PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Seytra on June 04, 2006, 10:33:40 pm
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First off, I am aware that there already is a thread about the DR in this very forum (it's even on the first page). However, it deals with OOC only. Also, there are several threads on the DR in the wishlist, but this isn't exactly a wishlist wish, either.
Instead, this is intended for RPers only.
The issue is that it has become increasingly common to see people RP death and the DR in a way that it was never meant to be. While the more or less general conclusion on the board is that the DR is tremendously hard to get out, more and more RP seems to view the DR exactly as it is implementation-wise, i.e., a very minor inconvenience that mostly deserves no mention and surely no concern.
The issue is that this really is OOC, and thus dragging OOC into IC, which shallows the entire RP. Not only for the person doing it, but also for others. With the recent developments (the large number of players "RP"ing the DR this way) it is near impossible to realistically RP not wanting to die, even less never having died. I've seen this particular quote in one RP thread from the Ingame RP Events board!
The only damage done besides the double murder were some stained and torn carpets.
Thromdir and his wife have managed to return to us from the Death Realm in the meanwhile so they are back at work in the Vaalnor Supply Shop.
This is even more surprising as Zan isn't a new member, nor are things surrounding Vaalnor generally low quality RP, and, as I said, things like this are getting increasingly common in RP. That's why I think it's necessary to make sure RP doesn't lose track of the settings.
This quote is quite correct in implicitely putting theft several notions higher than murder (like some RL countries' judical systems do, too :\), since stolen things are much harder to get back (if at all) than it is to come back from death!
It therefore is my request to all RPers to find ways to deal with OOC-deficiency-induced death in ways that do not violate the setting. Most of the time it is a lot more appropriate to simply ignore, from an IC perspective, the char's death and just walk back and continue, or RP the char has been knocked out, but please don't devaluate death!
I think it's clearly not desirable to see scenes like these, which follow from devaluated death:
Char 1: My entire family was killed in a raid when I was 6.
Char 2: Did you enjoy the time noone told you what to do? Or were they back too quickly?
or
Char 1: My husband is missing for three days already! I wish he'd get killed, he knows the way back from the DR better than the way around Hydlaa!
or:
Char 1: I really wish those assassins would just find something else to do. I've been killed no less than 12 times this week, it's really getting hard to not miss meetings that way.
or:
Char 1: (fights a rogue and is about to die)
Char 2: Can you please bring butter on your way back from the dead?
or:
Char 1: There! Just came back from death!
Char 2: Oh, alright, but be faster next time, the soup is cold by now.
Char 1: Yeah, sorry, met someone on the way back... oh, my... please hand me the knife, I think I forgot my hat in the DR! Be back in a minute, I promise! *kills self*
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Hmm. I take your point, but am not sure I quite agree. But then as someone playing an amnesiac character, I've really enjoyed listening to all the RPed theories about what the Death Realm is, and why we go there, and why other creatures and people don't. And while my character now knows a possible way out, she's been given so many theories about why it may or may not be a stable thing, a random thing, or even a second chance arbitrarily given by the grumpy bloke in the library (!) that she's got just as good a set of reasons to take care not to die as if the Death Realm was longer and more arduous to get out of. I think my in game conclusion is currently "This whole place is weird", more or less!
I think regardless of the state of the game vis a vis the settings, players are going to find RP reasons for the mechanics. I'm not sure you can police that, TBH.
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:) Well I agree death and the death relam should be taken seriously, I am not clear even myself how to roleplay the death relam. Because of my lack of explanation of it, I am actually guilty of seeing the death relam as punishment more than a place of death. When I did a roleplay with Alhana, that was her home. Zorbels knew Alhana was evil and I had something to roleplay with and be afraid of. Now that she is not in planeshift alot .... I really have nothing I can roleplay out. If you have any suggestions as to how to address the DR in a roleplay manner, I would love to hear them. If I had an idea on how to roleplay the DR, I would more than love to promote the importance of roleplay in the death relam.
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I completely agree, Seytra. (and nice to see you again)
Folks have even been using the DR as a one way shortcut between cities. And they RP it as such. Appalling.
Myself, I hate the entire idea of the deathrealm. It makes death this small thing that does not matter. Death has -no- consequence other than a little wasted time. Even in its final form, I see it as an annoyance is all. It is very hard to RP this ‘annoyance’. No one even has a similar idea on how to do it. Some RP it as it is now, a short detour from your path. Others choose to pretend it does not exist at all.
I choose a third path that does not rely on game mechanics. If one of my charters dies by means other than a game bug, they stay dead. On the off chance one of them can come back, it is no easy task, and relies on the help (RP wise) of others. Death has no meaning in this realm, so I give it one. I have deleted two of my characters so far because they died, and I will continue to do so. This is not something I would recomend for most folks, though.
I know some may read this with wide eyes and sputter about all the time and tria they spent on leveling. Well, as I see it, leveling is far too prominent in this game. There is little good RP about the DR, but there is no RP about leveling. How can there be?
I am sorry to say this, but any game that starts you as a peasant with no story path to follow, and relies on leveling to progress into the character you wish to be, and gives death so little meaning always turns into a hack-n-slash. That is the simple truth.
My opinion? Start out as the character you wish to be, and give death grave (no pun intended) consequences. Now, you may think that would ruin the game by having nothing but uber strong nooblins infecting the realm. But I give you a task. Go ingame and look around. Look at descriptions, and ask folks how long they have been playing and what levels they are. Then ask the folks you know to be good RPers what their levels are, and how long it took them to get there. Now tell me that the nooblins don’t own the game.
This would not ruin the game, and it would give death an actual meaning. It would also level the playing field for true roleplayers.
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I know some may read this with wide eyes and sputter about all the time and tria they spent on leveling. Well, as I see it, leveling is far too prominent in this game. There is little good RP about the DR, but there is no RP about leveling. How can there be?
Yes my eyes did widen at this part but not because of my stats or skills. I couldn't care less how powerful I am anymore with a sword or any other weapon for that matter. One of the reasons I am looking forward to the wipe. I had someone say "Ya right, when the wipe comes you'll be right by everyone else power leveling!" Again couldn't care less and no actually I won't be. My "training time" will be roleplayed into my character.
No .. Under the moon it isn't that stats or skills ... it is the character I have created from my start in planeshift. I do have a problem with killing zorbels off. When she dies, I will no long reside in planeshift. I have put alot of time into her character with writing stories and establishing a portrait studio. With making my way up in my guild and creating friends and enemies. I would hate to lose that, though I agree that death to a character would be realistic. :) Sometimes I think people expect to MUCH realisim in planeshift and forget it is a game with limits. I think somethings will just be impossible to work out when it comes to the issue of realisim. Maybe I will change my mind about it in a year from now as I did with the power leveling, but as it stands I can't bring myself to delete Zorbels because she ended up in the DR after a dueled roleplay with an enemy (Just an example). I also don't think this makes me any less of a roleplayer and others more true just because they kill off their characters. I view it as just a different way to play the game.
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What you have here is a incompatibility of the game mechanics with the settings.The settings say returning from the death realm is hard, almost impossible while the game makes it an easy routine task if you know how.
Now which one are you supposed to follow? Personally I prefer the game mechanics because they are still that bit more real than the settings. I'm not as hardcore as UtM here and don't want to keep my characters roaming around the death realm for all eternity as soon as they die or even delete them. Especially not considering that dying isn't always a roleplaying event in and of itself. You can't roleplay with a rogue coming to slash you up as you're lagging and you can't roleplay with that mean slope on that hill that kills you without warning either.
