Update on Open question to team evil/morally questionable

[GholaMan]

So then comes a DM and throws some kind of plot and you can just claim that your house has in the last 6 months gathered 3000 slaves that are useful for this plot? Shall we just accept that happening? You may consider this a facetious example, but what about 500? What about 200? Where do we draw the line here?

I am pretty you would draw the line there. I'm not saying DM's should not have the power to tell someone no, I am suggesting I should not have to ask permission every time I want to do something.

And what would this actually look like in-game? Like you say you want something to do ingame other than grinding and interacting with other players (I'm personallyu thoroughly confused by this latter one). So what would you actually be doing in this case? There's no mechanical systems in place for this kind of thing and either way the criticism that is being levied here is one about rules, not mechanical systems.

So exactly what would you instead be doing ingame that you cannot currently do due to rules?

Interacting with other players does not automatically mean your RP has impact. Just as an example, a bunch of players could sit around and talk about changing the laws or impacting the world. But we cant actually do any of that, because it is against the rules. I can't erect a temple or shrine to my character's deities I have to ask you permission to do that. Which cannot be done in game RP. What is the point of me logging in when I can be more effective at just RPing via forum? Its not like I am ever on when events take place. So the only thing I am really missing out on is potential items, since social interactions between players can be done via forums too.

We also hear a lot about people hating having to use the forums. Personally I think the forums are great: They invite a more long-form, thought out style of writing that is good for storytelling, than something like Discord. And they provide a good means for record-keeping and the tools needed to search through those records with some precision. So related to the above, then, should the onus be on the players to record these slave-gatherings when they are done and then the DMs just have to read through every post from every faction, every player in order to ensure things aren't exploding way out of proportion? Or, at least my greatest concern with it, cause extreme contradictions and mutually exclusive situations, as well as an assumption of auto-success in all mid-scale efforts.

All in all, I am just failing to visualise what you're actually suggesting this would look like in practice.

Me: House Sshamath sends troops to gather slaves from nearby tribes of lessers.
DM: House Sshamath gets fity goblins.

I should not have to ask permission do a thing, you should not have to manage if someone is allowed to do something or not. You should just manage the consequences of players actions and effects on the world. As it stands we are not even allowed to begin to do anything, I cannot say I am building a temple. I cannot say I send troops to get slaves, I cannot say i've effected the world in any way unless you as a DM approve of it ahead of time. This IS how the rules currently work. Because the above example is considered meta gaming by the rules.

[DaloLorn]

Godmodding, not metagaming, but your point stands.

[DM Spartacus]

Come on be fair this makes no sense.

[Louvaine]

I agree on many points, but the temple is easily built. Just role-play building it, get IG and have some presence in an area. Fact of the matter is that DMs will have to green light the idea, but there is something you can do, without DMs. Start the process.

[DaloLorn]

How do you roleplay building things, though?

IG, the most you can do is clearing out monsters (if appropriate) and negotiating with any PCs whose organizations might be able to provide support. At the end of the day, everything else will go through the forums (or the occasional DM event). When it does, either it will have explicit and ongoing DM oversight at every step of the way, or it will fall into this weird limbo where you're saying stuff is happening, but nothing ever comes of it, and it neither fails nor succeeds.

That works well enough, mind you, when there's enough DMs to go around and there's nothing preventing them from "advancing the simulation", so to speak, in a timely manner (even if it's just to say that the your progress bar is supposed to be stuck on a given stage as long as it is). But the minute any of those assumptions start to break down, your only recourse is to pray. Pray that the system starts to pull itself back together; pray that the sudden screeching interruption in your group's plans doesn't leave them terminally incapable of finding anything to busy themselves with; pray that you don't hemorrhage so many players that you feel bad about poking the team after you finally realize you're going to have to start pestering people to get back on track.

[Steve]

Me: House Sshamath [wants to] send troops to gather slaves from nearby tribes of lessers.

What interests me here is what would be the result of PMing this request to the DM Team.

Is the worry on the part of the player that it would go unanswered, thus presumably halting role-play?

