Death and Memory

[teris]

So, part of the rush of playing an evil character - especially one that targets other players, like a serial killer - is manipulating things behind the scenes in order to kill your target without anyone else being ever the wiser. There's the intrigue, the tension, all that good stuff. The risk is that you get discovered, or that the public discovers what you're doing, and you end up hunted; the pay-off is the role-play aspect of mounting tension and more and more heat. Keeping your public persona and your alter-ego separate is also a challenge, and a lot of fun.

But it's hard to play a character like this in a game where characters can be resurrected, because they're likely to take their death to the public forums, especially if you collect their head as a trophy and cost them EXP. If you're playing somebody like an undercover serial killer, it's really immersion breaking when you can't off a single target before getting outed.

Does Arelith have an official policy on death and memory? Also, killers of Arelith, how do you play around this?

[Ork]

Disguises.

[Nitro]

The official policy is that people can RP death however they please, and may remember any events surrounding their death at their leisure.

I'd advise investing in disguises if you wish to remain anonymous for longer, but sooner or later those will get pierced too. So all in all, prepare to be outed at any moment and have a plan in place for it, that makes it a lot more fun for yourself than if you're banking on remaining anonymous.

[JubJub]

Yes the server can't say you can only remember this or not this. Basicly I always rp'd it as depending on how long the death took the more I remember. You spend hours torturing me before killing me I feel I am likely to remember a lot. You stab me in the back and all it took was a couple of blows I usually rp something like I saw a shadow and then all went dark. or I remember fleeing from an ogre and then nothing.

As with anything if you are going to do something bad but take no effort to hide your identity you can't expect to stay hidden long. Disguise will be a must.

[Iceborn]

I'm not a fan of the current stance regarding memory and death.
So I still roleplay the memory loss.

EDIT: Sorry, there was a question in the OP. Yeah!
Lemme just...

http://wiki.arelith.com/Death
There

[Seven Sons of Sin]

The rules might say you remember death, and the Fugue, etc.,

but this is really a rule you should personally ignore. Never put it onto others, but you should not remember with any vivid detail the circumstances surrounding your death or the Fugue Plane.

If you died in a PvP ambush by drow in the forest, you could say you remember:

a) spiders
b) a forest canopy
c) attackers come from behind trees

I think a victim should always provide more of a hook than blurry memory, or a shadow, etc. Some hint that could lead a curious mind towards a certain individual or faction. I think assailants would love consequence that arises from some drawn-out investigation by the victim's friends or allies. That's cool.

Also, if you're an evil character and you happen to engage in PvP, and emerge victorious or having killed a fellow PC, and that PC goes around blabbering the exact specificity of the events, and your villainous character-

don't roleplay with them ever again. Even drop a line to the DMs. Save some of your logs.

Move on and find better people to play with.

edit: I'm more than happy to lose. But if I win, and the other side cheapens this experience, I'm frankly going to disassociate. You should always do everything you can to make sure people have fun, but if a group or individual is still so hellbent on winning they cannot take a loss, you owe it to yourself to shield yourself from those individuals. They're not fun to be around. They're likely never going to change except via being cut off, or from the DMs.

Storytelling is a waltz between two characters. Evil characters often lead, and if the other side doesn't want to follow, but try to beat you, and not care about the waltz - then just peace out.

[Iceborn]

The rules say you MAY remember the details of your death.
It's up to the player in question to be a good sport or not.

[Nitro]

A lot of words

Wow, I don't think I've seen someone go "You're doing it wrong" quite this hard in quite some time.

And don't follow Seven Sons' advice about ignoring people just because they did something you personally dislike. That's how you get echo-chambers that breathe life into shadow rules and make everyone feel like the DM's are out to get them because their personal version of the rules is never enforced.

[JubJub]

The rules might say you remember death, and the Fugue, etc.,

but this is really a rule you should personally ignore. Never put it onto others, but you should not remember with any vivid detail the circumstances surrounding your death or the Fugue Plane.

If you died in a PvP ambush by drow in the forest, you could say you remember:

a) spiders
b) a forest canopy
c) attackers come from behind trees

I think a victim should always provide more of a hook than blurry memory, or a shadow, etc. Some hint that could lead a curious mind towards a certain individual or faction. I think assailants would love consequence that arises from some drawn-out investigation by the victim's friends or allies. That's cool.

Also, if you're an evil character and you happen to engage in PvP, and emerge victorious or having killed a fellow PC, and that PC goes around blabbering the exact specificity of the events, and your villainous character-

don't roleplay with them ever again. Even drop a line to the DMs. Save some of your logs.

Move on and find better people to play with.

edit: I'm more than happy to lose. But if I win, and the other side cheapens this experience, I'm frankly going to disassociate. You should always do everything you can to make sure people have fun, but if a group or individual is still so hellbent on winning they cannot take a loss, you owe it to yourself to shield yourself from those individuals. They're not fun to be around. They're likely never going to change except via being cut off, or from the DMs.