There are some things I agree with however, things like using the DR as a shortcut instead of the long road through the hills and in roleplay duels/fights reappearing a few minutes later to take revenge for losing .. those things are examples of bad roleplay. I tend to distinguish between a pure roleplaying death, which means I'll let my character roam around the death realm for a while (read: log off with it for a few hours at the least), and a game mechanics death, which I tend to try to wrap in roleplay or not depending on the context of the death.
I personally don't see my own roleplaying example used above going against the settings at all though, it has taken a middle ground between the game mechanics and the game settings. Also I can see how Seytra interpreted that quote as theft being worse than murder but it is still just an interpretation you made. It wasn't my intention and it isn't the case in my or my character's eyes. However murder isn't as bad in Yliakum as we are used to it being in reality either. There is a gigantic difference between Yliakum culture and real life cultures. Yliakeans know that death isn't the end, that it is just a transfer to a different realm. So methinks part of the problem is the settings still holding too close to the real life equivalent and not taking into account that Planeshift is a MMORPG and that generally speaking in those kinds of games death isn't a huge deal, just a minor setback.
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The Death Realm presents some quite unique RP situations. The people of Yliakum have indeed no concern about death as a final point because the Death Realm is a natural soul catcher and they get reunited with theyre bodyes every time they exit the Death Realm. The journey trough it might be called a spiritual journey, a requirement for reincarnation. There should be more traps along the way, monsters that make this journey more difficult but maby in the future some randomly placed traps that will lure your soul back to the starting point (you might make an asociation with the temptations from the budysth religion).
Another thing that should be taken into consideration would be the fact that some weren't born in Yliakum, so they still have an instinctual fear of death and in conclusion having 2 different mentalityes about death would be quite normal. Those born in Yliakum would take death as a simple process of having to find your way back to the living world and those that came from outside would see death as a deeper matter.
Also, the Death Realm could be "malfunctioning" sometimes and that would be a good IC explanation for the people that leave the game for good. They died. And the Death Realm missed theyre souls so they suffered final death.
This unique property of the Death Realm offered me for example a good background story for a RP character. He is an outsider and his wife died in a raid. The pain drived him crazy and wandering without a purpose he found the Stone Labyrinths where he died and unfourghtunately for him he became trapped in Yliakum, reincarnating after each death. So now he seeks a way to be reunited with his wife, trough death, but he can't find one because he can't find the way to the Stone Labyrinths again. So he is living his life now in Yliakum hoping that one day the DR will "forget" about him or that a God will grant him that "final death".
My point of view is that we are trying too much to compare Yliakum with the real world. They are totaly different and each world has it's own set of rules. In RL we take death as a final point (at least as a final point for something because we don't know quite sure what's next) but in Yliakum it would be normal to take it lightly because of the fact that people die every day... and they return. So there was no harm done only the fact that they had to find the way back.
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The problem as I understand it isn't as much that people have different opinions on how to treat the death realm, or a problem with realism (close to the way it is in the real world, that is) as is the fact that it creates a dull world where nothing ever changes and everything is pointless. There is no intruige and nothing ever has a lasting effect. Imagine, if you will, the following situation:
<Insert world domination plotter here>: The last resistance has finally been crushed! Yliakum is ours to rule! Order and power shall flourish and... *is interrupted by do-gooder arriving at the scene*
<Insert do-gooder here>: Your vile schemes shall not come to fruition! Taste my steel, evildoer!
<Insert world domination plotter here>: By the gods, this is not possible! I slew you with my own blade just two hours ago! How can you have returned?
<Insert do-gooder here>: Are you kidding me? With the size of the death realm it's a wonder it took two hours. Now prepare to be vanquished!
<Insert world domination plotter here>: But how am I supposed to achieve control of the stalacite if not even the foes I slay stay dead? How am I supposed to enslave an immortal people?
<Insert do-gooder here>: Hmmmm... I quess you can't. Anyway, have at thee!
<Insert world domination plotter here>: You know what? Screw this world domination plot. I'll go do something actually possible to achieve instead.
<Insert do-gooder here>: Like what?
<Insert former world domination plotter here>: Hmmmm... Assassinating the ochtarch and putting in his place a puppet that will follow my every whim? Oh, right, immortality... Well, I quess I'll stand over there breathing for a while then.
<Insert do-gooder here>: Aww, but then who am I supposed to twarth and vanquish?
<Insert former world domination plotter here>: Well, you could go poke the group of mindless animals over there with your sword. Not that it will actually achieve any meaningful difference, but at least they stay dead.
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There's another approach to roleplaying the DR that I think no one's mentioned yet. Since there are now a few more NPCs there other than the Death Guardian, maybe one could roleplay it as having been given a chance to return to life. The problem with this is that there has to be a limit on how many times one can return to Yliakum, and some consequence such as losing skills or turning slightly evil to make it "realistic."
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(and nice to see you again)
Thanks :)
Niavard's example is another consequence indeed.
It isn't impossible IMO to integrate the DR into RP without making death unimportant and lacking consequences.
My way to view the DR tries to incorporate every part the settings gives on it, and that is that the DR is a huge place, similar to Yliakum in size, possibly larger. It has it's own unique creatures for which Carkarass is an example.
The DR does have a select few interconnections with the WOTL, but they are in hard to reach places in both the DR and the WOTL. That would be places not inside big cities, but in the stone labyrinths, for example.
Those gateways may or may not be unstable, and cease to exist / lead to different places at possibly more or less random times.
This means that it is highly unlikely that someone who dies will get out of there anytime soon, even less back to where they were.
The DR also houses a civilization, it is possible to "live" there. Hence, many will, one way or another, decide to stay there, be it for force or free will. Some may also find powerful dark way mages who can actually travel between the realms (or only one way), and take others / send others there. A few at a time, at a huge cost, involving a lot of preparation and surely a ritual. If you manage to gather the loads of circles or other favors, then you can maybe some day afford such a trip. Seldomly, if ever, and things may very well go wrong.
We also have the ominous notion of some diety in the DR. It isn't really clear if that will stay in the settings, but this would be the easiest way: you hand over a substantial part of your property, and get resurrected. If you manage to get an audience with that diety, that is. And the fees will be steep.
One thing, though: the dead can in no way return to their bodies. The setting forbids that, because it states that
Larger rubbish and bodies are simply thrown into almost vertical and apparently endless wells. Nobody seems to care about where all of this junk finally ends up, since the stalactite theory is only devised by some Xacha scientists and has not been proven yet. Dead bodies are eliminated the same way. Though discarding dead in such a callous fashion would seem rather shocking, neither of the two main faiths at Yliakum requires particular care nor reverence to dead bodies. To the people here, a body is simply a non-functional apparatus or an empty shell with no soul.
This clearly means that the body is neither taken to the DR, nor is it reentered by the soul upon departure from the DR. It cannot, anyway, since one might not manage to return from the DR before the body rots, and what would happen if you die falling off a mountain or burn to ashes, anyway?
Therefore it makes sense that whatever takes you to the DR creates a copy of your body for you in the DR, which is no more unrealistic to assume as having a DR in the first place.
