Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 3.7K All Categories
- 3K The Midnight Age
- 757 Announce posts
- 125 Newbies
- 6 Class Guides
- 804 Harpy's Head Tavern
- 57 Echo Canyon
- 310 Self-Affirmations
- 163 Town Crier
- 135 The Exchange
- 167 Sparring Grounds
- Combat Guides
- 30 Combat Logs
- 188 Idea Box
- 9 Classleads
- 578 Roleplay Logs
- 107 Aetolia Development
- 5 The Void
- 744 Miscellaneous
- 9 Announcements
- 417 OOC Chat
- 217 Tech Talk
- 47 Scripts
Looking for more active discussion? Join our Discord at https://discord.gg/x2s7fY6
Comments
In the same way, if the Admin just accepted canonically that half-breeds can exist(As Damariel mentioned in that quote), that should help those who want more structure. There won't be an influx of half-breeds because not everyone wants to play one and both sides of the debate(yes, it's a debate) will be appeased. In a world of magic, where angels can be turned in horrible monsters, Gods can turn metal into replacement appendages that function the same way, and inanimate objects can be made sentient through manipulation of these energies - it's not out of the realms to assume that species will intermingle on occasion. Maybe the inter-special couple has to pray to a God for some love essence. The fact that it's canonically allowed that they have children or same-sex couples can have children, is more jarring in my opinion. A horkval and mhun may not be compatible, but they'll have a kid that's either horkval or mhun? Not something that shares a feature of both, or died horribly, or should be killed horribly? If we're drawing lines, someone jumped the gun.
I ask this question: If the Admin stated that half-breeds are canon, but they had to follow certain guidelines to not be outrageous, would the majority of the people arguing be content?
I mean 'Stated' in the sense that a HELP HALFBREEDS scroll is created. It would allow for rules and guidelines to make the world more immersive and allow for current and future hybrids to edit their roleplay to fall more in line with the established canon. It would also allow people to break the guidelines if they wanted, but still be within the realms of possibility. No skills needed, either.
No, I don't want halfbreeds canonized in Aetolia. I think that would be ridiculous and ill-reflected by the existing mechanics.
The problem here, is that opening that door, opens that -entire- can of worms, and forces the admin to come up with individual race biology. Which traits are dominant, etc. If we want the world to be fun and interesting, they need to be doing something with their time beyond drawing up 800 punnet squares to determine which traits would win out at which point in a lineage.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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? 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.
Setting standards is not meddling. Attempting to downplay an established standard by calling it 'assumptions and hearsay' is meddling, and more to the point, it's transparently incorrect.
My question is: Why? I really don't get how you made that jump in logic from halfe-breeds therefore genetic map of each race.
That's the player's job. Just because traits are dominant and recessive traits doesn't mean that they will get them. There is no need to break down every detail of a race for this work, nor should you and I would be against it. The same logic should be applied to everyone with two parents of the same race. Why don't you have brown eyes and red hair? Both your parents did. Do you see my point? Even amongst two species, if you wanted to, you could breakdown genetics from the parents, grandparents, and further back. It's not needed when designing. Sticking to the Rajamala example, there are various types that play, black fur, white, red, stripped, etc. If you wanted to be a half-breed Rajamala human, I would decide my design first and not think about the genetics.
The guidelines would be a way to tell them, 'Hey, when designing your half-breed, keep in mind that the occurrence is rare and most don't live to maturity. As such, a successful hybrid will be more dominant in one race with hints of another, not a melding of both.'
As I said previously, it would be a guideline to try and reel in outrageous half-breeds but allow for the blatant ones to run amok and let the population of the game deal with them in context. There are Horkval designed like spiders with multiple limbs that go against mechanics as they should be allowed to hold six weapons. Imagine a Templar doing a HSL! Hexa-slash. Lock in one round.
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.
The post does not state half-breeds are not canon, it states that they do not support inter-species breeding and that half-breeds are canon within the game as both player and NPC and that, as I said in previous posts, bear closer resemblance to one parent or the other.
edit: For the record, one of D&D's base races is 'Half-orc' and 'Half-elf'.
This still isn't a debate, particularly in light of the recent change made to HELP RACES. This is a case where there is a correct answer.
In the same fashion, current administration could, if they wanted, create a similar thread about info all characters are kind of expected to know or be aware of.
The thing about all this is that it's not meant to be mean spirited on the part of the administration. Yes, you can whine about how things have been wildly inconsistent in the past, but you can't disregard the fact that the Pools are TRYING to get people on the same page now. It's why there's been OOC meetings with city and guild leaderships on guidance and direction of where things are supposed to go: to get people on the same page and keep things relatively within acceptable bounds.
I've kind of come to view Aetolia's lore and various details and writing and roleplaying within it as something along the lines of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, just to use an example. You have a a big setting with a bunch of people writing their own things within it, and many of those writing within their interpretation of what's 'canon'. However, this world you're writing in? You may have your own stories, your own characters, your own ideas of how things work, but in the end, you're at the whims of what direction the higher ups want to take the universe. You deal with it.
