Surface "Enslavement" needed

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I'm not opposed to a prison system on the surface, but personally I would take it one step further. Everyone on the raiding side accepts that if they die, it's a permadeath.

Why?

Because I still believe in setting integrity, and a raid from the underdark on the surface is usually the result of months if not years of planning and large groups from teh dark working together (sometimes is just a really strong drow house) when it comes to the forgotten realms. A raid on arelith is usually the result of having a strong group of 5-10 mechanically skilled players ready and willing, taking a portal over, and win lose or draw you get to do it again in a few days when that group is together again and bored.

That's a pretty serious disconnect from one to the other, and I personally think that anything that slows raids down and makes it more of a character end game thing rather than what that character does after leveling up for a few weeks until they get bored with it is a good thing.

I know, that's crazy talk.

100% agree.

Why would anybody engage in PvP with such hilariously uneven stakes?
Shaking things up in and shape or form should be incentivized and this would achieve the exact opposite.

I feel like you assumed a few things to get to these questions, so I'm going to try and clarify.

1) This is only about raids, not pvp, and raids are not the only form of pvp.

2) Symmetry is implied, meaning a group of Cordorians raiding Anundor would have the same caveats. Just because that doesn't happen as often as the reverse doesn't mean its uneven.

3) Raids generally do not "shake things up". Raid happens, those that want to fight against it fight, those that don't stick their head in the sand and pretend it never happened as soon as it's over. Sure, it's a fast track for making a name for your character, since if you can level really fast and get your 5%s done in a timely matter you are only a month to a month and a half away from being the well-known terror of the server after creation. But is that really the definition of "shaking things up" we all want?

4) Assuming somehow the answer to the last question in 3) is yes, it's actually not shaking anything up. If you read what Irongron says about the server, he wants us all slow leveling up telling brief stories along the way while considering level 30 the end of the line. And while that is nowhere near where 75% of the playerbase is, since he controls any changes to the server it seems unlikely using logic that anything will change from a raid. So even if I want to respond the right way to said raid, eventually I will be overwhelmed by the forthcoming wave of apathy from the majority of folks in my settlement.

So, just to conclude, Raids are not the narrative driving tool they are often mythicized to be. They are essentially the needle and spoon for players to get their pvp fix. Whether or not that's a good thing I guess is for both Irongron and the majority of the players to sort out, but we should at least be honest about what it is and stop pretending it's something different, at least as is. If you add more stakes to cut down the frequency and put it more in line with something special, as opposed to something we just do on Tuesdays and Saturdays, that conclusion would have to be reevaluated based on how it plays out.

Edited to add the first part of the conversation, since it could get confusing as to what we were talking about without that bit >_>

[LurkingShadow]

I love the prison location idea, but not so much the way the technical execution is presented.

Deleveling and releveling is decidedly not fun. Having to re-allocate all your skill points, feats, spells, and etc. simply doesn't sound fun to me. And then imagine if you are caught again after escaping, now you have to do all of that again.

I'd much rather see a debuff to stats that scales with your level, than prisoners having to relevel. This, I feel, would make Prison Ship/Island much less tedious to be in.

Like item that mechanically lowers items? Like a level drain maybe?

Level drain hadn't even crossed my mind, but that's brilliant! That way no releveling is required when you're free, and thanks to saved spellbooks spellcasters won't have it tedious either.

That would be interesting to see how it could work out! And yes, no releveling! That would be a bit to much I think.

[Preserver]

Random opinion but...
I believe that the implementation of Manacles that happened, at this point, some time ago, has the potential of completely substituting any type of slavery/prison system.
I will, in this post, refer to prison and slavery system interchangeably.

The only benefit that the current slavery system grants is, in my idea, not really a benefit: it relieves the slaver from any responsibility they have to protect their slave from being stolen or liberated. Slavers have access to magical collars that are immune from most magical tampering even from very high level spell casters - which means that the slaver is encouraged by the system not to care about the day-to-day protection of their investment.

A viable solution that I can see is to stop using the slavery system, and just default to manacles; this may trigger certain reasonable questions.

• "But manacles can be lockpicked and broken!" - Yes, which forces the slaver to actively invest time in taking care that the slave does not escape and is not liberated. This creates an economy (AKA a RP environment) that supports paying Guards (for surveillance) and Blacksmiths (for the most advanced manacles).
• "But why would I try to enslave someone who can lockpick and break their own manacles?" - That depends on you, but in general, don't. Slaves that are hard to control are problematic, and thus may be an investment not worth the risk just losing your manacles and your resources.
• "This sounds like such a hassle, why would I even enslave people?" - This makes slavery an investment. It brings thought behind the act of enslavement, because it forces the slaver to think of a way their investment of time and coin can create an advantage for them. Pride, retribution, fear, internal commerce - all valid reasons that are given more weight due to the fact that keeping slaves under control now could require effort.
• "But manacles are impeding for so many activities! Why would a potential slave OOCly accept this?" - The system is already opt-in, just as slavery. And, I would argue, the mechanical problems that derive from wearing manacles are better representative of the tragedy that slavery is than the magical collar system we have now.