So the rightful question is why your inventory travels with you. There was a sentence on the site that says that it doesn't, and instead gets stored somewhere for you to get it back when you exit the DR. Whatever it is, it is fairly certain that items aren't lost by default, which is, as is the fact that every player gets into the DR, and can get out without no limit (i.e., there is no "you have 5 lives left" thing, not the "just walk the stairs and you're out"!) and, in fact, the entire DR, a conveneince measure for players. You can't let the system decide who does and who does not go to the DR, just as you can't have final death w/o the player's consent in a game. To remain fair and playable w/o too much frustration, you must have every player go there, with the possibility of coming back.
This, however, does not mean that it is common, expected or even generally accepted in the entire population, just as the entire population is not composed of sparkling heroes and powerful baddies (the common PCs) with a very few merchants with infinite supply and money and not a single farmer but food prices at the bottom end of things, even by RL standards. Our chars are just as everyone else in Yliakum, and a minority by several scales. Thus, even if all of them get back from death 10 times or more in their entire life (which should be near the upper limit for almost all reasonable RP), it will still not mean that the chance for anyone is higher than at best a few percent, averaged over the entire population. Also, as has been said, every PC eventually vanishes, since the player leaves. So it also is quite obvious that not everyone gets back, or every time, and thus the PC can never know when it's time for that, and thus can never say "Oh, death isn't that bad, I know my way out.".
Another thing that is usually brought up is "I never see the NPCs" in the DR. Well, it is quite obvious why, in fact. They'd just keep falling off the ways as the AI barely manages to move them arount the easily navigable Hydlaa. So they in fact some do, though way fewer than PCs, and it simply is not implemented (yet?). But even with that, the DR is so very huge that it is highly improbable to ever meet one of them, even if you get killed at the same time in the same spot.
So by far not everyone actually goes to the DR at all, and instead the vast majority just ceases to exist as IRL, and of the few who do go to the DR, only few manage to get back. So death is, to the Yliaki, more or less as final as IRL, with the very rare exception of a few. This is therefore similar to Syilph's interpretation, with the difference that the DR's "catching" effect is the exception, not the rule here, and also a bit like Astraea's version, in that you are more or less given a slim chance, though by whom or why remains unknown. Most similarity lies with Under the moon, though. So far I have managed to RP without dying, but given that I tend to search the wilderness for people IC-ly, while OOC-ly knowing they are in the tavern already, I'm likely to handle IC death similar to Under the moon.
All of this has no explanation for why the DR exists, and who goes there. The first doesn't necessarily need an answer in order to RP it properly. After all, it is highly unlikely that an Yliaki knows it, anyway. However, the question remains whether one also goes to the DR if one dies on the surface, or beyond one of the portals some races initially came through. This is important to know in order to RP in the DR, as you might travel to places there. Maybe it's a sort of mirror image of the WOTL, and therefore the DR's of the different places are interconnected just as loosely as the WOTL places are. However, still, I think that since so few actually go to the DR, and even fewer manage to come back, that it doesn't really matter in terms of travelling between places via the DR (Yliakum <--> surface, not anywhere <--> Hydlaa / Ojaveda as the abusers do). In fact, it seems very likely to be that way, because it would make for a common interpretation accross all realms PS may ever add, while still allowing for the strong separation of the realms that the settings speaks of.
So I RP the DR as something that can, in theory and legend, be gotten out of, but clearly something no farmer, no soldier, not even an Octarch can be sure of entering and coming back from. This is supported by the settings, again, as it says that one very corrupt Octarch has been sent into the crystal on a hypnotised Megaras. No use doing that if he'd just come back and slay everyone who opposed him. They would've just banned him from the level in that case.
One of the most famous cases is the one of Fertedian Dalko, Octarch of the 4th level, that was tied to a hypnotized Megaras and sent straight towards the Crystal.
Also, the DR Citadel's ruler states that
(02:18:02) Londris Kolaim tells you: I'm Londris Kolaim, great master of the dark ways, owner of this cidatel and of the souls it contains... including yours!
Would the DR be just a simple passageway, he'd surely have phrased that way differently.
It is also supported by the guide (section 3.2.4. Death Realm).
The Death Realm is a mystery as few have returned from it.
Why do I advocate this option out of all those mentioned? Because it provides for a well-RP'd resurrection without making death unimportant. It keeps things as realistic as possible while still not creating much frustration.
Yes, I am very well aware that this gives almost no, if any at all, emphasis to the implementation. Why? Because it is a fact that the implementation is extremely limited and in almost all parts does, at best, hint at a glimpse of the vision of the designers of PS. It therefore is important to not RP the implementation, but that vision, at least in those parts that are accessible to players. The implementation changes every day, bugs can literally turn things upside-down ("tipsy" bug, anyone?) and substantially change the implementation. Thusly, it is obvious that not the vision, the settings, is something in transit, but the implementation is. Sure this is more abstract, but it is not any more abstract as the inspiration of MMORPGs, the P&P RPGs, so it's certainly quite feasible.
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Death Realm is a hard thing to RP indeed. For one, however hard it is to get out of it, Yliakum people just wont look at death as we do with it existing as people actually return from it. I can't imagine what kinda of impact that would have if that started happening in RL. Fear of death is something very human although in some cultures it's more present then others ofcourse. Part of this is because it is such a big unknown. I think someone who has returned would look at death in a way we can simply not imagine.
Anyhow as to RP death. I think it's stupid that people sometimes come back in five minutes. I have seen it in RP and have made the mistake aswell to participate. Mostly also becuase you don't want to ignore those people. I think we all should put more of an effort into making deaths more like wounds or temperary unconciousness so that death and returning from the DR isn't that much of an occurance.
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I think we all should put more of an effort into making deaths more like wounds or temperary unconciousness so that death and returning from the DR isn't that much of an occurance.
That would work, if the DR could be roleplayed as something similar to a RL hospital, and the DR is simply a "place to recover" instead of the name being taken literally. But then we'd have to come up with a new definition of what DR stands for.
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Why do we always have to compare Yliakum to the real world? Different worlds and different laws lead to a different existence. For all I know water could flow upwards and it would be normal if the laws of that world make it so.
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it's quite hard to rp the dr yes, but as syilph says, this is not the real world (as syilph said) where you stay dead. When death realm get's more developed maybe with some uber uber super npc's which you had to group together to take down, (increasing community) death realm would be more scary as you could be stuck down there forever if it happened. To stop some from defeating death relm on their own you could make different spawn points depending on how strong you are.
your body will be lifeless but you will reincarnate in the death realm making your soul materialized down there, maybe your soul will cry for being materialized, i haven't really completely thought on how to rp it yet though...
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when you also consider Levrus sends you to the death realm with the ancient sword as well as a trainer of dark way is down there it muddies the waters.
Cheers
Anfa
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As everyone has already stated, the DR is difficult to rp.
Now, i feel that i have a different way of RP'ing than most people. And while i throughly enjoy RP'ing, there are some things that i simp[ly cannot RP due to the fact that the game is Pre-Alpha officially. I know that if i left PS and came back in 3 years or so, it would be much different than it is now. Compared to how it used to be the DR is huge. But people who may not know the previous DR may find it still rather small. Now, since the game is Pre-alpha, i simply take the ooc approach to the DR. I have no RP explanation for it, or at least no explanation that i feel will last a long time. From what i percieve from some explanations about the future of 'dying', i think it is somewhat useless for me to rp something about the DR now, because soon(tm) enough its all going to change.
And anyone who wishes to compare Yliakum to the real world is missing the point. I feel that the game is supposed to be immersive, not neccissarily realistic in terms of the real world. If it was, we wouldn't have magic or imbued daggers, or tefusang, or enkidukai etc..
