Evil roleplay change suggestion.

[Hazard]

Poor PvP happens here and there. But... is it really such a big deal?
You can't win all the time - bad things happen to good adventurers.
This is an RP server and our goal is forging a compelling narrative, not to partake in some competitive LoL type PvP fest.

Darth Vader totally pwned Luke Skywalker at the end of Episode V. At the time Vader was much higher lvl and had much better gear than Luke and I don't think that Luke found the RP enjoyable either, but Yoda forgot to give him that lens.
But you know what? It made him a much more compelling character than the optimally built Rey who got epic gear handed to her by her high lvl pals and keeps winning all the time.


One way or the other, you are the writer of your character's story and get the final say. There's always the option to just respawn and pretend that your toon has a hangover. Your call.

<3 lol

[whoisthisis]

Poor PvP happens here and there. But... is it really such a big deal?
You can't win all the time - bad things happen to good adventurers.
This is an RP server and our goal is forging a compelling narrative, not to partake in some competitive LoL type PvP fest.

Darth Vader totally pwned Luke Skywalker at the end of Episode V. At the time Vader was much higher lvl and had much better gear than Luke and I don't think that Luke found the RP enjoyable either, but Yoda forgot to give him that lens.
But you know what? It made him a much more compelling character than the optimally built Rey who got epic gear handed to her by her high lvl pals and keeps winning all the time.


One way or the other, you are the writer of your character's story and get the final say. There's always the option to just respawn and pretend that your toon has a hangover. Your call.

Best response in the history of forums.. ever.

[Kuma]

Yup. When you pump out quality roleplay as a villain, people will be less likely to just stomp your corpse into the ground. Make your character provocative and interesting & I guarantee that others will play ball. If you dress down in 63 evil and cackle maniacally about being a Talos Worshiper, you'll find people rolling their eyes as they proceed to corpse bash.

ideological warfare is far more satisfying than pvp.

[The Kriv]

This topic has somewhat drifted a bit... but maybe in a good way?

I'm sure the literary professors among us can weigh in on this as well, but in my last couple of years studying scriptwriting and narrative story telling, there's always been a very clear division between conflict and story-conflict... which I feel I have seen get very grey and muddled on our server since I've joined back in the spring of '11.

CONFLICT as it is defined by our buddy, Webster, is (n) a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one. and (v) clash or be incompatable.

This is very different from Story Conflict... which is a necessary component in order to keep an audience engaged.

But conflict, in order to be a compelling story, REQUIRES a resolution. If a conflict has no resolution, often it's because simply a solution has not been found yet (typical in the first 3/4 of every motion picture you've watched... or where every play ends at the curtain of ACT II.

When we are the ones that don't choose the conflict, we are forced with finding a way to deal with it. And conflict without clear or forthcoming resolution creates stress. Just go see any slasher film, they are great purveyors of stress.

I think what the OP is talking about is that a LOT... and I mean A LOT (big letters) of conflict that gets created from players of evil characters SOME (some, meaning the minority) create more stress than fun. And not the kind of stress like a roller-coaster where you scream while you're on it, and then step off and say, "Well, that was fun." I mean the kind of stress where when the conflict ends you say to yourself... "well, that sucked."

I believe that's the sort of 'conflict' that the OP was attempting to address.


In my own experience, DM-created conflict is pretty dam fun, and cool, and worth-while. On a few rare occasions, very cool and interesting plots have started and just were never finished, which sucked.. and to this day remain open-ended years later. But those are a tiny fraction of the whole.

Player-created conflict... some people are very good at it. A lot of them have posted here in this very thread, and If you're the sort who's skimmed through a multi-page threat like this, I encourage you to go back and read through them, there is a lot of great wisdom to be gained here.

But we do have a lot of players who create evil characters for the very purpose of using them as cathartic experiences to live out little 'evil villain' fantasies they otherwise cannot do in civil society. They are the evil-jerks. The ones who use evil as an excuse to be a dick. And I think that good players of evil-characters are often overshadowed by the evil-Pufferfishes. and it's important to remember that the evil-Pufferfishes are in the minority, but like bad apples, just one can spoil a lot of RP for a lot of people.

i've been victim of more than my share of evil-dick characters than I care to admit, and it has turned me off from a large section of Arelith, like ever participating in Cordor-Guard, or Cordor-Governing RP. -I just will never go there. But that doesn't mean there isn't good RP to be had there.


If anything can be gained constructively from this thread, It is very clear that what is needed among our very cavernous and ample supply of source material for Arelith, a Villain's Handbook... or a "How to be good at evil" bible.

"Conflict" for conflict's sake is bad. Don't ever JUST CREATE conflict because you're thinking your adding to the fabric of Arelith. You're probably just creating open-ended stress for someone else.

As an audience of film and novels and even IC stories from Arelith... when we as consumers of stories root for "bad-guys" the best ones (IMO) aren't really "evil" -they're actually just people who've made bad choices and have nothing left to choose but a path of survival.

[InTheFlesh]

ideological warfare is far more satisfying than pvp.

It takes a lot out of you and worsens your existentialism

[-XXX-]

Your character cannot be the main protagonist of every ongoing story.

Sometimes they're just the faceless stuntmen in the background performing the Wilhelm Sceam

[Aodh Lazuli]

ideological warfare is far more satisfying than pvp.

It takes a lot out of you and worsens your existentialism

"Worsens".

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Your character cannot be the main protagonist of every ongoing story.

Sometimes they're just the faceless stuntmen in the background performing the Wilhelm Sceam

If someone makes an override that replaces all death noises with the Wilhelm scream, it would revolutionize the PvP experience.

