Thought Relating to Olden

Comment on anything. Spelling & grammar mistakes, inconsistencies, the subject of the thread even.

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Mu himself could not of told it more like it is. Well, maybe but then again he's Mu.

I agree with a lot of your points there and one I'd like to focus on (in this particular post) is the passive-tavern rp one. It seems to be a constant problem that we're constantly getting stuck in. I know we can't have a fair every week (even if it was fucking awesome) but there's got to be something we can add to every day Surnan life to take the monotony off be it more events or otherwise.

I got somethin about magic too but I'm a bit too tired to properly lay my thoughts into text so I'll hold off on that for now.

Anyways it's late and my thinker ain't thinkin' too well, so I'll just leave it at that and return tomorrow or somesuch.

You're in a town in magical lands.

Why can't you just asspull the "new problem every week" thing.

You have a vampire going round fucking people up, get a group of townsfolk together, leave a bunch of notes about and "clues" and have a good old investigation.

Have a bunch of bandits hit a caravan on the road coming into town.

Have a magical storm roll in that a bunch of wizards have to deflect and send people off to collect X things to do it.

Potion making contests, weapon faires, market days.

Stop relying on "main" characters, you can easily make one off characters.

Yes you can't delete them, but kain was supposed to be putting that in. I can always manually delete them if you request it.

Anyone can make an event. But it takes the community to actually take part in it. If you just sit and ignore what someone might be trying to make, you're just shunning your own roleplay.

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The first, least important topic I'd like to bring up, is the utter lack of anything to do in town. Most of the time, our options are limited to either tavern RP, or any event we happen along (meta-game to). We need to get together and find different things to make passive roleplay more enjoyable for those of us living in other parts of the world, or with strange sleeping schedules. It shouldn't be limited to just those people, either. For those of us that were here for the festival, that's the sort of thing we should strive for. Something that people can enjoy, instead of moping around in boredom at the tavern.

I never have this problem. Getting any rp going, whether it is active or passive, is not and should not be the responsibility of the administration. It is a matter of personal creativity, and no one has the right to make this complaint. If you can't figure something out, I'm not really going to spare you any pity.

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Personal rant. I want to stress that this is my opinion, I don't expect others to share it.

Super villains. There's too damn many, and they're all acting at once. I like each of them as a character. Each one brings something different to the table, and it's good. My problem with them arises when there's (at least) four, all vying to fulfill some evil plot that will in general, ruin the average citizen's day. Is it too much to ask to have only one impossible task at a time?

The four most active, Vorn, Mirage, Persephone, and Reaver, are all more than a match for any character, or group of characters, Vorn being the possible exception. It's been argued "Well, the good guys always win anyway." Says who? I'm sorry, but at present Surna seems so doomed the name may as well be "You Should Probably Kill Yourself" RP (YSPKY-RP).

Let's make a list, let me know if I miss something.
1) Removal of Cyril's ward generating sword has basically left Surna open to any and every threat, specifically necromantic ones.
2) There's a life devouring portal growing not so far from Surna, and I'll bet it's not just a glorified bug zapper.
3) We've got a now less restricted, two hundred thirty eight year-old vampire running about, ripping the genitals off men.
4) There's the constant threat of goblin invasion, due to Vorn's plotting (damn him), on top of whatever else he has planned.
5) Reaver has come knocking, and if he's anything like his brother, he's bent on ending the entire existence of all Aeria.
6) Once a month (luckily), and whenever they emotionally get out of control, we have three thropes ready to raise hell for everyone.

If that hasn't got you down, then just remember. Everyone villain is at minimum two hundred years old, with all the experience that comes with it. Vorn is probably the only individual of the four who can actually be killed by any group of people. I'd insert Gir's doom song here, but it'd be too obvious.

Again, my personal opinion. If I've insulted one of you (and I probably did), I want you to understand that I'm not attacking you, your characters, or your RP. None of it. What I have a problem with is the colossal amount of imminent death heaped on top of everything, hold the sprinkles.

Rant on this topic, concluded.

All reasons for me to totally disregard everyone's concern for Alec and not nerf him again, after nerfing him twice already. Some may say they never noticed. To that, I say, yeah, you wouldn't, not like anyone pays attention to the details of other people's characters, unless you're me and deeply involved in helping others get their characters integrated into some of the dnd stuff.

With that said, lolvillains. lolvillains everywhere. Guess what, I have a villain, too. But he's not a lolvillain, seeing as he doesn't show up. Plus, his existence actually provides challenges that the playerbase can and regularly does deal with, instead of just being the guy that frightens people when he walks into a room. Anyway. I shan't say nothing further, except that I will probably personally deal with any lolvillains if the lolvillain problem persists, though right now, it's mostly just escalated into some very troubled times. That's my stance on it.

