[Amendment] Blood Magic

[Acostrob 254]

On 11/11/2022 at 12:26 AM, FlemishSupremacy said:

Honestly, yeah, remove the spell. It's just used to cast it on people during events while being totally hidden to just troll and disrupt events. "haha, i will go to this court session and make everyone's eyes bleed. My tell? oh it's breathing out through my nose a bit harder than normal."

 

Blood mages deserve nothing but being called pvp on if they do this

its called we do a little trolling

 

[Laeonathan 3957]

5 hours ago, E__V__O said:

 

You don't need to glow eyes or have visible distortion when casting void magic either, just droplet of sweat or cracking your fingers can do. Long as it is a tell and people can notice. This is all redundent however if the spell states it has more effects and stuff to cast.

 

Simply: No.

 

Quote

The Voidal Tell

Due to the alien influence of the Void, the Void Mage will express a tell which signifies their connection and focus upon the Void. When performing a simple spell in non-combat, and at high mastery, this tell may be as simple as the twitch of  a finger or ear; whereas in combat, attempting to cast a spell would manifest a clear and distinguishable tell, such as the manifestation of their aura, clear ripples in the air, their entire hand trembling, etc. In the event of applying magics such as Sensory Illusion or Mental Magic, the tell should be a distinguishable and explicit emote of the mage focusing upon the target individual. 

All combat spells in voidal mage require a strong tell.

The lore is very detailed about it.

[argonian 12837]

10 hours ago, MeteorDragon said:

 

You never did end up rping the effects of the spell, hmmmm. Though, I also ended up not bothering to make you rp it just like a few others. As I said, it's not just in big events, though it can be. I've used it in small groups as well, that was the second time, I believe, I've cast that during a "big event", at least the first time it caused some entertaining rp. Also the same event, maybe 15min later, had someone try to assassinate one of the nobles, I'd say mine was tame compared to the like 50 people who jumped up and emoted *draws sword

Except no, because the guy with the sword was actually trying to achieve something and he was also clearly noticeable and stoppable, whereas all this spookstuff is undetectable and almost invariably done for the RP reason of "I'm bored and I think it'd be funny to waste half an hour of these guys' time".

[argonian 12837]

53 minutes ago, satinkira said:

 

hardly wasting your time when you could actually produce interesting roleplay from it, though I do agree that doing it for the rp reason of 'lol' is stupid

I mean if the only "tell" is some incredibly minor emote that'd be metagaming to notice, then you're gonna spend at least 20 mins just working out who it is before you can even begin to combat it. And I've legit never seen them actually achieve anything doing this. Like for example if a ghost had possessed Sveneld and made him attack because the ghost wanted Karl or Sveneld dead, that'd actually have been purposeful roleplay. Same as when Sveneld did it himself. But I never see this. It's always just some guy causing random chaos for the sake of chaos and no interesting outcome has been achieved or even attempted by the end of it. That's why it feels like a waste of time.

[Tentoa 1991]

ITT: Humans malding they can't immediately 5v1 someone who gave them a harmless nosebleed.

[Zarsies 6027]

Late per usual, apologies. If I had to guess we'll probably put a cap on the number of people it can hit but it'll still be "many".

 

As time goes on I lean further and further into wanting nothing to do with player content. The toys I make get misused or misrepresented (or both). There's an inevitable breakdown in the cooperation of roleplay and either the user or the subject (or both) agonize over their misalignment, bicker about the rules, and leave the argument without closure. They mald in their group chats and proliferate 'takes', uninvolved folks create preconceived notions of x y z, and they stick to those conclusions. I'm of course generalizing but I've had very few successes in remedying this conundrum and see no real solution other than having frank conversations about community behavior, our shared expectations for roleplay, and how we police these things without soiling what modicum of fun we have.

 

Player content (i.e. the LotC term lore, not the word, that has to do with players like magics and creatures) can't be written to be 'powerful' and trust completely in the good will, virtues, and disciplined constraint of the user; inevitably there's poor roleplayers who misuse, abuse, or otherwise pierce the language of the given piece to inflict their vision of their story on others. Not everyone weighs tension, drama, fun, fairness, etc. as a player and make non-optimal choices in-character for the sake of others (cough cough, cooperation).

 

On the flip side player content shouldn't be written to cater to the utmost obnoxious, selfish, 'gaming' (without standard virtues), haughty, and cynical players because then we neuter our fun by making our toys drab and boiled down to the point of tastelessness. If every magic was written in the philosophy of rock paper scissors, could only be distinguished by their color, everyone had perfect knowledge of their mechanics, and everyone had an instant remedy/counter to all interactions then where's the fun and inspiration? It would be safe and perfectly balanced (ignoring policing) but homogeneous. Oatmeal.

