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Not to discount anyone's personal experiences or their personal circles of rp, but I do believe the thread is addressing global RP and the trends happening globally.

As mentioned, Bama was driven off due to perceptions. We have had multiple events curtailed or ended early due to upset and emails directly to Matt or Jeremy. Dark roleplay with violent, dark, or twisted themes do happen, but for the most part, they are limited to specific circles of individuals and no further.

I agree that compassion should always be a consideration, however, the landing page and the "about" section of the game should bring with it a certain acceptance with it, too. That does not currently seem to be the case.

Should the character creation include a blurb about agreeing to themes, or more, being more explicit in what the themes may cover?

Separately, I also agree there is a general aversion to conflict. World pk outside of areas that are considered 'open' pk does not happen. Now, this is not an invitation to go on a murder spree, but I really do not see rivals or nemeses used in a way to mean anything. Even RP fights sometimes get people giving their two cents into how they are unnecessary or unfair or what-have-you.

Again, this is not discounting individual experiences. As with any game, YMMV, but on a GLOBAL level, the game is soft. And I do not blame the admin, at all. In the past year, alone, the admin have had to step in twice to two separate orgs (or more, but I am only aware of two). This is not accounting for the myriad of other times they have had to step in to stop Aetolia from shitting the bed. Please tell me I am wrong and correct me, but from what I have seen, in general, Aetolia does a pretty poor job of policing its own community and enforcing its own themes in ways that are constructive to the entire playerbase.

Hi, I've not read all the comments and frankly don't care to because I know it will just make me frustrated; disregard my comment if you think that disqualifies me. But I have also played the game for 15+ years, on Spirit, Shadow, and Pools.

Please do not equate 'darkness' with "disregarding ooc feelings" and please don't equate it with roleplaying things that have very clear OOC weight and parallels without first checking in with your very real roleplaying partner. There is a very obvious difference between acting out, say, a vivisection (something likely no one playing has experienced) and religious/racial/gender-based/sexuality-based/what-have-you persecution.

I regularly participate in frankly quite dark and heavy roleplay while, yes, checking in oocly to make sure the other person is aware of what they're signed up for! It's as simple as content warnings! Which I understand people also like to get up in arms about but it's literally as basic as saying "hey there's sexual violence here"! It's good to know! It's showing basic respect for the human on the other side of the screen! You playing a "dark" character does not exempt you from considering this other person, as much as PKing someone does not exempt you from considering that other person (hence the issue system), and as much as roleplay does not inherently staunch you playing a "dark" character or having OOC compassion! Why are these being conflated!

Exclamation points aside, I would ask that people just double check the content they are wanting to roleplay, and the participants. It's truly not the end of the world if someone's personal comfort level is not compatible with yours. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to stop your roleplay, it just means that you care that the human being, again, on the other side of the screen, also trying to have fun in their spare time and not necessarily wanting to experience a mirror to very real world persecution in their fantasy world, does not have to confront it here too.

There's no grand conspiracy to make you roleplay flowers and rainbows. It absolutely is still what you make it. If you're not finding the gravity you want, that's on you to find the people who will play in that sandbox with you, as it always has been. Why is it being considered a bad thing that we are having compassion for our fellow human beings and their unknown experiences and backgrounds. Thanks. Bye.

First off, this isn't even an opinion. It's an irrefutable fact, so lets get all the cards on the table. As @Rhyot pointed out, and I saw with my own eyes, Bamathis was equated to fascism and Nazi-ism and the volunteer was likewise personally attacked. While that was abhorrant, what was even more disgusting was that a huge portion of our community stood by silently and allowed it. As @Benedicto said, this is -our- community. If that sort of thing is allowed to happen without a massive outcry, don't be shocked that your deity is dormant for years at a time and no one wants to be a volunteer.

This is just my opinion but I've always considered the best RPers to be people who are playing characters that are drastically different from their real selves, who put my character into challenging situations and are able to trigger emotions with what they do. There is a character who comes to mind that does a very good job at this. I don't know this guy OOC at all, I've only ever interacted with him ICly.

Point blank, he makes you hate him. Not just your character, but he makes YOU hate him. Anyone who can provoke an emotional response from you (good or bad) with their RP is a VERY good roleplayer in my book. I remember one of the first encounters I had with him, I walked away kinda pissed off. About an hour later I had to laugh because I realized how silly it was to be pissed off about how a fictional character (his) treated another fictional character (mine). This is something we're all guilty of at some point or another and its to be expected because we get attached to our characters. What is NOT excusable though is to walk away from a situation like this and never realize your failure in controlling your own emotions, blaming that person behind the character for the emotional response that they triggered in you, then going so far as to attack that person OOCly based on how they've roleplayed. I've seen this a lot since I first started playing Aetolia and the fact of the matter is, people that respond like this and never see where they erred are simply bad roleplayers. We should never be angry at a player who got us emotional with their character. we should commend them because it takes skill to roleplay with the realism necessary to fool another person's emotions.

