Update on Open question to team evil/morally questionable

[Alex Vaine]

Even here, in post directed to evil and neutral characters, players have to protect their way to play evil. Intention of this topic was to hear out opinion of players playing evil and neutral character and even here those players are attacked when they are trying to share their opinions. This topic is not about your tips, but opinion. Opinion you invalidate when you guys are telling other players how they should play their characters. Why you are so fast to giving advice instead of reading and learning about opinions of people playing mostly on the North? It shows me a lot about our community. It is really sad.

[Rinzler]

predetermined outcome.

Could you clarify and qualify this, please?

While there has been a healthy increase of evil players, it still seems as if there's an unwritten rule where evil isn't permitted to exist, much less make a meaningful impact, outside of Soubar (or the +/- 3 evil-approved areas surrounding it). I don't think that's intentional by any means, but it's certainly a perception I've heard reiterated by many players and it feels real. An all too often response I hear is:

"You really have to respect the effort they put in, but sometimes it just doesn't work out."

It's what people said after Batibat's Undercity plot, and then it's what was stated after the Zhent war, and then again most recently after the Auril war. It does make one wonder how much effort is enough to achieve an objective victory / meaningful success.

Maybe it's what comes with the territory of playing an evil character, but generally what happens is everyone and their grandmother with a good alignment bands together and simply annihilates any evil initiative that takes place outside of the "permitted evil zone" (AKA Soubar).

Yes, evil has "victories" but they're generally self-contained and via a personal/guild DM plot. That said, I can't think of one example where an evil player's initiative prevailed over its good player's counterpart during my time here.

Yes, evil has "victories" but they're generally self-contained and via a personal/guild DM plot. That said, I can't think of one example where an evil player's initiative prevailed over its good player's counterpart during my time here.

Gunna preface this by saying I havent been on the evil side of things for a good while now (not counting my fairly new Duergar).

However I'm going to be entirely honest and state that this is THE major reason I figured out a way of turning Barry away from evil IC. In all my years here, I cannot tell you of a single major victory over good that I experienced while on the evil side and I simply got tired of trying. Sure we had a few very minor victories here or there, but never anything that actually felt impactful to the setting/server.

This was reiterated by others on this thread as well, but it probably gets my point across. I can’t think of an inter player conflict, ever, where evil came out with the clear and objective victory.

[Deathgrowl]

This was reiterated by others on this thread as well, but it probably gets my point across. I can’t think of an inter player conflict, ever, where evil came out with the clear and objective victory.

None of that suggest any level of predetermination. Who predetermines these outcomes?

[JustAnotherGuy]

I'll preface my thoughts by saying I play on Team Neutral, while admitting that many of Team Neutral leans heavily in favor of Team Good.

I'll start though, with talking about "who is the antagonist". The antagonist in a PW is the one who is actively engaged in stopping or slowing another's plans, or to stir up trouble for them. If Team Good goes out of their way to foil the plans of Team Evil, then they become the antagonists; think of the recent incident at the Boarskyre Bridge. In my opinion, the paladins who showed up to put a stop to things were the antagonists in this scenario.

To follow this up, the role of antagonist usually falls to Team Evil on this server, as they are usually the ones who are plotting and scheming, and thus are the "aggressors" in plots (which I think is a better descriptor rather than antagonist, anyway.) On a PW, the people who are doing the aggressing (or trying to change the status quo) should be at the disadvantage. At the bridge incident, the Paladins paid a heavy cost; they were the aggressors and had an uphill climb to accomplish what they wanted. In contrast, at the battle between Nashkel/Auril, the Aurilites were the clear aggressors, and should face a much harder time to win (and thus change the status quo).

Now, as to the state of playing evil on the server, what I have personally seen (and this is only my opinion based upon my experience) is that we have a few long term Team Evil players who deserve to be rewarded for their long term efforts. However, I would estimate that roughly 2/3 people on team evil that I run across are "moustache twirling villains" who deserve to lose, all the time. I know of a handful of people who have been around for a bit now who keep making evil toons, and they want to upset the status quo, but are trying to do such in trollish ways that only serve to annoy team good, team neutral, and likely team evil. (Emmanuel once ICly said about one such toon, "They are such an idiot and making the Cyricists look so bad that I'm surprised they haven't killed him themselves yet.") These types of efforts shouldn't be rewarded or encouraged. In fact, some of the things these toons have claimed to have done recently I have ICly brushed off with my toon saying, "It's not possible", and me OOCly explaining to people that it was indeed impossible for them to have done what they said.

As far as reward, I'm all for Team Evil being given a chance to win, if they would indeed have a chance to win. There's many factors to be taken into account to make this happen, though. Firstly, is that I still hold that the person/guild/team who wishes to change the status quo should have the success rate stacked against them. Secondly, invested players (player count as well as RP done) and RP should be taken into account. Then we must consider the actual possibility per lore/situation, weighed against the tactics of the aggressor.

In short, fights aren't even. If my toon decided to march on Darkhold and destroy it because I figured only Tarina was there, it shouldn't be a one-on-one. I should absolutely lose. The same goes for so much more. Neither team good nor team evil defends in a vacuum. But it's very likely that they attack in a vacuum. In other words, if one guild in team good marches upon Darkhold, Darkhold likely has lots of Zhentarim allies to help them defend. But it's not likely that Baldur's Gate and the entire Lord's Alliance would step in to help the assault. There should be a high likelihood of the aggressors losing.

[Louvaine]

Easy there, cowboy. Those very paladins you mentioned did take on a god and walked without a scratch. Clearly, you could take the Darkhold on and go drink in a bar next morning.

I'd love to hear more about your thoughts and experiences how you enjoy playing team neutral and what challenges that poses. What would you like to see change, what works and what doesn't? Let's respect the team neutral, the unsung hero.

