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Hard disagree. I actually LOVE the idea of the "good guys" committing atrocities in the name of the light. That's actually really rad.

Aetolia is not meant to be "Good vs Evil", we are "Spirit vs Shadow."
Are there people who lean towards Good in the Spirit tether? Sure. But there are more than a few characters in Spinesreach who would, too.

Not all Spirit characters are intrinsically good, just as not all Shadow characters are intrinsically evil.

Example: Sibatti leans more towards evil than good, if you were to stack up her morals and compare them side by side. She hates undeath but thinks Sciomancers aren't fundamentally a bad idea. She hates slavery but probably wouldn't think twice about killing an innocent. To her, the "Good" parts are what benefit Duiran/Dendara, and a little bit herself.

I think some of the feelings from Spirit players (myself included), is that Spirit rarely (if ever) seems to get a clean win. It's always "Congratulations! You've won..! But at what cost?" And that's just a real slap in the face, especially when I've never been more thrilled to see Spirit players really show up in force and band together during the past two major conflicts.

See, this is the part I honestly just can't get behind. If the 'at what cost' is a sneaky hidden thing after you did everything right? Yeah that's not cool. But for things like this, where there are very real and very well-broadcasted potential negative side effects, it feels cheap to me when there are no consequences. The good guys should be always asking 'at what cost', otherwise they become equivalent to the Crusaders, committing atrocities in the name of the light. I really love the idea that no city is perfectly pure, no city is perfectly good, no city is perfectly right, and blindly following your God or city principles without considering that individual scenario's nuances should be responded to with plot consequences.

I really wish people could embrace the idea of complex storytelling, in which everything has a ripple effect, and you can do everything 'right' and it still not work out for you. People expect the misdeeds of Shadow to go badly for them or have long-reaching negative consequences... why not for Spirit, too?

Bad things happening is what makes fun RP possible.

A potential negative side effect is fine every now and again, but there doesn't need to be an M. Night Shyamalan twist for the end of every global event. I will admit that the end (?) of this one seemed relatively clean and I definitely got that feel-good vibe that came from Spirit winning, but if every event concludes ends like an episode of Black Mirror, then that's just not fun for anyone and gets exhausting, because you never get that moment of satisfaction. And THAT, to me, is what makes good, complex storytelling.

I will, however, agree that I don't think any city should be perfectly pure, perfectly good, perfectly right, etc. But that's also partially because of how I play my character, and I understand that some people do get enjoyment out of playing that white-knight archetype that is so popularized in medieval fantasy settings. The issue that I've been trying to fix is how to make Enorian more proactive in conflict rather than merely reactive, because that seems to have been the narrative for the city for a long while. We're just sorta over here vibing, minding our own business and only really ever get spurred into action when BL comes and leaves a turd on our doorstep. So it's not only Spinesreach with a motivation and/or identity problem, it might be slightly less so for Enorian but we still have our kinks to work out. But I'm optimistic that we can get it done, and so far the citizens have been super responsive and engaged in everything I've been trying to push forward! Without their participation, we'd be spinning our tires in the mud, so I'm super grateful!

I think some of the feelings from Spirit players (myself included), is that Spirit rarely (if ever) seems to get a clean win. It's always "Congratulations! You've won..! But at what cost?" And that's just a real slap in the face, especially when I've never been more thrilled to see Spirit players really show up in force and band together during the past two major conflicts.

See, this is the part I honestly just can't get behind. If the 'at what cost' is a sneaky hidden thing after you did everything right? Yeah that's not cool. But for things like this, where there are very real and very well-broadcasted potential negative side effects, it feels cheap to me when there are no consequences. The good guys should be always asking 'at what cost', otherwise they become equivalent to the Crusaders, committing atrocities in the name of the light. I really love the idea that no city is perfectly pure, no city is perfectly good, no city is perfectly right, and blindly following your God or city principles without considering that individual scenario's nuances should be responded to with plot consequences.

