done. why? because death was never a option.

tee ball

[Hoihe]

then do your damndest to stay alive so you can have option 1 and 2. how can your character really live if it cannot really die?

are you proud of your character(s)? why? are you also really proud of beating your 8yo niece in one on one, because that is about what it's like. the challenges this game provides are not at in the interactions with people because it is tee ball without permadeath.

lets do whatever we want without any repercussions so we can all live forever in the happy hunting grounds of BGtSCC.

its like i have said before. there are no heroes on the server because nothing heroic has ever been done. why? because death was never a option.

tee ball

Does one to die for their achievements to be real? Let's go and shoot Stephen Hawking then, so as to ensure his achievements actually hold weight.

Your entire point hinges on treating death as an OOC aspect.

What prevents you from ICly ignoring the fact that permadeath doesn't exist?


I can do it. Done it in fact. Made a choice that ran risk of very, very negatively affecting the outcome of a DM plotline just to ensure a single PC didn't die. This almost caused a mutiny because of the selfish action, and we only succeeded thanks to Arkaine saving the day.

There were no mentions of permadeath anywhere. There was no such threat. Yet I played with the tension of it existing ICly, because ICly death is bad.

I was able to simply separate the comfort of OOC from the tension of IC. Why is this request so difficult?

To have comfort OOC once you "Decontaminate"/"Detach" from playing. To have proper IC approach to death when actively playing?

To know OOC that all actions can be reversed doesn't imply your character knows.

If you properly lose yourself OOC when playing, your knowledge will be limited entirely to what your character knows.

[aaron22]

and that is great. i can also pretend i won the Heisman but it doesnt put a trophy on my mantle. no matter how hard a pretend it is there.

there is nothing to push home the point of fear for your character's life like an actual death of character.

you want to see a paradigm shift in the way people play on this server.. make it HC and see how much pretending your character's mortality holds in comparison. can you hear me laughing at your pretend concept from here?

it is quite clear that i have no idea how you like to play on this server. i would probably die if i tried to play the way you do. i think the game would be a googleplex more fun if it were more HC and everyone played by these standards, but i will just argue with my Heisman Trophy because it will never happen.

that doesnt stop me from trying.. always the optimist

[aaron22]

Here's a simple thought process.


1. Playing a live character gives you an infinite amount of options to interact with the world as.
2. There is an infinite amount of options to interact with a live character.
3. There is exactly 1 option by which you can interact with the world as an indefinitely dead character. Be Resurrected.
4. There is exactly 1 option by which you can interact with an indefinitely dead character. Resurrect them.
5. There is exactly 0 ways to interact with the world as a permanently dead character.
5. There is exactly 0 ways to interact with a permanently dead character.


A dead character might as well not exist and never have existed.

i was rereading this and this makes absolutely zero sense at all. where do you come up with these equations. you are missing a very important variable in it that changes the whole spectrum of your model. there are a bunch of people on the server. so if dead character is not there to RP with then you can just RP with body number 2 or body number 3. who cares. your just there to tell your story anyway. so who cares who is listening as long as it is somebody.

plus if we had death we might actually have heroes... so dead guy hero could be thought fondly of or wished for in desperate times. maybe a statue can be made... they might actually deserve it now.

[Hoihe]

and that is great. i can also pretend i won the Heisman but it doesnt put a trophy on my mantle. no matter how hard a pretend it is there.

there is nothing to push home the point of fear for your character's life like an actual death of character.

you want to see a paradigm shift in the way people play on this server.. make it HC and see how much pretending your character's mortality holds in comparison. can you hear me laughing at your pretend concept from here?

it is quite clear that i have no idea how you like to play on this server. i would probably die if i tried to play the way you do. i think the game would be a googleplex more fun if it were more HC and everyone played by these standards, but i will just argue with my Heisman Trophy because it will never happen.

that doesnt stop me from trying.. always the optimist

On the phone now bear with me.


Why are you so hellbent on the OOC meta-game that holds no relation to the characters within?


Every argument you propose relies on one treating the game as if it had a OOC scoreboard.

Barring religions, if i hopped out of the train right now (which i can do thanks to soviet engineering), beyond having no more bullshit to deal with (which does sound enticing), how else would it affect me? I guess i can speak with other souls in afterlife and compare our "scores".

Do we even know if death is eternal IRL? Some spiritualities treat calls of the void as points where you died in one life. Does being a faithful of this belief mean life is less valuable?

Stop treating RPing as if it was a competition and instead try to think of it as a second or third or whatever life.

Some people treat their public personas as RP characters. For these people the idea of two lives is pretty standard.

Once you stop thinking about OOC values and consequences in relation to IC actions, you'll be able to superimpose your character upon yourself. Their wants, needs, fears, emotions, knowledge. The fact that death is not OOC permanent will no longer be relevant to your IC reactions and decision-making.

Re HC. I love simulator-focused HC. Have stamina, needs, realistic travel distances and time, realistic injuries.

The only caveat is that IC remains IC. And this means death is reversible.

[Reckeo]

I think death and the notion of perma-death is sometimes only utilized in order to represent 'finality' and ending to a characters story arch as a plot device, nothing beyond that.

