(Discussion) General Part VI

[crueldespot]

Orsal wrote:

I know that a lot of us are) will know that a player has stated his intention to have future characters of his carry on a vendetta on behalf of a possibly-soon-dead character.
Is this legal? What exactly does our policy against characters of the same player getting too involved together entail, and what are the limits? Even if one character is dead before the other one picks up his torch, given that it's a cause that a random character wouldn't be likely to take up, it strikes me as a little inappropriate. What are other people's thoughts, especially Judges' about this?

As the target of this proposed vendetta, here is what I think:
I don't mind if Rocco's other characters take revenge on Cain, as long as they have an in-character explanation (relatives or something). This will probably be moot, since Cain will be imprisoned in the cell for life if he kills Calamar. If they were to take revenge against other characters of mine that aren't related to Cain, then that wouldn't make sense, though.

 

[El Jefe]

Those of you following the duel thread (and since there are about 17 views per post in that thread, more than for any other IC thread, I know that a lot of us are) will know that a player has stated his intention to have future characters of his carry on a vendetta on behalf of a possibly-soon-dead character...Even if one character is dead before the other one picks up his torch, given that it's a cause that a random character wouldn't be likely to take up, it strikes me as a little inappropriate.

I've seen more than one campaign spiral out of control precisely this way. Someone holds a grudge against another player either for a decision that they didn't agree with, or what they perceived as incompetence, usually something that got their own favorite character killed off. Then they go off and generate the most thoroughly chaotic evil character they can possibly imagine. Then "Mr. Evil" bumps off the "incompetent" player's character at the first opportunity that "Mr. Evil's" player can find where he has some flimsy in-game excuse for doing so...and "'Mr. Evil' is chaotic, evil, and psychotic, so you never can tell when he'll kill someone" usually suffices.

This is usually followed by the "incompetent" player rolling up "Mr. Evil, Mark II", at which point the better players who haven't already left the campaign soon do so.

If I had a vote, it would be to "stomp it flat". No PC should be entering the game with a built-in justification for PC vs. PC violence toward any other PC already in the game. I suppose we might consider an exception if the "intended victim" is already 10 or more levels higher than the "would-be avenger", since it might make for some comic relief. Or then again, maybe not.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

An issue has come up that I think requires an LEW rules clarification.

Somehow, I'm just not suprized... :\ Honestly, I think this is more than rules clarification, this is a flavor of our game and acceptable behaviour clarification. Which makes it harder but, to me, more important. The PvP thing isn't what I like to see in the first place and there have been some other, well, roleplaying issues of late within the tavern which have me concerned.

I'm only a temporary judge, but my recomendation would be that the active judges take this to a private conversation and then a private discussion with the posters involved before it snowballs any further. Thats just me.

Kahuna Burger

 

[The Goblin King]

I've downloaded autorealm also, GK, so maybe I'll give it a shot this week if I've got some free time. It'd be easy enough to add in a wall around at least part of the city.

I can email you a copy of the AuR source file I used to make the pics so far. Its a little large (1 meg) since I made the whole overworld one big map.

 

[orsal]

Somehow, I'm just not suprized... :\ Honestly, I think this is more than rules clarification, this is a flavor of our game and acceptable behaviour clarification. Which makes it harder but, to me, more important. The PvP thing isn't what I like to see in the first place and there have been some other, well, roleplaying issues of late within the tavern which have me concerned.

I'm only a temporary judge, but my recomendation would be that the active judges take this to a private conversation and then a private discussion with the posters involved before it snowballs any further. Thats just me.

Actually, I think the potential for PvP is one of the great things about a living campaign. In regular gaming groups, too often the adventuring party becomes, in practice, a single creature with many heads. The PCs don't work cross-purposes. If three PCs and one NPC meet up at the beginning of an adventure in a tavern and decide to go out together, the PCs have perfect trust of each other, because their players are all good friends and their other characters have adventured together, but they aren't entirely sure whether to trust the NPC. (Kind of the opposite of the problem El Jefe describes.) I'd like our characters to be as unsure of each other as we are of the character the DM provides.

This means that the process of alliances forming and splitting is part of the game. In order to keep things fair, we have to prevent alliances that are natural for metagame reasons -- generally, that the characters belong to the same player. My understanding is that the "no interacting with yourself" rule is designed specifically to prevent this kind of alliance. I think therefore, that if DM-Rocco is interested in doing what he promises/threatens, we need to clarify this rule. What exactly counts as forbidden interaction or collaboration between characters? I could imagine an argument that it's OK as long as the characters aren't active in LEW at the same time. I personally favour a stricter standard, but I could entertain an argument for allowing new characters with relationships to deceased or retired characters.