This is a fantasy game. Maybe there will be two types of death. One way in which the soul can return to the body, and another in which the soul is destroyed.
Basically: RPing the death realm is difficult, but many things are since the game is pre-alpha. When the game is more advanced, maybe we can have absolutely everything have a satisfying RP explanation, but while we are in the game's infancy, i think that we need to, as sad is it may be, settle for a hole in the RP.
Stay Safe,
Easton Ghent
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I always explained it this way... All living beings have an inherent magic. This magic is passive, activating on it's own will. When someone is about to die, this magic transports the person's mind/soul and a replication of their body to the Death Realm, where they may travel out through the phenomenon of the portal back to the living realm.
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I'm glad that someone finally brought this up. The manner in which many players RP the DR has bothered me for a long time. ("Oh by the way, you'll never guess who I ran into in the death realm yesterday...")
Wtihout fear of lasting death, life is meaningless. And playing an RPG in which life is meaningless is meaningless.
I do, however, agree that in a fantasy setting, it may, on an extremely rare occasion, be possible to come back. For the most part, I think Seytra's explanation is feasable. However, I would be extremely surprised if any of my characters ever manage to come back from death. But the possibility does add some mysticism to the setting, which is always a good thing.
When killed by a monster, (which is something I try to avoid, as Ralas is not likely to take on something that he doesn't think he can defeat easily enough--he's not that courageous) I say I was knocked out and had weird dreams. I used the same explanation one time when Kittik fell off of a roof. When killed by a bug, obviously, the explanation is simply (I fell off the edge of the world :-/), or another suitable bug description, always OOC. There is no IC explanation and there should be no IC inquiry as to what happened.
There are many things about the implementation of PS that need to be dealt with in a strictly OOC manner. For the most part, the DR is one of those. I did once have (what I considered to be) a very good RP session with Rilar in the DR...but there was a very well thought-out explanation, and Ralas was only dreaming.
EDIT: Typo
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*grins and waves to Ralas and Seytra*
Good to see you around, Seytra ^^
I agree on that one. The DR is hard to RP as everyone has a different imagination of it. I had several occasions or "confrontations" with the DR in the past.
Of cource I /tell my RP partner(s) "oh crap, just fell off the world, brb" and not mentioning or including the "inconvience" at all in the RP when a bug or other OOC reasons got me in the DR, I strictly distinguish between IC and OOC reasons, whereas OOC reasons also are getting killed by a rogue (because i take the fighting system as OOC), PvP without RP background and things like that.
The first serious confrontation with death ingame was when Rilar got killed by Sefron's poison. At that time the RP explanation for his resurrection (back in his body) was because the gods thought that it wasn't time yet for Rilar to die, for whatever mysterious reason. So they sent his soul straight back and in the next night sent him a vision in a dream that could be seen as explanation by the gods.
The second time was Rilar's confrontation with Hagarath. A kind of ritual made it possible for Rilar and others to enter the DR as living subjects, with their bodies and inventory and so on. Hagarath had and has (afaik still ^^) the ability to "dissolve" souls, to make them die beyond death, "poof" them out of existance, so to say. A char getting killed by him would force the player to delete the char, if RPed correctly. I didn't really know this beforehand, maybe I'd have been more cautiously as I didn't really want to loose Rilar as char (and still wouldn't like him to get deleted). However, in the fight with Hagarath, he reached into Rilar and ripped the soul out of the body and was about to dissolve it, if the others wouldn't have stopped Hagarath in that very moment.
The result was a living body that got seperated from the major part of the soul. The fact that it happened in the DR made things complicated as my friends took Rilars body back into the world of the living. Because of that Rilars body was in a sort of coma for (IC and OOC) ~ two months while the soul explored the DR, tried to contact friends (for instance by occupying peoples dreams... sorry Ralas ;D) and met other dead souls and entities there.
My impression and way how to RP the DR is as following:
The DR is a "dimension" that exists out of the Y-reality (yliakum-reality). There are a few points were both realities touch.
I assume, coming from the settings Seytra posted, that the soul originates in the DR or another DR-like reality and is able to spawn into a body in the wotL.
If the body dies, the soul get drawn back from where they come (or have to go). There are few possibilities preventing the soul from getting drawn to the DR as there are few possibilities to get in the DR as living.
But if the body died in Y-reality, only the soul enters the DR, leaving back the inventory and body "as empty shell". A possibiilty to get back into the wotl is to find a point where both realities/phases/whatever touch. But that might be at random, if not conducted by god or mage powers. So you'd get ressurected at a random place in a random body, one could think.
This image of the DR leaves a lot of space for interesting RP, even as dead soul _in the DR_ and not being able to come back. However, it can be possible (as I was able to prove in a lot of very interesting sessions) to RP a soul in the DR, also being able to interact with the living, using special ways.
That's why I don't think deleting the char and ignoring the possibilty to actually use the DR as chance to RP things that aren't possible otherwise is what a good RPer should do. But there is an exception. As stated, there are RP ways to get "dissolved", killed in the DR. RPing such a plot, in which the soul gets destroyed surely adds spice. But nearly all RPers I know have a regular character which they wouldn't like to delete, out of sentimental feelings or whatever. In those cases I think it is a good advice to create a "disposable char", a char which isn't as fleshed out as the regular char, so it doesnt quite cost as much effort to see the char getting killed and deleted as it would be with the regular one.
According to my experience it is quite easy to RP the DR not as the DR but as something else. Like a dream, maybe, or the castle of a crazy warlock, the home of a demon, another planet or something completely different.
In those cases it's not advisable however, to include people in the RP without firm introduction. According to my experience its almost never advisable to include people in an RP that is happening in the DR if the people don't know exactly what is going on (that includes noobs as well as the best RPers, simply because everyone has a different imagination of what the DR is). Therefor RP in the DR almost always requires to be in /group and not in /say.
PS: there surely are typos and/or grammar faults, im too tired to get them corrected now.
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maybe something needs to be written into the settings of ps about death realm, it would make the rp of dr much easier.
Although i try to avoid talking about death realm as it is as many has said, you can't die.
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You can kill the enemy all you want. But in a good RP, they will not die, but will be defeated in some way ;-).
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My impression and way how to RP the DR is as following:
The DR is a "dimension" that exists out of the Y-reality (yliakum-reality). There are a few points were both realities touch.
I assume, coming from the settings Seytra posted, that the soul originates in the DR or another DR-like reality and is able to spawn into a body in the wotL.
If the body dies, the soul get drawn back from where they come (or have to go). There are few possibilities preventing the soul from getting drawn to the DR as there are few possibilities to get in the DR as living.
But if the body died in Y-reality, only the soul enters the DR, leaving back the inventory and body "as empty shell". A possibiilty to get back into the wotl is to find a point where both realities/phases/whatever touch. But that might be at random, if not conducted by god or mage powers. So you'd get ressurected at a random place in a random body, one could think.
The problem with RPing that "only the soul enters the DR, leaving back the inventory and body "as emptly shell" is that the dev's have placed a Quest that has you "taking an item to the Death realm". I too am interested in how to work within the parameters set by the developers to rp this place known as DR. If it is only souls and not bodies and inventory, that are running around the DR than why would a quest have us going to the DR with our inventory intact? I would very much like to know how the Developers "see" the Death Realm to help all of us better understand the concept they were working for.
Cheers
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or:
Char 1: (fights a rogue and is about to die)
Char 2: Can you please bring butter on your way back from the dead?
