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lockquote class="Quote" rel="Teani">Just to toss my two cents in: the stance of no half-breeds was clear to me when I started playing this game over a decade ago. It's been there.

How did you know this from the moment you started Aetolia? It isn't listed in any HELP file. What do you expect a new player to do? Do you want them to go to the forums, search countless posts, post for ideas on what they plan to do with their character, and then go to the game? Or in the game itself start asking people -after the fact-? That is ridiculous.

If it wasn't stated in game, it's not part of the game. Forums are not canon.

It's been spoken of, but some people have sort of (or even blatantly) ignored it. Some people might have started something without even asking, and thus not knowing, and then they were too far into their RP to feel like they could back down. Some people were perhaps not informed properly when they asked around to begin with, or the people they asked didn't know themselves and just went with the easiest "go for it" answer. Who knows? 

All I can say is that I've heard the Admin have this stance throughout my playtime, and it's not been a one-time mentioning in a random context either. I just don't have the time or inclination to chase down quotes to back it up.

This entire segment basically supports my point: the stance is not helpful for players and only serves to divide them on an out of character level. A player who isn't blatantly ignoring something that they can't find or can't be informed of properly is shunned by the other players in real life, just for trying to play a game.

The Admin has once again stated that this is their stance on half-breeds, which is to say there are none. A dominant trait determines the race of the child of parents of different races. It is up to the parents themselves to determine which one this will be. It also makes sense from the character creation point of view, since one has to specify a race to play, not a combination. It brings consistency to the game in a way, so I agree with their stance.

Canonizing things means people have something to lean back against, or something to use as a guide as they develop their characters. It brings stability and less uncertainty to the game, making the world seem more real and easier to immerse oneself.

One admin has stated in a forum post their stance and it is not being debated by the playerbase, though I'm still unsure why there is so much hatred for such a benign aspect of the game that has existed for nearly two decades. Why can't the players just see, 'Oh, this person is using the half-breed aspect to formulate a character trait, let me see what else they got,' when instead I see is, 'Lawl, half-breed, kill it with fire. What a joke.'

Also, I was never saying they should be a combination of both races mechanically. One race would be dominant and there would be superficial physical traits shown in the description. It's an ancestry. In the same way that not all Rajamalan are bengal tigers. The concept of a bloodline in Aetolia has always been ignored, not referencing the BLOODLINE mechanic. Few, if any, children look like their parents or even resemble their race. You may have experiences that counter this, fine. I have experiences that support. The point is that the waters are muddy and this is not the place to build a foundation to make the game more immersive.

People are still going to do it and you're just going to have a bad time because you believe they're breaking some rules when they aren't, they're going against a minority's interpretation of how things are supposed to be.

Besides, all games have rules, you know?

Yeah, they're usually in the game. Except this one isn't. Then that means it's not a rule. Just like landing on free parking gets you the public taxes not being a rule in Monopoly.

Doesn't make any unicorns sense for any race to be able to reproduce successfully with any other race. I vote 'jhalf-breeds break my immersions' to the above.

Except its canon that the races can reproduce. That's not my point, that was stated by the admin. If half-breeds are where you draw the line, fine, but can you admit that it makes no sense that they can reproduce and that their children don't share traits from both?

It's not that we want rules - no. We have rules because things were a mess without them. We have had these rules for a long time, as Teani said. I think that point is really important to keep emphasizing.

No, I don't want halfbreeds canonized in Aetolia. I think that would be ridiculous and ill-reflected by the existing mechanics.

We don't have rules. Not about this, that's the whole point of this debate. Why don't you see that? There are no rules for this, only assumptions and hearsay until recently that a forum post was made. Forums are not canon. That was stated many times in game as well as here.

If the admin don't want to state it in game, then stop arguing this and let people enjoy the game and stop trying to meddle with their fun.

I'm going to breeze over everything else, because I think this point has been argued to death on both sides and no further arguments are going to change anything but upset people. However, I want to address @Vyxsis 's closing question:

"why take the position that we must designate one thing "real" and another "not-real" in a world that's all made up? it seems mean-spirited to me, to put it mildly."

