Your View: Necromancy, Undead, and Everything In-Between

[Sorcerio 4606]

 

Happy Memorial Day, LOTC!

 

With Lore Games finally over and the world once again populated with all assortment of magic and mystery, many have been taking another look at the lore accepted under the tumultuous administration of Flamboyant and questioned whether or not they should be reworked to accommodate for more roleplay-friendly interactions with both the magic itself and regular players. Among the largest of these, at least in my view, is that of Necromancy, which has undergone several large revamps since its introduction in Aegis. It has been a rather unstable topic of debate and has many glaring flaws which have not yet been addressed. This is something I intend to amend, seeing as the current community has stagnated and thus left an opportunity to carry out a more solidified and engaging rewrite that both addressed past problems and adds content that can be enjoyed by more than a handful of people.

 

With this also comes the matter of undead, whether they be ghouls, liches, or darkstalkers, as well as interactions with mundane players. One of the largest problems with old undead, from what I’ve gleaned, was the inability to do anything more than murderhobo and ascend the ranks, before inevitably falling stagnant after boredom due to either lack of promotion or failure to capitalize on success. Though I have a few ideas as to the amending of these issues, I also highly encourage your own thoughts and ideas to be presented. 

 

I’m certain there are many players who may be skeptical of the magic’s success as a whole, which is fair considering its rather volatile streak of activity and inactivity. It has died out numerous times in the past, in part due to poor leadership, poor lore, or both.  However, the magic holds rather dear to me and to many communities on the server, and I do believe it is possible to fix it. Therefore, I’m asking the players, whether new or old, means by which this may be done. I confess that I am not as old as many other players who encountered necromancy back in its heyday, which is why your responses are so crucial. This is not something endorsed by ST, but it is something that I myself hope to receive feedback and validation from my fellow ST members.

 

Do keep in mind that with this, necromancy may or may not be what it once was. The system may be changed drastically depending on the responses given, though I am confident that such a system will be for the better should it embody proper critique. Ideally, this will be the one rewrite to finally solidify necromancy in LOTC cannon indefinitely, or at least for a good while.

 

If you do not feel comfortable responding on the forums, you’re more than welcome to PM me via discord (pundimonium#9142). If you have other thoughts, I would be more than happy to hear them. All I ask is that your responses be thoughtful and give reasoning. Quality responses with valid reasoning will be more highly prioritized as opposed to less thoughtful responses.
 

[IsaaKc 1225]

Hoping to see some meaningful responses since Necromancy is such a hot topic of a Magic.

Edited May 31, 2021 by IsaaKc

[TreeSmoothie 5136]

I haven't seen Necro used much, a few I know are inactive/gone from LOTC altogether. It's a good magic, just that it's players seem to rather keep it to smaller interactions, rather than big ones, which is understandable (i.e. large assaults, arsonry). Metagaming is a nightmare to deal /w 😔

[Security_ 1075]

Yeah I got a recommendation for ya, shelf it 😎

[hotbox_monk 1024]

Dreadknight Veredin would revel in the chaotic abyss that the lore games sent him away to.

[UnBaed 9187]

i miss seeing pesky ghouls on the roads, or on the outskirts of cities; i miss when undead and dark magics had an actual presence on the server and motivated light magic users to actually do something about them or to actually make people be wary of stuff they don't understand

 

i miss losing my life energy when i shake a dude's hand and rping as if it was just my social battery dying to explain my lack of energy

 

Honestly, I just wish there was good antag RP again and it felt like a lot of potential was had with this magic for it.  I'm not saying good antag RP doesn't exist now, though I feel as if this could have helped in spreading it more around the server for others to experience.

 

I know antag RP can exist without dark magic like this, but we're still on a medieval fantasy server and it can be cool to have a variety of niches

 

but the issue is that people see magics like that and want to collect it and sit on it, or feel like they can't do much with it because it's been written to be overly complex and tedious to the point where all the fun is sapped out of it (i.e. requiring dragon bones to make a lich)

 

another issue is just how the community reacts to it, there's still too many people on this server that view lotc like it's skyrim or some dnd game where their character is the protagonist that is meant to slay any and all evil so that they can be super cool and kissable while being 6'6" and having a beard at 16.  Just suffocating 

[Nozgoth 2991]

I'm going to expand on the idea I previously mentioned a few minutes ago on discord.

 

The current state of necromancy, while not perfect, can still be used to create conflict and narrative - and yet, to many players disillusion, it is not. It is at the end of the day up to the players on both sides of a conflict to contribute and build a proper narrative...