Currently, most of poeple believe that when you die, both your soul and body are moved there. It is what i was always against, because i remember the first official news about DR in CB. These news informed us that what is moved to the DR is the soul and only soul. While in CB we move to DR with all our inventory and escaping from the world of dead we appear always in the sae place, like entering and escaping we are simply teleported beatwen two dimensions. And now Anfa wrote about that quest. Maybe it is a mistake, or devs really want the DR to be the way how most people get it. If so, it all spoils the common idea about soul and death. The whole death idea is getting very innovative, about which we know almost nothing and everything is possible, while not always well thought. Fresh ideas have a lot more holes in its logic than the old ideas - thought long time ago and "patched" as some holes was found in the past. Maybe there is no soul if the whole body is moved to DR? because why would we need soul in PS if it was that way?
Given by all this, i have completly no idea how i should RP death and existance of my char in DR. That would spoil a lot my ingame experience if i wasn't a bit too bored and annoyed with such like these unlogical fact, that I wasn't online since long time now.
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The news item Nikodemus refers to would be in line with the quote about "when you get back, you get your stuff back" that once was on the site, which implies that it's not with you in the DR. It obviously is quite easy to imagine that something like this would very likely be not yet implemented, and indeed the easy way would have been chosen as preliminary solution: teleporting to a different map. Which, obviously, is precisely what is in PS ATM. Therefore it may indeed be the case that only soul travel is planned. However, that contradicts the notion of "a place with cities and people being able to "live" in the DR", and also the idea of wars "DR vs. WOTL", at least in the common notion of a fight and "living".
However, what I have never found any reference to is the point about respawning in a random body. It would re-add all the issues about having a forcedly fully random char creation, and therefore is something that should not be done. It might be possible to RP it that way in special circumstances, but not as general rule IMO.
Also, as usual, a note about "It's fantasy!" seems in order: Yes, PS is fantasy, and yes, in "fantasy", everything is possible. But this is valid only until one decides on a world, on a setting, and after that has been decided, then there is no more "fantasy" allowed than the setting states there is. To put it in a concrete example:
When there is a PnP RPG in which death is final (there are several), then even though these are "fantasy", you'll still not get your GM to accept your "My char just came back from the dead, since it's fantasy, everyone can if they want!" reasoning. Nor will your other players. Unless you reach a group-wide agreement that in your particular instance of that setting, death is not necessarily permanent.
Transducing this to PS, this means that you would have to reach a community-wide (devs and every player included) agreement. The impossibility of that rules out such an option for PS.
Therefore, we can not define things like this in PS. We must try to find out what the devs really intended, and fill in the gaps by the most likely version, the one that has most backing in the settings, not in the implementation, since the latter, as has been uniamously accepted AFAICS, is not adhering to the settings for OOC reasons like pre-alphaness.
@Anfa: the quest is still quite possible in an RP setting that lacks causal DR travel. To RP that, you'll obviously need to find a RP way to enter the DR, and get back out. That can be a powerful necromancer, a priest, or some other, less general way (like finding a scroll, or a dimensional rift, etc.). The trip may also not be permanent. It could be that your travel provider can keep you in the DR for a set time only, like IRL you can remain in space only for a set time. So you don't necessarily have to fully enter to solve that quest, smoothing out the issue of the inventory in that case. (Though I think that this quest and trainer location is, to put it mildly, not wisely chosen for the current development stage, since it obviously creates confusion that takes some extra thinking and background information to get it set right, something that can not be expected of the average player.)
To find a dark way trainer in the DR is also pretty likely. There surely are some in the WOTL as well, but harder to find, obviously, and not implemented yet, too. But it is established that not implementedness doesn't mean that it is meant to be RP'd as such. Do you really RP that you can't find a merchant that buys animal remains outside the DR? Surely not, so why would it be any different with dark way trainers?
So the conclusion is that you IC-ly train with some dark mage in the WOTL, while you OOC-ly train in the DR. This is just like the mines... does anyone truly RP that they simply walk into the temple of a god that really exists, completely ignoring the priests (running right past them), into the inner sanctum(!), jump into the sacrificial well in order to do something as mundane as mining? Surely not. The real thing would be to simply use a ladder to access the blocked entrance. But there are no movable ladders in PS, so people go that route... RP? Part of the settings? No. Mere lack of implementation. The spirit of that arrangement is "there is a ceremonial well in the temple, where sacrifices are made to Laanx. This well is, possibly by chance (erosion / cave-ins), connected to an ancient dungeon that is neither well explored nor safe to enter (though the bridge means that there either once was an exploration going on there, but the state it's in hints that that has been long ago, or it is now used as a deadly maze for living sacrifices to die in.). There also is a place where ores can be mined, but the access to this was the warehouse which likely has been sealed (by a wall for lack of working doors (implementation issue again)) by the one who owns the mines, so getting in isn't easy (and would represent trespassing, if not theft, if it came to a trial, if this mine was the only one in Yliakum (again, by definition of the setting, not the implementation))."
An entrance to a mine from the inner sanctum of a temple clearly is suitable only for a god of mining, which Laanx is not.
I find that many quests are hard to make part of RP, simply because they are more or less unique. Take the familiar quest, for example. It is highly unlikely that Levrus would ever need that done twice. So two people can't really RP to have been on that quest, so they can't RP to be on that quest. Same with Brintec fur research. They are SPG-like quests, and as such not suited for IC use in a MMORPG. (With Levrus you can claim some special weirdness of the person, but not with Brintec).
All of this does not mean that PS is like RL. I don't see where I might have raised that view which Syilph seems to have noted. In RL, there is no DR from where people come back, even irregularly. So the water, to a certain degree, already flows upwards in PS. But it does so to the extent the settings states only, not to the extent the implementation or even less to the extent player laziness states, not even close. Also, even though technically it might run upwards, a well-thought out setting must provide some pseudo-natural laws that not only state the fact, but also the reason and the effect. Like in this case "where does the water come from if it vanishes into the sky"? PS-wise: why is it that even though noone dies, yet people still get born, that there still is space left in Yliakum? So there is a limit to the degree of freedom even in an unformed fantasy setting. Since we have the twin facts that there is a DR, out of which people can get back to the WOTL, yet there is no overpopulation in Yliakum even after centuries of continued birth, there must be quite a high loss in the WOTL->DR->WOTL transmission. A loss that, even if not 100% as IRL, will need to be carefully considered by the living. Would you purchase a car that explodes with a 99% chance? So obviously even with the theoretical chance of getting back from death, Yliaki would not risk dying without real need, so things would not change much compared to RL.
It also quite obviously brings up the question of aging. If noone ever really dies, then noone really ages, as aging is simply a degrading process of the body, just like is being burned to death. If you are being burned by a spell-effect like meteor, or forcibly aged by another spell effect, then that would in no way differ from the real thing. If you then come back in one case, then you also come back in the other, or that other case does simply not exist (and indeed we don't have life expectancies in the settings, though there are the vague notions about middle-agedness in NPC descriptions.).
Thus things aren't as free as the lack of expliciteness in the settings might suggest, as many things just follow from RL, for the simple lack of other options. These in turn force certain other conclusions that eventually narrow down the truly possible explanations.
@Nikodemus: the settings references a "soul" where it says that "once the soul has departed the body, it's just rubbish" (burial wells). So there is the notion of "soul".
