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Your View - Banditry


GodEmperorFlam
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The absolute biggest problem is that as a bandit from both an OOC and an IC perspective it is far more beneficial to murder your target rather than let them live. It just makes sense. Why? Because no one can investigate that most of the time. If it were possible to create a plugin or a set of rules that required there to be some clue or something perhaps then leaving the victim alive wouldn’t be the obvious stupid choice for the Bandit. This way, if the victim is killed, there could be clues left over. But unless it’s hardcoded into a plugin in some way, or the rules explicitly say you have to do something – maybe do a modreq or perhaps an sreq and have them review the logs and create a scene that can be investigated. Blood trails, scuff marks, beaten down grass, etc. However the RP went, the mod or the Story team member could lay out the foundation for an investigation to occur. They could place signs and set an expiry date on them, because evidence doesn’t last forever. 

 

That said, who’s gonna happen across it on their way to a town? Most people have soulstones and don’t travel the roads much. But I’ve always held the belief that it’s IMPLIED there are far more people out and about than players represent. Unspoken and unrepresented NPC’s. I think that as part of this mini story line some NPC who’s crossing through any well traveled area, such as the main roads, should definitely notice some straight bullshit and report it to wherever they’re heading.

 

IN fact, many nations to my knowledge have borders that span well past their city limits. So essentially, there should be NPC guards that are implied to be meandering about, doing patrols. Sure, they can’t just show up conveniently and the victim can RP them as back up. But they should always be looking for suspicious bullshit at the very least on the main roads that would indicate some sort of crime. They don’t investigate it themselves, however. That’s up to the actual players to investigate. The NPC Guard would be roleplayed by a story team member. How I imagine it should go would be as follows. 

 

The bandit has just finished their...transaction...with their victim. There are a few main possibilities. I’ll go through each one individually!

 

First Possibility:
Victim lives and is let go, probably after being cleaned out of their belongings or something. Story team isn’t really necessary here. They can launch their own investigation with whoever they want if they choose to, or decide to move on with their lives. That’s it. 

 

Second Possibility:

Victim is kidnapped/captured by the bandit. An Implied Guard NPC from whatever place they’re in, assuming it originated on any maintained road by the nation it took place, comes across the first clues. Perhaps the ST has the guard investigate personally depending on the situation, or the guard instead rushes towards the nearest city of that nation and immediately informs REAL player characters of what they found, and leads them to it. This is of course after the ST has gone through the logs or something and laid down all the appropriate clues, hints, evidence, etc. Then, an investigation is launched and they try to follow the clues as best as they can. What happens from there is up to the bandit/kidnapper and their victim, and the ST, and the actions of those investigating. 

 

Third Possibility: The person is murdered in cold blood by the bandit. Maybe the corpse is just left in the road. Maybe it’s dragged off somewhere. Either way, there’ll almost always be clues. Following the same guidelines as above, the ST comes in with their implied guard npc and reports to whomever is concerned to launch an investigation and to hopefully locate the body, and perhaps other evidence. Shreds of clothing from the bandit? The bandit’s blood, perhaps? They can grab some druids maybe and have them talk to the animals and trees? Who knows! 

 

Fourth Possibility: The person is wounded or otherwise immobilized or handicapped by the bandit and left in the road or wherever to rot and die. Following the same guidelines, the ST can have an NPC guard find them and return them to a city for medical help and then they can launch an investigation. Perhaps in this case an ST doesn’t need to actually play the NPC, it can be assumed one came across them. ST’s call. 

 

This is just kind of like...a rough super rushed idea and nothing I’ve mentioned here is “HOW IT SUPER DEFINITELY NEEDS TO BE!” but is meant to inspire a more concrete set of rules. Basically, any instance of banditry, if the victim OR the bandit wants, can have an ST overlook it, or aid in setting up the aftermath and clues. There should never be mina’s or die RP. Sure you can have the combat itself be pvp, but the end result should be overseen by an ST, unless both players are perfectly happy leaving it as it was. Basically: Players have the right to a conflict Story Team member to assist!

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Again I’ll bring up the point:

 

Antagonists are meant to NOT always be the winners.

