frill

If both parties refused to work together before, during or after a conflict arises then they’re throwing their right to cry about rule-lawyer or mala fides pvp clicks into the flames. The onus is meant to be on both parties to create the atmosphere, and if one is acting so aggrieved in so far as wanting to lawyer and manipulate the rules in place to protect them to be a weapon against the other party, that needs to be nipped in the bud by whichever staff-member is handling the tickets instead of being enabled by them. There should be no incentive for leaders to press for agreeable terms; the purpose of the OOC discussion is to define a via media in which both parties would want to step into conflict, and these terms need to be reached without any carrot-stick artifice beyond having something fun to rp. The spirit of direct conquest and RP bulldozing still remains, as we’ve seen in all of the previous wars that have crept up since the reveal of the new wars, and it’s a spirit that means that there is no room for negotiation between either party because they see no “roleplay reason” to move the terms, consequences et al. into a situation where the conflict would be seen as an enjoyable mutual enterprise for the people behind the screen. When people’re threatening to void wars because the victim-group don’t consent to full, unabated, steamrolling, PRO-losing conquest, there’s a clear lack of “let’s just have fun roleplaying this out” from anyone involved. The rule-sets are for people who take pretend knight roleplay less seriously, and can flit through IC logic with a wink knowing that they’re not causing an OOC conflict by starting an IC one. With the factionalism and unabated vitriol that people throw at each-other at the national level, it’s very hard to get this subtle smudging of role-play circumstances to keep people enjoying things on both sides. Instead, you have people mobbing Nation Leaders in hour-long discord calls where they state that they demand to have absolute OOC control of a settlement so it’s no longer a “threat in roleplay”, and that it’s either handing over the keys OOC or being bulldozed. The system is idealised, and would work well, for a different set of people. The staff and players are relatively incapable of following the new rules if an issue comes up every three days from a rule-set that is meant to fuel mutual, respectful conflict for the sake of jus’ fun RP :3c and prevent conquest bulldozing of entire nations.

tbh as most of the abuses of the system were from your blacklisting of players id like to thank you for helping stall the staff teams decline by resigning from it cheers.

O poor Prince Myshkin, at least you tried. The implied sanctity of this backdoor agreement formed the backbone of your system because you deemed the new system to be less about OOC malice and conquest and more about creating and writing cohesive roleplay stories as a wholly cooperative effort of storymaking between all parties involved. The staff being hands-off would be a boon to the avenues of roleplay and story that could be explored and give players welcome relief from staff they deemed too totalitarian in applying rules verbatim when broken. It would give the staff more room to work on other facets of the server while also giving players some welcome freedom - and hopefully, earn back some of the respect that you feel the players no longer held in the staff. By their own admission, staff interventionalism continued to exist even when you created a system to allow roleplay to continue autonomously, and the staff continued to nanny roleplay and have an overarching presence in conflict. Further, the rules further meaning to give players this welcome power to adjudicate their own roleplay conflicts acted as the cudgel they were beaten with as staff liberally applied the punishment system to situations that were agreed on and approved by the players and the players alone. The key to sincere and enjoyable roleplay really is in the backstage wink and handshake, but you need to respect that mutual agreement as existing. The staff should not strong-arm their will past this agreement if the agreement exists, otherwise you're admitting that the players do not deserve the right to self-govern conflicts and that the staff presence is still a necessity with your new system. Maybe you should have your staff team read the rules you wrote, buddy. It's a good system but it isn't quite there yet.

It’s very telling that the administrators would rather silence dissent rather than address, assuage or hopefully resolve any problems put forward by the community. This isn’t some political diplomatic skill that should needs to be trained into them, but a basic social skill that is expected of the players – hence why it is a really sad thing to see when acted by the administrative team overseeing them. Forced silencing doesn’t beget silence nor fix the issues that’re raised, it just means the administrators, moderators et al. don’t have to see the problems that they need to address. It can only be expected that this issue will continue to be brought forward in the future; if not by the people who’re effectively shadow-banned through the posting-throttle of the forum content moderation system or newer faces being pushed back by an ineffectual staff team that refuse to engage with, and in some cases actively punish, members of the community when problems are publicly brought against them. godspeed mr h and free med

let me pretend

It’s about encouraging a different kind of conflict RP. The conceptualising of good faith as intrinsic to RP is to prevent PvP warclaims and general goonery as being resultant from some OOC desire to screw people over, something that seems to fester as a latent attribute to most of the more veteran players to the bigger nations – reforming the rules so that they necessitate co-operation through a good faith caveat of “this war is just meant to be for fun RP” is something that is there for just that; encouraging roleplay that is far more enjoyable for both parties involved as opposed to encouraging domination and conquest alone. Simply “saying no” would be a meta-action and in bad faith because it’d be an RP nation acting on OOC preservationism instead of a motivation to create and sustain the RP that the conflict would foster. It’s not that wars can’t happen, but it’s that they’re happening for entirely different reasons following the reform. Yes, the previous wars and warclaims had a significant amount of roleplay stoking their flames but the lingering necessity of having both parties agree to conduct the war puts the onus of war on needing to sustain that consent through OOC cooperation – if people’re repeatedly refusing to go to war with your nation, you should have a long stare in the mirror and consider just why that is.

As long as it’s something both parties agree on happening, yes. (and here’s why that’s a good thing.) The new rules are trying to skew war from being a medium for OOC domination of playerbases to a consentual process that both parties agree on occurring to create conflict-based stories that people are happy with. The OOC toxicity and crying from both sides that occurs with WCs and conflicts would have to disappear if both warring NLs or warring parties are consentually both agreeing to go to war explicitly to generate RP. Conquest can still happen if both parties still agree to it – and there are now far more ways available to go about doing war than just the pattern of wc > wc > wc > siege that people’re used to. It’s more freeform because it isn’t combative from an out-of-character standpoint; instead, the wars are there for the sake of roleplay stories. anyway, if people’re getting bitchmade about a lack of staff intervention or no more raid ladders, the point of the post has flown too far over their head for it to be worthwhile engaging with them about the substance of the war reform. Remember where your feet’re at. This is a roleplay server and isn’t meant to be factions pvp in medieval dress, and rules like these’re meant to be reminding people of that. The only major OOC difference between warclaims, conquests, sieges et al. are that they need to be in the good faith of an established story being pressed forward or created by both nation leaders. That wink and a handshake in some backroom Discord is key to keeping RP to RP and making sure people have an enjoyable time instead of sitting in fear that the stuff they’ve worked hard on is going to get nonconsensually steamrolled by some dickswinging major faction. fleepers cry more

Serene Prince Ide Haraccus of Ves signs on behalf of his people, the humble people of Ves. Magistrate Helton Hadrian co-signs on behalf of the Magistrate’s Office of Ves. Both signatures are inked in the skilled flourishes of men of such a cultured city.

kobolds turning from an npc to a playable race in dnd stole thematic niche of “haha silly trapmaker tinkerer that die in droves” from goblins. the lore you’ve written (tribal system, tinkering+trapmaking, shamans) feels like reskinned goblin and orc lore but with the added bonus that they have more appeal to furries honestly you’ve put a lot of work into this application but my blood boils to pink steam the moment i even think of a “yap-yap” koboldpost getting made thanks to years of failed dnd campaigns getting sidetracked by koboldplayers