I agree with @Jhin. At present, Aetolia is a watered down land of snowflakes, carebears and unicorn kisses that has completely lost its identity. Bloodloch doesn't scare me, Duiran isn't "savage", Enorian has naughty secrets that would make Severn blush, and I think Spinesreach is just twiddling it's thumbs and waiting for something meaningful to do. Most vampires are weaklings that only drink NPC blood because they haven't the skill to take it from anyone competent. Its generally safe for non-coms to hunt in the fracture and vortex because no one wants to hurt their fragile feelings and get issued, and no one wants to do foci battles unless the odds are stacked in their favor because they're too emotionally weak to risk a death that costs them nothing except a little pride.

I know this sounds harsh, but this is the state of our game. We need to be kind and decent people to each other out of character no doubt, but in character anything should go. This is a foundational principal of roleplaying guys.. its kinda weird that so many people who have played this game for so long need to be reminded of what roleplay and immersion is. Evil characters shouldn't be attacked OOCly for being evil or pressured to be less evil. As @Benedicto pointed out, good characters need evil characters to make their character more relevant. Likewise, good characters shouldn't be attacked OOCly for fighting evil. That is what their character is all about. If someone is RPing in a way that you aren't comfortable with, then simply don't RP with them.

I 100% understand that there are real life things going on that are sensitive. If any of that causes me to be so sensitive that I'm trying to force other people in this game to play their character differently than they want to or worse yet, expect the admin to change the game in order to accommodate my sensitivity.. that's when I know I need to take a break, or just remove myself from whatever the situation is. Its not a fair expectation to ask those around you to tip toe around your feelings. Its borderline insane though to expect people to tip toe around your feelings while they're playing a fictional character in a fictional universe. Lets get back to the roots of what roleplay and immersion are and do our best to leave our real life baggage at the door when we login to this game.

I've had this conversation with a few people now and it's interesting to see other peoples thoughts on it. I think the issue is, as highlighted by @Elene, that there are players who are unable to disassociate the politics and roleplay of the game, its lore and its themes from real life. I experienced a moment of amusement when Bloodloch fought against El'Jazira to abolish slavery as it's something you'd have expected of the Templar and Enorian.

I always associated those who were in a city on a sliding scale with Enorian being at the 'lawful good' end of the spectrum, through to Duiran, then Spinesreach until you reached Bloodloch as 'chaotic evil'. At the moment, it very much feels like we don't get past 'chaotic neutral' at best, as Bloodloch has moved to try and occupy the same, or similar space as Spinesreach. Bloodloch, to me at least, has always represented 'evil' and that was echoed in its themes and the classes it held. However, now it feels like there has been a significant dilution of what it previously represented and as I've interacted with some of Bloodlochs citizens as Benedicto, a lot of them want to be perceived as 'good' or 'innocent' people. This confuses me because I'm pretty sure the blurb of the guilds, classes and the themes of Bloodloch all run completely contrary to that and it seems extremely counter-intuitive to me at least.

I do think it's a shame because we've lost quite an integral part of what makes Aetolia balanced in terms of representation of roleplay. Bloodlochian's should be allowed to be evil and do inherently evil things without being sniped at by their own tether on the understanding that this is a roleplaying game. There are a couple of players who currently are very enjoyable character villains to interact with, such as Elene and Naos. As a 'good' character, it actually gives me something to bounce off of in roleplay instead of twiddling my thumbs with individuals who live in Bloodloch but seem to share the same ideologies as the Templar and Enorian. We're in charge of this story and this world of ours that our characters live in instead of being reliant on the administration to provide threats from outside of the PMP etc to give us an enemy with a contentious ideology to be in conflict with.

This topic may be sensitive to some and my intention is not to make anyone upset in this post but rather be transparent with my thoughts. I've played Aetolia for a long time, over 15 years and I've seen a lot of changes. I may be speaking from nostalgia here but I remember a time in Aetolia that it was dark and that darkness was attractive. I never thought that the midnight age was meant to be a land of carebears. It seems nowadays Aetolia has adopted a lot of real life politics into an RP fantasy game. When I log into Aetolia I want to bite someone neck and possibly devour their corpse because they were too kind. I feel like the polarizing nature of the midnight age is what made Aetolia, Aetolia. I introduce this topic because I want people to think about and add to the discussion on their personal views of where the Midnight Age is at currently and how we can better the authentic experience of the realms.

Personally I don't come to Aetolia to learn whats on Joe Bidens agenda or any other politician in the world. I come here to fantasize a different world. Slaves are a sensitive subject in America, but slaves are real in Aetolia. So just want to hear peoples perspectives. Thank you.