 

I will say, this iteration of necromancy does make it increasingly harder to ever accomplish something as mentioned before, and it, combined with other elements (such as meta-gaming and attitudes of player-bases) has led to a stagnation. In my opinion, the combat abilities need to be more versatile and viable; 10 emote draining seems quite ridiculous. Also, the auxiliary components of necromancy (such as plagues and black alchemy) should be made more relevant and be intertwined with the main body of lore, to encourage their use and properly synchronize the lore piece as a whole. An example of this would be to make it so that perhaps a requirement for an important ritual would be that one must take use of other parts of necromancy, perhaps they would have to run a plague event and infect x amount of players to fuel the ritual. This, of course, requires cooperation from the LOTC community as a whole.

 

Also, as UnBaed said, there needs to be more epic antagonist roleplay. I am not sure how we would achieve this, but perhaps it could be made some how so that there is more incentive to create conflict - or just choose players who are WILLING to do such for the sake of the narrative.

 

I might elaborate on this if I think of anything else to say.

Edited May 31, 2021 by Nozoa

[Chthonian_ 99]

a more free form version of necromancy would be refreshing to see, something along the lines of how PBM handles 

[Vangroth 39]

Darkstalker Sentinel glares up from the hell Flam's shelf sent him down to

 

Jokes aside, i don't think that undead will ever be more than the occassional pest or something for people to expect stubling into town. Necromancers? Maybe. But darkstalkers or ghouls are stuck. No matter if one's to play a for some reason peaceful darkstalker or a hostile one, due to how LOTC is, everyone wants to be a hero. Let a wyvern into a city, people won't flee but charge at it. Same goes for the undead, most of the time they're forever stuck existing for the entertainment of others as some sort of player-ran event and little else.

 

Even necromancers themselves don't exactly do much other than either create more undead, teach a friend or two the magic or  make gigantic schemes that mirrior necromancy's origin that never go anywhere. Ascended are gone for lesser reasons despite being awfully similiar in OOC origin. To sum it up, from a IC standpoint, you'd see more voidal horrors be tollerated than any type of undead, rendering what they can do quite limited when it comes to roleplay. I've played only my darkstalker up until flam's shelf, while my character was rather bloodthirsty, more often than not he fought in self defence because someone wanted the bragging rights of taking down a darkstalker.

[DrakeHaze. 2491]

Been here 10 years and the only necromancy that I've witnessed outside of Events and antags is when Lhindir walked into Providence with his Gravelord name above his head. I'm not too sure what my view on Necromancy and undead stuff is, I think its cool and a fantasy staple so its bound to attract players both positively and negatively. I think undead playable creatures and the like was another way to add more players into the fold of necromancy without giving them the magic, like a trial I guess.

The thing about promotion is generally what happens everywhere. Players in an army for example climb ranks and get bored eventually if their 'progress' becomes limited or reaches a conclusion. Difference between a necromancer and some army goon is that the army guy can pk his persona and basically do it all over again with a fresh coat of paint whereas someone with magic can't because they'd have to 'learn' the magic all over again for half a year to reach a similar point in power where they can comfortably produce conflict.

Idk if necromancy had pk clauses or what not but I think it'd be neat if a T5 necromancer that PKs whether through a clause or not, have the option to attain T2 or T3 Necromancy on a new fresh persona through some dark magic mumbo jumbo reasoning. Would likely ease the boredom with regards to promotions when there is an option for a new coat of paint. 

I feel like the way magic is handled on LoTC in general is just incredibly lame. At first, 6+ months to master a specific magic seems fine on paper. However, what these restraints on magics don't take into account is that its not 6 months of active magical roleplay but a handful of training sessions and rarely any magical conflict. Additionally, since magic is such a huge IRL timesink for power rewards ,players are HEAVILY inclined to never PK their persona and just stack applicable magic apps until they have the equivalent magical prowess of Xerath.

Sorry for the rant in that last part but since the topic is about a magic I just had to share a bit of my opinion on magic in general.


What I want to see from necromancy? I want to see dark magics have an actual opportunity to achieve some sort of position of antagonist. I'd like to see necromancer players be able to gather resources, magics and create LITERAL naxxramas to rain plague and undeath upon farming villages. I want necromancer and undead players to have crazy goals like that and for it to be achievable through whatever system possible. Feel like the lifespan of necromancers should correlate to this sort of storyline, where a small cabal gathers in power and attempts some unbelievable feat towards the end. Either defeated or victorious, at least SOMETHING big and noteworthy happens. Necromancers and Undead should be very ambitious and at the peak of their power should be very confident and public. There needs to be a gameplay loop to keep all players interested, having an ENDGAME to magics just literally ends their gameplay most of the time. There should be a cycle rather than some linear progression. 