 

People who play as bandits should pay attention to the role that such characters have in other games. There was the mention of the random bandit encounters in Skyrim. These things are infrequent and designed to pose no great threat to the character. There’s a scuffle, and the highwayman is often either killed or allowed to flee, only winning infrequently at best. In many of the comments defending bandit rp however, the bandit is consistently assumed to be the victor except in cases of pseudo-rulebreaking interventions. To their credit, the conflict rules had ought to have revisions made to give bandits more of a chance at providing good rp. Yet even then, that wouldn’t resolve the win-at-all-costs attitude that is held by many in the banditing community. 

 

There’s also the point repeatedly brought up that bandits have no reason to leave victims alive. If they were to, that would only make for trouble further down the line. Putting aside the assumption that the bandit could simply wear a mask and different clothes--Yes. Leaving victims alive could result in consequences for the bandit. It could very easily result in bandits being hunted. But that is what’s meant to happen to villains. They aren’t supposed to be pvp-hungry, nigh-unbeatable memory-erasing menaces, but tangible characters with strong, realistic flaws. I get the urge of people to not want their character to lose--as most everyone else does. But for the sake of longer, more enjoyable roleplay on both sides of the aisle, people need to be able to look at things from a viewpoint that doesn’t revolve around them.

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From what ive seen in my experience alone is that upon the removal of villian applications banditry had severely declined due to there no longer being a penalty for poor roleplay and thus the threat of a va being taken from you and with it any form of villiany roleplay one may want to participate in. There is a reason most countries IRL have licensing procedures for industries besides the revenue acrewed by the applicatiom process for different licensing such architecture/contractor/drivers/industrial licensing. Its to protect the quality of these aspects of life and to assure that if rules are broken these licenses can be taken away so to prevent others from imitating these mistakes. I am a firm believer that banditry can be a good form of roleplay. But the mentalities of both bandits and banditees wont change out of good will. Staff intervention and good server policy is what can make banditing/villiany roleplay overall higher quality. 

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I think that Banditry Rp helps the server as it gives some people fun as a profession, and it gives a risk to travelling on the roads, as ithats makes it more realistic RPly, along with the fact that it also can turn out badly for the bandits as ive on multiple occasions did a two man bandit on a single person and died due to them calling pvp and being rather skilled at pvp or having magic and killing both of us. I think that there shouldnt be any mid crp or pvp join ins as that helps both bandits and victims so its balanced. and i think that you shouldnt be allowed to kill anyone unless they are in any way not doing as you ask, ive once had three bandits come to my own house in the wildlands and kill first my neighbor, and they then killed me after i watched, though they later got combat blacklisted there is another situation where someone did meta knowing that i had a cult through ooc methods and only new my ooc name but stopped me on the roads with the traffic of 5 people in the area, which had no way of knowing it was me and they got to kill me without any RP, despite my best efforts to have some. Ive shown two bad examples of banditing here and ive come up with a few rules to fix banditry. Rule one: no ooc stalling, such as contesting emotes or such, if you have a problem /modreq to get some resolution. Rule two: the bandit can only take either 50 percent of your mina or inventory, or the 3 most valuable items, this is a way to prevent people fro taking everything. Rule three :if the victim isnt cooperating than the bandits can incapacitate the person and have them go maybe three IRL minutes before they get up, and the person must give up all their items.

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Last time I was a bandit and gave a small group antagonistic role-play, they stalled until another group happened upon us and initiated upon us. Not to say that it was definitely a metasquad, but the instance would not of taken as long as it did if all partieswere cooperative. Therebis no real way of solving this problem from a rule perspective either, cause it is on the individual to just not be a c*nt about it and call in the metasquad.

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Consider adding a rule that makes it so if you’re killed while doing villainy RP you’re no longer allowed to do villainy RP for a set amount of time.

 

An example of this would be three bandits robbing people on the roads. A patrol of guards show up and slay the bandits. Those three players who played the bandits are no longer allowed to do bandit or villain RP for 6 IRL hours.

 

Another suggestion I have is punishing bad villains through blacklists and bans instead of punishing all villains through restrictive rules.

Edited by The Combatant
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On 8/12/2019 at 9:51 PM, Anonymous_Potato said:

I think banditry should not be PvP-based, because this is an RP server. Instead, it should be an RP interaction, and should usually not result in a character’s death. This would erase all of the develop of the character during the encounter. 

