Should that be allowed?

[zanzibar]

Someone wanted to be Octarch, so they just went ahead and did it.

Someone wanted to have dragons, so they just went ahead and did it.

Someone wanted to be able to make pits magically appear underneath people, so he went ahead and did it.

Someone wanted to introduce a new God to the game, so he went ahead and did it.



This group of people wanted to have Vampires.  They didn't care about the settings, so they introduced Vampires through their RP.  That's really all it is.  People doing what they want despite the settings.  It's not our job as players to clean it up.  It's not our job as players to deal with it or work around it.  It's just people who don't know what roleplaying is, doing whatever they feel like.

Roleplaying means that you have a character and that character operates within a certain setting.  In planeshift, our characters operate within the planeshift settings.  It's that simple.

[Nikodemus]

Um, I know I've said this before, but... how about HUMANS, ELVES, and DWARVES?! All of which are in PS, and which are way more overdone than at LEAST fairies and vampires, if not dragons and horses. I think that if PS really wants the right to force everything to be original, it should junk all the current races (and rats) and come up with new ones. ALL the races are pretty much similar to something which has been done in loads of fantasy works before. Yes, I know the official race names are not "human", "elf", and "dwarf" (except for the tip note about dwarves that shows up every so often) but that doesn't change what they are.

I ca answer it
It is not about orginality. It is about Xordan sayng NO which is more or less very true. There are things which can't be answered just like that. You just have to use brain and understand PS setting well. Human brain is much more than a computer CPU and it is capable of this.

[Mindari]

i can recall a long time ago, some dev mentioning that the game will not include the undead for ethical reasons ( or something similar) if some are offended for religious reasons or simply find such things distastfull, mainly that is good enough reason to omit them from a game that is intended to be available for many people

[Siteri Kidachi]

Exactly what about vampires actually CONFLICTS with the setting anyway? If they came up with a good reason, that is consistent with the established rules, for how vampirism got there, I don't see any problem. Yes, the developers said they don't intend to have vampires as an official part of the game, but they didn't set up an official reason why NO form of character that must suck blood to survive is possible. Having vampires may not have been what the creators intended but as far as I can tell it doesn't actually go against the setting on its own.

Maybe we could say that this is sort of the PlaneShift "extended universe", kind of like Star Wars. We have the original setting created by the developers, which is REALLY official, and which will be used in the "official" history of Yliakum, and then we have the official setting PLUS stuff created by players that builds on the original.

(By the way... At least in the form people are using in PS, vampires aren't undead, so no problem there.)

[zhai]

(...) Now, people have asked, "Why are there no vampires in Planeshift?" Up till now, it's been, "It isn't explicitly stated in the settings." Well, here's a more definite answer: the settings team said there aren't any vampires. If you don't think that's fair, you have two options: play without vampires or find another game. This whole argument has gone on for far too long. Oh, and in case you wonder at my source:
[2:10pm] *Cha0s* what's the settings team's opinion on Vampires, vampirism, etc in Planeshift?
[2:12pm] *Xordan* vampires don't exist
[2:12pm] *Cha0s* never will
[2:12pm] *Cha0s* ?
[2:12pm] *Xordan* nope

Now you have an official answer from the settings team. No more argument!

Thank you. Now it's official: Vampires are not within PS Settings.

[Cha0s]

I think you misread what Xordan wrote... let me paste it here again:
[2:12pm] *Xordan* vampires don't exist

That's not, "we don't plan to implement vampires." That's, "there are no vampires. Zero, zip, nadda, nil, none." There is no way around that. It's their game, not yours. They made the game and they get to make the rules.

As I like to say, without rules, there is chaos. You can't pick and choose which rules you like and just follow those. If the devs say there are no vampires in the game, there are no vampires in the game. You can't have your own modified setting. Everyone works in the same framework and that framework has no vampires. If you want to roleplay vampires on your own server, go ahead, but a server where everyone works from a premise of their own choosing is chaotic, and, in the end, less fun for everyone involved, and Laanx is not that kind of server.

Now, I was trying to hint that we should drop this topic, seeing as we have already had official input... I'll be more direct: there isn't any room for discussion here. If you think there is more to be discussed, the settings team can be contacted individually. I didn't make the decision, and neither did your fellow players. So don't argue with us.

[zhai]

True. No more to discuss.

- Question: Should that be allowed?

- Answer: No.

Time to lock?

[Siteri Kidachi]

OK, fine. We'll just let the RP finish and then forget it. In Misfile terms, we'll throw the papers out of the file. We'll just have to make sure everything is put back the way it was before the whole thing started before we can forget it. (For instance, Farren will have to be brought back to life because his death was an indirect result of the vampire RP.)