Idk just ask @NarthokI heard he is interested in dark magics currently, should probably just make him the lich king and see what happens.

[_Sug 2574]

42 minutes ago, UnBaed said:

i miss seeing pesky ghouls on the roads, or on the outskirts of cities; i miss when undead and dark magics had an actual presence on the server and motivated light magic users to actually do something about them or to actually make people be wary of stuff they don't understand

 

i miss losing my life energy when i shake a dude's hand and rping as if it was just my social battery dying to explain my lack of energy

 

Honestly, I just wish there was good antag RP again and it felt like a lot of potential was had with this magic for it.  I'm not saying good antag RP doesn't exist now, though I feel as if this could have helped in spreading it more around the server for others to experience.

 

I know antag RP can exist without dark magic like this, but we're still on a medieval fantasy server and it can be cool to have a variety of niches

 

but the issue is that people see magics like that and want to collect it and sit on it, or feel like they can't do much with it because it's been written to be overly complex and tedious to the point where all the fun is sapped out of it (i.e. requiring dragon bones to make a lich)

 

another issue is just how the community reacts to it, there's still too many people on this server that view lotc like it's skyrim or some dnd game where their character is the protagonist that is meant to slay any and all evil so that they can be super cool and kissable while being 6'6" and having a beard at 16.  Just suffocating 

This ^

[Bones 153]

1 hour ago, TreeSmoothie said:

I haven't seen Necro used much, a few I know are inactive/gone from LOTC altogether. It's a good magic, just that it's players seem to rather keep it to smaller interactions, rather than big ones, which is understandable (i.e. large assaults, arsonry). Metagaming is a nightmare to deal /w <img src=">

BIG AGREE. 100%. I would love to see large scale antagonising of settlements that isn't just bandits showing up, causing a city to lock its gates for an eternity. Unfortunately, navigating the red tape surrounding property damage within settlements, coupled with the fact that the perpetrators would likely be subjected to pvp default makes it near impossible to do.

[TreeSmoothie 5136]

2 minutes ago, Bones said:

BIG AGREE. 100%. I would love to see large scale antagonising of settlements that isn't just bandits showing up, causing a city to lock its gates for an eternity. Unfortunately, navigating the red tape surrounding property damage within settlements, coupled with the fact that the perpetrators would likely be subjected to pvp default makes it near impossible to do.

YEAH, it's fun, too. On my [redacted] I've been antagonising Oren for a while- burning down their hospital, their bank, on my spook. It's really awesome when people commit to it and take the RP seriously.

[Lhindir_ 3445]

Lotc is very, very hostile towards players who play darkmages. @TreeSmoothieisnt actually using her magic to do arson/the like, and realistically any random bandit can do the same thing. these sorts of 'random acts of chaos' dont give anything to the necromancers and or darkmages, and any actual dark attempts are immediately snuffed out to the point where there is literally no reason to actually use the magic openly and get caught because it just immediately means *death. 

 

Hence why undead and necromancers recently have, Very deliberately, been very, very secretive. We're not loot balloons to get blown up by protags lol. 

[TreeSmoothie 5136]

18 minutes ago, Lhindir_ said:

Lotc is very, very hostile towards players who play darkmages. @TreeSmoothieisnt actually using her magic to do arson/the like, and realistically any random bandit can do the same thing. these sorts of 'random acts of chaos' dont give anything to the necromancers and or darkmages, and any actual dark attempts are immediately snuffed out to the point where there is literally no reason to actually use the magic openly and get caught because it just immediately means *death. 

 

Hence why undead recently have, Very deliberately, been very, very secretive. 

Somewhat true. Protags make me weep, but I've been able to get RP focused on Xionism & ungabunga magic out during most of the encounters. If I'm doing something mundane like Arsonry or Banditry, I add spice to it. Fading, Hindering, preaching Xionism like an uncle talking politics at thanksgiving. People've gotten better with taking it IRP, so I've been more trusting toward people during my events. Call me a fool for it, but even if it means my character's PK, it means my character's PK. I'm here for my own enjoyment, but the role of a dark mage is to be the ""antagonist"" in most cases, and that's why they're given their power in magic (vs. a normal evocation user). This is why certain things were added and amended, like Mysticism's Scavenging ritual (Leaves victim with RP of trauma, ethreal wounds, keeps them alive and the Shepard still gets what they need without being metagamed on, through memory erasure). Lots of people have tried to metagame, but I'm still here in (mostly) one piece. 

 

It's logical to want to be secretive, but to not do something with a dark magic for ages (months +) and only use it for a group's own benefit, is just greedy. ((This tangent isn't about anyone/any group, just an "if" scenario. Necros are cool and I am surely not being held at gunpoint to add this))