Abandoned Codex

[Seph]

Ok, now I've been doing this for about 8 years, and it occurs to me that some people need to learn where their character ends and their actual persona begins.

Perfect example:

I, for one, am a big fan of the ic/ooc flags: sometimes I enjoy simply coming on the mud to interact with my "friends" online.

Monday, November 8th 2004 I came on to get Jamuraa to join an msn conversation about Halo 2.
Might I add the day before I was helping a lowbie character in the Elven Tower.

My flag was ooc.

I came back about 10 minutes later to scroll up and read
Help! I am being attacked by Saul!

wow. k thats cool

My corpse has been completely looted.
Awesome.
More power to Saul.

He killed me good, afk, ooc and completely non-spelled.

Here's my point: when I came back and confronted him ooc about it, he completely ignored me, opting rather to justify his actions IC, as a 'conflict between his character and mine.'

Suddenly, I become pissed off...

If he (or his character, as this boundry has become foggy) desired a fight with mine, he needed only asked. I was afk at the time, OOC, and non spelled... with 2/3 my hitpoints. Yet, however, he felt it was a roleplayed out conflict between two characters.
Sure, I'd gladly have tangled and lost outside of town. Yes his character is much stronger than mine. What did he prove by doing this?

Well, firsly he proved that he knows not the boundries between roleplaying and logging onto a mud.

Secondly, he has no knowledge of the Zefedoka rules, under help laws3

Thirdly, he has absolutely no intent of becoming a friendly addition to the mud. He would rather go about his merry ways as a character than take the time to interact with his fellow players on a personal level. This I can deal with.

For anyone requiring a clear rationalization from this point forwards, roleplaying is the interaction of two or more characters, reacting to the environment set around them or the history of their characters.

It is not the killing and desecrating of one "character" by another "character" followed shortly with the "justification" of it being a conflict between the two, when no interaction on that level took place at that time.

This is not the first time this has happened Saul.
And to the rest of the pbase, it wont be the last, I am sure of that. Be careful when "roleplaying, ooc and afk" with Saul or anyone of that nature.

Just thought I'd clarify things for a confused mass.
-Seph
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"Sleep well, sweet child... the lord holds thee now."

[thulla]

ok, so here's my oppinion on this...

i know im still a newby, and it may not matter much, but i would certainly hate to have that happen to me....it sucks to die, the loss of xp, and then it's for no reason?? (no real reason) i know im still just getting into the flags myself, but i really enjoy what i am geting back so far. i just hope that seph isn't right about there being more than just one person who would just do that cause they can. i like to think of myself as a pretty nice person, both in and out of character, and i would hate to have people take ic things ooc...that's just my thoughts.....
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~*Thulla*~

[prophecy]

Well i'm new to this and all but it sounds kinda fucked
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Prophecy the mighty mouse killer is here!
Cease your panicing!

[bronze]

with those actions it reminds me of why i play codex........... ah yes "to have fun" that is the point of any game right? i mean none of my chars a BADASS althought i talk like they are,,, i mean a pixie monk,,, how cool is that =P well anyway it is understandable when someone attacks another player.... exspecially if that player chooses the deadly path. and it is also understandable when a player loots another player, there are many justifications to that. however for it to perpetually happen isnt fun. its just plain being an asshole. an asshole doesnt further the enjoyment of the game. it has been my experience for the past four or so years that i have been playing that there are mostly friendly people playing this game, however there are a couple that only play for power and welth both IC and OOC. this is disturbing to me to see that such an aggravation can occour. however i understand that if you put rules on the affair that they may be taken too far and applied in any different way. it is a complex matter that im sure everyone has a an idea on the solution, lets all work together and see if we cant come up with a popular fun way to settle this thing.
it is my personal oppinion that saul is out of line on this matter about looting a corpse from someone that is afk.... ok you killed him good job.. but when he isnt there to flee what chance does he have at saving his eq?
perhaps if Seph was not afk looting would have been acceptable.