Storytelling is a waltz between two characters. Evil characters often lead, and if the other side doesn't want to follow, but try to beat you, and not care about the waltz - then just peace out.

WOW did that basicly just come off as you better rp the way I want you to or I won't rp with you anymore?

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

The amount of sentiment I see on the forums demanding other players detriment themselves with no form of courteous interaction or cooperation from the instigator is absolutely mind-blowing to me.

We exist and play in a world where you can come back from the dead. Your memory remains unaltered in this world. There are, in fact, historical precedents in this world of people being revived/sought in the afterlife to learn things that happened during their life that you can't learn from other people.

Saying it doesn't make sense is literally the least valid argument you can hope to use (in this instance) - it's magic, and the gods will it so.

Now that we've established the baseline for our "collective reality," let's address something called "personal responsibility."

Your goal is to execute a dastardly deed of killing someone, and not be caught, in a universe where people's corpses can be spoken to to determine their murderer as a casual fact of life, without so much as reviving them. This does not make it someone else's responsibility to forget you. That's lazy on your part.

What this means is, you should probably try to coordinate with that player OOC to make the conflict more interesting and come up with cool ways for them to not know it was you, because otherwise you are being lazy in the pursuit of "winning" and demanding that they just suck it up and have no recourse about it. That makes you the not nice, lazy, inconsiderate person- not them.

Rather than just walking up to the person, shanking them, and then going "hah, I won, you shouldn't remember anything..."

1: Disguise yourself. You didn't build a disguise character? That doesn't sound like it makes a whole lot of sense if you want to do shady things without being called out for them.

2: PAY SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT FOR YOU. What's that? You don't trust anyone? They might betray you? They might fail? That sounds like RP and consequences of a risky hostile action. Or they might do the job well, and create a really interesting and intense story.

3: Again; organize with the other player. The other player might be much more likely to work with you and find an IC reason that doesn't destroy the world's lore and history in order for them to not know it was you, if you don't just turn up, kill them with no warning, and then expect them to remember nothing or you're just going to vanish with the gold from their body and never interact with them again. (I would in fact consider this gold well-spent to avoid someone with so little courtesy).


TL;DR

You get what you give, and if you show up and shank someone with no warning and then demand that they don't remember you, your character deserves every bit of bad reputation they get for the duration of their life as a result of your own laziness.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

A lot of words

Wow, I don't think I've seen someone go "You're doing it wrong" quite this hard in quite some time.

And don't follow Seven Sons' advice about ignoring people just because they did something you personally dislike. That's how you get echo-chambers that breathe life into shadow rules and make everyone feel like the DM's are out to get them because their personal version of the rules is never enforced.

Yeah, I pushed the envelope a bit but I don't think it's unforgiveable to be selective. And to argue semantics, I never said 'ignore' - I said disassociate.

When you are trying to get into a lot of conflict-related scenarios, which is what PvP, death and memory entail, you have to have a lot of patience, thick skin, but also you need to recognize who are the most fun types of roleplayers to get along with.

Echo-chambers are only problematic when they're ignorant, and cliques are only problematic when they're reclusive and exclusive.

If you've experienced victims/people on the other side, who have a more interactive and fun take on death/memory rules, go out of your way to bump into them.
If you RP with people who don't, like no one's forcing you to roleplay with them. Just leave them alone.

This isn't a "you're doing it wrong", this is a "different strokes for different folks." Whenever someone makes a judgment on this forum or elsewhere, people immediately jump to "wow dont tell people what to do."

Which is like precisely the point. You can't tell people what to do. People enjoy different things. So when it comes to rping a serial killer, as the OP details, you are going to have players who will jump through hoops and will be AMAZING to be involved with.

You will also have players who are indifferent, irritable and combative.

So how's it wrong to suggest to be selective with your experiences?

In a vaccuum, you should 100% be like this. Circumstance often means you can't, and have to be a part of a larger roleplaying ecosystem, but that doesn't mean you have to be forced into certain laneways.

Feel free to disagree, but when it comes to playing conflict-heavy characters, you have to go where people want it.

[Blood on my Lips]

I don't think it's fair to say that someone remembering their death isn't being a good sport.
"Oh, I was just standing there and the next thing I know I was dead. No idea what happened."

[Ork]

WOW did that basicly just come off as you better rp the way I want you to or I won't rp with you anymore?

I read that as more of roleplay. If you ignore the PvP encounter, seven will do the same.

[Iceborn]

I don't think it's fair to say that someone remembering their death isn't being a good sport.
"Oh, I was just standing there and the next thing I know I was dead. No idea what happened."