If the request was answered in 1-2 weeks, is that too inefficient for the role-play to continue? What if it was answered in a week, with either: a) DM: "House Sshamath gets [ten or] fifty goblins."; b) DM: "Let's setup an IG event on this." Is waiting 1-2 weeks for "something to happen" just too much for a player?

Realistically, players and their RP move far faster than what a DM(s) can do, in regard to Requests. But that doesn't mean that DMs do not want to help the players out.

And yes, being a player IG and having a DM "pop in" at random is more immediate and great fun. But as it has been pointed out, the percentages are low, depending on timezone, population, etc.

Probably, any means by which Requests could be sped up, would be beneficial to all involved. I myself have no idea on how to do that...maybe DMs do?!?

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Me: House Sshamath [wants to] send troops to gather slaves from nearby tribes of lessers.

What interests me here is what would be the result of PMing this request to the DM Team.

Is the worry on the part of the player that it would go unanswered, thus presumably halting role-play?

If the request was answered in 1-2 weeks, is that too inefficient for the role-play to continue? What if it was answered in a week, with either: a) DM: "House Sshamath gets [ten or] fifty goblins."; b) DM: "Let's setup an IG event on this." Is waiting 1-2 weeks for "something to happen" just too much for a player?

Realistically, players and their RP move far faster than what a DM(s) can do, in regard to Requests. But that doesn't mean that DMs do not want to help the players out.

And yes, being a player IG and having a DM "pop in" at random is more immediate and great fun. But as it has been pointed out, the percentages are low, depending on timezone, population, etc.

Probably, any means by which Requests could be sped up, would be beneficial to all involved. I myself have no idea on how to do that...maybe DMs do?!?

A couple of years ago I began recording when staff looks into submissions of mine, particularly on self initiated ones and while not as true today as it was a year ago, those submissions went very overlooked. One entry having only been viewed by one staff member, as the other two were me and YMHM, released December 7th, 2021

This snip was taken today, showing no change since I last reviewed it.

In other webhosts (previously Imgur supported this), you could see how many times the image has been viewed from external endpoints, and for five of those they were either one or two views, some of them going answered, some going nowhere. To test if this was solely a me problem, I had some submissions sent by other players with the same setup for me to view the statistics of and came to the same conclusion. This isn't a dig at the team, nor was I vocal over it publicly as others were, but it certainly diminished interest going forward in staff involvement of a story altogether, all the while playing defense to reassure that the players just need to keep poking for updates - in the PW's largest player guild. If there are fears of requests going unanswered there certainly is historical numbers to support it, but I don't know what that landscape looks like today.

[Steve]

In other webhosts (previously Imgur supported this), you could see how many times the image has been viewed from external endpoints, and for five of those they were either one or two views, some of them going answered, some going nowhere. To test if this was solely a me problem, I had some submissions sent by other players with the same setup for me to view the statistics of and came to the same conclusion. This isn't a dig at the team, nor was I vocal over it publicly as others were, but it certainly diminished interest going forward in staff involvement of a story altogether, all the while playing defense to reassure that the players just need to keep poking for updates - in the PW's largest player guild.

Yeah, so data to back up the current "views" would be good to have.

But also, what would be good to have, is to know if the current DM Team even likes the system of "Submit a Request for RP?!?"

Maybe this system is totally annoying, knowing that there is something to address—maybe tens of hundreds of things to address!!—sitting, waiting there, simmering...every time you log in or look to the Forum...going unanswered.

I mean, should DMing be about "managing the workflow?" Maybe, we should just get honest here and realize that requests cannot go fulfilled because the DM Team is under populated, and even when online, are pursuing their own stories (which in themselves DO BENEFIT PLAYERS, but only those online at the time...).

I don't think it does anyone any good to present possibilities—outposts, campaigns, world changing activities—if they can't actually happen IG. That's not a dig on anyone or the Team itself. It's just taking a hard look at the reality of the situation.

[zhazz]

I don't think it does anyone any good to present possibilities—outposts, campaigns, world changing activities—if they can't actually happen IG. That's not a dig on anyone or the Team itself. It's just taking a hard look at the reality of the situation.