 

Anyone writing player content has to navigate that spectrum. They will assuredly fail in one way or another because no matter how much we redline things to hell and back, foresee bad faith use and patch holes, and actively police use, amendments are required. It's just how LotC works. Our lore is alive. We do what we can to thread that needle so everyone has as much fun as possible as often as possible. Too much in either direction is - as we've learned over the years - is not fun. Success is somewhere in the middle and typically leans towards toddler-proofing. It's the internet after all.

 

All that said, I believe I've sufficiently waged this battle already. It's nothing like the old ability yet satisfies the fantasy. It was a bad spell poorly written and used by knobs, all terrible things individually. The current spell is as neutered and boiled down as I could stomach but it can still be used by knobs. I strongly suspect the issue isn't the lore but the people you're engaging with. Both sides are valid; having a ceremony disrupted by bleeding tears can be both jarring, unwanted, and edgy as well as surprising and thrilling. It's a matter of who is on both ends and what their wants/expectations are. Misalignment makes it unfun but it doesn't matter how it happens. A magic spell, a combat rule, tone like comedy vs seriousness, voice like flowery and long vs concise and punchy, styles of dialogue, modernisms vs archaisms, etc etc. If you don't like how someone plays you should talk to them about it so you can still play together. If that doesn't work out, don't play with them.

 

I say all this not in defense of lore itself, it can just as bad as the aforementioned virtue-less knobs, but because in this instance I'm quite sure there's more to the problem than the rules as written. I'm sure the team will come up with a number to cap it, we could debate for months about the logic behind what that number is and why it should be higher or lower, but that's the bugaboo of balance. As I already said lore already requires upkeep so logically no piece is perfect and timeless; there's plenty of things that aren't addressed this instant that warrant review. Blood magic isn't perfect and because of the users - LotCers as a whole - and the people they'll teach it'll get amended over and over.

 

 

 

 

I wish people would talk to me in this spirit. Seeing players echo that mystics and ghosts are dumb, blood mages are edgelords, vampires are virgins, spooks should be avoided/killed at all costs, keep spook players out of communities, blah blah blah it all stings. It's demoralizing to see people sniping at each other and baiting for upvotes. I'm probably being unnecessarily sensitive but it doesn't feel like we have much community camaraderie and therein lies the poison.

 

Related to this, blood magic is in desperate need of its second half. I posted it and reiterated during revisions that the second slot is very unfinished and there's a lot I cut out so it could be up in a timely manner. The majority of requests I get ask for it to focus more on combat since it's overwhelmingly ritualistic / has little in-hand spells. I hate writing for combat. It exacerbates the struggle I've outlined above because players get heated and abandon fun in their application of the fantasy. If I pour the necessary hours into writing it, slave over revisions (because numbers and I don't get along) to appease ST, and see it through after months of progress it can all still be used by edgelord weebs out to win and dictate their story. Their misuse creates a broad misrepresentation of what I've worked on and when I muster the time and energy to play I hear it reduced down to a single generalization. I feel it's implied by every quip that Zarsies is the factory of evil and everything he touches is to be avoided. We ought to summarily remove the lore. I'm unsure if or when I'll write the addition because y'all can be bummers. :(

[ClassyDryad 1733]

49 minutes ago, Zarsies said:

Late per usual, apologies. If I had to guess we'll probably put a cap on the number of people it can hit but it'll still be "many".

 

As time goes on I lean further and further into wanting nothing to do with player content. The toys I make get misused or misrepresented (or both). There's an inevitable breakdown in the cooperation of roleplay and either the user or the subject (or both) agonize over their misalignment, bicker about the rules, and leave the argument without closure. They mald in their group chats and proliferate 'takes', uninvolved folks create preconceived notions of x y z, and they stick to those conclusions. I'm of course generalizing but I've had very few successes in remedying this conundrum and see no real solution other than having frank conversations about community behavior, our shared expectations for roleplay, and how we police these things without soiling what modicum of fun we have.

 

Player content (i.e. the LotC term lore, not the word, that has to do with players like magics and creatures) can't be written to be 'powerful' and trust completely in the good will, virtues, and disciplined constraint of the user; inevitably there's poor roleplayers who misuse, abuse, or otherwise pierce the language of the given piece to inflict their vision of their story on others. Not everyone weighs tension, drama, fun, fairness, etc. as a player and make non-optimal choices in-character for the sake of others (cough cough, cooperation).