Now manacles can give some pretty hefty quality of life problems; that could be partially solved by creating some different manacles (one or two, for different slave categories) which allow a measure of freedom. But then again, I don't think slavery should have lots of QoL focus. Slavery is BAD - and I posit that those who participate in slave RP often aim for a tough RP fantasy of struggle, scavenging, and suffering. To tell that sort of tale, rather than the tale of the lvl 30 slave who can do basically anything they want.

[Edens_Fall]

Wouldn't it be easier to just place a slaver NPC in each settlement and rename them to something more fitting that would allow players access to the Prisoner Collar system? Access to the slave collar dialogue option can be removed for surface settlements.

I find the Prisoner Collar that can be taken from the slavers just as useful and fun to RP with as the actual slave collar itself and it seems to offer what settlements are looking for. A system-controlled, player opt-in choice to RP as a captured PC.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

Wouldn't it be easier to just place a slaver NPC in each settlement and rename them to something more fitting that would allow players access to the Prisoner Collar system? Access to the slave collar dialogue option can be removed for surface settlements.

I find the Prisoner Collar that can be taken from the slavers just as useful and fun to RP with as the actual slave collar itself and it seems to offer what settlements are looking for. A system-controlled, player opt-in choice to RP as a captured PC.

this is exactly what manacles are

[Edens_Fall]

Wouldn't it be easier to just place a slaver NPC in each settlement and rename them to something more fitting that would allow players access to the Prisoner Collar system? Access to the slave collar dialogue option can be removed for surface settlements.

I find the Prisoner Collar that can be taken from the slavers just as useful and fun to RP with as the actual slave collar itself and it seems to offer what settlements are looking for. A system-controlled, player opt-in choice to RP as a captured PC.

this is exactly what manacles are

Don't manacles apply limits to movement and abilities etc versus the RP only version of the prisoner collar? If the manacles are the surface equivalent of the prisoner collars was Is there an intended reason for the limitations versus using it as am simple RP tool?

[In Sorrow We Trust]

Wouldn't it be easier to just place a slaver NPC in each settlement and rename them to something more fitting that would allow players access to the Prisoner Collar system? Access to the slave collar dialogue option can be removed for surface settlements.

I find the Prisoner Collar that can be taken from the slavers just as useful and fun to RP with as the actual slave collar itself and it seems to offer what settlements are looking for. A system-controlled, player opt-in choice to RP as a captured PC.

this is exactly what manacles are

Don't manacles apply limits to movement and abilities etc versus the RP only version of the prisoner collar? If the manacles are the surface equivalent of the prisoner collars was Is there an intended reason for the limitations versus using it as am simple RP tool?

to prevent people from doing things easily that would not be easy to do while wearing manacles

[Cthuletta]

Don't manacles apply limits to movement and abilities etc versus the RP only version of the prisoner collar? If the manacles are the surface equivalent of the prisoner collars was Is there an intended reason for the limitations versus using it as am simple RP tool?

I think it's done that way to ensure it's temporary. Prisoner collars can remain on for longer periods of time without hindering the player's mechanics hardly at all, but manacles aren't meant to be left on very long. One just gives a tag to your name while the other actively hinders your abilities. Can't cast, can't really fight, so on.
A prisoner collar can be removed by the person wearing it, while the manacles can only be removed by the person who has the matching key. As a result, you don't really see anyone with manacles on for more than a couple hours.

In my opinion, I think if Surface folks started using prisoner collars, ICly, the server culture would make it so that people would compare those doing so to slavers, and would probably cause more issues than it'd solve? I could very well be wrong, of course.

[Bazelgeuse]

Wouldn't it be easier to just place a slaver NPC in each settlement and rename them to something more fitting that would allow players access to the Prisoner Collar system? Access to the slave collar dialogue option can be removed for surface settlements.

I find the Prisoner Collar that can be taken from the slavers just as useful and fun to RP with as the actual slave collar itself and it seems to offer what settlements are looking for. A system-controlled, player opt-in choice to RP as a captured PC.

I like this idea. Maybe fiddle with the name a little - change it from "Slave" to "Captive" so that it's more of a catch-all.

"This character wears shackles, marking them as a captive of Slavemaster of Andunor/Slavemaster of Sibayad/Prison Warden of Guldorand" and so forth