[Rinzler]

This was reiterated by others on this thread as well, but it probably gets my point across. I can’t think of an inter player conflict, ever, where evil came out with the clear and objective victory.

None of that suggest any level of predetermination. Who predetermines these outcomes?

If you’re saying there’s never subjective decisions based on conflicts between evil and good, then perhaps it’s mere coincidence that evil always loses. Which then you’re right, “pointless” would be the better descriptive term rather than “predetermined.”

[JustAnotherGuy]

Easy there, cowboy. Those very paladins you mentioned did take on a god and walked without a scratch. Clearly, you could take the Darkhold on and go drink in a bar next morning.

I'd love to hear more about your thoughts and experiences how you enjoy playing team neutral and what challenges that poses. What would you like to see change, what works and what doesn't? Let's respect the team neutral, the unsung hero.

I sent you a PM concerning the first part of your response. As for the second, it might be fun to start a thread on the topic. I have my own opinions, of course, but others likely have differing ones.

[Tantive]

Honestly, I am wondering if organisations that are at least aligned in purpose do better overal. Religion, as an example, has been a great unifying factor for more scaled evil deployments.

On evil vs good itself, with expression in between too. It is harder to create then to destroy, so then I wonder: Perhaps there needs to be more specific subjects presented as on the balance that can be fought over. And the fighting needn't be an armed conflict perse.

[zhazz]

I believe I mentioned something similar to this next bit, when the first thread popped up two years ago:

The server doesn't have, and will have a difficult time to facilitate a Session-Zero between all the players (old and new) and the staff (old and new). It's not a discussion that can be easily had via forums in the best of circumstances, and for a server such as this one, we're talking 100+ different people needing to weigh in over the course of a year.

And that's just for a single character, since the wishes, desires, and red flags, may change with each character concept a player attempts over time.

So that leaves a situation, where one group of players want a sandbox for their characters to live in. A sandbox, where they can pick and choose what adventures and plots to involve themselves in. They know what areas they can RP in, without getting exposed to RP they are not interested in at all.

And then another group of players, wanting to impact the server through their characters, come and invades some of those areas. Through RP and long-lasting effort some areas shift partially of fully to be more/less appropriate for one group of those players.

The players who now lost a RP area are left with a feeling that what they enjoy on the server has been diminished without them agreeing to it happening let alone being a possibility. Or a feeling of having to engage with RP they don't enjoy, to protect the parts of the server they enjoy from changing to something they don't.

This goes both ways, regardless of what side of the pond someone is on. While we are one joined player-base and community, some players want one thing, and another want a different thing. Some want to change things, others don't want things to change. Regardless of the outcome of any effort, there's always going to be some players, who find that their enjoyment on the server is diminished.

What is the fix for it?
I unfortunately do not know. Based on this topic popping up again after two years, and many of the same arguments of team evil/morally questionable feeling their efforts are in vain most of the time, and team good feeling a win is automatic for them, I don't think anyone else knows the answer to that question either.

[OneExtraHand]

Is the desire then, or a main desire, by players of Evil-aligned PCs, to have a haven/area map/enclave/etc that is just by Evils, for Evils, and only Evils?

That whole Events and player-to-player and DM-to-player campaigns can be created, evolve and be resolved?

Without interest/influence/annoyance of any good-aligned PCs and/or factions/guilds?

you know, funnily enough, this was going to be one of my DM requests, to colonize an area into a neutral-evil aligned village where the bad guys can hang out. Unfortunately, I feel like it feels as if the DM team plays favorites, and I am on the naughty list. My requests have gone unanswered for two months with zero updates.

I also think the whole Aurilite war was ridiculous; Nashkel not wanting to pay 200gp a month? for a shrine to Auril? so they spend an astronomical amount in terms of gold and life to siege the Auril temple? A ridiculous response on Nashkel's/Amn's part. INSTEAD Nashkel could have petitioned good aligned factions for their help, so as to maintain Nashkel's appearnace to the greater Amn.

What really grinds my gears were the paladins who confronted Cyric on Boarskyre (which is another can of worms) faced no real punishment for a guy who wields a "god slaying sword".

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Easy there, cowboy. Those very paladins you mentioned did take on a god and walked without a scratch.

What really grinds my gears were the paladins who confronted Cyric on Boarskyre (which is another can of worms) faced no real punishment for a guy who wields a "god slaying sword".

Talking about the paladins that took a permastrike for that?

[Louvaine]

Yes.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Yes, evil has "victories" but they're generally self-contained and via a personal/guild DM plot. That said, I can't think of one example where an evil player's initiative prevailed over its good player's counterpart during my time here.

Wren DiCorvi and Selengil Harkonis' multi-year Zhentarim influence inside Duchal politics is a pretty big example, only being overturned in the past year.

Yes.

Probably should find out what has happened to those characters than to rely solely on assumption.

[Rinzler]

Yes, evil has "victories" but they're generally self-contained and via a personal/guild DM plot. That said, I can't think of one example where an evil player's initiative prevailed over its good player's counterpart during my time here.

Wren DiCorvi and Selengil Harkonis' multi-year Zhentarim influence inside Duchal politics is a pretty big example, only being overturned in the past year.

Selengil (Wolfshear) was the OP of the original thread under this topic two years ago and this was his conclusion:

Playing evil is entirely pointless and utterly unfulfilling on this server.

[DM Soulcatcher]

Easy there, cowboy. Those very paladins you mentioned did take on a god and walked without a scratch. Clearly, you could take the Darkhold on and go drink in a bar next morning.

No one were given permadeaths from that event, but some were given permastrikes. Any actual permadeaths were decided entirely by the individual player at the time and I spent my time asking several times if they're sure about it.

Please, let us be civil here.