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[Completed][Completed] [Debate/Poll]: Holy vs. Dark Conflict


BonesOfTheEarth
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Holy vs. Dark  

73 members have voted

  1. 1. How should Holy vs. Dark conflict be handled?

    • Holy people should be allowed to write within their lore what they're required to fight for/against.
      22
    • Holy and Dark groups should compromise whenever a holy lore is being made, and discuss how their given creeds/tenants/whatever would apply to the dark.
      36
    • The LT are right and holy people should not at all treat dark people differently than your average innocent man.
      11
    • Other(Detail below).
      4


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Just now, wan said:

I suppose the best question for clerics and holy mages is, what makes them different than an average man with a dislike for undead and a sword that hurts undead extra-good? And what purposes could they fulfill beyond that basic encounter? (Granted, folks going around tapping everything with aurum/slayersteel poses the same problems as people using Clerics/Paladins/Ascended to meta-scan dark mages in the past – in which case just report those folks.)

Again, beyond the ‘good guys beat up bad guys, and because they’re good, they should win’ attitude I see sometimes.

 

I think the answer to this question is that holy mages should be honorbound to do good in general. Not just watchdog against dark mages or whatever, but save travelers from bandits, rescue cats from trees, heal the sick, or give out cookies. Could be whatever, but they have to be seen as good (or at least altruistic) to not end up being just regular guys with magic that hurts people. 

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@Apostate Will do.

 

@rotund_man

 

That is a whole other argument entirely. Relevant, yes, but I was hoping to avoid that can of worms. The unfortunate reality is that we do exist as a large number of people, and the players who gain interest in such do so for the premise of protecting innocents from the vile. I believe this wouldn’t be an issue if dark magics that were not actually dark didn’t label themselves as so. That, and truthfully holy mages are not necessarily good either(Being a good paladin/cleric usually takes precedence over being a good person). Deity magic=/=Holy magic.

 

Overall your point is a fair one. That’s a little bit based on RP culture, but in cases of Clerics – they were required to aid the needy and whatnot. I do agree there is a need for that kind of deal. Holy mages should be holy because they do good deeds all around, not just attacking the dark. It’s a good thought and one I 100% am going to take into account. I hadn’t quite viewed it from that viewpoint, and I’ll take a look into redefining “holy” because of it. I do have to disagree if you’re saying we should just vanish as a playerbase, though.

 

I’ve written Paladin “good” to be based on the law of wherever they currently are. “Innocent” people are people who have not broken the law. But Ill have to do more on that, reading your comment.

Edited by Fury_Fire
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@Lackless_ lol i suppose i worded it poorly

i believe holymages should not be an antithesis to darkmages – holymages are at a “Dissonance” because at the moment they seem to only be – I suppose it is nice to have them at the voidal events, but there doesnt seem to be a central theme behind them because they only ever seem to hunt down darkmages, and do not interact otherwise. I’m not a paladin, I would not know. There are evils in the world that are very present (banditry, slavery, torture, the like) that are very much more evil than some types of mages. I suppose maybe I’m thinking too into the roleplay and not enough into LOTC. 

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Just now, Fury_Fire said:

That is a whole other argument entirely. Relevant, yes, but I was hoping to avoid that can of worms. The unfortunate reality is that we do exist as a large number of people, and the players who gain interest in such do so for the premise of protecting innocents from the vile.

 

You guys don’t, though! You spend 100% of your time developing powers or pursuing jihad against dark mages. It just so happens that those mages are usually bad and hurt people, but if they aren’t, your premise falls apart entirely. Just a little bit of PR altruism would turn paladins from generic magic dudes into plausible good guys. I think you should focus on that more than anything else.

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Just now, rotund_man said:

 

You guys don’t, though! You spend 100% of your time developing powers or pursuing jihad against dark mages. It just so happens that those mages are usually bad and hurt people, but if they aren’t, your premise falls apart entirely. Just a little bit of PR altruism would turn paladins from generic magic dudes into plausible good guys. I think you should focus on that more than anything else.