I generally like making rules proactively. It's a lot more efficient than trying to react to developments with the appropriate ruling every time. So we should treat an issue like this as a precedent setter. The concern is not how we handle this particular decision by this particular player, but how in general we want to handle situations like this, what we want to allow. Then even if DM-Rocco decides not to carry on his multi-character vendetta, we should still have a ruling in place for the next player who decides to create two characters who are siblings or childhood friends. Corollary: it doesn't matter to me if crueldespot is satisfied. The purpose of the rule goes beyond protecting his specific character, it is designed to maintain the overall flavour of this campaign.

BTW, I think you have a good suggestion about discussions with certain new LEW players. There are issues about PbP etiquette and attitude to be addressed. But those issues are separate from the rule issue, which is by nature a public issue. Also, anybody who does start such private discussions with offending player(s): please take a constructive tone. New players, especially those new to the whole PbP arrangement, might very well "not get it" immediately; the goal should be to explain what the issues are, and to correct them, rather than to make them feel unwelcome in this setting. Unless you become convinced that the offender is being too closed-minded to correct the offense.

 

[The Goblin King]

Great stuff, exactly what I was looking for, and perhaps something that needs to go in a sticky or a separate thread in the archivomatic or something like that.

Creamsteaks description is from his In Service of Orussus adventure. My own ramblings are just something I put in to fill out the entry at the Living ENWorld Library. Be aware that nothing there is offical. I created the page mainly as a way to keep all the information for the maps organized. That said, your welcome to add more descriptions to the site. I could use the map making practice.

 

[Creamsteak]

First off, I agree that creating a character as a revenge actor is violating the rule that you can't relate your characters to each other directly or indirectly. This is one of the core bits we've kept for LEW, though I need to update the FAQ about it. However, under certain circumstances I think it could be permitted if it is meant in mutual fun (such as the idea of a 1st level character being created to go after a 10th level party). However, I'm going to flat out veto that idea. No need to open unnecesary loopholes in a rule that I think is so important to our game.

Now, in other business, my opinion is that any character in LEW should be a potential Player Killer (PK). A good character could PK an evil character for henious acts, or in an extreme case two good characters could get forced to fight. While I don't want to be in charge of who can kill who, I would love it if everyone could agree to be reasonable and respectful to all players.

I'm going to say this a bit bluntly, although we are a public community I have no qualms with booting a player or ten for acting without respect for the community etiquette. What's been going on in the "duel" thread has been a general breach of what I feel the community standard is, but I feel that both players are new enough that it isn't a grevious offense. But I want it to stop where it is.

How to establish the rules? Well, first of all, don't limit this to LEW. If Gnomeworks killed my character, Animus, in the Psionicle game: it should be against the rules for Gur Chuck-Chuck from LEW to go after Troi Delmontes from LEW. That isn't two LEW characters interacting, but it seems to violate what I want the rules to say. Even if Gur and Troi have other reasons to be at each other's throats? We can argue back and forth all we want... but I think I'm thinking we can keep it so much simpler...

No two characters belonging to the same player can interact directly or indirectly. In order to attack another character, you must have a judges approval and the players of both characters must accept.

And to put it quite simply, because of the rule in the first sentence (which is quite old) and the new rule in the second sentence, there can be a sort of community control on the matter.

 

[DM-Rocco]

Quote from Creamstaek

No two characters belonging to the same player can interact directly or indirectly. In order to attack another character, you must have a judges approval and the players of both characters must accept.No two characters belonging to the same player can interact directly or indirectly. In order to attack another character, you must have a judges approval and the players of both characters must accept.

I wasn't going to argue anything about what is going on between Cain and I, until I read this. It could be argued that be me creating a thread for a duel that I was infavor of the duel, however, if you read and follow the whole arguement from the begining, you will find that I was done everything I could to not get into t fight with cain. I have a lawful Good character and I played him in every action to not engage a fellow adventurer in combat, especially since he is neutral good (even though we will both rot in jail now you might want to change his to NE).

In the back room of the Inn he left the room, coaxing me to a fight, and I bolted the door with magic so I wouldn't have to fight him. Later, I moved to the Inn, and in an attempt to resolve this disagreement so we both could go on the adventure and not worry about each other, I offered to move the whole thing to a new thread so as to not disrupt the Inn.

Yes, it was named Duel between Cain and Calamar, but I had intentions of having seconds, people who can negotaite between the two of us like in the real middle ages, to try and come to an understanding, and perhaps I would have just left if he got out of hand. The arguement started with words, it should have ended with words too.

Every action that I made has been defensive, from readied actions in response to his lethal attacks (when he back stabbed me going out the door), to trying to find non lethal ways to subdue him. Yes some words were said that may sound different, but that is part of role-playing.

