Something is wrong on Arelith.

[IDidNotDoIt]

I have never seen so many lesbians on arelith since we actually allow it.
It's getting silly.

Then there is the, lets just be honest, complete fear and thus lack of confrontation. Pvp with rp value.

And the lines between good and evil are gone. If you point out somebody is evil, folk are like, so what?

Some good and evil just happily date.

Is this just me, or am I just not keeping up with todays RP?

[P Three]

Er...what's wrong with lesbians? If they're as tastefully played (i.e. within the bounds of PG-13), I don't see the problem. I haven't exactly seen orgies in the streets, soooo...

[IndifferentPerson]

INCOMING SHITSTORM.

[The Rambling Midget]

If you think people are breaking the Be Nice, PG-13, or Role Play rules, please report them directly to a DM. This is not the appropriate place to air grievances.

No good can come from an unmoderated discussion on this topic.

[P Three]

Thanks, man. I didn't want that coffee I just snarfed up anyway.

[Marsi]

its cyclical

[Kuma]

its cyclical

lesbians are cyclical

[Yma23]

I have never seen so many lesbians on arelith since we actually allow it.
It's getting silly.

Uh... playing a lesbian was, to my knowledge -never- dissalowed.

it was requested that not a huge deal was made of it (e.g. very public marrages, ect) but they've always been around. Now I think the Authority is a little more easy going about people being -open- about the fact their characters are lesbians/gay. But they've always been pretty prevelent. indeed I think I've noticed less of late. Why is it an issue anyway? Why do you care? If a character is badly roleplayed, they'll be badly roleplayed whether they're a lesbian, streight, gay or whatever.
As has been said below - so long as they arn't actually cybering, who cares?

Then there is the, lets just be honest, complete fear and thus lack of confrontation. Pvp with rp value.

And the lines between good and evil are gone. If you point out somebody is evil, folk are like, so what?

Some good and evil just happily date.

1) How do you know who is evil?
2) Confrontation can happen without pvp
3) Confrontation is, indeed, a requiste FOR pvp and I think PvP should be near the last step of a long term confrontation, not the first.
4) How do you know exactly what has gone on between two characters that you can so easily judge whether its good roleplay or not?
5) How is it your place to judge what is good or not? Are you a DM?

If you have concerns about the roleplay of others - bring it to a DM.

If you are worried the rules are being broken? Bring it to a DM


(Side note - I think it's probably wise to lock this topic.)

[Coreybush11]

[Barradoor]

[Maragaram]

*cracks knuckles in preparation for laying down some smack*

Nah, just kidding. But seriously, if you think having "too many lesbians" is a problem, then I don't even know what to tell you. Seriously? With all of the things on Arelith which really are problems, that's what you choose to complain about?

There are plenty of gay male characters on Arelith, too. Are you going to complain about them, too? And how do you know that the characters you are taking issue with are even lesbians in the first place? I have never seen a female character on Arelith actually call herself a "lesbian." Which means you're likely just assuming the prevalence of a certain sexuality based on the couples or the flirting you see. But just because two women have a romantic relationship, that does not make them lesbians. I play a female character who is bisexual - she's had romantic relationships with both women and men, and she likes it that way.

The Forgotten Realms/Faerun/Abeir-Toril setting is expressly stated to be a world where people are not routinely discriminated against on the basis of gender identity or sexuality. Some discrimination still exists of course, but it is the exception rather than the rule, unlike how it is in many places in the real world. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that in such a world there would be more people who openly date other people of the same sex. Most characters likely weren't raised to believe there's a problem with that.

As for the "good and evil don't matter" thing, I'm guessing that has to do with that fact that just because someone's alignment is "Evil," does not give every other character full rights to shun or kill them with impunity. You can't just say "that person is evil" and expect everyone else to go "Oh, okay, we hate them now." And as for good and evil characters dating each other, well, there are plenty of people in real life who seem completely wrong for each other and yet have a relationship anyway, happy or otherwise. There are entire subcultures devoted to idolizing the "bad boy/girl" image in real life. Why shouldn't the same principles apply to life on Arelith? Attraction doesn't know many limits....

[Rystefn]

Yeah, I don't think I know of a single lesbian on the server right now, actually. What you are seeing are the bisexual people Greenwood said are supposed to be common as grass and no big deal in the setting and only noticing when it happens to be girl-on-girl.

