Best Of

Ok. My second post was intended as my last post here, but I feel like people keep misrepresenting me. I'm going to tell everyone first and foremost, if I do a thing, I'll own up to it. IE yep, I have defile aura a lot. However, and this is something that CZ brought to my attention recently with his post and later admitted to me himself, people seem to be putting a lot of things on me that I HAVE NEVER SAID OR DONE. I put that in all caps for emphasis. Cz literally admitted to me in tells when I approached him, and in his last post here as well, that his view was coloured. In tells he said "I placed what other shadow players have done before on you." I'm going to be very clear. I play Whirran, and that's it. This seems to be prevalent, because the last two pages and more have various instances of people claiming that I did x or y or that I don't want x or y. If you're going to post about me or at me, don't misrepresent me. Here's how things are.

1: I have never said, nor will I ever say, that I don't want conflict. If the way I play my character hasn't told you how much I enjoy conflict, I don't know what will. That being said, I can piss multiple people off and still not try fighting 1v6. It's not like, oh I made this person mad, I better not make anyone else mad today! There are a lot of claims of me wanting conflict but then not wanting conflict. There is a stark difference between wanting conflict and letting folks gank me 6 deep at will. I'm not going to sit there and accept being ganked just because I made you mad, I'm still going to try and get away. If you take that as me "not wanting" conflict, that's on you. Also next time I jump you please sit down and let me bbt if you "don't want" conflict as well.

2: I have never taken pk that happened in the Vortex or the Fracture outside of either area. Sryaen, you never asked me or had any interaction with me, you just ran to the forums and posted. Potentially, from the time of that post, while we were actually still fighting. Pk in the vortex and the fracture does not auto nullify any and all cause you had on you previously. You've helped gank me at a Bama sermon. You've helped gank me while I'm defiling Haern shrines, Omei shrines, and while I'm raising Bama shrines. You were looking to play the victim and use the fact that we did fight in Fracture as a crutch to get there. Here's the full picture, for folks who care.

3: Saltz, I was going to respond to you by simply posting the link to our fight where you died to standing axekick in less than two minutes, but I don't have access to it anymore, evidently. A shame, that. I'm not scared of you or of anyone, much as you'd like to inflate your own ego. I fight and lose plenty. I'm not going to fight you and your friends simultaneously just to prove to you that I'm fearless. That's absurd. Also if you want to claim I have "no cause" maybe don't call me a coward in tells and talk a whole bunch of other shit and then go afk fish. Just my two cents, you might die less that way. And be less salty.

4: Eaku, I have defiled a lot of shrines. I've never defiled Ethne though! Nothing big to say here, just a quick clarification. Isn't her vessel an ogre? Ogre represent.

This might be unpopular, but justifying behaviour that negatively impacts players beyond the in-character consequences around, “it’s my roleplay” or “my God told me to” doesn’t make you anymore a competent role player - it makes you a dick.

That said, I've seen just as many people proclaim that roleplay is griefing/bullying/whathaveyou in order to smear the reputations of people, just because it handed their character a minor L (or no L at all and just made them mad).

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what makes "a dick" is fairly subjective, and bound to the whims of the perceiver--and bound to people acting in bad faith. So, yes, there's definitely a spectrum here, and there are things on the far end that definitely could be dickish. I would, however, caution against broad prescriptions about this sort of thing, because I've just as often seen this "remember there's a person behind the screen" mantra be used to prop up and shield people from in-game consequences or as a way for them to drum out people they don't like.

I guess what I'm trying so say is, nothing is prescriptive and absolute here, and try to exercise some judgement, not just in yourself when you're experiencing something, not just in yourself when you're the one doling things out--all the time. When someone tells you so-and-so is x,y,z, don't always take that at face value, especially without receipts or a visible pattern of behavior, or at least trying to assess whether what is said actually matches up with itself.

edited: for grammar

I feel like you're trying to justify actions in a 'spirit of the law' vs 'letter of the law' - when in reality I personally think you're overstepping in both regards. 'But it's my RP' is such a tired excuse for killmongering that people have tried to use against Aetolia's PK system for a lot longer than you or I have played the game. It was never accepted then, and I certainly don't think it should be accepted now.

This comes down to what we define the game as being 'about', I guess. I think it's a safe assumption, though, that we agree on the notion that a main focus for Aetolia is roleplay and a growing story. This would make the game 'roleplay-centric', for sure. We roleplay everyday. We demand a certain degree of 'roleplay' in pretty much every interaction in the game. Without it, the organizations would have severely diminished stakes because they would just be coats of paint.

So. If this is an RP-centric game, why is 'but it's my RP' a maligned PK reason? Especially when it is done in moderation? I would agree that 'it's my RP' is a bad reason for just walking up and killing citizens of an off-tether city. That's a tremendous stretch. However, that's not what is happening here in any of these situations. In that scenario, the victim is minding their own business. In reality, there is no victim party in the PvP exchanges over the last week or so. The people holding sermons, shouting stuff, and raising shrines are making roleplay decisions - and those decisions are open to consequences or reactions. Violence is a valid reaction, IC - especially with parties you have given up the notion of reasoning with. As it would so happen, my character has absolutely given up the notion of reasoning with Bamathis - there was an entire story arc for it where he tried, even! He has changed after that.

If roleplay is so important to this game, why is the roleplay of rejecting or standing against a cause not an acceptable justification for enmity? Is it because the roleplay is not actively happening in front of you? I would say there is no reasonable explanation for this aside from an unwillingness to accept that there could be consequences for roleplay decisions.

Maybe we define 'roleplay decisions' differently? Not sure.

When I start killing every Duirani novice, because Duiran has Haern as a patron, and it would be uncouth for me to change my RP, for a faction that does things my character doesn't like, I will be sure to reference this. Afterall, I shouldn't have to change my RP because it upsets people. (Sounds real bad when you read it that way, but I'm down to clown)

I think I am beginning to see why my opinion is objectionable to you.

What you just described in my quoted block is the type of bad faith approach to "it's my RP" that I would agree as being unacceptable.

As it would so happen, I'm not doing that right now. My character is killing Bamathis congregants and Bamathis order members that engage in Bamathis business - and only when they are currently engaging in that business. He might pay a little extra attention to where they are so he can catch them doing minors or something, but otherwise he leaves them alone outside of what I'd like to call Work Hours. If you decide to kill absolutely unrelated parties because your character is mad at a god or character, it will be you setting that precedent, not I.