Why do('nt) you PK?

[Tk4522 369]

With my current main persona the reason she still breaths is because I worked hard for a TA and I want that investment in time and brain power to continue to pay dividends. Prior to Emony / Uku I was happy to permanently kill my personas under the right conditions. In short, it takes time to get magic and I know I'm not alone in the fact that I don't want my time waisted.  

[DizzyGrey 715]

Cause I don't wanna, so I don't do the thing I don't want to do.

Usually the reason why is because I feel they deserve a better death or I have an attachment to the character and want to keep playing them.

[SethWolf 1810]

So far, I have PK'd to every single character death I've been inflicted with because I have been fortunate enough to have some decent narratives that ended with satisfying conclusions. Save for one, which I felt personally wasn't very good spirited roleplay so I just decided to roll my shoulders and move on with it because it was so incredibly low stakes I felt nothing would be gained or lost if I didn't kill off the character. (nothing was, in retrospect)

 

I do my best to stick by the "if it's good roleplay I'll PK to it" clause. This isn't a strict policy of mine, it's just how I generally feel about it.

 

This mindset will probably be a lot more loosey-goosey with my spook, though. Not for any reason, I'm not particularly attached to them because they have magic, I've played for two years without any magic at all and had about as much fun as I've had with magic. I think it's moreso that you are sort of expected to be killed often when you play the bad guy, and if every bad guy pk'd when they got killed in some gatehouse by a loyal town guard or jumped by inquisitors there'd be hardly any evil practitioners left for people to fight outside of ST events. 

 

Not sure yet, I haven't been killed on them so far but I'm sure there'll be a day. If it's good I'll probably still PK.

 

 

My favorite PK death though is probably my first one, with Felix. Loyal peasant who rose to be a Viscount - who was also my first character. He died a pretty typical death of the loyal warrior archetype of fighting side-by-side with his brothers in arms. I rolled low in an ST event - got stabbed in the chest and thought: "Well he aint fuckin' walkin away from that", and so I killed him off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Cheese 4297]

I like angst and making people cry with my pk posts

[sam33497 5069]

dying is a great narrative device and i like to pk on death, but for some people it won't do anything for them nor do they have much to gain from it

 

i think people play lotc in much different ways, many people pursue their own areas of rp without minding larger effects and don't want that randomly ruined by lotc's watered down death system. Like if I was a humble tavern rper and some juiced out 'immortal' cringelord with klones or a CA came and killed me to use their ego minmax i wouldnt give a **** nor would i pk, even if my friends and i went on an epic quest to get revenge they would just respawn and continue to spew bs all over me, this is not giving meaningful or fun rp to the target

 

i guess along those lines, if u are giving the person ur killing a narrative/good death, or there has been a lot of good rp leading up to it, they are much more likely to pk anyways, if its a situation where you engaged in a questionable faith ooc battle with someone and hunted them down to kill them and they didnt pk, i dont think either of u are truly valuing that story very much and are probably wasting each others time. Shaming for not pking in this instance is zzz

 

i think public execution (authorized by PRO or something like that) should always be pk though because lotc's death is soooo shit and means nothing and you have to suspend belief, imo its one of the biggest detractors from the immersion of the setting

[Suzzie 326]

I haven't gotten into a scenario that would warrant death, and also, if I died to something ridiculous while in the middle of a magic or otherwise long time investment, I think I would genuinely crash out losing months of work. LOL.

There's also a secondary, which I have difficulty sticking to a character; It takes a long time for me to find something I vibe with, so I hesitate greatly to give that up at the risk of me re-entering creative hell.

 

I don't think I wouldn't PK in a public execution though that's kinda bonkers lol. 

[xo31 1237]

for my first bit on lotc I never pkd, this was mostly because after reaching my mandated pink tag hours I played an animii who had a pk clause up until death. I didn't like how it's death made me feel, and so I didn't pk, ever. I always told myself 'ill pk when someone gives me good enough rp' and then someone DID give me good enough rp' and I still didn't, and I think at that very point I realised something's gotta change.