I really wish people could embrace the idea of complex storytelling, in which everything has a ripple effect, and you can do everything 'right' and it still not work out for you. People expect the misdeeds of Shadow to go badly for them or have long-reaching negative consequences... why not for Spirit, too?

Bad things happening is what makes fun RP possible.

My issue with tethers really is once you join one, you are expected to behave a certain way. I will use this event again as example. When a couple of Spireans came to us about wanting to fight with us, most of us were shocked. It was unheard of for Spinesreach to do so. But it made sense. When there is a battle of life vs undeath, and the outcome of a fight could have a real effect on one way of existence, why would Spinesreach side with a city of primarily undead? It goes against their own self interests. Yet, because of fear of retaliation because Bloodloch is the stronger city (at least, that is the reason I was given) they had to step back.

Why would anyone in the City of Artifice help the two cities that destroyed almost all of Severn's shrines? For that matter, why would Duiran and Enorian ever accept Spinesreach's help after what happen with Bamathis, Severn, Haern, and Dendara?

In the same vein, if Bloodloch decides they need to recklessly draw more from the Shadow Plane to make manifest their dominion over Sapience, what would Spinesreach do?

I'd expect the Sciomancers to take it over, thinking they could handle it safely, and if they don't, the Archivists 100% would. But again, I have no real first-hand experience with what "recklessly draw more from the Shadow Plane" means, only some context.

Looking at this, and looking at the offer from Bloodloch for research into what was essentially a new field of magic, it made sense to be like "No, we should help them, not because they're our allies or because of the treaties or because ShAdOw-whatever, but because we stand to learn some new cool stuff from it, and that is, on paper, our schtick." Unfortunately, that's just really not what the city is. Spines doesn't have an identity right now strong enough to push us towards a singular goal. We're basically the Hufflepuff of Aetolian cities where "all the rest" go, and that makes it really difficult to involve ourselves in any sort of meaningful way in events.

I think Spinesreach has a well-defined cultural identity, but lacks a purpose for people to consistently rally around. It's the city that both studies and fights the Shadow, so if the Shadow isn't currently doing something, Spinesreach doesn't have much to do either. The other cities can actively pursue their purpose without constant admin support. That's one of the reasons why I think Spinesreach and Bloodloch's space within the Shadow tether needs to be defined more strongly. It would give Spinesreach a stronger sense for what it's supposed to be doing when there isn't a major event.

While I may agree that tethers are cancer and or have developed a special tribalism that's hard to unshackle... and gets in the way of some RP(and combat) - I feel some of the problems can be policed with organizations INTERNAL policing of bad seeds too which seems to go by the way side when let's say Unicorns-head Steve just keeps being a Unicorns-head and no one checks him on it.

This ultimately is what needs to happen, but it's also difficult without a unifying identity to say "This person is a bad seed because we believe THIS and they believe THAT". As to getting in the way of RP, I'd argue against that. All actions cause consequences, both good and bad, and it's up us as the players writing the story of our characters to determine if risking bad consequences is worth it. Roleplay it out! Be the person breaking the rules because that's what your character believes in! That's infinitely more interesting than "Well I don't wanna get in trouble, so I'll do nothing"

The biggest irk with tethers is we only have "good" and "evil" ... no in between, no neutrality. You're FORCED to be one way or the other by specific city or guild laws that anchors RP to the wayside.

I don't agree at all that the game is split into "good" and "evil". Every in-game culture, if viewed from the perspective of someone in that culture rather than the lens of IRL morality, is capable of being seen as 'good', and I think that that makes for compelling world building. As to being forced to act certain ways by city or guild laws? That's just putting personal RP over an organization's RP, and saying that it "anchors RP to the wayside" is just avoiding any potential RP of that conflict. Cities and guilds aren't just titles or boxes to slap on our characters, they're archetypes of certain ideals that if you're joining and pinning that name to your character, you should be at least willing to embrace those concepts, or accept that conflict is gonna result from it.