Not what I implied.
How many details and exactly what you do with the information you were presented with determines the quality of a roleplayer; whether it is to use that information for a larger narrative event - such as it can be playing a high bluff chracter that displays utter confusion and absolutely no memory of the incident, while at the same time plotting to take revenge - or to run up to the guards 2 seconds after respawning with a note that just says [details of the guy that killed me, pls arrest], is entirely to the player in question.

So in my eyes, being a good sport is not whether you remember or not, but giving the other player a narrative satisfaction and still exercise your own.

Even then, personally, I rather abide by the "6 minute rule" most of the time. It works for me and I feel it's fair enough.

[Xarge VI]

I think it is wrong to say that Seven is saying "Ur doing it wrong."
Every moment we are online we are under judgement from our fellow players.

If someone doesn't play with me fairly and displays powerful urge to have their character win every situation I'll just move on and find someone else to share the story with. It is not vengeful, simply I rather spend my limited time online in a way that I enjoy.

Sometimes my character remembers who killed them, sometimes not. The level of what my characters remember really depends on the situation, how much I enjoyed the story leading to that death and most of all what I believe will lead to a coolest story.

[Yma23]

Building on what's been said above, at the end of the day when it comes to death you get what you give.

In a situation with a lot of buildup, tension, where there's good and intereting purpose to the PvP, where I enjoy the other player and trust them, where there's an interesting even /after/ the PvP, I'm going to be not only more inclined, but more -able- to provide interesting rp after the death.

In a situation where some random guy jumps out at my character and yells 'Die scum!' before killing and corpse bashing me - well, what can I do? I don't know the guys name, I don't know why they did it, nothing much came after how it happened, I probably havn't been impressed with the rp over all. Sure I can rp my death if someone asks, and I would, but I won't be inclined - or even able, to make much of a story out of it.

This is something that people engaging in PvP really need to remember.

It doesn't actually matter how good your pvp skills are, if you can't provide good rp around it. And death will always be more meaningful and interesting if you can give people material to work with!

[Peppermint]

It might seem a bit hard line, but I'm in agreement with Seven here.

It used to be the case that remembering death/the Fugue was a no go. This rule was changed for... reasons. I don't know.

By and large, it seems to result in much worse roleplay. If anyone gives me the, "I remember you! You killed me! And then your henchman insulted me in the Fugue!" line, I'm just going to avoid interacting with them in the future. That's silly, and silly isn't fun for me. I don't think avoiding people that make the game actively less fun for me is unreasonable at all.

[Ebonstar]

Ive always played what happens in the fugue stays in the fugue

when you spawn or are raised you remember exactly the instant of your death, and your next memory is the instant of your raise or spawn.
anything and everything that happens in the middle is nowhere to be found

[Lunargent]

It used to be the case that remembering death/the Fugue was a no go. This rule was changed for... reasons. I don't know.

It's been a while (almost a decade, for me!) since those dark and early days, but I'm reasonably certain that it was never an actual rule, only a "shadow rule". I also don't really think it resulted in better roleplay, because it allowed people to ignore the fact that they'd been killed by somebody; and so they could just carry on as they did, which is actively detrimental if you're trying to change something or modify behaviors. It means that you didn't have to roleplay the consequences of being beaten by somebody. It also didn't really fix the silliness of respawning, as your killer could reference your death as they pleased (and often did to taunt you) while you could not. This resulted in all kinds of nonsense taking place.

The shadow rule was also enforced by OOC pressure/bullying on behalf of the people who were playing murderers and bad guys at the time, and they used it to go killing a lot. If you've killed somebody, you already have power over them. You don't need a shadow/rule to further control their behavior. Would it be better if everyone played along with one another? Yes, of course. However I personally am more glad for the abolishment of that aspect of server culture than not. It was objectively terrible to be a low/midbie back then because of that 'rule' since people with more levels could just walk all over you and you couldn't do anything about it.

If someone sits up from death and starts trying to immediately engage you with "U KILLED ME" messages or whatever, report them for a 24 hour rule violation. Other than that, accept that if you kill someone it's likely to have some kind of fallout for you.

[Twily]

How much my character remembers is based directly on how interactive and thought out the murder was.

Example 1:
If I'm at a dungeon first, someone comes along after and says 'leave or you die', and then kills/corpsebashes me in a borderline rule breaking way to get the dungeon to themselves; You can bet my character is going to remember every single detail.

Example 2:
If I'm walking through the forest at night and stumble upon a drow group, who proceeds to capture my character, drag them around with them (which ends up providing chances to be saved or to try to escape), interrogating them or things like that before eventually killing them, my character would remember almost nothing from the incident; stumbling through no more than vague memories if/when asked about it(most notably without details that could easily be used to figure out who did it).


For me, it's definitely a case of 'You get what you give'.

As an aside, I never have my character remember things from the fugue.