Which is what I've tried to address with an Effort NPC in the "Restructure or Status Quo" thread. An in-game means of tracking progress towards a goal, which only require setup by a DM once, and can then be left unattended until the goal is reached.

[Ghost]

Me: House Sshamath sends troops to gather slaves from nearby tribes of lessers.
DM: House Sshamath gets fity goblins.

I should not have to ask permission do a thing, you should not have to manage if someone is allowed to do something or not. You should just manage the consequences of players actions and effects on the world. As it stands we are not even allowed to begin to do anything, I cannot say I am building a temple. I cannot say I send troops to get slaves, I cannot say i've effected the world in any way unless you as a DM approve of it ahead of time. This IS how the rules currently work. Because the above example is considered meta gaming by the rules.

This isn't against the rules. It has never been against the rules.

What is against the rules is to assume result. You can send troops if you wish, as a high ranking member of House Sshamath. You can even send them to try to kill High Rider Lord Dhelt of Elturel, if you want.

You can attempt anything.

But you cannot assume the result.

So no, none of your concerns that you have raised are actually against the rules, as you have presented them.

[GholaMan]

This isn't against the rules. It has never been against the rules.

What is against the rules is to assume result. You can send troops if you wish, as a high ranking member of House Sshamath. You can even send them to try to kill High Rider Lord Dhelt of Elturel, if you want.

You can attempt anything.

But you cannot assume the result.

So no, none of your concerns that you have raised are actually against the rules, as you have presented them.

Alright if that is the case I will hold you to it. But this is what the rules concerning godmodding say.

Godmodding
You only speak for your character's actions, not anyone else's. Do not "godmod" other peoples' characters or NPCs, or dictate their actions without the consent of the character's player or the DM(s) stewarding the NPCs. NPCs are not soulless entities to be disregarded when a DM is not present. Treat them as if they are able to react to your actions regardless if someone is behind the wheel or not. As a general rule of thumb, assume that one NPC represents 10 of them being nearby, and that your character is always outmatched power wise. Also, do not assume that they cannot see your character if they are hiding, invisible, disguised, or polymorphed, unless a DM tells you that it is OK to do so.

Minor instances of NPC interactions may however be used, such as and for example: "The merchant said they would spread the rumor I was seeking a special item," or "the bartender takes my order and brings me my drink," or "The local guards gave me directions or information about the laws."

It is also safe to assume obedience of reasonable orders given to subordinate NPCs (for instance, NPC assets controlled by your guild), but not the success of those orders. If you would like to speak directly in these subordinate NPCs' voices, please seek permission from the DM team first and this will be reviewed on a per-case basis. An exception to this is roleplaying your summoned creatures, and this may be done at will with the expectation that the actions roleplayed are appropriate for that type of creature.

The rules say "It is also safe to assume obedience of reasonable orders given to subordinate NPCs (for instance, NPC assets controlled by your guild), but not the success of those orders." Fair enough, but I am wondering how many people thought that using faction resources to assassinate a lord of the land would be a reasonable order? And I know I am not alone in the thought of what is considered reasonable before asking permission to do something was far lower than trying to kill a lord. I mean I personally have gotten in trouble with staff from godmodding in the past because one of my characters was interacting with NPC's while they had a mask on.

[selhan]

I am not one to make any claim that I know everything about DMing. I've DM table top like twice in my whole life ever, never in a virtual game. I Have ran plenty of Player Events and I've always stuck to one basic thing which I feel was a simple enough guide to follow. That was...

A DM or even as a player leading a Player event, you inform others what they see if they see it. You give them the description to whats before their eyes. And when your finally finished, you ask them in order one simple question, that is..

"What will you do?"

On the player side , their response would be anything "In the attempt" then the DM gives the results.

*PlayerX : Attempts to cast a thick fog in the middle of the main street of Neshkal*

((DM behind the scene rolls a D20 to check results of the Fog, 10 below / 11 high does the fog freak ppl out? Do the Guards see it? ))
*DM: You PlayerX succeed in casting a thick fog in the middle of the main streets of Neshkal, your spell cause panic to the commoners and they flee in fear, but such actions considered illegal to an unregister magic user, has attracted a group of guards rushing towards you with hostile intent in their eyes.*

*PlayerX the faction leader of the 9th Circle Club attempts to sends tropes to gather as many slaves around the town and have them brought over*
DM: Rolls d20 to check the results, how many slaves does PlayerX tropes manage to find or bring in?