[Peacer]

Someone wanted to be able to make pits magically appear underneath people, so he went ahead and did it.

It was the tavern i did it to -_-


Thank you xordan

[SovHed]

Ok.. if a GM/Dev had posted this in the vampires topic to start with you wouldnt of wasted 5 pages of forums.. As its against the settings the vampires will not carry on..
All due respect to the GMs & Devs.. I dont honestly see them coming up with better RP ideas.. the vampires was to fight bordom.. it worked while we did it.. people enjoyed it mostly.

Closing the vampires isnt a major thing as we agreed we would shut down if it wasnt allowed... But 5 pages of ranting and posting? was it really worth it.. Owch..

Well.. i guess its  For trying to get out yet another RP. Sorry.

Ill be there for the next big RP that conforms with the "Good vs Evil, Good wins" Rp line

[Ellasandra Lenria]

I have tried my best to make the vampires’ existence fit within the settings of Planeshift. If the Devs would like me to just abandon the idea, I will do so immediately.

I quote myself. Why waste your time arguing in here when the Devs could've stopped the idea in the first place? I was more than willing to stop and forget my ideas. To the Devs: Thanks for nothing.

[Karyuu]

"Phase out" is correct.

Siteri, the dev team chooses how many of cliche things they accept into the game - humans/dwarves/elves are to provide players something immediate they might be comfortable with in an otherwise bizarre world. But there's a line - you can't either accept nothing or accept everything, so we choose. And some things get left out for various reasons: personal dislike/preference, gameplay problems, effort disproportional to worth, etc. Why does the PS team want no vampires constantly running around? Because this is the way of the game. Why are glyphs being used for magic? This is how it is built. Why is there a Death Realm instead of instant revival? This is how we want it to be. I'm taking on a more lenient approach because I don't see this as Yliakum-shaking as a player Octarch at this point in time, but people should be careful regardless.

A personal note: people should be really careful with the "popping into existance in Yliakum" backstories. Same as coming from the surface worlds, other universes, etc. If everyone's character came from outside of Yliakum, the only reason to obey the settings would be to interact with NPCs. The Portals are closed (no one has found them or knows where they are), and other gods don't exactly have leeway to snap their fingers and send creatures from their own worlds into the one of Laanx and Talad. It's bad RP to roleplay your Ylian as coming from modern Earth, or roleplay a Lemur from a space-age. And it's "easy RP" to bring in a disease from another world or another creature. "Bloodsucking" does not originate in Yliakum - it just doesn't exist. If your question is then "Why can't such a disease mutate from something else or just appear?" the answer is the same as to the question of "Why aren't Enkidukai and Kran at war with one another."

So again, a please-be-careful. Let the RP come to its climax and then cease - with no long-lasting effects on other characters, or on the world. I think telling people to just stop right now would be too abrupt, so let their stories play out - but soon. With a wide disagreement from a great number in the community, it's best to make sure that everyone has fun instead of a select few whose (a bit awkward) stories now take dominance. I'm not telling anyone to just quit, again. And you shouldn't - it just wouldn't make any sense.

Ellasandra: not all devs read every forum section - Xordan hasn't seen your guild thread, and I wished you luck with a bit of 'personal disapproval'. There have been vampires before that failed each and every time, and I wished that it would be different with your group, that you'd find a way for it to be less cliche and more unique. And that's a difficult thing to do - though you certainly tried.

So to wrap up my own post (leaving the thread open for a bit longer) - this is a subject that you will never find wide agreement on within the community. And there are many things players can do that don't fit within a Settings niche - some harmless and others not so much. Finding out which is which, is just a test of time.

[zanzibar]

Exactly what about vampires actually CONFLICTS with the setting anyway?

You mean besides the fact that there are no vampires?

[Santiago]

So, what are we supposed to do about it after all the events related to the vampire RP are over? Forget it ever happened? Or if you're going with the angle that the people who believe in the vampires are insane... would you stay friends with someone you knew was crazy? Will being part of the vampire RP force our characters to lose their friends?!

Do whatever suits you best, in the end it doesn't really matter that much, does it? If it does, you are going to have a hard time when it comes to another character wipe.

[Xordan]

As I said in IRC to someone asking me, and I'll expand a tiny bit more too:

Basically, Vampires (and Werewolves) don't and will never exist officially ever. This means that they will never have any physical existance, nor be mentioned in any text ingame, nor in any history, story, event, quest or anything else related to PlaneShift. However, if you want to go around ingame pretending (meaning that you talk about them in chat) they do, then feel free to. You will just be those crazy guys who go around talking about creatures which don't exist.