OOC discussion about: [RP] Behind Sealed Doors...

[Prolix]

[So here is a question: How are wraiths anymore in context than vampires? The last I heard grendols were the only undead officially in the game. Am I now at liberty to animate ulbernaut corpses into zombies and skeletons? Maybe summon up a wight or two? How about some cacodemons and etc? If all souls are eventually claimed by Dakkru how do wraiths get formed?]

Edited Subject line to indicate the topic split. First chance, please confine the discussion to this purpose as the original thread is still open.

Could Suno's IC post please be moved to the appropriate thread.

[Earl_Listbard]

[So here is a question: How are wraiths anymore in context than vampires? The last I heard grendols were the only undead officially in the game. Am I now at liberty to animate ulbernaut corpses into zombies and skeletons? Maybe summon up a wight or two? How about some cacodemons and etc? If all souls are eventually claimed by Dakkru how do wraiths get formed?]

[wrathrats are undead ]

[Prolix]

[wrathrats are undead ]

[Are you sure they are not living denizens of the death realm? I suspect like other rats they are born and die unlike undead which have no life.]

[Suno_Regin]

[Kieve explained it to me once, but I can't recall right away. I still have to wait for him to get on and revise my post, since I was only going by bits and pieces of what I -could- remember. Best ask him.]

[Kieve]

Hoo boy... Okay here goes.

Proglix - 'wraith' is a general term, like 'elf' or 'insect' would be - Etherwight is the proper term for the creatures. And while I never claimed them to be specific to Settings, I did make a wholehearted attempt at edging them in without being terribly obtrusive. To compare them with 'classic' horrors such as vamps and werewolves is a bit off...

wrathrats - I have no idea if they're undead or what. Would have to ask a Settings guy about those.

And finally, on the creation of Etherwights:
They are sentient beings composed of 'living' shadow, formed by certain coagulations of 'wild magic' (the same stuff that causes glyphs to spontaneously appear). In this regard, they are similar to Krans, albeit without Talad's deliberate influence. Call them accidents of life, if you must.

I spoke with Suno on IRC about the creation of this particular one. To use the term "DNA" is something of a misnomer - Etherwights have no comparable physiology to most organic life. Think of the liquid Terminator from T-2 and you begin to get the idea. But the gist is, the abilities Xathen granted to Nalkorash were also transferred to his child - while the body may be dead, the transferred powers form an ideal focal point for the necessary gathering of magic. Once that reaches a certain threshold (critical mass), a consciousness is formed, and the thing begins learning to exert control over natural shadow/'shadowmass' and gain a physical form. To draw another movie comparison, think of Sandman from the third Spiderman movie. It's not an easy or simple process, which is a big part of why Etherwights are both exceptionally rare and previously found only in the deepest tunnels in the Labyrinth (where little or nothing else would mess with their evolution and disperse them).

I hope that answers all questions sufficiently, but if not, do ask for clarification.

[Prolix]

Etherwight is a term that appears in two places on the web, here and on a now defunct wiki for some game identified as C2. A wraith is traditional undead and a wight is also undead in modern usage though originally meant creature or person. Either way I do not see how it really fits.

I suppose your malevolent creature formed from wild magic/shadowstuff might squeak in under the settings as being (ironically) within a grey area though it has been said repeatedly that undead is generally out. You should have, perhaps, avoided any folkloric names and made up something new but it is understandable that you want your wraith/wight that is not a wraith/wight though it is nearly indistinguishable to be comprehensible to your readers/participants.

I know it is hard to stay within the settings when so much is publicly undefined but it seems to me that the more you pull in traditional mythology the less likely it will appear officially in non-traditional terms. You are taking options away.

All in all just incredibly Goth-O to me.

[Kieve]

I have but two things to say:
-While I never claimed the ideas were entirely original, it seems the description of 'wraith' is much closer to my intent than I'd figured. The 'wight' link is totally unnecessary however, as Etherwight is simply a title I came up with on the spur of the moment. I had been toying with several 'species' name ideas up to that point, and of them, Etherwight sounded most appropriate. (Read: "Don't dissect the word, it's just a title.")
-Etherwights, despite the name, are NOT undead. They are long-lived predators with a definite lifespan and certain mortal necessities (hunger, most notably - gotta eat to live). Please do not confuse them as such. I do, however, understand the misconception since a pitch-black humanoid roaming around draining others' lives and residing in shadow is admittedly a bit reminiscent of it.

All in all just incredibly Goth-O to me.

...The smiley doesn't make this statement any less condescending. Nor is it necessary. I welcome constructive criticisms - opinionated commentary, you may leave at the doorstep.

[Prolix]

Well your sig is a little condescending too, don't you think? I didn't notice it before is it just for me? Be that as it may it is irrelevant to the discussion though I am always amused when people get their knickers in a knot over a throwaway gibe.

Now on to the main topic. There is very little entirely new in the creative world so I am not faulting you for independently coming up with something old although you did list an antecedent or inspiration in the Sandman. Both Spider-man and the Sandman have been around since the early 60's though looking at the wiki page does not help me much and I have not seen that movie. I am relatively certain that the only parallel to your creation is the difficulty manipulating his raw material. At least I think that is all you were saying.

