On the topic of Law.
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I don't think I really understand what's being suggested here. I'd say that if you -want- to play an orc that's not killing folks outright and wants to be friends with the cityfolk then you might be better off playing a half orc instead. I'd also say that if you absolutely have to have an orc and do that then you should app for the orc and make it a goal IG.
Otherwise the OOC stuff seems unecessary and kind of off. There's a ton of IG events to warrant the death of certain monster races IG. There's also a little bit of complaining about how players react to monsters which is just silly. That's suggesting that there's a right way to react to monsters, (Or anything IC,) and also a wrong way. But there isn't.
Nothing wrong with the way the laws are being written. I'd take it in good stride and run with it.
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there is no justice, there is just us
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terry pratchet quote +1
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Frankly, I usually get the impression that people treat the so-called monster races too nicely. How often does a tiefling with glowing red eyes and a tail walk through the market and nobody even says anything about it? I'd like to see more hate on the monsters myself.
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Just for the record, canon Arabel does tolerate some "monster" races; Even drow are not Kill on Sight. Drow traders in the surface, especially in frontier zones, are not at all unheard of. This doesn't mean people socialize with drow, it just means they let them trade; Though it's usually accompanied by ten guards pointing bows in the drow's direction 24/7. Tieflings and Aasimar, much the same. (Contrary to IG behaviour, aasimar scare people just as much as tieflings do. Angel, demon, to the common peasant, they are all lumped under "freak".)
Commerce with orcs was mostly post Obould; It was a major effort to set up the race as part of the civilized world, when prior to it most orcs were simply raiders. Kill on Sight for orcs and goblins is not really strange in Arabel, as they have long been traditional enemies of Cormyr as a whole. Zhentarim frequently deploy them as fodder troops in the stoneland skirmishes with Cormyr. This needn't apply to other places, of course.
However, the above is /canon/. CoA has long moved past that, so don't take it at face value. Simply pointing out that the OP has a point in certain aspects; Racism was rife in the old days, but it usually took the form of encouraged harassment and discrimination (For example, jews were expected to pay additional taxes not applicable to catholics in the 14th-16th centuries in certain kingdoms) rather than execute-on-sight (Those happened of course, I'm generalizing here.) FR is not really all that different. Naturally, exceptions will always exist depending on the specific nature of the city in question.
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Frankly, I usually get the impression that people treat the so-called monster races too nicely. How often does a tiefling with glowing red eyes and a tail walk through the market and nobody even says anything about it? I'd like to see more hate on the monsters myself.
Actually, people flock to them, because they assume that with the app char comes DM attention/quests/etc.
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what about the bounty for monster races? any orc that came to arabel to trade better watch out for his ears/head and can expect mugging and death in alley, that's assuming it even got into the city. Any orc trade enclave would be part of political collusion and massive guard presence on both sides. Not saying it cant heppen but a single orc approaching arabel would one hundred percent of the time be a dead orc. i can hear the peasants cheering and hugging me.
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If you think it's IC to kill any goblin or orc on sight, kill them.
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I agree with the OP that many people view race through the Lens of the 21st century.
I do agree that the Phoenix Legion did a horrible mistake of removing noble privileges and there should (if there was, apologies) an armed Rebellion by the Noble Houses banding together to keep them.
I also agree that their needs to be regular executions of miscreants and more abuse by city guards. Censorship of certain materials, making it illegal to speak out against the current rulers/noblemen of the city, slander laws should be rampant and apply to everyone making a fuss about the law.
IMO, oppression is a good thing and adds to immersion.
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Getting rid of noble rights was the worst thing that happened in v4 IMO. Hopefully they will make a return before it ends
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@SpiffyHas:
I agree with the OP that many people view race through the Lens of the 21st century.
I do agree that the Phoenix Legion did a horrible mistake of removing noble privileges and there should (if there was, apologies) an armed Rebellion by the Noble Houses banding together to keep them.
I also agree that their needs to be regular executions of miscreants and more abuse by city guards. Censorship of certain materials, making it illegal to speak out against the current rulers/noblemen of the city, slander laws should be rampant and apply to everyone making a fuss about the law.
IMO, oppression is a good thing and adds to immersion.
That was the case for pretty much the entire life of the Sheriffs (abuse by city guards, oppression etc.)
If there's one thing Arabel has not had any shortage of in a long time, it's characters going on power-trips over the littlest bit of superiority they can get on another. If the setting did shift towards heavy-handed nobles fomenting oppressive laws then it wouldn't take long for something like the Phoenix Legion to start up again from players who have had enough of not being able to play a dignified character without an app.
As to the original post:
- You need to ban monsters or everyone runs up to hug lycans and vampires and tieflings and their players inevitably play along. If they're at least illegal then people won't want to associate with them.
- Nobles should have power, but just like law factions, it needs to be regulated. Controversial nobles are great, and intrigue-laden ones are even better, but a nobleman who is publicly abusing his power should attract some kind of attention if we go back to a noble-dominated server.
Bottom line is that good and evil exist in this setting, and that's not a concept that most people can relate to. The best way to get across what's "good" and what's "evil" is to make evil illegal. Infernalism, bloodstones, raising the dead, consorting with monsters who are ever scheming to bring down the civilized world - because that is what they do. Drizzit syndrome that says a tiefling isn't evil until he does otherwise is a really silly way to operate the setting because it completely blurs out of sight one of the best things about FR: the dynamic between good and evil, the knowledge that a paladin will never cease seeking out and ending evil before it harms someone; that a vampire will cajole and twist his way into society but does not care for it anymore than if it were hens and not people he walked among; that an orc, say what anyone else will (because orcs by racial definition are as likely to punch someone in the face as try to persuade them themselves they're not truly out to kill anyone) is going to cause a stark increase in violence in the area.