I assume that is how the game is played, do correct me if im wrong. But with that concept in mind, I've never had trouble in that approach. If I myself in my experience have anything to complain about, it would be, "Not getting the DM response to tell me the results of my attempt" Not to say its always the case, but in my opinion , such the case is a crucial thing if no reply ever comes.
A:) it breaks players motivation or even enjoyment in the game
B:) it prevents progress or fails when such attempts are ignored or failed to be replied too.
C:) It opens the doors to player bootleg response and claims. Cause since there was no reply, some players will take that as a "I make my own results" and suddenly they claim their faction got 5000x NPCs.

A faction leader with npc's should be allowed to give instructions to just about anything within the rules of the server. However the results are narrated by the DMs because in this game of Dungeons and Dragons that we all so love to play, the roll of the dice is suppose to give us the results to each and everything we attempt to do ie, from choking a person with their bare hands to a hostile take over of a city. Any attempt within the rules of the server from my understanding is ALLOWED. However the Player does NOT make the results. Thats for DM's to decide. I've had 0 Problems with that approach. Except! When I dont get a response from a DM which is a rare thing in my own experience. But it does or can happen.

Now how can that get fixed? Idk , not a DM nor understand that world much but I can pretty much guess from simply reading this thread , that its a freaking headache.

Overall I am not trying to bash at anyones posts nor attack anyone. I'm just trying to say , maybe its how the "Approach" is being made. Nor am I claiming theres nothing wrong with existing DM's. I only speak from my own opinion and my own experience. 99% of my attempts at DMs has been replied too. I may not always get the reply I had hoped for, but I get the reply at the least "Most times". I got a couple of DM events in my own personal hands, where my only trouble in progressing if finding the proper help (from player base) to proceed because certain ig/rp reasons limits my choosing or so I believe.

[Louvaine]

Roll of a die doesn't dictate results of all we do. You don't roll to walk in a straight line until you, for example, start walking on ice. And even then, at some point your Dexterity modifier would be too high for you to fail that task. You wouldn't roll to jump on a moon. That's silly. Even if you get a nat20, it's impossible to jump that high. Saying that you can attempt the jump is silly. Letting a player go down that rabbit hole is beyond my understanding.

[DM SummerBreeze]

In other webhosts (previously Imgur supported this), you could see how many times the image has been viewed from external endpoints, and for five of those they were either one or two views, some of them going answered, some going nowhere. To test if this was solely a me problem, I had some submissions sent by other players with the same setup for me to view the statistics of and came to the same conclusion. This isn't a dig at the team, nor was I vocal over it publicly as others were, but it certainly diminished interest going forward in staff involvement of a story altogether, all the while playing defense to reassure that the players just need to keep poking for updates - in the PW's largest player guild.

Yeah, so data to back up the current "views" would be good to have.

But also, what would be good to have, is to know if the current DM Team even likes the system of "Submit a Request for RP?!?"

Maybe this system is totally annoying, knowing that there is something to address—maybe tens of hundreds of things to address!!—sitting, waiting there, simmering...every time you log in or look to the Forum...going unanswered.

I mean, should DMing be about "managing the workflow?" Maybe, we should just get honest here and realize that requests cannot go fulfilled because the DM Team is under populated, and even when online, are pursuing their own stories (which in themselves DO BENEFIT PLAYERS, but only those online at the time...).

I don't think it does anyone any good to present possibilities—outposts, campaigns, world changing activities—if they can't actually happen IG. That's not a dig on anyone or the Team itself. It's just taking a hard look at the reality of the situation.

Personally, I famously hate requests and think that people should just RP and then post it on the forums so we know they are RPing. I really like playing off the RP that is going on in the server myself.