It's a cop out so an author can say "Ok, they're gone done finished, I can move on to something else", or even "Retires walking into the sunset". Their life doesn't end, just the portion of the story that the viewer, reader, observer has been able to witness up to that point.

This being said, in a fantasy realm with necromancy, raise dead spells, undead walking etc, perma-death makes no sense. Why couldn't, if a player character was killed by say, an evil party of necromancers and deathguard, in turn raise that dead player as a skeletal knight, or a zombie, or a shade/spectre and allow them to PvP their old party members? What if that particular player doesn't wish to have to play that part, even though in essence, it is their character but 'all deaths final"? If the 'death is final' rule is to be enforced, then the notion of the fantasy realm loses a major portion of it's magical element, not just 'raise dead', but for 'undead' to be a major fantasy factor as well.

The reason 'undead' work as a plot device so well in traditional 'horror' themed mediums is because it represents an uncanny, out of this world depiction of what is otherwise supposed to an impossible feat: Walking skeletons? But skeletons are DEAD! How can this be?

It's complete contradiction for there to be a high number of undead roaming around on the server if perma-death is only enforced upon the players and not the environment in it's totality, which goes against the rules of the Forgotten Realms setting since its full of undead, ghosts, zombies, necromancy, and resurrection magic. It's not hard core, it just punishes the player for not having a highly successful character build that topples the hardest of what the in game environment offers while depriving said world of some of it's elements that make it magical and interesting to begin with.

Player characters are the heroes, the successful, the lucky ones that succeeded where all the others failed. In a world like Forgotten Realms, there may be 1 PC style hero out of every 100,000 inhabitants, and each PC is 1 of the lucky 1 in 100,000. This is also reflected on our character sheets. In old AD&D an average stat score was 9, 18 was almost considered the pinacle of perfection, anything beyond that was pure legendary or only for the pure gifted and skilled. A strength of 18 meant +1 to hit and +3 damage. Here, a strength of 18 offers +4 to hit and +4 damage, YOU ARE HERCULES. Our characters have strength that go to 24+ with relative ease on a strength build and with some magic. It's easy to attain.

There are also perfectly valid reasons to role play a character experiencing the after life. When I ran Pen and Paper, if a PC died and was unable to be resurrected, I would allow the player to roll a new character of equal or maybe a lesser level, or take control of an npc they liked that I was running as a companion to another PC. They would have to be coached in some of the mannerism etc, but it was never impossible. It was also a cool plot device to let them RP a character stuck in a pseudo limbo, and if they successfully navigated the death experience, could come back to the world with a strange power or something obtained through blessing by the Gods. In my settings, death was more permanent than on this server, but was always workable because it was designed always to keep the players entertained and involved. They would never 'feel' the things their characters did, but they did enjoy playing the story and their characters role in it. These are things that do not translate well into video game territory. As much as we wish this could replace PnP, it just simply cannot. It can come close though.

I have a powerful level 6 Wizard or something in Warhammer Quest. That is quite the achievement considering how brutal that old school tabletop game can be. I am attached to him, and yes I don't want him to die because it means I'll have to start over again at level 1. So many players died in their first quests we made a house rule that players cant even name their characters until after they reach level 2 (max level is 10, so level 2 is no easy feat). End result, only my Wizard and my friends Barbarian have made it without having to roll new toons, everyone else has died and rerolled many times. And while it certainly adds to the enjoyment and danger, it is also a setting that enforces perma-death for characters, as res and even healing magic itself is a rare thing (Wizard plays healer role and nuker role at same time).

I think there is a time and place for perma-death in games. Do I think that place is Forgotten Realms BGTSCC? Sometimes. Do I think that time is 'all the time'? No.

[NegInfinity]

You move away from home. Did you life lose its relevance?

Same applies for characters. You lose people to interact with? You seek new people. You keep on living as your character. Because for you, losing yourself to your character for duration of play is the essential point you derive satisfaction from.

Nah.

It goes like this: Imagine that you had a childhood friend you knew since kindergarden, and on your 60th birday he or she died. Do you go ahead and find a new kindergarten buddy? No. That ship's sailed. You can't enter the same river twice.

-------

Here's a simple thought process.

1. Playing a live character gives you an infinite amount of options to interact with the world as.
2. There is an infinite amount of options to interact with a live character.
3. There is exactly 1 option by which you can interact with the world as an indefinitely dead character. Be Resurrected.
4. There is exactly 1 option by which you can interact with an indefinitely dead character. Resurrect them.
5. There is exactly 0 ways to interact with the world as a permanently dead character.
5. There is exactly 0 ways to interact with a permanently dead character.

That doesn't make sense at all. You're too focused on ability to interact with the world.

Life has no meaning, and ability to interact with world like is not important.

A character has an ultimate goal, once that goal is achieved, continuing to live is not important, because nothing they will ever do will be as satisfying as reaching the goal was.

At this point the character should retire or die.

There aren't infinite options to interact with the world for the same reason that you can't read a book forever without ever seeing an ending. Ultimately the amount of events will be so big that the book will lose form and will stop making sense and character will become overwhelmed with them.

That's why a journey should have an ending. It is a stop point where you stop. Look back, and say "wow". And then rather than trying to add more and more to the painting made by your character's story, you walk away and start another anew.