The good/evil dating thing, well... there's this long-standing trope where you have one person trying to seduce the other to the dark side, and the other trying to redeem the first with the power of love. And there is no boring ending to that story. It's either hauntingly tragic, or upliftingly romantic. That's the sort of thing most bards would be falling all over themselves to get down in verse, I think. At least, any bard I played would.

[IndifferentPerson]

[Ork]

Personally, I'm seeing some of the best RP I have in years. Don't strain yourself in finding the flaws, enjoy the game. If you're not, a break once and awhile usually clears that up for me.

[Marsi]

its cyclical

lesbians are cyclical

autumn ends. lesbians settle downinto the earth

[Coreybush11]

this is poetic

[Barradoor]

[Manabi]

its cyclical

lesbians are cyclical

[msterswrdsmn]

...Ignoring the gay-and-lesbian thing...

Players ARE more inclined than they have been in the past to take a more neutral approach (alignment, not sexy stuff). Some of it is good. Some of it is bad. Personally, I like being able to wander into an area and NOT see 50 campfires and dead bodies in a single area, only to be steamrolled with a Wail 20 seconds later.

But I can understand the confusion with some interactions if you aren't privy to whats going on (ex: a paladin and evil necromancer wizard drinking tea? Confusing, but there was stuff going on i didn't know ICly.) Try poking around IG for the more confusing interactions to see if you can find an answer.

[IndifferentPerson]

I like being able to wander into an area and NOT see 50 campfires and dead bodies in a single area, only to be steamrolled with a Wail 20 seconds later.

To be honest, that should happen more often...

Maybe not the WoB part.

[High Primate]

My main character up until a few months ago was a lesbian who made out with Drow women on several occasions. Not even kidding. The RP surrounding it was superb.

[Black Wendigo]

Well, first of all as has been said, things are cyclical. One day the server has a lot of evils the next its flooded with goods because people get tired of playing evil Then they get tired of playing good.

As for how chars are reacting to evil. Well, maybe it's because evil is or is perceived as being stronger than good at the moment. Perhaps people are just RPing fear or the inability to do anything about evil. Or CHARS don't care. Not caring is legitimate RP.

Same with lesbians. Think of it as the latest fad, a novelty that, something new that people have not tried before. This is not something "wrong". It just is. BTW While it's true there has never been a ban on gay chars there was a temporary moratorium on them a few years ago after a HUGE kerfuffle ran rampant across the forums and the server. i would still want to avoid getting too close to controversial subjects and to avise people not to take things personally, as was the case. Not a rule, just a piece of advice from one who has learned from the past.

As for lack of pvp you've got to be kidding . Oh you may not see it but if you join the right faction you will. It's there. It's just that people are trying to be a little more mature about it than in the past (or so I think). believe me, we do not want to go back to some of the pvp happy moments that were happening when I joined in 2006. I can make a long list of things that were not very pleasant.

Also in regard to PVP: It's not that it isn't here it's that is more, erm , civilized. The new rules help to make it so and were put into place because of past pvp abuse across the board.


So, I don't see any of this as something wrong, but quite the contrary. Trust me things have improved a lot more than they have not.

[Maragaram]

One more try to hammer the point home.

Lesbians are not a "fad." Not in the real world, and not in Arelith. As Rystefn and I have both already noted, many of the so-called "lesbian" characters are actually just bisexual and only get picked out when they have relationships with women. There's nothing "cyclical" or "fad," about it. It has always been this way. It will likely continue to be this way. It is a common occurrence in Forgotten Realms canon.

Also, let's please not even think about stepping on the landmine that is the act of referring to playing GSSRM characters as "controversial." We have GSSRM players. Therefore, we will also have GSSRM characters. There's nothing about not being a heterosexual and cisgender person that is inherently outside the bounds of PG-13. It doesn't break any rules. Ergo, it's not a problem for the server as a whole. If individuals have a problem with it, they can keep it to themselves.

(Daily Terminology Lesson: GSSRM is a newer and more inclusive acronym for the group of people who might otherwise be referred to as LGBTQQAIPPIAUetceteraintoinfinity. It stands for Gender Sex Sexual and Romantic Minorities. A lot of people just say "GSRM" and leave out the "Sex" part, but I personally think it's important to be inclusive of Intersex people, hence the second S.)

