There's also the whole... you exist to serve the collective... thing

If your current RP defines "growth and enrichment" numerically, then you probably don't need to dilute it to incorporate anything you like into it. Enjoying the rice?

You do not have to 'dilute' RP to be able to do something. You can change it, and focus on that new front so as to enrich it. Serenwilde has a great potential to be an iron-fist organization bent on making everything serve pure nature and their Great Spirits. You can use that side of Serenwilde's personality (which is actually stated in the histories - you don't have to invent much!) instead of the current one everyone sees (passive, going-with-the-flow).

For all the wrong reasons, Urazial has sort of alluded to the conclusion we really need to be drawing from Yet Another Taint-Only Event (ok, Gaudiguch probably is fine with it too), which is that once again you can't have both uniqueness and a fair shot in the same aspect of design around here, and it'd be better to get used to it than struggle. In the context of the event, the admin realised they screwed us over by giving Hallifax the only village available instead of us after we did all the work, so they gave us that cool chest thing, which I think we should be happy with (first grabs at a village isn't THAT great.) In the context of the game as a whole, well, only having 9 (arguably 10) villages available instead of 12 is fine too, if you just try to enjoy Lusternia as a world instead of a game.

Just so this doesn't sound too negative, I do enjoy the new villages, and the non-grind parts of the event. We needed new villages in the abstract (more room for the new cities), tying it into the undervault lore was a nice way of doing it and the atmosphere of the places themselves are pretty great. So as with a lot of changes the admin have been making lately I can't really find fault in their thinking.

Glomdoring had its RP "diluted" a looong time ago, as it was deemed toxic by the powers that be. I would say I've had my fill of rice.

I guess the lesson to be learnt from the Glomdoring shake down is adapt your RP to work with the game, not expect the game to mold itself to your RP.

How did the admin give Ptoma to Hallifax when it along with the other village were free for anyone to claim?

It's more that Serenwilde wasn't given the village.

That's certainly true. No one was given a village.

Well, it's not like it's impossible my reading of the situation is wrong but from Eventru's post and various descriptions I gather Mumhatuti, in the context of the event, told Seren to go to the illithoid village and kill the illithoids, while Hallifax accrued a large head start in the other one. Unless you're also gonna go into denial over that time Estarra admitted to giving Paavik to Glomdoring by letting them have a huge headstart on it, or my understanding is somehow incomplete, that was totally giving it to Hallifax.

I believe what happened is that in the course of the event, Seren felt it was being strongly encouraged to go to Ixthiaxa and start killing things - which they did - thus they were both waylaid from the start of the revolt, while Hallifax was not, AND put out of the chance to influence Ixthiaxa, owing to a bunch of people being enemied. It's not really a matter of overall role-play in this instance, but immediate, course of event role-play.

Obviously Serenwilde could justify claiming Acknor, Paavik (they've held them before), and I even recall one revolt where they started stealing crow cloaks from newbies and began influencing Angkrag - so it's not like anyone can really say, "Serenwilde would never even try to claim Ixthiaxa!" It might not be their first choice, but depending on circumstances, I doubt anyone would pass up the chance to influence any village. It's not like you have to drop your standards of role-play to do so, either. Serenwilde could hold Ixthiaxa, choose not to allow it slaves, and otherwise ignore it for no other noble purpose but to deny the soulless there from profiting from enslaving the hyfae, nor any other tainted org from benefiting from such a heinous practice-- that's not even stretching it.

Given that Angkrag has almost never been attempted, I think it's fair to say Ixthixia is an order of magnitude beyond Angkrag and thus so near to "never" as to make no difference. There's a quantifiable, real difference of meaning between a shard of an Elder God that's gotten cooties from a Soulless's feces on it, and an actual shard of a Soulless God. You can dislike both without them having to be equal.

That said, I'll grant you this: given how politics works in Serenwilde, ("works" is definitely the wrong word here), tomorrow we could have someone who actually does any given thing we can argue is anathema to us, and someone else who lets them, and no one would even be surprised. It is always the case that any organization's ideals, consensus, and opinion, are not reflected in the actions of all its members; and if there were a Lusternian Olympics in the "loose cannon that gets away with it" sport, Serenwilde would certainly get more than its share of medals.

Just for the record, for some reason no one cares about any problems one might conceivably have with influencing Paavik. I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact the ghosts are decidedly optional extras and despite being ostensibly the leader, there's a quest to put them to rest or something rather than allow them to exist. (Obviously they come back but that's besides the point.)

It's Acknor/Angkrag we've consistently never gone for even though we've always had the ability to go for Acknor if we so wished.

I want to echo Lendren's point that this is an ILLITHOID village. I know for me, and a lot of other Serens, that is a pretty significant step above tainted(Acknor) or undead(Angkrag).

Eh, not in denial about Paavik- heck, I don't remember anything about a single revolt from however many years ago. I'm just going to have to say that there are consequences to blindly following denizen orders. Of course, maybe it wasn't blindly in this case. Either way, denizens will have motives of their own and they may or may not be what's best for player characters or their orgs.

Because you never actually could before. This is not some lofty ideal that Serenwilde contrived. You didn't refrain from influencing Angkrag as a matter of principle -- it was a mechanical disparity. If you're going to tell me that if in the past Serenwilde could have reasonably influenced Angkrag, but it wouldn't have - I am going to call you a big fat liar. Since I have been playing there has been a constant low grumble from Seren/Celest about the fact that they could not influence Angkrag. I think there has been a thread within the last month where Serens support an influence undead ability in the common skillset and cite Angkrag as an example why they'd want it. As mentioned, Angkrag now has a bunch of alive things which can be influenced, so we will just have to see what happens in the future.