@Kerol: (Thanks! :) ) Using the DR (as well as any other place in PS) as different place than default, clearly does not constitute a breach of the settings, but requires the concrete introduction and likely /grouping you mentioned. But even the "high loss" view does allow for meaningful RP of the DR without transposing it elsewhere.
Anyway, as the actual DR hasn't been defined well by the settings team yet, as well as things surrounding it, the most important thing is to prevent death from losing it's bite in RP. It does not matter what PLs do, not even those who try to make their PL look like RP, nor the abusers that use death teleport, nor bugs. The DR occurs in RP seldomly enough to be able to make do without proper background there, and use an individual interpretation akin to the one Kerol and others have presented in case of need, after agreeing on that with the group of RPers the RP takes place in, without affecting the remaining community (by not definging it as "the DR"), or a different approach.
That uncertanity can, as stated earlier, be made IC, as with this view, chars know even less than we do, for the most part.
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I had an extensive discussion about that topic with Darkmoon (the leader of the settings dep). I asked him for his (official) opinion on this matter and will quote some points from this convo.
Ker_lap, 18.06.2006 23:40:20 :
the problem is how to RP the DR
following questions are related:
1. are there souls?
2. if yes, are only souls roaming in the DR, without body and inventory?
3. would a dead soul get ressurected in the same body?
4. what happens to a soul if it get resurrected, but the body is already gone (via debris well/hole)
Darkmoon, 18.06.2006 23:56:45 :
well, as to #3, I think it would have to be same body, just have any dmg removed.
Going into an old, wounded/mutilated/headless body would be unproductive to continuing quests and such.
And we wouldn't want a soul in a body that it doesn't belong to.
Ker_lap, 18.06.2006 23:57:12 :
why not? :)
Darkmoon, 18.06.2006 23:57:22 :
too confusing
Darkmoon, 18.06.2006 23:58:11 :
for #1, I'd say yes, or at least something similar
Darkmoon, 18.06.2006 23:58:50 :
as for #2, I always imagined separate inventories for living/dead versions of chars.
after all, your body carries physical stuff, where's that going to fit in the DR?
Ker_lap, 18.06.2006 23:59:46 :
ok, then we got a problem
Darkmoon, 18.06.2006 23:59:50 :
I also wanted DR-specific items and such that don't carry back to Yliakum
Ker_lap, 19.06.2006 00:00:15 :
there is a quest that says you need to take an item from the wotl into the DR
Darkmoon, 19.06.2006 00:02:04 :
I suppose that there can be items that transcend, but you must understand that separating the DR and Yliakum now isn't possible yet, inventory-wise
atm, it's just another map
Ker_lap, 19.06.2006 00:03:01 :
but quests are considered as official guidelines by many RPers what the world will look like
Darkmoon, 19.06.2006 00:06:29 :
I will tell you that the current layout of Yliakum (in-game) is not the way our official maps look.
Everything will be switched around in the future. Cities and locations will be in new directions.
Ker_lap, 19.06.2006 00:07:01 :
thats not the problem, i believe
Darkmoon, 19.06.2006 00:07:09 :
as well as putting things between already known locations and spacing things out further
people will get lost again, saying "this isn't the world we know".
Ker_lap, 19.06.2006 00:07:48 :
its more the consistency of the settings, and how the quests and NPCs are complying with them
Darkmoon, 19.06.2006 00:08:21 :
many of the quests are made to stretch our understanding and limitations of the quest system.
Thanks a lot to Darkmoon who was answering the questions without bribe :flowers:
I hope this clearifies the situation a little.
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Thanks for posting this, it indeed does change some things, though the most important message seems to be that the implementation is even less official than even I assumed.
One thing that hasn't been answered is the implication of the soul going back into the same body (#4). I assume that this implies the movement of the body from whereever it was, in whatever state, to the location of respawn in perfect condition... still this has issues. What if the body is now part of something else, like you've been in the DR for some years and your body has been dissolved partially and now it's atoms are part of something else, like a worm? Upon resurrection, will that worm then suddenly find itself lacking possibly vital parts? Will a fly that formerly was a maggot in your dead flesh vanish upon your resurrection save the things it ate after leaving you?
So it seems to be not really the previous body, but one that is like the old one, and the old one, if still discernible, is left alone.
Likewise, if your inventory persists past death, where does it go while dead? This is more or less a completely OOC thing, unless there's actually some explanation for it to be otherwise. Until then, from an RP PoV it should IMO be regarded as OOC convenience, and real death should mean, RP-wise, possible theft unless guarded.
And, of course, the most important issue hasn't even been touched: what is the likelyhood, averaged over the entire population of Yliakum and everything connected to it, including NPCs and persons that are not chars nor explicit NPCs (the "men on the street"), of going to the DR and getting back after dying? Not the player convenience of everyone getting back, unless they are the same, which would be a shame.
I understand that the DR is more or less just a concept without concrete fleshing out ATM, but since many things (including design and story decisions) depend on the answers to these questions, it would be good to have them answered, at least team-internal (though I don't see harm coming from releasing that information once it's there).
Anyway, thanks for that info Kerol and Darkmoon!
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Been awhile since I've posted anything heh. But this topic caught my eye, and I'd like to add an idea. If it's been mentioned before, then please don't shoot me? ;)
So, a character dies, and their soul is wisked off, or "caught" in the Death Realm. Now...while the person's soul is in there, what happens to their corporeal form, their actual body? The idea, or connection I'm trying to make here, is that, while you're wandering around in the DR trying to find your way out, time is still passing in the WOTL, correct? I guess the idea, or concept I have, is what happens if the body gets eaten, or consumed, or whatnot? If the body is in a relatively safe place, what about rotting/decaying/whatever? Point is, if you can't find your way out of the Death Realm within a certain time, does/should the body become unusable, and unsuitable for retaining a soul? I.E. Perhaps after so much time lingering in the DR, the soul becomes permanently trapped there? (unless they somehow make it out anyways, and exhist as a non-corporeal entity? Ghosts anyone? ^_^)
Now, i'm not saying that the DR, and the WOTL exist in the same time stream, for all I know, an hour in WOTL could be a day in the Death Realm, or some such, but mebbe RP-wise, try imposing a time limit on yourself, and if you overstep the bounds, you become perma-dead?
Just my two tria. Nice discussion though :D
-Vay
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Too bad "Nilrem Driel" may not yet have visited this thread. I'm sure he thinks in a similar way as Seytra. His fears of the death are "legendary"! ;)
Do I have to be ashamed because I don't think as much about this topic as you do?
I had another experience, similar to Rilar's soul retrieving, where my magic potion ran out too quickly (I had to leave to bed finally). This was with Verrliit trying to rescue Lolitra out of the Death Realm (ended by a blackout of the Laanx server). And we had to use similar preparations to enter.
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Well, I had this crazy idea. Maybe people do not want to leave the death realm? Maybe they lost their motor that keeps them on living? Maybe they are just to scared about their sudden death?
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Oh, there are "citizen" of the Death Realm - who can't or don't want to leave it. Ever met e.g. Tharos?
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If i'm not mistaken there is a bit in the settings / future developement part of the site stating that "Powerfull wizzards are capable of entering and leaving the death realm without actually dying"
To me that clearly states that the Deathrealm is an other world ( like roman mythology, where some dude walks into the deathrealm to get his beloved back, and is allowed to do so if he can leave it without looking back once. He gets out but at the entrance looks back and loses her forever.