(And I apologize for my tone, but every time someone brings up GSSRM things in a negative way on the Arelith forums, a little part of me dies and is instantly converted into pure energy of righteous fury.)

[The Pretty Prince of Parties]

A fair number of the most important people in antiquity were quite openly bisexual (Alexander the Great had three wives, a mistress, and a male lover he'd end up murdering in a fit of drunken rage), and there are even a few (albeit significantly rarer) examples of just generally open sexuality (Spartan women, for example, could practically pick who the father of their children would be if their husband proved impotent). This sort of thing was even accepted to a degree to as late as a thousand years past in some parts of Europe (there was nothing wrong, in Scandinavian society, about having relations with another man, only being the "submissive" partner in said relationship.) There are certainly many parts of the FR setting that aren't significantly impacted by their real world Abrahamic-faith dominated counterparts.

Many tabletop RPGs follow this model for their settings, actually, because some of the most of the big names in early tabletop gaming were extremely openminded about most things. I read Gary Gygax's guide on becoming a better roleplayer, and a lot of what he says is to just be more openminded and take this as an opportunity to explore different aspects of humanity and personality that you might not be able to explore on a daily basis, in a safe and contained environment. He literally says that, given a chance, you should try to play everything. A lot of modern settings echo this - Paizo's Golarion (the default kitchen sink setting for the PFRPG) pretty prominently features interracial couples, transgendered individuals, and individuals of nontraditional sexuality. Settings that aren't accepting of these sorts of things, are typically only unaccepting of them specifically because they're trying to make their setting seem gritty, narrowminded, and unaccepting of others.

'hem. /endrant

Edit: Touching on the other issues - I've noticed a bit of what you're talking about, with good and evil, but that's primarily because I've noticed a third thing: most people are neutral, and are not zealots. Unless given an extremely personal reason to care about whether someone is good or evil, they'll determine how to react to them based on how said evil person impacts them and their close associates personally. Since the vast majority of conflict that I've seen over the last few years is Evil Cult vs. Evil Cult, or Evil Cult vs. Small Town, or Slavers vs. Small Groups, there's not a lot of ground for a public call to arms against evil.

A priest, paladin, or antipaladin may care very much - on a very personal level - about the great and constant cosmological battle between good and evil. But your average farmer wants a good harvest, merchants want to make sales - to whom usually doesn't matter since everyone's gold is shiny, and adventurers want to get rich/get drunk/start a guild/become knights/rescue the princess/find true love/resolve the prophecy/restore their family honor/et cetera. "Good" vs. "Evil" is too broad and impersonal to interest most people.

As for good and evil dating? Hey. Opposites attract. Strange things happen. The American Revolution was probably only won because Johann Rall was too busy drinking and enjoying Christmas celebrations to listen to a report from a sentry who had spotted the revolutionary forces marshaling on their side of the Delaware. "The truth is stranger than fiction" is a very accurate saying. And wanting to help someone that you see as fundamentally broken is an extremely human (and actually pretty common) emotion. As has been mentioned before, it's usually not roses and buttercups - it typically ends in tragedy or a rousing success. I've also seen it end where both parties rub off on the other just a little bit - the paladin falls, the antipaladin rises. Both are now just fighters with a really short feat list.

/endsecondrant

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I think the Arelithian Standard for Alignments (ASA) is to be "edgey" or "cool" or "brooding" or "bad guy but good guy" or "weird guy with bits of honour" -

In other words, to never have any outright integrity. There's often some sort of narrative trap where badassery is equated to not being overly good, or not being overly evil, but operating in between. That's how you get the above descriptors.

The second issue, is that honest, blunt conflict is not considered acceptable. My playtime has not been what it used to, but I think the Forsworn were kind of the last popular "good guy" group where constantly fighting, killing, engaging in PvP (not always to the death) was not something to shy from, but treated as "awesome."

It's amazing the amount of people who actually hate PvP on an OOC level, and do everything they can to avoid it, and think it's stupid. This dislike often permeates to making their characters vocal about character-character fighting.

And it's true. I dare people to play a character that will actually get deeply offended by someone else, or believe to have absolute just cause in drawing steel on someone else - most times you'll lose, and most times you'll lose XP. And people see that "XP" as something that trumps everything else.

Which is a problem, but the nature of the mechanics. I think it server mechanics need to change, but that's just me.