I agree with this completely.

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Banditry is a situation where I feel as if nobody will ever be satisfied, but I do agree that it should inherently be more roleplay-based rather than getting jumped and having to PvP. Not everybody is skilled enough to PvP, as they’re here for roleplay, not to be PvP’d and stolen from. In my opinion, if you’d enjoy doing that, factions might be more suitable for you.

Traveling along the roads and facing the possibility of being stolen from is a good experience that I feel as if many roleplay servers lack, as it comes with risk and unhappiness (for some people). Due to this, I don’t see why it isn’t objectively looked at in a more “realistic” manner. Bandits learned routes and jumped groups all the time, but were disguised, so they couldn’t be identified. They’d rob their victims and leave them to whatever dangers they might face going to the nearest town to recover. Being a bandit on LotC and killing everyone just for the sake of them not remembering is rather.. dry. If you’re immediately robbed, killed, and revived, where are the consequences for the bandits? You couldn’t tell the guards anything about the criminals because you don’t remember, and the bandit gets away scot-free. Meanwhile, you suffer a larger loss just because you wanted to seek out roleplay in another place.

Of course there’s the risk the bandit would be overpowered and then they face consequences, but what are the chances of that? Some may argue that with genuine roleplay going into robberies, “meta squads” can roll up, but that’s just a rule-break that can be reported. And if they fear groups stumbling across them whilst a robbery is in process, then that’s to be expected; they’re roads that people use to traverse between settlements. In my opinion, that just encourages bandits to be more smart and swift about their robberies. Of course, people could stall with responses, but that’s also a rule-break in the way of avoiding roleplay. If bandits really needed to incapacitate their victims, knock them out. Make them unable to move efficiently, tie them up. Killing should be a last resort scenario, or seen as a more brutal choice. Not a, “Oh well, I can kill this person and get away with the robbery, so that’ll be my best choice to do.”

To me, that’s just skipping over valuable roleplay development and giving way to dry interactions and PvP scenarios in an immersive roleplay environment.

But that’s just my two cents on the matter ^^

 

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I’m just going to @ 3 + 1 people that I know can vouch for my banditry rp
@Jaded @TheAlphaMoist @Wyvernbane
Trust me when  I say that banditry in and of itself isn’t the problem. It’s the people who are being bandited and its sometimes the bandits themselves. The people who are being bandited often bemoan, complain, and shittalk the entire time in OOC and discourage the bandit from engaging in CRP considering that their general experience is to be countered with every attack/move they do with a complaint in OOC. The people who are doing the banditing are not only trying to avoid the metarally, but also trying to get something out of it and dip before they get killed by a squad of 20 dudes that roll up out of nowhere. As a result, shitty bandit RP ensues. However, what I typically do when I bandit is ensure that I at least give the people I bandit a good experience. 9 times out of 10, I don’t even pop them or ask for their pixels; I had a sacrifice on my Shrogo back in my banditing days where all I took was their gear and, after the sacrifice was through, i gave it all back to them before they SS’d. I had a fight on my Shrogo where this guy said he worshipped a sun god, not the right thing to say to a Shrogo, and we had some short and enjoyable CRP before he got thrown off a cliff IRP and rolled a 1 for the landing. Again, didn’t ask for pixels or loot. Bandited on my frostbeard where I ran into Llyria screaming that my wife was being attacked by a bear only to lure 2 people out into the wilderness and engage in combat, which resulted in them giving me an ear and a sword and me coming out of it with a missing arm – character development. I don’t know what happened on their side (is why I pinged Unwillingly and AlphaMoist) but the problem is not banditry, it’s how people on both sides approach banditry. A lot of what I see here is **** like ‘they’re just after my loot’ ‘they just want my pixels’ and honestly while there are a few roving goonsquads that do, the vast majority of bandits have an RP reason for banditing and, due to their negative past experiences, rush it because they have the impending sense of a metasquad – which is not aided by the person being bandited who complained incessantly.