 

for one, playing your character like you're going to pk on death is much more fun. people might pretend there's no difference if you're doing it right but in the back of the mind of the simple rper I believe there certainly is. now, I plan to pk on next death at last so long as it isn't a complete bullshit metagamed metarally or PvP.

 

in short,

 

why I didn't pk: I always felt like there was 'one last thing' I had to do before my character died (usually an arc of some flavor) and this loop would've continued indefinitely.

 

why i have become pro-pk: I have had a lot of good conflict rp where I haven't died irp at all, but I could've, and I realized I would prefer to improve the story of those who slayed my boy, so long as they have earned it, which most people who I find myself conflicting with certainly have.

 

on a side note. pking doesn't have to mean the end of the characters story. I believe becoming undead still counts as 'pking' and it's a way to finish up any arcs your character may have or start up whole new ones while still giving your characters enemies the satisfaction 

 

 

another small fun fact: excluding a time someone actually told me not to pk, noob me actually DID pk Arthur on first death. he became a ghost and haunted his old brothers in arms. but then I missed him, and in my infinite hubris I got the CA reverted.

[sapphic_spidy 593]

Very rarely have my characters ever actually died. They get brought to near death a lot, but the final blow is rarely dealt. I've never had to consider "when do I PK" outside of theoreticals, because every time a character has died has been for some of the things I don't plan on pking to (mainly necromantic sacrifice! I don't PK to anything that REQUIRES a death to occur, unless it's a special occasion. like if a ghoul killed my character to level up, i'm not going to pk, because they needed to do that)
 

Of course, in the actual scenarios, my opinions might differ. It'd depend on what felt right. None of my characters have been in a situation where their deaths would positively impact anyone I suppose? Or executed, hunted down, etc etc 

 

So tldr we'll see as things happen, but my luck is typically pretty okay with random encounters

[PCSwift 989]

On my current char i had one rp death, that I didn't really like

it felt very metagamey and the roleplay was very unfulfilling 

so i didnt pk

[_AzureLexi 115]

My personal PK clause is simple: If my character(s) die to anything that's a direct consequence of their own actions (and not OOC nonsense), I will PK. Regardless of how good the RP is, I will not PK to random bandits or darkspawn (Unless my character was like, goading them or asking for it). Which means generally, my characters will only be PK'd to characters they already know or had been engaged with some sort of oposed plotline with. Between that and the fact that death on LotC acts as an erasure of any consequences you could RP off of, makes me inclined to avoid death.

Though, I have not died on Arielle yet. None of my other characters really "stuck", and as I've found LotC isn't quite the server for me, I'm not going to make any new characters after Arielle. There is definitely a unique experience to knowing once your character PKs, there will be nothing left for you on a particular server.

[Unwillingly 14058]

1 hour ago, PCSwift said:

On my current char i had one rp death, that I didn't really like

it felt very metagamey and the roleplay was very unfulfilling 

so i didnt pk

brother in christ you came into the city wearing the same clothes that you were identified as a mystic in where it was said in RP our citizens were previously attacked by you, I didn't even know whether or not that was even ur mystic OOCly at the time of killing you

if there were issues I had assumed something would've been said, but you said nothing so the RP continued. I'm still open to talking about it if you want to contest the RP and have it voided on the chance that it's meta from the grapevine because I sure as hell wasn't metagaming that interaction lol

[indiana105 3935]

lotc ""conflict"" is either 3 IQ banditry, some MART/CART stacker feasting on ur soul, or the eternal war between "legacy building" manchildren

 

i like servers where you're forced to pk on character death, but lotc players are so braindead and toxic about everything it'd never work 

[Baccaaa 151]

I don't like the idea of having to PK over player interactions even if it somehow is a public execution though I would consider PK-ing way more over that. But once you invest 1 year with 1 char, struggle to find MA's and achieve FA's and earn TA's for things that feel rather gatekept, would you be prone to PK with ease? Personally I wouldnt and its a gigantic factor.