This is hard-core personal role-play you've got regarding the illithoids, but as you note, such things are regularly disregarded in favor of the means that meet your ends today. You can refuse to influence illithoids at all, not deigning to even speak to them, but this is a personal choice - not an extreme that I can conceivably see an entire org veering toward. Village > No Village. Village in Seren's Influence > Village not in Seren's Influence. This will be the view of the moderate majority, and the specifics can be sorted out later. What remains is that, unlike Angkrag in the past, there is nothing written in stone that says you cannot influence this village. If you choose to impose some morality role-play against the very idea of it, that is not the same thing as a mechanical inequality!

Because you always went for Estelbar first. Because the farmers were already there. Because it's always peaced, and you have more influencers, and there is more to influence. Because you have an affinity for cutie furrikins and tae'dae cubs. Rest. Assured. On the occasions when Estelbar was claimed by someone else first, Serenwilde went straight to Acknor -- and on a number of occasions, you held both. Again, this is not a matter of high-mindedness, but of practicality - and I am sure we will see the same sort of thing in Ixthiaxa.

P.S. Lehki - just don't. You kill babies and attack faethorn fae with the justification of denying benefit to Glomdoring - to claim that holding an illithoid village for a similar purpose just crosses the line for you at this point is just silly.

I believe you would be wrong, the actual request was for a similar mechanic that prevents mag/glom from influencing a certain creature type, effectively creating a replica of Angkrag for them at least that is the thread I remember. The actual issue being that while yay it is a unique thing, no other village has a similar obstacle.




Personal role-play comes from somewhere and if you've been watching, whenever the "good" orgs do something naughty they get punished. I believe Marinus had a fit when celestians were killing Merians, Gods had a fit when Serens did the tbc.

Though I have to say you've provided the best argument for why Seren really can't influence this village, you do remember what happened with the baby killing right? Serenwilders do what it takes to protect the forest, even if it was morally wrong, and stuff hits the fan.

It's not really surprising that they would stick to using role play as a reason for why they can't. It is likely that going against it could bite them in the rear. I'm thinking along the line of the Queens or Monk Guild tutors for this one, maybe demanding that they constantly exterminate anything that tries to live there.

I don't remember ever holding both. It's possible it happened. I am HIGHLY suspicious of "number of occasions" though. I can tell you from experience there have been sooo many times, before peace, and completely irrespective of "more influencers and more to influence", where we just gave up and went to go get kills in Acknor rather than influence them at all, even when it would have been practical to influence it, because that just isn't done. I mean, I know this is in fact the reasoning, both because occasionally people ask and I hear people tell them no, or it comes up on SEG and we make the decision not to, and not just for lack of ability like it would be right now.

There's also a subtlety in the complaints over Angkrag. The argument is not that we should be able to influence Angkrag per se. It's that we can't influence a mining village, and Mag (used to) get it free, yet we had to actually compete for ours. If they so chose they could have gone for those instead, unimpeded by mechanics OR RP directives. There was a not unreasonable expectation that the game would be constructed that orgs should have an even chance at mechanical opportunities.

EDIT: Saran maybe described it better than I did.

There has always been a divide, mainly since TBC which is an example of this going HORRIBLY WRONG, between the people who actually play Seren or Celestian characters and those who just sit outside with their advantages sniping inwards, on to what extent it's reasonable for us to just give up on caring about anything and "play the game" instead of engaging in the world. They have a point to some extent, in that it's dumb to expect us to, say, deliberately aggravate Glomdoring AND Magnagora into slaughtering us both on and off peak hours when they're the strongest two orgs in the game, and that we have to make do with tha. In this case being forced to compromise might even add an interesting aspect to the inter-org dynamic (or it might not.) The problem is, some people then expect us to do it for everything, and that is just asking us to sacrifice the good parts about Lusternia for distinctly less good parts. I wish everyone could look at this objectively, especially people who'd been in the org before and ought to know how it is - you know who you are - but I also expect that some individuals (not orgs) just want us to do it so they can act as though never feeling the need to have ground to stand on is better than having had some but being forced out of it.

Anyway, this turned into kind of a rant which I didn't intend it to. Naturally I don't expect posting about it to change anything but it's so disappointing when people just lazily fall into thinking this way. Enjoy the rice, I guess.

The problem is really players jumping to support the divine and denizens. Should an org keep at it despite the initial penalty they can probably find a method of fixing it (eg another divine throwing in their support, surpressing or just ignoring the denizens etc).

I kicked one or two fae in faethorn once to stop a glom from influencing them because it had been done repeatedly to me and I was annoyed. And I can't see how that we're willing to kill a baby relates to this. The life of one small child is unimportant compared to protecting Hart/slaying Crow is the general mindset. That resulted in the village revolting and people were STILL of that mindset, just being slightly more careful to avoid a another revolt.

And it's not just personal role-play hatred of the illithoid. We have patrons who can't stand the sight of of them, and the whole kephera alliance where denizens have flipped out from player or mob illithoids being around, and organizational rules banning illithoids from joining or even being in our territory. If this place was exactly as it was now, except not an influenceable village, there would be absolutely no question that we would want nothing to do with them. We should change that role play around just because we can get comms and power? I don't think so.