Player Review on: Arelith

[Lady Astray]

But be aware that if you're on one team and you keep passing the ball to the other team you're supposed to be playing against, your team has every right to be miffed at you. If you say "Screw you I don't care about winning." don't be surprised when they kick you off the team. You might just be playing for fun but others might want to play competitively. Sabotaging their chance of winning for "muh narrative" will very likely earn you their contempt.

Players who value 'winning' above narrative or the well-being of fellow players would have more fun on an arena server than on Arelith. It's a persistent world; a character's victories are fundamentally impermanent and small-scale.

Sometimes your character wins, sometimes they lose. The stories that get told in the process are what make those victories and losses mean anything.

What about players who value "Narrative" over the winning or the well being of other players? What about players who value the "Well being" of other players over winning or narrative?

[Cortex]

Defining these so black and white is nonsense. Players seldom are strictly categorized as "pridegamer must win" , "hugbox plz" box or "elitism is good". And any of the three can be good traits if balanced, a person who wants to win can have dedication to create RP, a person who wants people to feel well will make sure to always do their best to not grief another, and someone who values good narrative will push for quality stories, and a person can be all three of these.

[Berried]

What about players who value "Narrative" over the winning or the well being of other players?

Anyone who violates the 'be nice' rule in favor of controlling their character's narrative has to be reported, just like anyone else who breaks any other rule for any other reason.

What about players who value the "Well being" of other players over winning or narrative?

Those are called 'dungeon masters'. They sacrifice time they could spend playing their own characters to make the game more fun for other players, which is extremely cool and dope of them.

Anyway these questions aren't really relevant to my point, which is that ooc contempt for ic actions is rarely justified outside of rule violations. It's also counter-intuitive. Policing ic character behavior on 'team good' via ooc harassment or rumourmongering doesn't help team good. If anything it's probably scaring players into Andunor.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

I feel it's worth pointing out, to get this topic a bit away from the alignment conundrum and back towards where I meant for it to be, that the sort of character assassination I was referring to in my OP wasn't really about IC character assassination, but about character assassination of the players themselves, for conversations and events that happened OOC outside of the in-game world, and had no actual IC bearing at all on the people being talked crap about.

Kind of like meeting someone and then telling other players "stay away from them, they're a mouth breather" as a very immature, absurd example. Or any other implication of "you shouldn't play with this person, they're bad people."

Personally, I feel that this kind of behavior is literally the most detrimental, toxic action any player can take on, towards, or for the server. If you are saying this kind of thing in any context other than as a report to a DM, you are part of the toxic element that needs removing.

The frequency with which this happens and is casually accepted in the community is both disappointing and off-putting. I tapped out of the primary arelith discord again last week because of it, and I already feel better about logging into the game.

Edit: Royal You's. Maybe I should just put this disclaimer in my signature.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

But be aware that if you're on one team and you keep passing the ball to the other team you're supposed to be playing against, your team has every right to be miffed at you. If you say "Screw you I don't care about winning." don't be surprised when they kick you off the team. You might just be playing for fun but others might want to play competitively. Sabotaging their chance of winning for "muh narrative" will very likely earn you their contempt.

Players who value 'winning' above narrative or the well-being of fellow players would have more fun on an arena server than on Arelith. It's a persistent world; a character's victories are fundamentally impermanent and small-scale.

Sometimes your character wins, sometimes they lose. The stories that get told in the process are what make those victories and losses mean anything.

What about players who value "Narrative" over the winning or the well being of other players? What about players who value the "Well being" of other players over winning or narrative?

You should always want to win. You should do everything in your power to win. You should play your character to the fullest if that character wants to win.

But you don't jeopardize OOC behaviour.

If you don't play competitively, you're not getting the rawest, truest conflict.

[Nevrus]

To want to win as best you can but to never mind losing.
To want to play the best character you can but to not judge others for not being where you are.
To want to engage in conflict but not hold enmity to your enemies.
To want to be a part of something bigger but not hold dominion over the smaller.
To want to help everyone have a good time but power through frustration when you suffer it.

My recommendation to all players is, if your character becomes an enemy of another character, go out of your way to be friends with that player. It's much easier to go for the throat and risk it all when you and your opponent laugh about it with each other. It also cuts off feeling animosity towards that player and them feeling animosity towards you.

And if your reaching out results in death threats, belittling, an attempt to assert dominance, or any other negative behaviors... Report it! Chances are there's a pattern that can be perceived and corrected. As a lot of people in this thread have noted, when people are poor sports, they're usually loud about it. That attitude is never restricted to just one character. And if you aren't sure if they're being poor sports or not, ask someone on the server you trust who doesn't have much interaction with that player.

Take it from me: In my time I took fairly oppositional stances to a lot of people but as far as I'm aware, no one hates me! (As an aside, if you do hate me quietly, let me know so I can learn how to not make people hate me in the future!)

[Seven Sons of Sin]

To want to win as best you can but to never mind losing.
To want to play the best character you can but to not judge others for not being where you are.
To want to engage in conflict but not hold enmity to your enemies.
To want to be a part of something bigger but not hold dominion over the smaller.
To want to help everyone have a good time but power through frustration when you suffer it.

This is an excellent Arelithian mantra.

Stick to this, and you're golden, ponyboy.

[satan]

I do challenge everyone feeling the mire of clique-dom to expand their horizons. If you find yourself without friends or allies on this server, change characters and create something you'd have fun with regardless of being popular. Sometimes the best solution is a change of perception. If your last character was invested in politicking, make a character that is adverse to socialite roleplay - a true adventurer or lore-hunter.

Yes!

That was my thought process.

I love RP, and the game itself, but dislike the cliquy politicing. So I built a char I enjoy playing, that is RP unconcerned about the politics of 2-leggers, and is capable of getting level appropriate content done solo should I need. (Which is actually not that often as the little guy has been 'adopted' unofficially by a few different groups lol)

I've honestly never had so much fun with a char in my (admittedly short) time in Arelith.