Being a rogue is always an option, even if not a very appealing one. Yes, that will lock you out certain aspects of the game, but every one of those aspects is tied into conflict in some way.

I really, really hate "did you see x talking to y" and will fight 'til my last breath to suffocate that weird culture.

Don't assume malice in what can be chalked up to ignorance. I think that we do a lot of the former, as people. This isn't a problem unique to Aetolia, but it does tend to come up since it's a conflict-driven game. But sometimes that means that we need to pause and remember that other players (aside from a few little shit exceptions) have little to gain in harming others out of the game. We should all be thinking more like Dungeon Masters, in that we want to set up other players to enjoy the experience, even if something "bad" happens.

When there are high stakes situations out there, I think the competition heats up considerably. Case in point: Sib doesn't tend to get involved in PvP, but this was significant enough to set off every alarm bell in existence. The ....health? well-being? ...of the Soul Mirror is one of those suuuuuper high stakes situations. When the fate of the world hangs in balance, it would be a hard sell to tell Duiran and Enorian to not fight so hard over it.

Maybe we need some more medium or low-stakes stuff going on?? I dunno, just spitballing here.

Spinesreach?...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not sure if this is threatening to break past the scope of the topic, because I really don't want this to become a "Spinesreach sucks, and they screwed everything up" conversation, because I truly don't believe that. Spines has some really dope RP going on, and it's not a mistake that they're (presently) the biggest city in the game.

BUT, this RP and identity has basically boxed Spinesreach into a corner where the only real conflict it can be invested in (as a body) are things that directly threaten Spinesreach itself. Which, in a sense, is true of all the cities, but the things that can threaten Spinesreach aren't really ideological. Someone has to show up at Spine's gate with and army and be like "We think you have too many rights!"

Spines became a de facto neutral city, or as close as we can get to having one. They don't really get along with Eno and Duiran because they do have existential threats going on in there regarding shadow, and they do let yucky vampires join up. But aside from that, they're kinda the forgotten city, with no real reason to get out of bed in the morning. Just as they don't really seem to have a reason to defend themselves, they don't seem to have a reason to go out and do something proactively (i stg italics better not linebreak me again or I'll rip my hair out).

I think in a game that has effectively two sides to it, and one of the sides is almost unanimously unified on all issues while the other has one city that is Mordor But With Snugglies and the other is America But We Say Comrade, this is going to create some serious challenges when it comes to designing apparently balanced conflicts, especially if they're mechanical and require physical bodies to fight things.

It doesn't seem like an unfixable problem to me, and I think it can be done without crunching the toes of any org's major RP. Just will take some creative thinking.

I still think tethers as a concept, of two fronts opposed to each other, needs looked at. It seems overly basic, for a game that has four different orgs with different identities. I'm not sure under which conditions one might say Only Spines and Duiran fight each other, or Spines and Eno fight against Bloodloch and Duiran, or any number of strange scenarios one might conceive of could be justified. But I think it warrants consideration. Mechanically, I do still think you shouldn't have Wardens joining Spinesreach and all that jazz, and that definitely should stay.

Shadow has this mentality of putting on assless chaps and being like "Come get some" and then tearing each other down under the guise of "constructive criticism". This is further seen when people decide they want to demoralize and attack people for not participating, because they cant/won't code in some support thing, or because they don't like a specific group of people.

I don't see this happen ever. I'm not online 24/7 but I literally haven't seen someone disparage anybody for not PKing, or attack them personally for PKing badly, in, like--I mean I just don't think I've ever seen it once, honestly. The worst I ever saw was probably nearly two years ago now where some folk were grumpy at losing and were being fairly negative about it. And while I'm not online every single minute of the day, I can say with confidence that this is not a ubiquitous part of Shadow's culture and is a massive mischaracterization, and I'm really gonna have to see receipts before I accept that this is a thing.