There is nothing mean-spirited about players who want to play a fantasy game wanting there to be rules and guidelines to their fantasy game, because in a pretend world, having guidelines of what "is" and "isn't" is essential for players to feel more immersed within it. To make the pretend world feel more real, you need more rules explaining how that pretend world works.

Guidelines aren't directed at anyone or intended to hurt anyone or wound anyone. This specific RP/Lore guideline is the way it has been supposed to be, but because of the dearth of information available to players we have players now feeling like their characters' histories and backstories are being attacked or now made to look illegitimate and that is very unfortunate because for plenty of those players - they didn't have any way to know any better and it isn't their fault. As was mentioned, there is even confusingly mildly contradictory stuff in those HELP ORIGINS files - the parent folder is labeled 'mythos', but it isn't really abundantly clear that this is mythos TO the characters, not "the mythos of aetolia" (when you throw the word 'mythology into a fantasy world, it gets confusing).

However, at the end of the day, in a role-play-heavy and immersion-heavy game that also relies on those aspects having mechanical effects: you need guidelines and this is the one that has been chosen. It is both the simplest to hold up mechanically while giving RP freedom (doesn't stop you from boinking whoever you want and having a happy/dramatic/tragic family). It isn't intended to be mean-spirited or diminish your RP or anyone else's. The line just needed to be drawn somewhere and this is where it is for better or worse.

I think pointing to the bloodline registry as a defense isn't necessarily the best one; I don't quite agree with that either. Granted there are artifacts and means by which to change gender and surpass it, which could very well explain it, but I'd personally love to see more fleshed out rationale behind the system as a whole to bring it into lore/logistics standards. Right now there isn't a whole lot explaining how this person suddenly became somebody who carries the blood of the person that added them, and players are left to retcon histories and figure it out. It's used in an almost whimsical manner by some at this point, and some diving into the details wouldn't hurt. Popular reason why this has popped up in the past suggesting the ability to append ADOPTED to the register command.

Second, you mention roleplay that establishes it prior - I don't necessarily think that individual players can just create lore in that sense. We have a character in game that has 3 heads and 9 tails, one of which is a scorpion, and another that just ends in a bell. How'd it get there? A hand-wavey explanation of "I experimented on myself."

Should that become a standard/canon just because somebody typed words in their description?

Regarding seeing this as making "arbitrary rules for everything" - creating a consistent environment is important for the game and the roleplay associated with it. It's the same reason I can't roll a Shaman and make up my own roleplay stating that since Shamans commune with spirits I can imbue a tree with a spirit and make it talk and tell jokes to passerby. It's just not how it works. By setting boundaries and guidelines we're given enough of a space to creatively play with and have fun, while still ensuring the limits are uniform.

Finally, again, biology plays a role. I get that the game's a fantasy game, but we need some barriers to keep things in line. Just like I can't go out and breed an eagle and a squid to make a squeagle (because that's crazy and impossible and makes no sense), some common sense boundaries when it comes to biological function and reproductive systems helps to keep an air of realism and encourages immersion.

Look at vampires having kids/reproducing for example. In the early days,

i think you just made my objection for me. making a decision "in the early days" is substantially different than making one now, some decade-and-a-half on, and arguably, the cases aren't really even similar. "vampires physically can't reproduce" =/= "all races can reproduce, but somehow their offspring can only be one or the other of the parents' races". the first is an assertion of physical impossibility, while the latter is an incomprehensible restriction on an acknowledged possibility. there's also the fact that it shouldn't be surprising to most people that vampires don't generally reproduce since that's a bit of vampire-lore that's pretty bog-standard, whereas kelki or w/e can't reasonably be said to exist as a feature of general pop cultural knowledge.

To say there's different reproductive mechanisms at work there between would be... an understatement.

i mean, maybe? but why is a hardline stance on this necessary when, say, "yeah, you can register your kid with the bloodline registry, and how you explain two ''''''''female''''''''' [massive scare-quotes] parents had a child is your business" is fine?

Where do you draw the line?

you don't, because there's literally no need to. there's literally no need to have a rule about this that contradicts over a decade of roleplay by numerous people, some of which is, in fact, mechanically backed-up.