A very civil, and structured rant. Kudos, you raise some very good points.

Achosi wrote:

The first, least important topic I'd like to bring up, is the utter lack of anything to do in town. Most of the time, our options are limited to either tavern RP, or any event we happen along (meta-game to). We need to get together and find different things to make passive roleplay more enjoyable for those of us living in other parts of the world, or with strange sleeping schedules. It shouldn't be limited to just those people, either. For those of us that were here for the festival, that's the sort of thing we should strive for. Something that people can enjoy, instead of moping around in boredom at the tavern.

I agree with Kain and VH on this one, we're in a magical land. Surely we could just create little events here and there, main chars or not. We wouldn't even need ridiculous 'XP' or loot.

Contrary to popular belief, not all of the villains roaming around are out to wipe Surna off the map. Quite the contrary. They have their own agendas, and their success or failure really does depend on people's player characters. I'll use Persephone as an example; as my own character I'm most familiar with her motivations. Her purposes in Surna are selfish, and have little to do with harming the population. She does murder people from time to time, never anyone's characters, just NPCs. It is possible, with enough IC investigation, to find her and expose her.

And I'll just say this: No villain will ever destroy all of Aeria. That would just be stupid, and it's not even possible IC.

I liked a lot of the points in his arguments about all the villains, but two of those four villains are working together (along with an accomplice or two). They are helping eachother reach their own goals through less than socially acceptable means.

Good characters can do the same thing. Say the Monster Hunters rally up a good group of people, they could go and try and stop all this evil stuff.

For the record, the Monster Hunters will probably never rally anyone to do anything. Most of the time, we tend to warn others to stay back, but they come anyway. I have been trying to avoid committing to heroics on the hunters so that we don't get forces into a dumb situation of heroes ganging up on all the villains. The most I do is mock Vorn and confront villains about their villainy (in a tense convo), rarely do much behind that.

All the conflict between the hunters and Vorn is just a result of Vorn making attacks on the hunters or their friends. An eye for an eye, etc.

Kain wrote:

For the record, the Monster Hunters will probably never rally anyone to do anything. Most of the time, we tend to warn others to stay back, but they come anyway. I have been trying to avoid committing to heroics on the hunters so that we don't get forces into a dumb situation of heroes ganging up on all the villains. The moat I do is mock Vorn and confront villains about their villainy (in a tense convo), rarely do much behind that.

All the conflict between the hunters and Vorn is just a result of Vorn making attacks on the hunters or their friends. An eye for an eye, etc.

The monster hunters was just an example of a potential "Do-gooder" group.

I'm flattered you know about Reaver so well. I'm trying to not do anything with him other than have him pop up and mumble about irrelevant crap, so he's technically not "active" yet. Thank you for thinking of me though.

There is a note of villains, and a note of lack of roleplay. Villains help create roleplay.

The Tiramisu issue, being the one that involves me:

I have only one comment to make, and that is that I do not want to force anybody to use it, never had never will, despite the fact I really dislike the current script. I will not showcase it until it's done, Krug and Dragon being like the sole exceptions to the rule. I will not propose its use any further nor raise the topic anywhere until it's done, and then I'll post a SINGLE thread about it. That's it.

My actual problem with it is the smear campaign that ViralHatred has started against it and myself, which I find unfair and uncalled for. I am sick of it. I honestly and truly am sick of it, and I'd rather have nobody talk about Tiramisu unless it's on that thread which I'm gonna create at some point.

My second problem, and I'm being entirely honest here, is that people love to take jabs at eachother mostly on things that have passed a long time ago. Olden has too much history, that much I'd admit, but trying to constantly reinstate the negative side of our past instead of learning for it is gonna get Olden nowhere. I mean it, shut up already. It's about time everyone gets a fresh start.

My final comment would be that Olden needs to stop being so critical against change. We need to stop comforming, we should all strive for being better, we should all strive for a better place, a more fun experience, a place everyone can enjoy. Olden hasn't changed one bit for almost 2 years, the only discernible difference that really stuck was GeoWulf leaving (Which really was for the better), that's it. This whole time we've been stuck with the same old faces and the same old conflicts. Changing the lore doesn't suffice, people need to change, attitudes need to change, and that fucking mentality of apathy to change needs to be wiped out of everyone's minds.

Change starts with oneself, so I'll certainly try to improve my attitude, to let things go, and to solve this ridiculous rivalries that have plagued my stay here. But what I change is meaningless if not accompanied by the rest of you. I ask of you, I implore you, change.

