I think the whole problem resides in that they eliminated the only RP device to be in common grounds with Glomdoring. I mean, it's cool that Seren and Glom are supposed to be like day and night, but in the end we need a common ground so short backstabbing aliances (a la Celest and Magnagora with Marani) can be made

Common ground is there if you want it to be, and not there if you don't want it to be.

Please, then, point out some of this common ground. I can't think of anything that one stands for that isn't in direct conflict with something the other stands for.

disgust for cities, disdain for the cosmic planes, hatred of Kethuru, a respect for the Great spirits, a respect for Nature. A reverhence for Nature and fae , etc.

Okay, let me see if I can rephrase this. You can make up all the canon you like, but you have to accept that at any moment it could turn out not to have been canon all along.

Right, gotcha.

From now on, the concept that used to be represented by the word canon will be represented by the word florpznarp.

Players can make canon, but only the admins can make florpznarp. They can do so by putting a stamp of approval onto something someone else wrote, or by writing it themselves, but only they can make it florpznarp.

There, glad we got this settled, without anyone having to be "wrong".

All joking aside let's hear some real examples.

Edit - I'm sorry, I phrased that like I was interested in a response. Just to be clear, I'm not.

Thats fine, if you want to be an idiot about it you can.

Seriously, Anarias, welcome to real life, where we can speak to each other objectively. All the things Daganev mentioned are places Glomdoring and Serenwilde could/already do have common ground. Whether or not that happens IC is up to the players. Judging from the OOC attitudes displayed here, it's no surprise that none of these work.

All of the things that Daganev listed are things the forests COULD have in common, if they chose. Everything in Lusternia can be interpreted and adapted by a clever mind; it's possible to take all of the facts and develop nearly any RP you wish. Any given person could develop the RP that Glomdoring and Serenwilde are both tainted, and be able to defend that with IC research (in fact, this is basically Derian's RP since moving to Mag). You could also say they're both pure, and both serve the fae and spirits, just in different ways. IC, Serenwilde chooses not to do that (which is also perfectly reasonable, and encouraged somewhat by some, mostly past, mechanics).

The biggest problem is that we get confused between IC and OOC logic - they are far from the same thing. OOC, we live in the post-enlightenment era. Everything has to be researched and proven before we believe it. IC, we could perfectly well believe whatever we want, even if all evidence points to the contrary. OOC, trees need water to survive (so I have heard people mistakenly make the case that Celest's water is an aspect of nature), IC I have never seen anyone water a tree, and they survive perfectly well even without much rain.

If everyone learns to separate these things and be more creative, IC life gets quite a bit more fun.

Honestly if you don't see where half of those things are dead wrong there's little point in talking about it. The first few things on that list are the only things that are anywhere close to being common ground. Here's why they can't work at present:

Disgust for cities - this concept is not nearly developed enough to have any meat to it. I'd be surprised if you found a majority of Serenwilde that even had this belief at all to begin with.

Hatred for Kethuru - nobody likes Kethuru. That isn't anything. Also, Glomdoring is the byproduct of Kethuru in that the forest was warped into what it is now. I'm not talking about the wyrd/taint thing here mind you. Kethuru's touch killed Raven, warped Night, and mutated Gib and Glomdoring likes it all this way. That's not helping build common ground based on hating Kethuru.

Disdain for cosmic planes - Again, this concept is not nearly developed enough. What little shared opinion there may be on the matter is outweighed immensely by all the other strifes and conflicts between the communes. So what if we both think Celestia is bad, we can't even get past thinking that the other commune is trashing Ethereal which is much closer to home.


As for the rest, I'd seriously reconsider your own objectivity if you think that Glomdoring and Serenwilde share any kind of ideals about reverencing and respecting nature, the fae or the spirits. You're right, this is real life. You can leave behind the in-game propaganda and just look at things as they really are.

I'll grant you the point about Kethuru.

The rest, though, is something chosen by the players of Serenwilde, not by the administration. It's actually an example of the players changing the status quo. Surprise surprise! Glomdoring's initial posts actually make it quite clear that they desired a friendship with Serenwilde from day one, united against the cities. Anti-city sentiment was about all that the Serenwilde had in the days of Auseklis. Serenwilde's response? Let's go kill Gloms.