It does not really affect me one way or another and it appears you have put a lot of thought into your play. This is a good thing. I must also admit that I did not read all of the logs/stories. However well thought and played out the affair was, the one fatal flaw as far as I was concerned was the introduction of a new player entity that is not one of the allowable races. In that regards it does not matter if it was a wight, a wraith, a zombie, skeleton, vampire, gnome, gremlin or goonie. If that is to become prevalent practice I think I will just morph myself into Herbie the Love Bug.

P.S. (parting shot) Opinionated commentary ^<mine> countered by opinionated commentary^<yours> ... how delicious. 

[Anumesa]

Honestly, i was there for much of this RP and all of Kieve's creatures/characters are all well thought out with extensive background stories. It was a lot of fun for all those involved and it got many people involved in the RP....and I have seen many more people do RPs that are even MORE out there and retarded then this, so I really see no basis for this attack except personal malevolence.

One should probably know Kieve and his RPs before feeing entitled to make such comments, hmm? 

[Suno_Regin]

[Hey, I guess I don't have many explanations to add to my post after all; I was pretty close to getting things right.

But yeah, I've actually seen the "inside scoop" to Xathen and wraiths in general, and I'd say they're pretty tight to settings; the wraith concept itself the only loosely tied area.]

[By the way, the thread went completely OOC - add brackets people. ]

[Prolix]

[As I said, this means little to me and I am glad you had fun. I probably would not have posted anything in this thread if Suno had not posted that other now deleted thread bemoaning bad roleplay. I am not a newcomer around here and had the same thoughts when this thread first appeared but chose to let people do what they want. While you may see my contributions to this thread as a personal attack I am not saying anything that is essentially untrue although I do enjoy beating around the bush so it took a while to get down to the brass tacks. I thought my objections were delivered mildly and without undue approbation but if people are convinced they are right they do not appreciate being told otherwise. That is the effect of being opinionated.

There is a self appointed cadre around here -- like there is most places -- that considers themselves the guardians of what is proper who feel it is necessary to instruct the lesser lights as to their deficiencies at the best of times and brutally mock them at others. I am not speaking of anyone specific right now, only in general and individuals vary in the strength and nature of their instructions. If you feel I am going on and on about nothing of significance well then that is my nature and you should understand that from my name.

To sum up my position: creating player entities beyond what is available in character creation is better left to the GM team in an official capacity in order to introduce new official content to the game such as the shields event where they introduced the little rock creatures. Other than that you should limit your roleplay to that which is currently available and to whatever else that, while unimplemented, has been officially endorsed. If you are unsure whether something fits, run it past settings. Was this event filtered through the devs? Is there among your participants the unprivileged characters of some of the dev team? Can we expect someday to have an etherwight mob to fight?

I am quite happy to continue on with this discussion but you do not need to humor me by doing so, you can always let it go and get down to finishing your story.]

[Suno_Regin]

[There's a difference between bad roleplay and something that goes against settings. Even if wraiths aren't supposed to exist, Kieve's done an excellent job in setting the picture, and plays his characters how they would act as if he was really them. Besides, GMs have certainly gone against settings in the past, and godmod. For example, the recent event with a GM turning everyone into clackers with some sort of magic, and people having to find the wand and change them back (I'm just using that as an example from word of mouth - I wasn't actually there). If that had been a player event, people would be flaming the player up and down about something like that being against settings, and being too powerful - like you're doing to the wraith setting. If Kieve was a GM, you certainly wouldn't have -anything- to complain about.]

[Dajoji]

Ok, I got nothing against this RP. Personally, I prefer players to avoid RPing uber creatures but that's just me. But since GMs are, again, being used as a negative example, let me say something here...

[(...)Besides, GMs have certainly gone against settings in the past, and godmod. For example, the recent event with a GM turning everyone into clackers with some sort of magic, and people having to find the wand and change them back (I'm just using that as an example from word of mouth - I wasn't actually there). If that had been a player event, people would be flaming the player up and down about something like that being against settings, and being too powerful - like you're doing to the wraith setting.]

GM events do not go against settings. They are all reviewed by Talad so they never include things that do not have a place in Yliakum. In that particular event, nobody told players to pretend they were turned into clackers. They were transformed. GM characters can do those things. Players can't. The reason why GM characters can do that is so we use all available mechanics and settings to enhance the players' experience and not so we can have uber characters we can play with every day.

That said:
- If this were a GM event, it would have gone through Talad before ever reaching any player.
- If this were a GM event, the event character would indeed be more powerful than any player character (and not just claim to be and expect the rest to agree with that).
- If this were a GM event, you would probably be criticizing it for being against settings.

[Suno_Regin]

[So you're able to be stronger because you're approved by Talad? Don't take this the wrong way, but the whole thing sounds like a cheap way to get people to join the GM team - by enabling them to have RPs that players are shunned from having.]

[Dajoji]

[So you're able to be stronger because you're approved by Talad? Don't take this the wrong way, but the whole thing sounds like a cheap way to get people to join the GM team - by enabling them to have RPs that players are shunned from having.]

[GM commands allow it and they are used responsibly, not to our benefit as players. We can create powerful characters if we need to but only to fulfill a specific role in an event. We do not use these characters to "play the game" or any GM command for personal gain for that matter. Players can develop any plot they want but they will be severely limited if they want to do things GMs can do simply because they do not have GM powers.]