If lore or other info is introduced that overwrites older lore or changes things? It's a lot like the new Star Wars movies retconning a lot of the old Expanded Universe. Does it suck? Yes. But this is your new framework that you have to work within, and that's always the case with writing within a setting that's not completely of your own making.
As for claims that it stifles creativity? It really doesn't. You still have a VERY broad framework to work with, and if you can't work with that, I think it says more about you than it does the world. You want YOUR vision EXACTLY as you see it. You want to be able to do whatever you want.
You can, but you have a frame to work with. And you have to accept that the framework you're working with might change, and you have to be able to adapt to that.
One of the biggest problems with basing your argument upon what was acceptable in the older days is that standards in both lore and roleplay were A LOT less defined back then, on both an admin and player level. Over the last few years, we have been working on fleshing out and developing the world of Aetolia. Yes, this sometimes means that your personal character roleplay may be compromised as we settle on how things work. No, this sometimes cannot be avoided, nor is it any sort of personal attack on you.
It's important that we establish these facts as it helps prevent contradictory lore in the future. No matter what way we go, there's always someone we'll upset with the decision. What if one Grook player decides to roleplay a live birth, but another Grook player roleplays egg laying? They both can't be right, and if someone comes to us and asks us which is right, one of them is going to be mad.
On the matter of half-breeds, there's actually more implications to this than a lot of people realize and is a small (but still somewhat important) plot point for Aetolia. Why can't Sapience races create half-breeds, when there's evidence of half-breed races (e.g. the haekathi who recently invaded Sapience, known to be half-breeds of the Dreikathi) being made when (certain pairs of) two Albedi races breed? :thinking:
In any case, outside of extreme circumstances, this isn't something we'll actively police on an admin level. We're not going to pull you aside and say 'hey, change your desc'. And ultimately, once you get to end-game you can still make yourself a catgirl if you want. It's a well known fact I'm a huge fan of catgirls, for what it's worth.
you see nothing condescending about "I am explaining this to you - not arguing, explaining" or attacking my way of engaging for using "debate conventions" and "academic language"?
if expecting people to actually address points in a disagreement is a "debate convention", then i'm guilty as h*ck. i freakin love debate conventions, apparently, because this one in particular seems to me like a way we can treat our interlocutors with respect. nobody who's known me for a long time would've guessed that i love debate, but i'm glad you've sussed it out and explained my intentions to me.
and for real, "academic language"? i don't really see myself as using academic language. i'm a 29-year-old disabled college drop-out trying to avoid becoming homeless ever again - not an ivory tower academic. generally, i write more casually than this, yeah, but when i'm trying to think through something, why wouldn't i use ideas and language that i find helpful? d'you think it's somehow contradictory that i don't observe capitalization, use textspeak & other internet shorthand, and yet somehow know about social construction? what's the issue here? like, i don't know what exactly you're trying to get at, but it reads as dismissive, pejorative, condescending.
you're free to think whatever you want of me, as is everyone, but if you want to play the "who has moral high ground" game, you really ought not draw attention to yourself when this is how you speak to people. just imho.
/$20
I would love to see multiple tribal and cultural centers developed for each of the races. Where a basic identity can be developed. Where young and old players alike can travel to, and through the factions system, adopt a tribe identity for themselves that helps them identify not only with their chosen race but also a particular set of cultural ideas. On another note perhaps groups of adventures themselves could develop these tribes later on. Have a set number of adventurers required, all of the same race, band together and submit a cultural identity they would like to be considered for development. Then if all goes well and the idea can be well-developed then a small village or locale could then be created and NPCs populated. The NPCs would work to allow other adventurers to know what the tribe values through interaction. As well as help others join if they are the appropriate race. The only caveat to this is that players would have to adhere to their cultural values. As well as any hard-coded restrictions. For example, maybe some tribes have hard stances on not allowing their kin to be undead. Also if you changed race or did something to lose reputation with the tribe itself you could lose membership. As for identifying players, it could be as simple as a flavor line in their HONORS information. Such as, "He is a standing member of the Atavians of Cloudtop". Or there could be HELP files that list off notable members of each tribe. Somewhat setup like how HELP lays out information.
You could start each race off with a couple tribal options in the beginning, and then let players choose those or go on to band together and make their own identity. Also for those that choose none of those tribal ideas they can be rogue agents within their race. However, each race should have some base characteristics and guidelines set that still ties all members of a race together. For example, the Atavians all have wings. The Tsol'aa all relatively lithe and have pointed ears.
In short - I think this would help flesh out identities for races beyond just a baseline commonality. In a way that allowed for character development and interaction between players. As time passed tribes could rise and fall in power. Some might even die out. While others are born.
While races may and often do intermarry, mortals are all one or the other, determined by womb-choice during gestation.So yeah, no mixed breeds. And while WHY hasn't been divulged to mortals yet, I do have it on good authority that the reasoning does exist.
Hi.
I know its likely more a TIME thing....but I LOVE IT
QED.
Cute-Kelli by @Sessizlik.