Role-play & Death

Haven

Someone shouts, "Genocide is not only impossible here, but it is laughably stupid. You're wasting our time. Did you ever think of that?"

Ignoring the one person's obvious misunderstanding of what genocide means, I never completely understood why the relationship between death and both our characters and players alike are the way they are here. It's been an increasingly popular trend for characters to take on an indifferent stance toward death. From things like "It's just one death." to "Don't worry. I'll be back!"

Out of character, quite a bit of people rage about their characters dying but the characters themselves have an amazing lack of respect for it and or an indifference towards it. As a role-playing community shouldn't the relationship be the other way around where the player should at least try not to care too much about character death because Aetolia is ultimately a game (a relatively easy one to regain experience in at that, plus there's no permadeath) while the characters themselves should be the ones that get outraged?

From my understanding of the lore, Varian is only allowing the player's characters to circumvent true death because they haven't quite reached what He intended for them in that life yet. It is implied, however, that once they achieve His goal (which is unknown to everyone) that should they die afterwards then it'll be a true death. Shouldn't there then be some kind of fear or respect for death still for the characters because they never truly know if in their moments of living they've achieved Varian's goals and will die for real the next time? I want to say the Undeath lore is similiar but instead of Varian, it is Ivoln that's pulling the strings.

Some of these stances seem borderline if not out right metagamey to me at times. This is not to say that there are no excuses for such a stance anywhere in Aetolia at all ever. I just think this could be an interesting discussion if nothing else. What do the rest of you think?

Arbre

This is a disagreement I've had with Roux for awhile now.  I take death relatively lightly, especially in RP situation.  Roux has told me that's one thing she doesn't like RPing with me as well as disfigurement, because I'm like lolmending.  Permadeath exists in Aetolia (via purging characters and suicide;agree), so it isn't something that can be denied as you're definitely coming back, but after how many times Arbre has died and come back through the mirror, it becomes like driving a car - yes, there's the risk of a drunk driver killing you FOREVER, but it hasn't happened yet, and I'm not gonna spend my time being paranoid about it.  I'll make it out this car ride safe, just like I did last time.

Ezalor

Welp, I'm a stinking immortal vampire. Death does have no meaning to me .

But yeah, it's a fine line. While people should respect death, it gets no fun RPing "oh I might die here TIME TO RUN AWAY" like you would in real life. I think the general feeling should be that for mortals, death is something that will eventually come to them but, to quote Jojen Reed, "Today is not the day I die."

For Undead and vampires, ain't give a damn!

Eleanor

See I read that as "Genocide is impossible here and he is laughably stupid"

Which is kinda mean, poor ol' Genocide.

Roux

Arb's right in that we've disagreed on it for some time. I enjoy the drama of a life and death situation, and without the death, the fun is just not there. It seems to be a duality really, rather inconsistent I'll admit, as dying while bashing for instance doesn't even get a second thought from me. Really, for most I'd hazard that it depends on the situation. 'Oh, you died to xorani, want my artifacts?' versus 'OMG so and so KILLED you, now I want REVENGE!!!'

Haven

Arbre said:

This is a disagreement I've had with Roux for awhile now.  I take death relatively lightly, especially in RP situation.  Roux has told me that's one thing she doesn't like RPing with me as well as disfigurement, because I'm like lolmending.  Permadeath exists in Aetolia (via purging characters and suicide;agree), so it isn't something that can be denied as you're definitely coming back, but after how many times Arbre has died and come back through the mirror, it becomes like driving a car - yes, there's the risk of a drunk driver killing you FOREVER, but it hasn't happened yet, and I'm not gonna spend my time being paranoid about it.  I'll make it out this car ride safe, just like I did last time.

That sounds more like your character respects and is content with the idea of death and less like she is taking death for granted. "I'm going to die one day but I'm not going to obsess over it. It happens when it happens but until then I'm doing this."

Eleanor

The way I handle it- or how Elea handles it, I guess- is that for any given death, you'll probably come back fine, but that one death MIGHT just be the one at the end of Varian's story for you- so really, you don't want to be killed ever. Large aversion to death. And you can be angry at people for killing you because it MIGHT have been the one. To yoink the car crash analogy, I guess, you can get pissed off at a truck driver for ramming you and putting you in hospital- sure you're not dead, but you damn well could have been.

Life and death situations are still potent, then, because to err on the side of safety one assumes that the next death could be the one.

Jensen

@ezalor The lore of this game permits perma death of vampires, especially with Big Z being gonezo and that colony in the Vashnars.  But I completely agree that nobody takes death as a serious concept.  Bashing high end areas is justified by net xp, pk is justified by no more than 1 death per incident, and the worst case scenario for death is you get mildly frustrated.

Drop starbursts and racial revives, then make the death sequence something you can't just trigger approach mirror.  Maybe consider making corpses lootable, or just something to make you think twice about it.

Valenae

I sit at my desk waiting for the damn spam to inch up my screen so I can hop back into the roleplay, heh. 

To answer the question, though, I would say Val has a similar view as Arbre - this has obviously happened before and as soon as it cycles through I'll be okay again because I haven't lost the faith of Varian.