The Blacktalon oral tradition and the Ebonguard long-established GHELPs on culture and progression make quite clear that they desire all of the Totemic Spirits to be reverenced. This extends clear to Moon and Hart, although those come with some qualifiers. It's basically fleshed out from the AB files and a few events and augmented by player creativity, which, gasp, might be wrong. You'd be hard pressed to find a Glom who cares that it's not canon.

The fae would be trickier. There's modern history that's less than favorable, and I'm not sure either commune still holds a high regard for the wisdom, intelligence, or sanity of any fae. Still, it's not impossible.

I'll have to keep this short since I'm running low on time. I'll add on if I can after finishing up some other things.



Except it was never developed beyond "Cities are bad." There likely wouldn't have ever been any Ethereal Star Alliance business if a coherent, developed perspective had ever existed about why the cities are bad. It was shallow then and its worse now.

About all the rest briefly, its all fine to say that Glomdoring respects and reveres nature and the great spirits but what do you expect from Serenwilde when you follow the perverted form of Crow, revel in a decaying forest and shackle the fae spirits in shadows? Glomdoring openly disparages Raven and the former Night and embraces the mutilated versions that Kethuru created. How is that common ground?

So develop it out into something you feel isn't as shallow? I don't think the admin are going to stop you.

I know it sounds insane to you, but if people wanted they could ignore the worship of moon/night crow/hart, and instead focus their common ground on the goals of Bear and Wolf, or Sun and groundhog.. or whatever you want.


My suspicion is that people don't have more city/cosmic hatred because they want to avoid the nature vs civilization conflict that exists in the other IRE games, since they haven't gone anywhere interesting in those worlds. I.e. 90% of the time you have someone talking about RL physics and biology to get their point across and it just ruins anything good.

That's something I've already been working on. I was more ranting about it than anything.

You don't know how it sounds to me. If you did, you'd know it sounds stupid and lame to me to say, 'hey let's forget about how Raven's dead and we made Gib into a guildhall and we tried to kill White Hart and we slay the Aspects of the Hart when we can and we generally are an affront to your world view. After all, we both know Monkey is pretty awesome.'

Aww, come on Monkey IS pretty awesome!

Seren would just need to stop giving cookies to Charune/Hart and start giving banana's to monkey, there, problem solved.

Serenwilde's "disgust for cities" is all but nonexistent, Glomdoring is just interested in nothing but the Glomdoring.
Neither Serenwilde or Glomdoring actually plays out a common disdain for the cosmic planes, and this would make a very poor common ground in the first place due to the lack of potential there.
Everyone hates our resident Lovecraftian ripoff, as he's trying to end the freaking world. Not really special enough to count as a common ground, and also only comes into play every other IRL year when a generic plot device needs to happen for some Really Special New Thing to be brought in.
Serenwilde respects Serenwilde's Great Spirits and hates Glomdoring's, the converse applies to Glomdoring.
Glomdoring shows no real reverence for nature or the fae, after all, nothing matters but the Glomdoring. Indeed, Serenwilde and Glomdoring are in constant conflict over nature and the fae.

Significant work would need to be done in order for any of these to be common ground enough for there to be any sort of semi-lasting peace. In addition, the frequent mechanic changes that make it more difficult for Serenwilde and Glomdoring to work together on the pure game level remove any incentive for players to work to make the IC effort to resolve Serenwilde and Glomdoring's differences.

While I agree with some previous posters that orgs are certainly free to define themselves, and there are pretexts for giving more in common with Glomdoring and Serenwilde, I'm unclear as to why we'd actually want to do this. The group delusion that is part of Glomdoring is the most fun part of Glomdoring for me, and that delusion seems to me to be inherently opposed to the claims of every other organization - Serenwilde included.

ICly, I might not esteem Serenwilde to be as ideologically "bad" as Celest or Mag, but the net effect is the same - they all need to give up their ways of seeing the world in favor of Glomdoring's. If we have to purchase IC unity at the expense of minimizing the things that make Glomdoring unique, I don't vote for it. That's not fun.

Why do I never see you in game.

*grin*

Because we play at completely opposite times?