I personally like the villains, for without any conflict there isn't any progress.

Gambit wrote:

I personally like the villains, for without any conflict there isn't any progress.

I concur with that,
Also If we had a bit more low level villans like say an occasional bandit in the forest or a kolbold band attack that would spur things.
How about a heretic burning in the market?

What about my bounty board.

i've done both hunts and bandit ambushes.

i did a lot of low level stuff, and some mid-level-but-still-handlable stuff. I suppose the reason no one ever ran into that is half of you avoided my encounters like the plague (because of dnd).

in any case, that stuffs there, do it yourself, you don't need an admin or someone else to host a robbery for you.

Dama Oscura wrote:

The Tiramisu issue, being the one that involves me:

I have only one comment to make, and that is that I do not want to force anybody to use it, never had never will, despite the fact I really dislike the current script. I will not showcase it until it's done, Krug and Dragon being like the sole exceptions to the rule. I will not propose its use any further nor raise the topic anywhere until it's done, and then I'll post a SINGLE thread about it. That's it.

My actual problem with it is the smear campaign that ViralHatred has started against it and myself, which I find unfair and uncalled for. I am sick of it. I honestly and truly am sick of it, and I'd rather have nobody talk about Tiramisu unless it's on that thread which I'm gonna create at some point.

My second problem, and I'm being entirely honest here, is that people love to take jabs at eachother mostly on things that have passed a long time ago. Olden has too much history, that much I'd admit, but trying to constantly reinstate the negative side of our past instead of learning for it is gonna get Olden nowhere. I mean it, shut up already. It's about time everyone gets a fresh start.

My final comment would be that Olden needs to stop being so critical against change. We need to stop comforming, we should all strive for being better, we should all strive for a better place, a more fun experience, a place everyone can enjoy. Olden hasn't changed one bit for almost 2 years, the only discernible difference that really stuck was GeoWulf leaving (Which really was for the better), that's it. This whole time we've been stuck with the same old faces and the same old conflicts. Changing the lore doesn't suffice, people need to change, attitudes need to change, and that fucking mentality of apathy to change needs to be wiped out of everyone's minds.

Change starts with oneself, so I'll certainly try to improve my attitude, to let things go, and to solve this ridiculous rivalries that have plagued my stay here. But what I change is meaningless if not accompanied by the rest of you. I ask of you, I implore you, change.

I agree with most of that although I will admit they did make a good move wiping the character base, which is a good change. The story wasn't necessary, but that's change as well. Aside from that, I have no clue what the deal is with the fight between you two, but I will agree that Viral seems to just bash down my requests because "LOL I'M SERVER OWNER." Anyway, aside from that.

Kain, levels? Really? This is roleplay, not an mmo. I'm honestly tired of characters being better because they stick to DnD all day. I tried it once and really hated it. I tried it again on a new character a couple of times, trying to do better, but I still had no real avail. This is a roleplay, if fights are taking too long, just roll dice and say high roll wins, but there's no need to restrict everybody to stats.

About the villains-conflict thing. I'd like to (against my better judgment) refer to old Olden. How many of you remember the age old conflict between the Guard and the Necromancer Guild? The reason I loved/think that sort of thing is such a great idea is because it doesn't pit good against evil (say what you will about dem necromancers) but rather it pits individuals with contesting ideals against eachother. I saw a lot of this at the start of the Goblin v Guild thing, where 'good' and 'bad' characters could be found on both sides of the conflict, some over something so petty as who was willing to pay them. Since then it's become a bit more of a good vs evil conflict, which sort of ruined that and to be fair, both Pat and I are at fault for that.

Short of ranting on here I'd like to see we should try to either make the Guild v Goblin conflict more neutral again, or get more of a group vs group conflict going to bring about that desired conflictingRP.

One final note...

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My second problem, and I'm being entirely honest here, is that people love to take jabs at eachother mostly on things that have passed a long time ago. Olden has too much history, that much I'd admit, but trying to constantly reinstate the negative side of our past instead of learning for it is gonna get Olden nowhere. I mean it, shut up already. It's about time everyone gets a fresh start.

I dunno about anybody else but I had a great time at Nostalgia Night, it was like a roast where all of us were loling at eachother about shit we all did in old Olden. I don't see a problem with taking our jabs, so long as it's not provocative.

There's a difference between friendly, jokeful jabs when you KNOW the other person isn't getting hurt. Those are usually nights where everybody is jokefully "attacked" though. There's a difference between one single person being attacked, and clearly not being happy about it.