I worded it poorly. This is what I was generally trying to get at. I’m going to be editting things into the Paladin creeds to make them more focused on being good beyond the slaying of dark – thank you for bringing this to mind for me

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The other problem currently is that paladins are the only active distinctly holy group to my knowledge. Ascended have gone inactive, Clerics are shelved. Each of these three groups were meant to have different identities – clerics being at some points largely faith based but unfortunately some groups succumbed to rampant dark-mage hunting. Each group has their bad PR.

This gets into another point – it’s easy to criticize the holy man who doesn’t do just enough good whilst forgetting the soul-stealing mage in the corner. Kind of like how people relentlessly focus on Catholic priests or other figures in the Church due to the rampant issues of questionable morality. Though that’s a bit of a problem with people entirely.

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6 minutes ago, Fury_Fire said:

I worded it poorly. This is what I was generally trying to get at. I’m going to be editting things into the Paladin creeds to make them more focused on being good beyond the slaying of dark – thank you for bringing this to mind for me

 

Sounds good. Just remember to de-emphasize powers. J.R.R. Tolkien spent very little time giving the OG holy mage, Gandalf, special powers. His character was more important; an old man lost in a changing world, representing dying ideals and the passing of generations. Paladins should represent the spark of human goodness trying to prevail in the insane hellworld that is Arcas, or something 2deep4me like that.

 

That’s what makes writing good, man, developing themes and having something to say. Powers are cool but at the end of the day this game is about creating something memorable.

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9 minutes ago, rotund_man said:

 

Sounds good. Just remember to de-emphasize powers. J.R.R. Tolkien spent very little time giving the OG holy mage, Gandalf, special powers. His character was more important; an old man lost in a changing world, representing dying ideals and the passing of generations. That’s what makes writing good, man, developing themes and having something to say. Powers are cool but at the end of the day this game is about creating something memorable.

I’m unsure if you’ve read the paladin lore we have currently in submissions, but take a look sometime. I dont think we have enough time to begin anew with our abilities/actual magic, if that’s what you’re implying(nor the mental brainpower to start over), but read our creeds! Paladins were always meant to be honor-based, but it’s never been officially written in and thus rather died off as concept. We’ll be doing that shortly, defining what honor is to a paladin, and essentially using that a way to branch an actual decent-person culture rather than function as holy zealots of war. I’ve already pinged Paladin chat, having a couple people write up ideas as the whole majority seems to rather agree with what you’ve said. If you have your own idea of creeds to add/change for this(as that is what determines our day to day rp), hit me with a message on discord. It’s a lot easier than performing this discussion over the forums and I want to hear more of what you’d suggest. Will/Fury#3108

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Players are incapable of any hostility RP without escalating it to extend to the people behind the screen. This is true of every combating faction on the server. The trouble with Holy and Dark is that we then get lore arms races where everyone keeps trying to one-up each other. Also members of the opposing group infiltrating an enemy on an alt or new character then doing stupid **** with the magic to cause chaos from within.

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25 minutes ago, rotund_man said:

 

Sounds good. Just remember to de-emphasize powers. J.R.R. Tolkien spent very little time giving the OG holy mage, Gandalf, special powers. His character was more important; an old man lost in a changing world, representing dying ideals and the passing of generations. Paladins should represent the spark of human goodness trying to prevail in the insane hellworld that is Arcas, or something 2deep4me like that.

 

That’s what makes writing good, man, developing themes and having something to say. Powers are cool but at the end of the day this game is about creating something memorable.

 

 

Insanely difficult to enforce because that requires a giant shift in the playerbase mentality in comparison to the lore. All lore can offer tools to provide as such, but it will permanently lie with the players to be able to enforce the standards that should go with holy mages.

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3 hours ago, ScreamingDingo said:

Yeah, essentially I enjoy the dynamic but I’d rather it be an RP dynamic instead of enforced through lore. By that I mean completely having the ability to counter-act the other persons magic and therefore essentially invalidate most of their abilities during conflict. Most of the issues lie with the inability of the dark/light dynamics to actually take consequence and then the general ‘arms race’ attributed with the dark/light dynamic. If the dynamic is enforced through lore, there is a race to essentially amp up your magic to be able to beat the other in every situation possible.