[Retribution]

I believe Saul has a valid side to this.

If you'd like to hear both sides before making a decision, let me know and I'll post how I see it.

Respectfully,
~Retribution
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-=Long Live The Fighters=-

[Seph]

I'm not saying he dosent.
What I'm simply getting at here is alot of different players have completely different contexts in which roleplaying is applied. What is considered roleplaying to one person is completely different than roleplaying in the eyes of another.

And for the record, this topic is not a direct attack on Saul, although his example is the fuel for the discussion.
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"Sleep well, sweet child... the lord holds thee now."

[Norik]

I think that the problem is that some people say one thing and do another. Working with this example, Saul's character has a problem with Seph's character IC. This *should* mean that whenever both characters are IC, they can kill each other over and over and over again, and it'll be good. However, if one of them is OOC, there should be no IC reason for Saul to attack Seph. Saul killing Seph was done OOCly, as Seph was config -IC, but Saul tried to pass it off ICly. See the problem? Theres nothing wrong with OOC pkilling, the problem is that some people don't understand the difference between IC and OOC and how they interact...

I dont mean to thread hijack, but this is as good of a place as any to say it. One of the major reasons that I refuse to RP with LS is because Saul can't seem to understand the difference between IC and OOC. I remember once, me and aluc were on the island at jerel. I didn't really feel like fighting Saul, and I believe I was config -ic at the time. I osay'ed that I was going to go play GT3 and went AFK... at which point Saul tried to shove me out of town to pk me. Now... how does this fit into IC? IT DOESN'T. This is a matter of OOC respect/disrespect. My biggest quirk with Saul is that he has no concept of OOC respect. If he is as great of an RPer as he thinks that he is, config -ic should be enough for him to back off. Sadly, it isnt. I believe that this is the underlying issue and the reason why so many players dislike Saul. AC revolves around OOC friendship and respect... I think that is one of the reasons why we have so many people that have played here for more than 5 years.

enough ranting... I dont mean to attack Saul, but those are my observations on the matter...

[Retribution]

Seph,
I think you're a good guy and I've enjoyed roleplaying with you. If you don't mean to attack Saul personally then I am glad. When I read your first post I couldn't help but feel that it was mostly personal.

(Personal note: I finished this and it was much longer than I intended it to be. I apologize for that.)

I'd be happy to voice my own personal feelings on the issues:

From what I experienced the history on this is: you attacked Saul to help out Alucard (which wasn't IC as I recall). Saul told you that he would be hunting you. Saul killed you while afk and looted you fully.

Now, being attacked while afk is specifically in the rules of being deadly as is being looted. So what's really an issue here is the IC/OOC flag. From my experience with you and Saul there wasn't a discussion such that you both agreed not to attack if one of you were OOC. If Saul did agree to this, then he obviously owes you an apology. If there was no such agreement, then I think you owe Saul an apology.

As for the issue of not being attacked when OOC. I think that's a great idea in most cases as long as both parties agree on it. I definitely think you should be able to log on and hang out if you'd like, disregarding your IC battles.

I do, however, think there are problems with making it a straight up rule. I'd be happy to detail those if anyone would be interested.

Seph, If you would like to have that kind of an arrangement with Saul, I believe he would be open to it.

Respectfully,
~Retribution
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-=Long Live The Fighters=-

[DethanStormblade]

Why would they have to agree to something along the lines of "ooc, no attack, etc.."....If you kill someone when configed OOC, thats cool. But don't claim it as IC reasons. That person is NOT in character. Seph is just a name for him, not his character at that point.

[Gareth]

I'll leave this thread up for now because some good points are being made, but it'll probably be removed in a few days.