 

On the flip side player content shouldn't be written to cater to the utmost obnoxious, selfish, 'gaming' (without standard virtues), haughty, and cynical players because then we neuter our fun by making our toys drab and boiled down to the point of tastelessness. If every magic was written in the philosophy of rock paper scissors, could only be distinguished by their color, everyone had perfect knowledge of their mechanics, and everyone had an instant remedy/counter to all interactions then where's the fun and inspiration? It would be safe and perfectly balanced (ignoring policing) but homogeneous. Oatmeal.

 

Anyone writing player content has to navigate that spectrum. They will assuredly fail in one way or another because no matter how much we redline things to hell and back, foresee bad faith use and patch holes, and actively police use, amendments are required. It's just how LotC works. Our lore is alive. We do what we can to thread that needle so everyone has as much fun as possible as often as possible. Too much in either direction is - as we've learned over the years - is not fun. Success is somewhere in the middle and typically leans towards toddler-proofing. It's the internet after all.

 

All that said, I believe I've sufficiently waged this battle already. It's nothing like the old ability yet satisfies the fantasy. It was a bad spell poorly written and used by knobs, all terrible things individually. The current spell is as neutered and boiled down as I could stomach but it can still be used by knobs. I strongly suspect the issue isn't the lore but the people you're engaging with. Both sides are valid; having a ceremony disrupted by bleeding tears can be both jarring, unwanted, and edgy as well as surprising and thrilling. It's a matter of who is on both ends and what their wants/expectations are. Misalignment makes it unfun but it doesn't matter how it happens. A magic spell, a combat rule, tone like comedy vs seriousness, voice like flowery and long vs concise and punchy, styles of dialogue, modernisms vs archaisms, etc etc. If you don't like how someone plays you should talk to them about it so you can still play together. If that doesn't work out, don't play with them.

 

I say all this not in defense of lore itself, it can just as bad as the aforementioned virtue-less knobs, but because in this instance I'm quite sure there's more to the problem than the rules as written. I'm sure the team will come up with a number to cap it, we could debate for months about the logic behind what that number is and why it should be higher or lower, but that's the bugaboo of balance. As I already said lore already requires upkeep so logically no piece is perfect and timeless; there's plenty of things that aren't addressed this instant that warrant review. Blood magic isn't perfect and because of the users - LotCers as a whole - and the people they'll teach it'll get amended over and over.

 

 

 

 

I wish people would talk to me in this spirit. Seeing players echo that mystics and ghosts are dumb, blood mages are edgelords, vampires are virgins, spooks should be avoided/killed at all costs, keep spook players out of communities, blah blah blah it all stings. It's demoralizing to see people sniping at each other and baiting for upvotes. I'm probably being unnecessarily sensitive but it doesn't feel like we have much community camaraderie and therein lies the poison.

 

Related to this, blood magic is in desperate need of its second half. I posted it and reiterated during revisions that the second slot is very unfinished and there's a lot I cut out so it could be up in a timely manner. The majority of requests I get ask for it to focus more on combat since it's overwhelmingly ritualistic / has little in-hand spells. I hate writing for combat. It exacerbates the struggle I've outlined above because players get heated and abandon fun in their application of the fantasy. If I pour the necessary hours into writing it, slave over revisions (because numbers and I don't get along) to appease ST, and see it through after months of progress it can all still be used by edgelord weebs out to win and dictate their story. Their misuse creates a broad misrepresentation of what I've worked on and when I muster the time and energy to play I hear it reduced down to a single generalization. I feel it's implied by every quip that Zarsies is the factory of evil and everything he touches is to be avoided. We ought to summarily remove the lore. I'm unsure if or when I'll write the addition because y'all can be bummers. :(

 

;-;

[Valannor 6345]

51 minutes ago, Zarsies said:

Late per usual, apologies. If I had to guess we'll probably put a cap on the number of people it can hit but it'll still be "many".

 

As time goes on I lean further and further into wanting nothing to do with player content. The toys I make get misused or misrepresented (or both). There's an inevitable breakdown in the cooperation of roleplay and either the user or the subject (or both) agonize over their misalignment, bicker about the rules, and leave the argument without closure. They mald in their group chats and proliferate 'takes', uninvolved folks create preconceived notions of x y z, and they stick to those conclusions. I'm of course generalizing but I've had very few successes in remedying this conundrum and see no real solution other than having frank conversations about community behavior, our shared expectations for roleplay, and how we police these things without soiling what modicum of fun we have.