You need monster laws and laws against evil acts because a paladin saying it is so just doesn't cut it, and without the contrast between good and evil everything falls rather flat.
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To be fair, and this comes from both the "planetouched" character players currently on Arabel. WE ARE FREAKS! Yet its rather hard to play ball with someone who, when he sees red glowing eyes, horns, or silver hair, go AWWWWWW, thats pretty, or "Maybe I can change him!" We are freaks of nature. We do believe, our alignments side, that we are better than everyone else. But, its damn difficult to portray properly. I dont want you to be in awe of my glowing eyes; They were given as a roleplay tool to "show" I am different, not because it looks cool. I dont get more dm attention because of my app, i would even go as far as saying I get less, because the dms expect I can hold my own with the tools at my disposal.
A tiefling SHOULD be a freak. An aasimar just the same. And I am getting a bit tired of people being friends with werewolves, vampires, tieflings etc. like this is an episode of Vampire diaries, and there isnt anything fundamentally wrong with them.
As to what Lizard stated… I HATE when players gain too much legal authority, because they so easily abuse it. And being on the wrong end of the stick when someone abuses powers in the extreme, is not fun.
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Since the topic is on that dicussion, i think it is better when people get more immunity from the law (through nobility etc) than getting too much powers to enforce the law.
However, i honestly haven't seen much (if any) ooc abuse of the law so far, so i don't mind it.
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Since the arrival of the sheriffs, the law was easily abused IC, which could make a corrupt lawenforcer an almost impossible target to fight against unless you wanted to simply kill him, as their powers were unlimited. They were supposedly to be kept in check by the Court faction, but the reality was that corruption was impossible to stand against without being in another dm faction, and even then it was difficult.
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My sheriff did all shit by the book when taking in "perps", that meant while they arrested them and maybe gave them a beating, but their final fate was left in the hands of the DMs. I agree that it CAN be abused for ic gain, yes…. but is that being done much? Last i knew, law factions were being watched pretty closely.
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Without naming names, yeah, I have seen the authority powers abused plenty IC, and when it was questioned OOCly, the response i received was "Its IC, deal with it." While I love the corrupt law enforcer… If it becomes routine, where you cant find a single guard who gives a rats ass, then It soon loses its fun appeal to me, personally.
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Too add my own 5 cents on this.. When my previous character was being approved for Sheriff faction i specifically asked a DM if law enforcement on Arabel was to be handled by medieval guard standards or modern western police standards. The answer was fairly unambiguos - we play by modern standards here. I was specifically instructed that roughing up miscreants was a no-no, abusing power in any way was to be first coordinated with a DM and so on.
Thus i can conclude that every instance of blatant power abuse was approved by DMs (or at least reviewed by them post factum). Hence i wouldn't say sheriff players gained any unfair advantage.As for the anachronistic behavior and mindset of many characters.. This can not be avoided. Not all of us are hardcore roleplayers and know how to roleplay a "medieval" character. Moreover some folks might even feel very uncomfortable to face certain features intrinsic to medieval society such as torture, racism, sexism, mass illiteracy, overwhelming censorship, lack of "human rights" as we know it and so on.
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I completely agree that the lines of good and evil have vanished from this server. There was a time when my paladin could point his finger at a teifling or a knonw necromancer and say "He is evil, we need to stop him" and people would be like "Why? He didn't do anything wrong." There was also my last successful character "Lucien Grey," and yes his last name was meant to be symbolic of my OOC goal for him. Lucien proved one thing to me that has shaped my view that there are no defined lines of good an evil in the server anymore. Lucien was a Forsaken Legionnaire, through and through. He believed the docterine, he preached it to everyone he meet, and he had no problem with necromancy because he was pretty much brainwashed into believe that turning criminals into undead to pay for their crimes was more Just then relying on the judgment of the gods. For the most part, Lucien had so many friends it was ridiculous. He was a member of a faction of evil black knights and he was openly trying to destroy the faith of Lathander within the region and PC's of Good, evil, and neutral agreed with him on many aspects and respected him as heroic and Knightly. Tell me where the boundries of good and evil exist in a place where Lucien became beloved and heroic instead of despised and hunted… even the Red Hart was forced to respect him and tried to turn him to their side more than fight him. "Grey" was my experiment to see if the lines could be blured to a point where they didn't exist anymore and people were merely shades of the color rather than black or white.
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Just like in real life, man.
I really don't think that "detect evil" was supposed to work as you mentioned. Imagine: paladin arrives to the city, scans the crowd, points finger at people, they promptly get lynched, exiled or become social outcasts.. No more evil people in the city. Or what.. a civil war between good and evil folks? Neither scenario would make much sense.
In reality, guard officer would likely detain the perpetrator who claims to be a paladin and fine him for libel. I'd imagine even heavier charges if he tried to instigate smallfolk to lynch some important people.
Black and white is no fun unless it's an action rpg like Diablo.And i remember Lucien. You played him as a really nice guy. I was actually under an impression he was a paladin until he started preaching for Loviatar. And that's when i started avoiding him. But then my character was a goodie, i can't see why neutral folks would shun Lucien unless he stopped being so sweet or openly did something very bad.
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And what is the purpose of good/evil/neutral alignment if the line is non-existant. Of course the Law vs Chaos seems to be relatively well RPed and acknowledged. Law aligned have been promoting order, law, and stability while Chaos has been rebelling, causing havok, and all around doing its part. I still feel that obvious evil and obvious good characters are not being acknowledged as such, evil more so than good.