Long story short, according to Creamsteak, I should not be in jail fighting for my life, I never wanted his stupid duel, I hate player on player crap. I find it very distasteful. I get enough back stabbing from party members when I play pen and paper without having to worry about it in LEW.

About the whole going back to the Inn thing, he didn't want to try and resolve anything with words, he wanted a fight, I didn't, that is why I went into the Inn, one because he technically he back stabbed me in the Inn which changes the location and since I didn't get a chance to resolve the combat with words, I wanted the chance to appeal to the hearts of those in the Inn to knock some sense into him. Notice that even after almost dieing to his attack I still only readied an action to attack him if he came near. Yes, the Inn was not made for combat, but the DM took away any hopes of my back up plan of appealing to the masses by locking us in a cage together.


According to Creamsteak, you need a judge and two willing characters to kill each other, what you have is a judge and one willing character.

If my character dies, I will be upset, not because he died, but because he died in a fight he never should have been in. I for one would vote for no player versus player. And don't worry, I will not carry out anything agiant his characters in the future, I was just upset that this has gone as far as it has.

We are both stubborn, that is true, but the DM running the "Duel" should not have tried to put us in a cage and force us to be friends, he took away the only real chance I had of getting out of the "Duel" without a fight, which was my appeal to the crowd in the Inn. I, for one, would have just gave back the money for the quest and waited until antoher poped up rather than party with someone who is going to back stab you first chance they get.

 

[orsal]

According to Creamsteak, you need a judge and two willing characters to kill each other, what you have is a judge and one willing character.

If I understand Creamsteak correctly, what you need is a judge and two willing *players*. If my character decides to assassinate your character, chances are your character doesn't approve, but you as a player may agree that it is part of the game and therefore play along with it.

I point out the distinction because I think you are taking everything that happens to your character very personally. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but this does not seem to me a very healthy approach to roleplaying. I've read through all your OOC comments, and every time I see a first person pronoun I get confused whether it refers to DM-Rocco, the 21st century PbP D&D player living somewhere on planet Earth, or Calamar, the mage living in the fantasy world known as ENworld. My character, Jo Guilan, recently got roped into an adventure in which he was miserable (interestingly, by the same DM who is refereeing Calamar's fight with Cain); that doesn't mean I wasn't enjoying it. Indeed, Jo would never have taken the bait that got him into that adventure if he had known everything I would. He would have resisted getting caught up in it (in fact he did resist to the extent he could), but I, even though I could see it was leading somewhere he didn't like, chosen to let him take the innocent-seeming hook. The point is: what you want shouldn't always be the same as what your character wants.

That said, I don't think I agree with this requirement. If my character is trying to kill someone else's character, I should hope the player of the other character would be willing to play along with whatever happens. But if not -- does it really make sense to let a player veto the effort, if the Judges agree that it makes sense for my character to try and the other player's character wouldn't be in a position to stop it?

 

[Kahuna Burger]

That said, I don't think I agree with this requirement. If my character is trying to kill someone else's character, I should hope the player of the other character would be willing to play along with whatever happens. But if not -- does it really make sense to let a player veto the effort, if the Judges agree that it makes sense for my character to try and the other player's character wouldn't be in a position to stop it?

Sometimes what makes sense falls before what makes for a good social environment. I agree that both players should agree to taking a situation to PvP combat/violence.

however that doesn't mean that the alternative is nothing or a 'veto'. If you bring it to mine and a judges attention that from your perspective things have degenerated so badly in campaign between your and my characters that you feel your character's next logical move is to kill mine, I can have one of two responses. "OK, give it your best shot, but I'd like some judge/DM adjucated sense motive checks to see if my character has realized it has gotten that bad." Or "I don't want this dispute to get that serious, what can we retcon or adjust in character to make this a walk away?" Me refusing to take it to PvP violence and sticking by the behaviour that made you and a judge agree that violence is warrented is not a valid option. (on the other hand, me bringing facets of the interaction to the judge's attention that make it seem more that your character is being a psycho and you have been pushing for violence in response to anything other than humiliating concesions from my character is a very valid response and the judge may change their mind.)

This is my view at least. "Its the way my character is" is not good enough if a character is making the game unpleasant to other players (not just other characters). We have to design characters that to most extents can be played well and accurately without causing other characters to kill them, without killing other characters for no good reason, and without forcing everyone else to metagame around them. When one or more players do not succeed in this sort of character creation, Judges need to step in and adjucate a solution either in or out of game that works for everyone. If there is no solution which works for everyone, sometimes as creamsteak pointed out the judges will have to decide where the problem lies and force a solution.

I'm hoping this will be a rare situation here, and so far I'm hopeful.

Kahuna Burger