The idea that you can return from the death is not very uncommon, in PS its just a fact aswell. If players would simply stop making jokes about it. Taking revenge on others soon after death or using it as a shortcut there really isn't a problem with it. I don't think that the mechanics of the DR need to change in order to achieve this. Simply look at all the players posting here, if we all roleplay the deathrealm a bit more seriousely and show the new players how to do so aswell the problem is solved
Something like this would solve the problem of an accidental encounter after a death.
Char 1 : Soo you're back from the death again? Care to take another journey there?
Edit : // does this make sence at all?
Char 2 : Please no ser, i still have the shivers of the dreaded place, If you don't mind i'll just be on my way enjoying the blissfull light of the azure sun on my body again. My bones are still cold from that cold and murky place.
Char 1 : So you've learned your lesson then? You finally see killing dwarves is a crime and will leave them alone
Char 2 : I can't promiss that, but for now i will consider the ordeal i put them through.
Char 2 grins " though i do like the pain and sorrow it might cause them "
Char 1 : Be gone fool, before i slay you again !
Char 2 bows politely, " by your leave ser "
If both players simply gloss over the short amount of time that goes between it then it doesn't ruin the atmosphere at all. You could always state as a character that the amount of time you spent there felt like years, the dust in your mouth, lack of water and sun and all. Who is to say how long YOU experienced your time there? It could be very plausible that time moves around diffentely in both realms. Just as long as a player doesn't mess it up deliberately you can always roleplay a fix to a situation. As soon as you go barging in on players completely ignoring the whole deathrealm though, then you're ruining the whole game for others.
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I don't think you're taking the DR nearly seriously enough.
Char 1 : Soo you're back from the death again? Care to take another journey there?
And so on. For PS to be worthwhile, our characters must have a lasting fear of death. Extreme situations in which it is overcomeable may be acceptable, as discussed before, but the character in your example merely wander back out of the DR. This doesn't work.
<.< And it was Greek Mythology first...
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If i'm not mistaken there is a bit in the settings / future developement part of the site stating that "Powerfull wizzards are capable of entering and leaving the death realm without actually dying"
funny, peacer did that sometime, but that was near the nolthrir spawning point where he met someone he would like to train dark way with and took that person to dr with him, the cold place meant nothing because he was with this special person :P
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When I did a role-play with Alhana, that was her home.
Well, not so much as to say a home... more of a domain she resides within along side the other far greater beings and evils than herself.
Zorbels knew Alhana was evil and I had something to role-play with and be afraid of.
Boo!... did I scare ya?
Who knows what tomorrow may bring :devil:
Now that she is not in planeshift allot .... I really have nothing I can role-play out.
Alhana was always about... in one form or another ;D. She travels within you now as she does with all whom have been in contact with her.
Things just kinda died within that RP and I think its fair to say it was time for something new for both our characters.
As I said before... you never know who you are speaking too... the next time your talking to a stranger, ask yourself... could this be her?! :devil: besides, she has no reason to bother you... for now.... MHAHAHAHAHHAH!!!!
I love the Deathrealm which is why I spend so much time there. Its somewhere you can think and absorb all around you, including the atmosphere. It fuels my desire to make Alhana all she can be.
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Nice topic title, I wonder if the "for Rpers only" part really prevented anyone from posting in here. I guess not, or at least, not anymore :devil:
I'll try to express ideas about the DR, at a low rate.
The first thing, that I think, we've to wonder about is:
Why do we have a Death Realm?
I'll try to express my view on why the game has a place such as the "Death Realm".
When you design a game, even if it's with a fantasy background, you want it to look somewhat realistic. It adds to its consistency, and looks better finished. In that sense, if you implement fighting, or falling, is reasonable to give those actions a health penalty if things go wrong.
So, for the sake of realism, when a monster hits your char, it has to be somewhat reflected (loss of health points) and when you fall from a height, the same happens. Otherwise, it would all be considered a joke, so that method is adopted, I'd say, by all games.
What happens with this? There's a moment when the health points end. At that moment, again for the sake of realism, you've to decide what to do with the char the player's playing. You've the option of showing a screen saying "Game Over" and force the player to start all over again. Needless to say, that would not be very liked by almost any player, so noone adopts this solution (and even if that was the team desire, it would be bad to apply it right now, considering that lots of deads can happen merely for in game bugs, due to an early stage of development) commonly, you've to give the player another chance. It's how it has to be. You'd knock the char down, and make it stay there, not moving for a certain amount of time, but that would be very boring for the player and possibly noone would like that solution. Commonly, another place is created. A place where you teleport all chars that have died, and where you allow the player to return to the normal world. The playing ground.
The origin of the death realm is, then, entirely OOC.
Currently, I've seen lots of efforts to "justify" the DR from an IC perspective. Make no mistake, it's always harder to fit into any background something that was borned with only OOC reasons, than anything that was invented purely from imagination.
I've seen too, too many efforts to empower the DR presence, making it larger, crowding it with NPC, even imaginating battles between both "realms"...
Planeshift originality doesn't reside in it's Death Realm. But in it's real world, Yliakum. The only world that really comes from imagination, with a purely imagination origin, and not imposed by the fact that a game is being created. Let's all focus then on empowering that world, the unique world that the game is offering to us, there is where the excitement has to be, there is where life has to be. It would certainly be a pitty, that, with the effort of us all, a "world" whose origins are purely OOC, overpasses in excitement and thrill, the one that comes with the original, primary idea, the one thanks to whom all the other things exist.
[I think the post is currently lenghty enough, so I'll leave it be now. If there are replies, I'll try to keep adding my points after them. If there aren't I'll try to progressively edit this post, so all ideas are expressed. Unfortunately, I haven't yet said all I had in mind.]
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I always kind of pictured the Death Realm as kind of a Valhalla of Yliakum, where only the most worthy could go and have the chance to be reborn. It would obviously be a place for warriors, since usually a merchant- or such-type character would not go into battle often and wouldn't have as much chance of being killed. To prove themselves worthy of being reborn, a warrior would have to go through monsters, mazes, and mischief (oh how clever I am ::)) and get out of death. It could be a places for warriors to recuperate, as Valhalla was for the ancient Norse. Therefore, it would be nicer to see more NPCs of people stuck in the Death Realm, or just people waiting for their time to be released to the world to fight some big evil.
I think we kind of belittled the Death Realm and made it into a joke. It has the possibility of many RP moments — maybe the army of the dead planning to breach the gate into the wold of the living? Maybe Orpheus-the-Enki is trying to get his lovely wife back from the clutches of death? The only thing I've seen has been the DR race, which was a one-time thing. Sometimes I stick around the DR just to make an RP moment, maybe be a Charon for the newbies (sorry, I'm having a mythology overdose) and guide them on their way back to their own realm.
So in conclusion, impatience and just sheer laziness has kept us from using the DR to its fullest potential, and I for one would like to try and fix this. *nods*
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Let's try to keep giving more feedback.
Anfa has a point when she says that a quest sends you to the DR to make another step in order to complete it, and, to complete it at full, you've indeed to come back to the living realm.
This wouldn't be the first case when NPC sentences collides in some way with the background settings of the game.
But then again, this has an explanation. Probably, the one designing that quest did only want to bring more fun to the ones trying to make it, and thought about using the DR too, as a spicy effect for the quest. I won't blame the designer for that, as it was with the best of intentions.
I'll do say, however, that quests hardly can be roleplayed properly, and this one, isn't an exception. But this quest IC/OOC discussion, is off topic in here.