 

Chars with less applications Im way more prone to PK, but definetly not over bad faith banditry or fighting a player whose char is essentialy 'Doombringer, Devourer of Worlds, Harbringer of Chaos.' I have had a lot of crp interactions but rarely has any of my chars died, in fact only happened twice. My first char was bandited and killed to be 'eaten' in 2 emotes a year ago a week after I started and my second char was trapped in a building with 5 people to be killed and 'eaten' yet again 1 week after I created them. Of course I didn't PK over that. Its also the fact that crp banditry/darkspawn raids or whatnot is like 4-6 people fighting one with a very poor goal like 'eating you' which guarants that you'll die 100%. Nope, not PK-ing to that.

[Frostdrop1 1176]

I PK fairly readily as long as the roleplay is reasonably satisfying. The only part I'm not to keen on is the workload I put on myself for the PK post but both my PKs have been entirely unplanned.

 

I find this to be a mixed experience in reality. While there is often some stuff done with death at times it is less so that you might wish to have narratively done with it. For Audo this was less so a problem, though I had to entirely give up on something I really wanted and have continued to want for very little retrospectively return retrospectively - but it wasn't a bad death. This is partly because I don't really force-plan where I want my characters to end up, which generally highlights how obnoxiously hard it is on LORC to achieve a CA without such a method or pre-planning or simply getting lucky. I haven't had another solid character opportunity since to do the same as I did with him, although I have tried my best to find one that's logical without being too thin or cheap.

 

For Marus, simply put, so much more could have been done and few bothered or managed to achieve much to my knowledge despite what people wanted to do with it. Sometimes that's just the way it goes. Again, the death itself was fine and made sense in a way where I'm happy enough with the death itself. This character was perhaps the most affected by OOC popularity because actual rp tended to not be very logical or exclude my characters direct input. Other characters with less input of his direct goals and work have achieved more with less requirement.

 

So even if I PK readily I think on the whole it feels like a net loss or neutral for one reason or another, rather than a gain.

 

I may well not do the same thing with my current character.

 

However, what I certainly do find impactful for better or worse is when someone else doesn't PK for this ethst do with me are usually character-defining. On my first character, this caused significant issues to the point where agreements were broken and have thusly left a sour effect and the character was not readily exposed to revival and had to find ways to cope with the idea which generally meant conflict given their warrior route. Someone not PKing when I played them tended to be an issue because of the logic people had to jump through to justify continuing to roleplay with them.

 

This has not been such a major problem since, as one PK revert - while it certainly mattered - was not all too impactful since they avoided returning. And, since, my current character is so overly exposed to death that their perspective as apathetic and thus there is little conflict to arise from it. This is neither inherent better or worse, but it is more relaxed.

[Epicethan4 545]

I do PK on first death as a general principle (except in PvP), but I understand those who don’t PK on small encounters like in banditry. I was at a raid once, and I saw people getting killed irp instantly and very quickly. I wouldn’t expect the person to PK under those circumstances because of how weak the scenario is. I personally would, that’s why I’m very cautious where I roleplay when I have a character that I don’t want to kill off.

 

because I PK on first death, I would sometimes get genuinely nervous about leaving the city on my character, especially during the Veletz war because of how easy it was to get killed, and how I would lose the entire narrative I was building based on one bad encounter, so I ended up spending 95% of my time in the Urguan capital, and logging off in areas where it would be hard to kill me. This isn’t for everyone, and I get that, but I personally believe that Pking on first death really ups the stakes on my character, and contributes to the collective narrative.

People want their deaths to fit their overall personal narrative, and because I’m super cautious, I’ve been very lucky to have deaths that do exactly that. I think I’ve pked three times in the past three years, and all three deaths have been ******* awesome.