curses

[RayvenD]

i was rping with a few friends last night and i told them about planeshift. anyway we came up with the idea of curse - quests. the idea was that a character would be cursed and would have to find the cure for said curse. the curse would affect how the character could behave within the game, for example the character could contract lycanthropy which would make them change into a wolf etc on attacking and losing the weapons and armor they would normally have (onviously not gaining werewolf type super-skills). Or the characters could get a curse making them unable to handle steel for example. anyway this was just somehting that we talked about and i thought i'd drop the idea in.

[dying_inside]

Hmm, the idea of  the Lycanthropy curse is  good, but I'm very unsure of  the whole "loose your items"  thing. 
Curses are usally thrown by a lich or mage or somone who dabbles in the dark arts, and is not the most powerful of spells.  So therefore  when magic is introduced to the NPC's,  this may cuase a little bit of chaos and disruption when your constantly loosing your heavy plate armor and silverweave short sword because that Enkidukia Lich on the Oja road just cursed you to turn into a weretefu and now you run rampant through the lands without control of your own actions then waking up in your natural form to find you have no items and this will happen until you  can find a cure.

See what I'm getting at.
Maybe some small items?
I'm unsure how it  would work. But generally people wont like losing their special items because of an out of control undead kitty....

[RayvenD]

I didnt mean losre the items completely i meant that whilst you were a were-whatever you would lose the advantages of having those items if you understnad what i mean?

[dying_inside]

Ooooh right. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
yeah that works. Though how you would go about lycanthroping some of the animals in planeshift would be kinda hard I think.... Wont be as simple as following  the werefolf style thing, but I think it would be interesting to see if what people could come up with.

[Farren Kutter]

I'm not sure if the devs like the idea of lycanthropy or even vampirism. Though vampirism is being RPed a lot, especially lately it seems, I think lycanthropy would be way out, especially with the fact that I'm not sure there are wolves in Yliakum at all...

[RayvenD]

lycanthropy was just 1 example. I just thought the idea of curses as quests would be a good one. It'd give more scope than the usual 'hey do you wanna be a blacksmith' type quests. You could be cursed in any way really, the fun would be trying to find the cure, i think you could have some really interesting quests, and it may encourage RP if you had to find rare items and were forced to talk to other characters in order to locate or purchase them.

[dying_inside]

Well... a curse to slowly turn undead?
This means maybe that your character could literally change who it is if you dont get the cure in time.
Like  your dexterity  drops alot, but your health hightens dramatically  in return and your not allowed into places like hydalaa because  people think your a monster. The death realm or some other sort of towns populated by the unseriables of yliakum would be the places you go to be served etc.
Just an idea.

[Mindari]

i dont understand how you can have undead in a world where death doesnt truly exist. if some 'necromancer' announced he planned to raise someone from the dead i would point at the most recent person to walk out of the death realm and laugh ;p

[Karyuu]

The Death Realm is a mysterious and dangerous place - "peasants" or normal people do not escape it at all. Our characters do because they are supposed to be "heroes" and smart geniuses for whom the dark god relented. You shouldn't roleplay death as if it's nothing - just because it's nothing at the moment due to an incomplete game doesn't mean that your characters should feel as you do.

[RayvenD]

i agree with karyu there, who's to say that there arent a lot of lost souls wandering around us when we embark upon our heroic escape from the death realm, the pit for example seems quite a scary place in my opinion. to be honest when i made this thread i was thinking of curses such as ' a pox on ye for mocking an old woman' type gypsy curses, this could make you so physically repulsive that no npc would actually talk to you instead shunning you for fear of catching your disease (obviously not much of an issue at this moment in time ;P) but i think if it was done well curse quests may encourage ppl to break the usual habit of digging all the time or killing ppl in the arena, maybe it could be used to force characters to explore more places than outside of the magic shop and inside the arena, who knows somebody me even visit oja at some point (laanx forbid! - sarcasm) i'd just like to see quests with more to them story wise than 'do you want to be a blakcsmith' or 'why dont you go and get this for me?.' maybe it was a stupid idea, i dont know.

[grenkar]

I really like it.  I think it could develop a very intensely real role play environment.  The only matter is coming up with the means to develop it into the game.

I personally don't think that curses should be restricted to NPC's.  Maybe someone with a very high level of magic could use a simple curse.

And a question for any very serious roleplayers: What is the difference between a curse and a hex.

[Mindari]

"A curse is the effective action of supernatural power, distinguished solely by the quality of adversity that it brings"

"The curse" is a term for the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Christian religion, and a slang term for menstruation.

"German people, including the Pennsylvania Dutch speak in terms of hexing (from the german word for witchcraft), and a common hex in days past was that laid by a stable-witch who caused milk cows to go dry and horses to go lame. . "

"The tradition is also called hex or hex work, or Speilwerk in Pennsylvania Dutch; its adepts are hexenmeisters. The tradition of Hex signs painted on Pennsylvania barns in some areas originally relates to this tradition, as the symbols were pentagrams thought to have talismanic properties; though many current hex signs are made simply for decoration."

"The deliberate levying of curses is often part of the practice of magic"

"Most established religions forbid such practices outright"

so if you are german or dutch, its a hex, otherwise it it a curse ;p

[dying_inside]

Question
Would curses  be dealt with like  full term spells which dont have a ending point only a sulution to them, such as a cure or death.
Eg: Cursed to turn into a block of wood until a mighty wizard comes and castes  Olabaalonga on you and turns you back into your nice Enki self.
Or would they be temporary set backs such as your character is stopped from healing naturally for an amount of time.
Or would there be both ways?

[RayvenD]

I guess i was talking more of the temporary detrimental factors to your character til they found a way to break the curse. but if it was added to the game it'd really be up to the devs i guess.

[Mindari]

you mean like "weakness"? ;p