[420chambers]

So, by restricting evil side to the only spot on the server where they can freely express their allignment would greatly reduce a huge amount of bitterness people get after pvp.

There is already a huge area on the server that does this (possibly even two), people walk about with undead and it's all good. It's find out in game information though so I won't spoil the fun in finding it in character.

[Mr_Rieper]

"Conflict" for conflict's sake is bad. Don't ever JUST CREATE conflict because you're thinking you're adding to the fabric of Arelith. You're probably just creating open-ended stress for someone else.

This. Absolutely this. Some people might feel that encouraging others to create basic levels of conflict cause some development or fights against stagnation.

But what you want to encourage is progress. Finding goals and pursuing them. Conflict is a by-product of this, NOT the main goal.

Please don't go and create conflict without a goal in mind. It's frustrating to have to acknowledge, each and every single time. This is why many evil characters get ignored, dismissed or even openly mocked. The frustration is a major contributing factor to it.

[-XXX-]

Well, yeah.... on the other hand:

• The goal might be unattainable

• Be wary of accidentally becoming the guy who brought a script to an improv session

[Hazard]

"Conflict" for conflict's sake is bad. Don't ever JUST CREATE conflict because you're thinking you're adding to the fabric of Arelith. You're probably just creating open-ended stress for someone else.

This. Absolutely this. Some people might feel that encouraging others to create basic levels of conflict cause some development or fights against stagnation.

But what you want to encourage is progress. Finding goals and pursuing them. Conflict is a by-product of this, NOT the main goal.

Please don't go and create conflict without a goal in mind. It's frustrating to have to acknowledge, each and every single time. This is why many evil characters get ignored, dismissed or even openly mocked. The frustration is a major contributing factor to it.

Yep!!!

[Mr_Rieper]

Well, yeah.... on the other hand:

• The goal might be unattainable

• Be wary of accidentally becoming the guy who brought a script to an improv session

It doesn't matter whether or not the goal is unattainable or if you've "planned too far ahead". You need to react to the players you are interacting with. Goals change. Plans change. They change all the time. What's important is that you are aiming for SOMETHING. Mindlessly creating chaos and irritation for other players and then calling it good RP is frustrating. If your goal is to be an antagonist, you need to acknowledge that there are other players behind those characters. A bit of mutual respect goes a long way. You don't have to be nice, but you should give people space, and do your best to entertain everyone involved.

Too often I've seen people simply cause chaos and aggravation, believing it to somehow change into something fun. And it sometimes does, when a more skilled and patient player decides to intervene. But that doesn't change the fact that as players, we should do our best to entertain each other, not annoy each other and hope it all works out in the end.

[Tryn Dralar]

"Conflict" for conflict's sake is bad. Don't ever JUST CREATE conflict because you're thinking you're adding to the fabric of Arelith. You're probably just creating open-ended stress for someone else.

This. Absolutely this. Some people might feel that encouraging others to create basic levels of conflict cause some development or fights against stagnation.

But what you want to encourage is progress. Finding goals and pursuing them. Conflict is a by-product of this, NOT the main goal.

Please don't go and create conflict without a goal in mind. It's frustrating to have to acknowledge, each and every single time. This is why many evil characters get ignored, dismissed or even openly mocked. The frustration is a major contributing factor to it.

Yep!!!

Yup, this

[dysmetria]

high level characters harassing low level - "bad guys" and roflstomping them each time they see, completely restricting them from getting any rp than hostile-corpse bash.

While I've been experiencing this myself, I wouldn't say they are completely restriciting my character from getting any rp. They often try to insult or degrade my character first before killing it. Sometimes torture it for information.

It reminds me a lot of kindergarten playground bullying. And Arelith is apparently one of the few places left where this practice is not only tolerated, but encouraged.

[dysmetria]

Please don't go and create conflict without a goal in mind. It's frustrating to have to acknowledge, each and every single time. This is why many evil characters get ignored, dismissed or even openly mocked. The frustration is a major contributing factor to it.

Yep!!!

Yup, this

Thats the thing. My character isn't evil.

From his perspective, the player characters that have repeatedly gone well out of their way to ignore, dismiss, and/or openly mock him before they occasionally rob, torture, mutilate, kill and/or corpse bash him ARE the evil ones. And that is about 90% of the PCs he's encountered.

After more than 3 rl months of it the first time he complained about it yesterday they threw him in jail on some trumped up charges and labelled him a pariah which apparently means that they now get to do the same to him openly in the streets and no longer have to be sneaky or feel bad about it. And they have. Over. and over. and over.

But long before being given the "pariah" title my character had been engaged in unwanted conflict it never asked for by characters it has never even met before over stuff it didn't do for months. This is my only character, and yeah it gets frustrating, enough to where I often question why I keep playing. If I hadn't been helping Mith test Anemoi for months before coming here or hadn't brought two friends here to play with me (that because of the bullying of my character it hasn't been able to actually play with them,) I probably would have quit.

Evil characters aren't getting dismissed or ignored or mocked. They are the ones doing the dismissing and ignoring and mocking and patting each other on the back and documenting it in a message board or forum post every time they do. But like most well rounded and fleshed out evil characters they lie and tell themselves they aren't evil. And as evidenced above, occasionally even their players believe it.

[DM Sollers]

Conflict isn't trademarked by any alignment, race, whatever. Actions will have consequences and there will always be at least one person to disagree- and therefore conflict- with your characters' deeds and statements. If you feel that it's crossing the line, getting silly or breaking the rules you report it to the DM team for evaluation. The public forum is not the place for that.

There isn't much else to say here.