 

Just keep the **** RP, make it so it isnt counterproductive to actual RP and maybe just RP conflict properly. As I’m rewriting the Cleric thing I’m trying to deviate hard from the objective ‘Dark/Light’ counters, for the sake that it really isnt productive to roleplay and the playerbase cannot be trusted with direct counters to the other playerbase.

 

Though I also ******* hate good/evil swapping like with clerics turning into necros or necros turning into clerics.

 

3 hours ago, Aethling said:

I believe the issues which led to this policy from the ST was the inability for players to deal with the holy/dark dynamic only in RP. That it seeped with toxicity and holy players would metagame or even oocly harass dark users or creatures, in order to ‘get them’ and vice versa.

 

Anyone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

 

If players can keep the conflict purely iRP and create an interesting narrative together, then that’s good. There’s room for nuance in a dark/light dynamic too.

Yep

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The difference between dark magic and holy magic is that dark magic should be considered taboo and harmful to communities or customs, and as such it could be different for each playerbase. For example, if there’s a magic that only goes after elves because they’re elves, maybe it wouldn’t be considered taboo for orcs or dwarves?

 

Say, for example, necromancers and everything that has something to do with life force should be universally considered evil and wrong, because you’re stealing life juices to survive, that’s the equivalent of killing people to survive, thus, you’d be a threat to people, thus, it should be considered a dark magic, or taboo magic.

 

It’d make sense for spells to counter one another or something if the patrons of said magic have some sort of rivalry instead of just labelling them as “dark creatures of which my super spells break”. For example, Aeriel, which is paladin patron or something, has a rivalry with Iblees, so he creates tools to give his christian worshippers to deal with necromancers that come from Iblees or something. Iblees, seeing that his kids are being bullied, also creates special powers to survive or fight back so he doesn’t gets subjugated, but holy magics shouldn’t universally affect unholy beings just because they’re dark, such as cleric lights burning dark shamans, which are two very distinct magics with different sources and different backgrounds.

 

Also, the bad guys, which is the evil and bad mages are supposed to lose in the end because this is a history and we also need to realise that it’ll never take a turning point that affects all players in the server to a reasonable amount, being in the end, restricted to only the holy vs dark war in which no other normal players have ever heard about, everything is a hero story and good triumphs over evil, because, this way, you can create enjoyable roleplay for both parties. I mean, it wouldn’t be bad if the good guys lost sometimes or in certain ocasions. This is a game, and the winner are the ones who have the most fun in the end, not the most achievments and godlike powers, yet, we insist on creating back and forth lore that only makes **** worse and stronger so we get closer to the 1v10 RP powers.

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I wrote a huge thing but then I swiped left on my phone and it got deleted, so allow me to restart all over again.

 

I like holy v dark, unlike a few other spooks, but it hasn’t been done well on the server at all. Holies shouldn’t be stronger than spooks, spooks shouldn’t be stronger than holies. They should be equal on every level. A holy should fear a spook as much as a spook fears a holy, and that’s the kind of dynamic I was going for when I assisted Fury in his paladin rewrite regarding shade v paladin mutual disconnections. That’s a fun dynamic, they do the exact same thing to the target, and no one is more powerful than the other.

 

That being said, holy v spook still hasn’t been done right. Nowadays, it feels as if spooks are on a kill on sight for paladins. That just doesn’t really make sense in my eyes, seeing how the spooks that have been targeted, from what I’ve seen, haven’t even been doing anything. I’m entirely leaving my character out of this, and I’m not talking about him right now. He’s irrelevant. 