Maybe this isn't an argument that's the best, but rather than forcing the administration to roll through and define biological components of every single race and how they reproduce, they went with the easier option of just saying "Yeah let's just avoid that big can of worms." New players don't have to be inundated with a genetic chart that shows "OK so you want to play a mixed race, you can have X and Y, but not B and C because B and C can't work but C and E can, but A and X absolutely can't, and A and Y will work for the first time, but the offspring afterwards will be sterile.." and so on.

yeah, again, what forces admin to do any of this? nothing, except the bizarre expectation that there be rules governing everything. if they truly wanted to avoid the big can of worms, there wouldn't be a stance on it at all - let players work it out somehow as they do with bloodline registration, as mentioned above.

Quoth the lore questions page, back in 2014:

[...] As for how interbreeding between them is possible, we do not officially endorse interbreeding between any Aetolian races as canon. While half-breeds, both NPC and PC, have existed and continue to exist in the game, they tend to bear closer resemblance to one parent or the other.

This seems like a reasonable standard to me, and it definitely has precedent that goes back beyond 'here and now.'

what harm, then, is it for people to roleplay mixed-heritage characters without attempting to assert such mechanical advantages? what harm is there, how does it effect anyone negatively, for someone to say their character is mixed and only mean "well, they look mostly human but have a few scales|cat ears|whatever"? none, really. there's just no harm in it, unless the precedent that admin are trying to set is that half breeds exist, but only for people who pay to purchase racial relics. such a stance would be much more harmful than simply allowing people to self-describe as possessing multiple race-associated traits.

Ages ago, there was a character named Kaurcer who tried to pass himself off as a 'Mhorkval.' It was very cringey. That is what we're going to have to work around - immersion and all - if we leave this sort of thing in the hands of player anarchy like you're suggesting.

Just because a player does something doesn't mean it's supported by the lore. If I did "DESCRIBE SELF , and she is literally made of disco balls", would you be behind that just because a player had done it and an admin asserting otherwise would erase my contribution to the game?

Hybrids have been something that, while not officially clarified, have tended to get levels of eye rolls over the years from a rather large chunk of the playerbase. I wouldn't by any means say it was ever at any point something that was widely mainstream and wholeheartedly adapted with open arms. Is a ruling on it late? Absolutely. But the question is raised as to whether it's better to have it later than not at all.

Look at vampires having kids/reproducing for example. In the early days, that was something that happened by a smaller segment, players rolled their eyes about it, administration got involved and drew a line saying "Hey yeah no, let's not do that" and it was unpopular. ...But it worked. Were there some growing pains involved for those that went that route and tried to roleplay it? Yes, without a doubt. But I think the game ended up better as a result.

All of that aside, I think there's an issue here from a biological perspective too. We're looking at race from an outside the game perspective when comparing radically different concepts here, I think. This isn't a Filipino man and a Mexican woman get together and have beautiful babies that are wonderful mixes of both (while both still being human).

I've always seen races in Aetolia as a poor word choice, when a better would be species. We're not talking two humans from different backgrounds/ethnicities, we're talking winged human with brittle bones and insectoid that lays eggs. To say there's different reproductive mechanisms at work there between would be... an understatement. Why does any 14 year old that strolls into the game get to play as if they have a more intimate knowledge of the reproductive cycles of the accompanying races in the game than, well.. anything else?

So, if it boils down to that, we run into the issue of "Well Atavians and Humans have enough physically in common, including reproductive cycles, that maybe it'd be feasible." What about Horkval and Atavian? Kelki and Xoran? Where do you draw the line?

Maybe this isn't an argument that's the best, but rather than forcing the administration to roll through and define biological components of every single race and how they reproduce, they went with the easier option of just saying "Yeah let's just avoid that big can of worms." New players don't have to be inundated with a genetic chart that shows "OK so you want to play a mixed race, you can have X and Y, but not B and C because B and C can't work but C and E can, but A and X absolutely can't, and A and Y will work for the first time, but the offspring afterwards will be sterile.." and so on.