I do think that requests to get NPC's ect still need requests, but I also think that the DM team gets way too many requests for things players can already just do without a DM, or that -should- be able to be done without a DM. Overall I dont really like how much we drive the need for requests or that there is inherently the idea that everything needs a DM request (when it actually doesn't.) I think it eats into DM creativity as well as DM workload.

I was also against the idea of opening up the Bio program again for the same reasons, it creates huge workload that is difficult to take on. But now that its set up with rewards taking it away would be massively upsetting to many, and on the flip side, I can understand that having an easily referenceable sheet for a players character can be useful as a DM. But as I said, its a lot of work.

This of course is all just me, and clearly the rest of the DM team felt differently than I do, and it is what it is. Luckily even the DM team is flexible with things, so I can spend my time doing the parts of DMing I enjoy now that im not HDM. Not all DM's love doing player requests, and right now we are sorely lacking in DM's.


So yes, to Steve's point, being honest here.

[artemitavik]

In other webhosts (previously Imgur supported this), you could see how many times the image has been viewed from external endpoints, and for five of those they were either one or two views, some of them going answered, some going nowhere. To test if this was solely a me problem, I had some submissions sent by other players with the same setup for me to view the statistics of and came to the same conclusion. This isn't a dig at the team, nor was I vocal over it publicly as others were, but it certainly diminished interest going forward in staff involvement of a story altogether, all the while playing defense to reassure that the players just need to keep poking for updates - in the PW's largest player guild.

Yeah, so data to back up the current "views" would be good to have.

But also, what would be good to have, is to know if the current DM Team even likes the system of "Submit a Request for RP?!?"

Maybe this system is totally annoying, knowing that there is something to address—maybe tens of hundreds of things to address!!—sitting, waiting there, simmering...every time you log in or look to the Forum...going unanswered.

I mean, should DMing be about "managing the workflow?" Maybe, we should just get honest here and realize that requests cannot go fulfilled because the DM Team is under populated, and even when online, are pursuing their own stories (which in themselves DO BENEFIT PLAYERS, but only those online at the time...).

I don't think it does anyone any good to present possibilities—outposts, campaigns, world changing activities—if they can't actually happen IG. That's not a dig on anyone or the Team itself. It's just taking a hard look at the reality of the situation.

Personally, I famously hate requests and think that people should just RP and then post it on the forums so we know they are RPing. I really like playing off the RP that is going on in the server myself.

I do think that requests to get NPC's ect still need requests, but I also think that the DM team gets way too many requests for things players can already just do without a DM, or that -should- be able to be done without a DM. Overall I dont really like how much we drive the need for requests or that there is inherently the idea that everything needs a DM request (when it actually doesn't.) I think it eats into DM creativity as well as DM workload.

I was also against the idea of opening up the Bio program again for the same reasons, it creates huge workload that is difficult to take on. But now that its set up with rewards taking it away would be massively upsetting to many, and on the flip side, I can understand that having an easily referenceable sheet for a players character can be useful as a DM. But as I said, its a lot of work.

This of course is all just me, and clearly the rest of the DM team felt differently than I do, and it is what it is. Luckily even the DM team is flexible with things, so I can spend my time doing the parts of DMing I enjoy now that im not HDM. Not all DM's love doing player requests, and right now we are sorely lacking in DM's.


So yes, to Steve's point, being honest here.

While I totally agree that Player Run Events are awesome and we should have them and more and stuff, the difficulty comes in a couple places.

1) through experience I have found that the DMs don't necessarily read the forums, even in threads they've been active in regarding plots, thus the next event starts and the players go "what about...<stuff we did>?" and the Dm's response is "what?"

2) when it comes to organizations, we often feel we have to request support. it is very clear in the rules we cannot dictate NPC actions, even the actions of our own guild NPCs. So anything we do, like community drives, etc, has to be vetted through the DM team.

3) the DM vetting is often a safety net to keep people from declaring arbitrarily on some point "well, we have done this, and we have these massive resources, and blah blah, because we had an internal event we did ourselves and said we do, and now we're posting it, so it's a thing." That ends up ether then being the way it is, or has to be taken down by DM review and thus a bunch of hurt feelings everywhere.

That's why I end up asking for event support anyway. So I can say "yes this happened" with 100% certainty.