All seem to agree at one point. DR is a place hard to get out from (even some state hard to get into)
I've seen replies that state that, currently, the DR isn't finished, and that it will expand with time. I've no doubts about that.
BUT
Attempting to design an ingame DR as it is intended to be in the setting, would be an error, and cannot be considered an objective of design, to my eyes.
Let's assume we've a DR map, that is as hard to get out as the "real" DR is intended to be. That means that hardly anyone, when entering that place, would be able to get out. See how this collides with the original objective of the DR, that is giving the player the chance to keep playing his/her char as long as he/she wants. But, for now, let's assume that map is indeed implemented.
If a char of mine dies, and I get teleported to that map, from where you've very little chances to get out, I would have 2 options. Delete char and start a new one (perhaps same name) in the living realm and pretend nothing has happened (and for this solution, there's no need to actually implement any larger DR, as it can be done right now) or keep the char, trapped in the DR. Considering the amount of accidental (that is, non player desired) deads that your char suffers (cliffs, bugged attacks...) sooner or later DR would be populated with "trapped" chars. Oh, but I never make my char to fight, so probably I'd stick still in the living realm. Most of people uses the combat system. Chances are that, soon, the majority of chars would be "trapped" in that DR map, perfectly mimeting the extreme difficulty that exiting the DR has. In order to RP, you need the players. And if they've their chars trapped inside the DR, you'll end killing your char to RP with them. In other words, strictically implementing ingame the intended DR, would switch realms. DR would become the "living" realm (at least where action is) while the living world would be almost desert (people finding noone around, knowing that people is trapped inside the DR, if they want to play, they switch world) obviously this is such an extreme view. But I hope the point is clear.
The DR will never be, in game, as hard to get out as it's supposed to be. Period.
How to act, then? Common sense, logic, and consciousness.
Indeed, if your char dies IC (if you player, agree to your char dieing) then you've the option to RP it trapped inside the DR, or, as Under the Moon said, delete it completely. You've also the option of playing a resurrection spell (a highly skilled crystal or dark way mage on the living realm casting it) but that, definitively, isn't the rule (there can't be a big amount of skilled enough magicians, and casting such an spell wouldn't be like going to buy rat hides).
Does that mean that if your char is sent to the DR you've to delete it?
Absolutely not.
I fully understand Zorbels point, as mine is exactly the same. I too won't kill Nilrem. I know it, people knows it. He has never been into the DR, nor been killed.
And that you've the right to do, because you player ultimately decide when your char dies.
But, then again, common sense. If you find yourself in the DR, and exit, but you didn't from an IC perspective were there, simply, don't roleplay that dead. I've sometimes the feeling that certain people sees this things as "obstacles" in their RP that they've to "surpass" and that, when they do that, they become better roleplayers. I disagree with that. If your char is sent to the DR, accepting that IC and playing a resurrection later won't make you any better roleplayer, to my eyes. If your char was not meant to die, it simply didn't die.
Sometimes this can be fun, you fell off a cliff and are teleported to the DR, and then an idea pops to your mind, and you think ok, I'll RP my char fainted, and fell on the ground. But in any case, you'd never RP it indeed died and resurrected. And still, while I agree you can RP your char fainted, you're not forced to use that always. Your char died for a bug, or your distraction while talking IRL with another person, or because you went away of keyboard... whatever the reason is, it's OOC, you don't have any need (and "succeeding" on that won't make you any better) to justify that IC.
Also, please refrain from using this to play the superhero type of char. "Since I decide when my char dies, I go around like a superhero because noone will effectively kill me". That's not the point. Let's all try to act logically.
So then again, if you don't really have to, don't roleplay your char deads. Examples have been given of ingame situations. Wars are one of those situations. There have been wars played in game, some have been tried to be roleplayed. After the war's over, the reports are done, praising the value of those that fight and all. Please, let's all refrain of naming someone that died two times in a battle. Or prevent also the one telling the war story from saying he/she was also killed, but now it's telling the story...
This, as almost anything in RP, is a matter of conscienciation.
[Then again lenghty post... same rule as my previous one applies :-X]
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There are two problems with RPing accidental deaths as fainting and then just coming back like nothing important happened:
1. People don't usually just randomly faint for no reason. You'd actually have to come up with a reason why you would faint, such as a sickness or a curse or something.
2. You still respawn back in your home city. So you have to essentially go into "OOC mode", run back to where you died, then go back to "IC mode" and say you just got up off the ground. It looks silly.
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I fully agree.
I just said that, sometimes, when you've that accidental slip, it can pop you an idea.
You fainted, or you can even decide you really felt, and hurt slightly your toes. I am not saying that each time my char goes to the DR I roleplay a faint, that would be stupid, as yo well say, and it's certainly not the message I wanted to transmit in my post. If that's what came across, my mistake. I merely ignore those accidents, they simply never happened.
Seeing this "issue" with how players roleplay the dead, and having been a concern of mine, widely spread it seems (hi Ligh :D) to the whole community as a player that has been always reluctant about any DR roleplay, having seen what I saw... and indeed, having lost RP chances due to that concern, and said fame that I acquired (not really aiming to) I decided to stop trying to state my points OOCly to those that had the patience to want to listen to them, but try something else.
In that sense I created a char (prior the creation of this whole thread in this forums) to whom I assigned the job of an "undertaker" ( sort of a gravedigger in RL. The one that deals with the disposal of the corpses into the burial wells in PS, and all what is around that) with that char, I have explored the world, and sensed the roleplay around dead.
I've to admit I've seen some things that could have been better left unseen, but I also have the hope, or at least this was my intention when creating the char, that I've been able to "hit" some players mind, to think a bit more deeply how they're playing their chars deaths.
With an OOC objective in mind (player conscienciation) I used the tool I thought was going to be more effective to let the message come across, and that was no other than roleplay, but not a roleplay where I set the example killing my char (deleting it) when it really dies, but trying to find a new approach to the issue, with a job that has to exist in Yliakum necessarily, with a guild that most likely exists too, to try that, with that figure in the world, some pause would be done, and reflexions made about this topic.
I'd like to take the chance to express my sincere gratitude, to all the players that, agreeing or disagreeing IC with Belun's message (as that is his name) have taken their time to express me my support OOCly, about the idea, and the objective, and thanks also to those that have taken their time to talk a bit about it.
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One more opinion :-) :
The first big problem for me is, that, as this thread shows, there is no written rule, as what the DR should be seen. This has to be changed in a RP focused game. Not because I love rules so much, just because there has to be a common base.
My simple approach would be that the DR isn't actually the DR it may be a realm between the world of us living and the actual DR.
So whenever someone is nearly dead he is transfered to this realm, now he has to show if he has the will to live (go to the exit) or if he is to weak, so he won't find the exit and ends a little later up in the real DR. So whenever you die a engine death, you aren't dead you only are really close to it.
But why do you still have all your worldly possesions and why don't you have to search for them near your old body? Well thats simply ooc, whenever you roleplay a engine dead, you do not have to mention this...
Btw I also think that most of the deaths currently happening in PS are totaly ooc, clipping, attacking, whatever caused deaths shouldn't be roleplayed. If you are in a heavy RP situation, just telle something like you got lost - if it is in Kada El's tell you wwre on the toilet... be creativ :-)
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Just another case of a game that wants to emphasize roleplaying yet having game mechanics that are not compatible with that. It's tough to reconcile death making sense in the setting with having a playable game. I was thinking a Valhalla like setting could pull it off.