 

But from what I’ve seen, a spook could just be walking from destination A to destination B, and if someone sees them, someone screams for a holy and that spook is as good as dead, no matter what. Unless, of course, it’s a spook that the paladins are biased for. This isn’t healthy. At all. For starters, why would the holies target a spook who isn’t doing anything when they could be spending that manpower searching for spooks who are doing ****? That just gives the spooks an irp perspective that holies are an unmerciful threat that needs to be taken care of sooner or later. Not only that, but when holies are targeting a halfling dark mage who literally couldn’t harm a paladin if she tried, when they could probably be doing better, more productive things, it kind of gives a vibe that the paladins are only interested in conflict and combat rather than providing an interesting story. Especially when the halfling dark mage hasn’t been a dark mage in months.

 

So, how do I think it should be done? With common sense. There’s no reason to provoke a dark mage who isn’t doing anything just because you have the manpower to. Go after the spooks who are actively causing issues and problems. When they aren’t, show your presence and show that you’re ready to stop any problems they might cause. I love that ****, that’s cool.

 

No one likes slice of life dark mages, but when every time they leave their secret fun zone they’re met with immediate death, then they don’t really have much to do but sit around their HQ and plot or waste time, which ends up giving them a bad image of “Why don’t spooks ever leave their bases???” which is met with “Why do holies expect us to leave when we’re met with death every time we do so??” and so a cycle begins.

 

I don’t believe dark mages should be targeted specifically in holy lore. It’s not needed, unless you have an ability that combats them, and if that’s the case, the dark magic it combats should be given the option of being able to do the same thing to the holy. Other than that, no mention of dark mages is needed, to be honest. I may be unaware, but is holy magic normally mentioned in dark magic lore? But most dark mages I’ve met are still ready to cause conflict against holies. All of that can easily be controlled irp. When holy v dark is forced with lore, then it leads to the toxic hunter mentality mentioned above that no one likes. If the holies are specifically meant to exist only to stop bad guys, just ******* mention that they’re around to fight bad guys. Dark magic isn’t needed to be specified because you don’t need dark magic to be a good villain. Conversely, just because you’re a holy mage doesn’t mean you’re the good guy or a hero, but that’s a rabbit hole I intend on opening myself in the future tm.

 

Above all else, however, lore writers need to work together. Civil discussions with holy and dark writers and the communities are necessary for this kind of conflict to work. That can be hard to have on LOTC sometimes, but if you want to get anywhere with having fun conflict, that’s what needs to happen. If you don’t work together, then it’s just going to be a **** show no matter how you go about things. End of story.

 

I look forward to seeing how the holy v dark situation is going to turn out in the near future after lore games have finished. My PMs are open for anyone who wants to discuss this sort of stuff with me. It’s a topic I really like talking about.

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2 hours ago, TheAlphaMoist said:

halfling dark mage

Uhuh

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Igght so ultra serious grimdark RP/tavern skeleton RP/auto DCing/turncoating/doing there job/not doing there job/inherently bad/not inherently bad/inherently good/not inherently good/irp/ooc is all skub.

 

What matters is that see the thing, kill the thing RP is inherently bad. This is not to say all killing RP is bad RP but when all interactions with another player base is just killing then its hot trash. When I play a “dark” anything I understand perfectly that what I am is considered an undesirable. That’s correct, that’s as it should be. But i’m also on a role playing server with other players. This isn’t some single player RPG like Skyrim or Pokemon. The people we interact with aren't NPCs, there players. Back in the days before changes started seeing a holy was a guaranteed combat encounter with the end result being the losers guaranteed death. It should have been an exciting experience but the entirety of the holy playerbase felt like an npc faction in a stealth game. You hid and if you were caught they tried to kill you. That was the extent of interaction. An encounter should be interesting, you shouldn’t be able to predict the end result because some jack ass decided to write the lore so that a holies only purpose was to kill. YOUR dude and THERE dude should have an effect on the course of the story. An encounter between the bright lord and the dark lord should have a noticeably different result than between a holy inquisitor and a unwillingly enslaved peon but when you write your ONLY purpose to be kill the other side and threaten the player base with DC’s, manual or auto, through tenants then your only going to get one result in any encounter and that is combat with subsequent death for the loser. This is interesting for no one but a murder hobo.

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