As much shit as this community has gone through I will never stop loving it I swear.. Being here when I was like 12 or 13 (Being 15 now) was the fuckin' shit for me. When I was stressed or had troubles with life I'd always just go back to Olden, RP a bit. I still do it now, and it's fuckin' great I swear. Sure we all are having problems right now, people aren't enjoying the way certain people are RPing (I'm not one for using names cause I'm lazy), people are bored on the server now with nothing to do. Sure people even had a bitch fit over how dumb the other one was and why their penis is bigger.

Through all that I still think we're all fucking friends and need to get over ourselves. I'm not one for thinking, "MAN FUCKIN RP IS SO SRS AND EMOTIONALLY CHALLENGING FOR ME" I just RP and enjoy myself. Even I did stupid shit back in the day, didn't matter as long as I was having fun doing it. Just keep in mind my friends, please don't hold grudges and get mad at one another. This place is really cool and I'd hate for it to be a shit fest of private RP and people hating one another.

Also, Vote Krug.

I'm going to respond to one thing in particular first.

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1) Removal of Cyril's ward generating sword has basically left Surna open to any and every threat, specifically necromantic ones.
2) There's a life devouring portal growing not so far from Surna, and I'll bet it's not just a glorified bug zapper.
3) We've got a now less restricted, two hundred thirty eight year-old vampire running about, ripping the genitals off men.
4) There's the constant threat of goblin invasion, due to Vorn's plotting (damn him), on top of whatever else he has planned.
5) Reaver has come knocking, and if he's anything like his brother, he's bent on ending the entire existence of all Aeria.
6) Once a month (luckily), and whenever they emotionally get out of control, we have three thropes ready to raise hell for everyone.

Oh man. If you think that's doomed, you don't know what doomed is. Surna has been in deeper shit than this on multiple occasions.

Anyway, let me go down the list.

1. Yeah, this is a problem. But it doesn't doom the town. Surna is the ONLY city that's had these sort of wards; you don't see every other city crumbling to mass invasions of undead.

2. The portal, as far as I know, is not a 'life devouring portal'. I think it's one of Markka's 'Fields of Strife', and basically means it's a small thing to attract people and cause RP. I could be wrong.

I think the rest of the issues can be answered with a simple question; what do villains do but create problems to which other characters react to. They spur conflict. Hopefully to get rid of some of that tavern rp.

One thing I'd like to say. It must be that characters lack the interpersonal relations and rivalries of old, because there should hopefully be meaningful passive rp among the people, even IN 'tavern rp'.


Edit : Another thing, in response to this thread, alec's thread, and the DnD thread, and Giggles' post;

These are all good topics. They address concerns and get discussion going.

But please, please, unless the examples are there, don't assume that things are going to hell in a handbasket again. If they are, I haven't seen it. I'm not saying everyone should shut up and go along. I'm asking that people realize that, unless you personally have started being incredibly bored in the roleplay or pissed all the time, please don't assume it's that way for everybody else. I become aggravated when people assume that things are going to shit because someone ELSE thinks it's going to shit because somebody else was bored or mad the other day.

Rutabega wrote:

About the villains-conflict thing. I'd like to (against my better judgment) refer to old Olden. How many of you remember the age old conflict between the Guard and the Necromancer Guild? The reason I loved/think that sort of thing is such a great idea is because it doesn't pit good against evil (say what you will about dem necromancers) but rather it pits individuals with contesting ideals against eachother.

Well said. It seems like there's this fixation that villain / evil characters must be killed. So a powerful villain is criticized because "we can't stand up to him / her". So? There are conflicts outside of open combat, broaden your horizons. And even if a villain could destroy the entire town, why the hell would they, when that would draw the attention of the broad-reaching Sanctimonian government and its army. Furthermore, what could they possibly gain by doing it? You burn a city to the ground, it's gone, no income, no labor, no nothing. Unless a villain is too psycho to care, or powerful enough to take on Sanctimonia itself (either of which would never be allowed or make any sense), that would never happen.

Now, the worst case scenario here is villains take over Surna completely. Even if that happens, it's not like there's no chance of a successful rebellion and eventual, albeit delayed, victory for the good guys. You all give up too easily.

Munroe wrote:

Now, the worst case scenario here is villains take over Surna completely. Even if that happens, it's not like there's no chance of a successful rebellion and eventual, albeit delayed, victory for the good guys. You all give up too easily.

I'll have you know Thorn lived in an underground cellar for the duration of the Inquisition. I actually quite enjoyed it, cozy little place plus it kept me out of the tavern.

Mikoel wrote:

Also, Vote Krug.

<3