To echo what's on the main board, we're going to meet with Saul and Alucard to formalize a set of rules for both sides (yes, I know most people involved in this don't like to be on a 'side', but it's convenient for me to treat it like that in discussion). Saul has always diligently followed any explicitly stated rules put before him, and I'm sure if a reasonable 'package' can be put together then everyone can be happy.
Perhaps this thread might be a good place for people to suggest a few rules to agree upon (such as loot limits, valid reasons for pk, etc). And before anyone asks, yes, these would be LS/ALS-only rules, not mud-wide ones. If you're offended by the idea of different rules for different people, it may instead help to think of them as guidelines on how to follow the Zefedoka Rule.

[Retribution]

I think I'm a little hazy on the whole playing a mud OOC.

I understand OOC if you're just hanging out and chatting with people -- basically using the mud as a chat room extension. Aadventuring OOC I'm not sure I understand. Could anyone help me out on how that works?

Respectfully,
~Retribution
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-=Long Live The Fighters=-

[Gareth]

It sounds like such an obvious answer that I'm worried I've missed your point.
Adventuring OOC: If a Sh'kur and Vampire are roughly the same level and want to group to get exp, they flip their IC tags off and go out. In this situation it's disrespectful of their IC personas to 'force' them back In Character halfway through by roleplaying with them, and expecting them to either explain why they were grouped with their mortal enemy, or to kick off on each other.
It's a perfectly valid way to play the mud. If I wanted a pure 100% RP system I'd have picked tinyMUSH or a similar codebase.
(and no, before anyone raises the point, the IC/OOC flag shoudn't be used to "hide behind")

I'm about to post my deliberation on the LS/ALS thing on the main board now, if you want to check it.

[Seph]

Firstly, what Norik had to say is completely what I'm all for.

Seocndly, G is correct in the adventuring ooc. Obsidian Circle is currently at war with SoN and Ira, dosent mean that Nori, Alu and I dont like to go out and hit up a few mobs every now and then. If there was no OOC adventuring on a mud with such a small pbase and such huge mobiles, then runs would never happen.

Thirdly, Ret: there was no agreement of such, I really have never thought it nessecary to "agree" with someone as to not attack me when I'm ooc. (Then again, it's never been nessecary for me to have a %u in my proimpt, which I'm sad to say is now an addition.) I'm not going to hide behind a flag if someone wants to kill me.

It was NOT the fact that I was afk killed and looted that really got me angry. (It miffed me, but everyone gets a little bothered when that happens.) It was the whole "In character" element that had happened when really, nothing happened. It's the same as Saul's shoving an afk ooc out of town to kill them, once again all in the name of his character.

The way I feel is dont hide behind the flag, if you dont want to fight someone whose character has a problem with yours, dont flip on the ooc whenever they log on. But if for example your character has a problem with someone's character and you log on and they're already ooc, you can ask them ooc if they'd like to play it out right now. (Note I said ask... not harass.)

Lastly, here's my main driving point.
Yes, this is directed at the L/S. No, this is not an attack.
Many people dont like you guys. It's simple why. This is a roleplaying mud, roleplaying exists. However, the other 95% of the time we're online it's ooc: chatting, running, qping, leveling etc. The main reason alot of players have such distain for you can be summed up in two parts. 1. You dont have IC/OOC boundries. and most importantly 2. You aren't active members of the player base. You're characters, and nothing more, there is no social interaction going on at an ooc level.

I've rplayed some badass characters in my day. On my mud I rplayed out a rapist. My character would cuss and insult to no end. However, after all was said and done I'd flip off the character and I'd be a member of the pbase again. People understood it wasn't me insulting them, it was my character insulting their character. Without boundries between the two, every action can be taken as your own. Without boundries you have no character, it's just you playing yourself. And if it isn't you playing yourself, noone can tell.

That's all for me.
It's late, hope I didnt make too many typos.
-Seph!
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"Sleep well, sweet child... the lord holds thee now."

[Retribution]

Thanks for shedding some light on the topic Gareth and Seph.

Cheers,
~Retribution
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-=Long Live The Fighters=-

[Balsa]

If all your character is Ic is a vengence machine in a game that is supposed to be fun, perhaps you should rethink it a bit?