 

Player content (i.e. the LotC term lore, not the word, that has to do with players like magics and creatures) can't be written to be 'powerful' and trust completely in the good will, virtues, and disciplined constraint of the user; inevitably there's poor roleplayers who misuse, abuse, or otherwise pierce the language of the given piece to inflict their vision of their story on others. Not everyone weighs tension, drama, fun, fairness, etc. as a player and make non-optimal choices in-character for the sake of others (cough cough, cooperation).

 

On the flip side player content shouldn't be written to cater to the utmost obnoxious, selfish, 'gaming' (without standard virtues), haughty, and cynical players because then we neuter our fun by making our toys drab and boiled down to the point of tastelessness. If every magic was written in the philosophy of rock paper scissors, could only be distinguished by their color, everyone had perfect knowledge of their mechanics, and everyone had an instant remedy/counter to all interactions then where's the fun and inspiration? It would be safe and perfectly balanced (ignoring policing) but homogeneous. Oatmeal.

 

Anyone writing player content has to navigate that spectrum. They will assuredly fail in one way or another because no matter how much we redline things to hell and back, foresee bad faith use and patch holes, and actively police use, amendments are required. It's just how LotC works. Our lore is alive. We do what we can to thread that needle so everyone has as much fun as possible as often as possible. Too much in either direction is - as we've learned over the years - is not fun. Success is somewhere in the middle and typically leans towards toddler-proofing. It's the internet after all.

 

All that said, I believe I've sufficiently waged this battle already. It's nothing like the old ability yet satisfies the fantasy. It was a bad spell poorly written and used by knobs, all terrible things individually. The current spell is as neutered and boiled down as I could stomach but it can still be used by knobs. I strongly suspect the issue isn't the lore but the people you're engaging with. Both sides are valid; having a ceremony disrupted by bleeding tears can be both jarring, unwanted, and edgy as well as surprising and thrilling. It's a matter of who is on both ends and what their wants/expectations are. Misalignment makes it unfun but it doesn't matter how it happens. A magic spell, a combat rule, tone like comedy vs seriousness, voice like flowery and long vs concise and punchy, styles of dialogue, modernisms vs archaisms, etc etc. If you don't like how someone plays you should talk to them about it so you can still play together. If that doesn't work out, don't play with them.

 

I say all this not in defense of lore itself, it can just as bad as the aforementioned virtue-less knobs, but because in this instance I'm quite sure there's more to the problem than the rules as written. I'm sure the team will come up with a number to cap it, we could debate for months about the logic behind what that number is and why it should be higher or lower, but that's the bugaboo of balance. As I already said lore already requires upkeep so logically no piece is perfect and timeless; there's plenty of things that aren't addressed this instant that warrant review. Blood magic isn't perfect and because of the users - LotCers as a whole - and the people they'll teach it'll get amended over and over.

 

 

 

 

I wish people would talk to me in this spirit. Seeing players echo that mystics and ghosts are dumb, blood mages are edgelords, vampires are virgins, spooks should be avoided/killed at all costs, keep spook players out of communities, blah blah blah it all stings. It's demoralizing to see people sniping at each other and baiting for upvotes. I'm probably being unnecessarily sensitive but it doesn't feel like we have much community camaraderie and therein lies the poison.

 

Related to this, blood magic is in desperate need of its second half. I posted it and reiterated during revisions that the second slot is very unfinished and there's a lot I cut out so it could be up in a timely manner. The majority of requests I get ask for it to focus more on combat since it's overwhelmingly ritualistic / has little in-hand spells. I hate writing for combat. It exacerbates the struggle I've outlined above because players get heated and abandon fun in their application of the fantasy. If I pour the necessary hours into writing it, slave over revisions (because numbers and I don't get along) to appease ST, and see it through after months of progress it can all still be used by edgelord weebs out to win and dictate their story. Their misuse creates a broad misrepresentation of what I've worked on and when I muster the time and energy to play I hear it reduced down to a single generalization. I feel it's implied by every quip that Zarsies is the factory of evil and everything he touches is to be avoided. We ought to summarily remove the lore. I'm unsure if or when I'll write the addition because y'all can be bummers. :(

 

Don't let the doomers get you down, my king. Ain't your fault that people abuse what you built to be used with good intentions. Noone can blame you for whatever bad rp has occurred. I think that fault lies solely with whoever taught the bad actors.

 

👑 you dropped this... 

[E__V__O 1984]

1 hour ago, Zarsies said:

vampires are virgins

 

This is cannon now.

[squakhawk 7877]

Amendments/Additions implemented into main lore post. Thank you for your submission. Moving to correct subforum to prevent redundancy and clutter.