Additionally, there’s @Daicen who was a snaga for a day during Marimba’s event and who I think – feel free to correct me if I’m wrong – enjoyed it. We captured him during one of the orc’s roving bandit squadrons and we made him a slave. He can give his own account if he wants to

 

However, the problem is that people constantly attack banditry, when really they should analyze their own attitudes towards it and wonder if their attitudes contribute to the problem.

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Honestly, I’m “Fine” with Banditry, however, if possible, I would like it if players could get back “Some” of their items, such as maybe some of their food, a choice of weapon, a valued item, IDK. Bandits are of course a problem, but unless it gets out of hand (meaning Bandit attacks start rising seriously), then it something should be added to fix this, maybe like a cooldown for when you can do your next Bandit attack (Ex 1-3 in-game days, or a IRL day wait, IDK up to you).

 

If I were to suggest something, maybe make a rule where Bandits and the people they are attacking have to /roll and rp it out, and if bandits get high rolls, the people they attack lose there stuff and are left, or if the people that are getting attacked get high rolls, the bandits are captured, have to serve jail time, etc. If the people in the situations, both bandits and people getting attacked agree to it, then character death can also be done, since it may be unfair to newer players (and maybe older players) if they lose there character in something such as a bandit attack. 

 

This could be a problem for me if the above feature is implemented (since 60% of the time I get bad rolls), but I’d still go with it, so long as the “kill character choice” is a thing of course. 

 

Anyhow, Thank you for continuing to work on the server! 

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On 8/13/2019 at 9:22 AM, A_New_Noob said:

I think the only problem with not letting bandits kill is that roleplay wise that’s what they would do, even if it does make for bad rp. I think a solution would be making another RP reason why they shouldn’t kill people, such as mayve yoy are confronted by demons if you have killed tooany people, or something like that. But I do think bandits should give an option other than death, just si they can make more interesting RP.

The issue with this is that real life thieves don’t actually kill that often. Statistically, they prefer to just snag stuff and run. Not to mention, the trauma that you accumulate by killing people. You -literally- need to be a psychopath to be completely unaffected by murdering someone. Killing is traumatic. That's a fact.

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Banditry is low tier and **** because it’s the only way to pull it off without random people coming across you hold-up on the road and fighting you.  Realistically, it would be unlikely to have a passer-by come along whilst I was banditing someone, however due to people being able to travel roads at mac 50 on foot, I need to get the banditry over and done with in as few emotes and minutes as possible.  As an Orc, slavery and spirit worship are the main drives to bandit, however I personally try to never kill my victim.  Instead of taking their loot and slaying them, I take them into slavery and give them loads of RP.  I have had multiple slaves of my own become my friend OOCly and ICly. For spirit worship, I once took a Bishop of the Canonist faith through the desert and to a shrine I made.  I made him cut himself and willingly offer blood to the Spirit, aswell as swear fealty.  I could have chopped his head off, took a screenshot and then said ‘Yub me hosh’.  However, now of days, I cannot do this.  Every time someone sees me, an Orc, on the road, they sprint passed me and do not give me time to type up an emote, thus forcing me to do a copy & paste of, for example ‘Trys to bash the stranger with the shaft of his Poleaxe’. 

My recommendation.  Do not allow passer-bys to join the RP if there are plans of banditry (Even if combat has not started.  Otherwise bandits will just instantly shoot them so combat is initiated), unless all parties agree.  Camping the RP spot to wait for combat to finish so they can then jump on the bandit should also be not allowed (perhaps even give the bandit/s a short grave period in which to move to a new location).  This would mean bandits are not rushed to hit and run, allowing people to experience conflict that goes beyond simple mina stabbings.  If this becomes an issue, simply remove the rule and go back to what it was.  So far, punishing banditry heavily only creates lots of toxicity.

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There are plenty of ways to avoid bandits through legitimate roleplay effort. All that matters is if people are willing to put the effort into it. Ask for an escort if you’re worried about bandits on the road, and rp hubs should be expected to have security protection the rpers in the town rather than relying on ooc barriers blocking certain type of RP from happening as long as it isn’t oocly toxic. Restrict toxic bandits, not bandits as a whole.

 

Bring back peace time raids with 5player caps and counter raids/rescue raids with 10player caps.

 

 

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@Anderssn Yeah dude i totally agree with your statement on the matter at hand here, pvp totally rox.

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