Bullying
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Fear icly has to be earned from the player base your character can be the most mechanically powerful ever made but if you do not do scary stuff you aren't going to be feared.
Yes, I am aware of that. Maybe I should have specified that my character -should- be feared for IC reasons. I never mentioned anything about mechanical power, except in the context that people abused it. And do realise, I am not talking about fear in that everyone should bow down to every powerful character, but more so they should not be insulting said powerful characters.
Then if all you can do is that you arn't going to get ic fear step outside the box and do something,make them know you can kill them at will then you will get fear.
This would be a possibility, but without PvP of some sort, people have a hard time fearing you. Even then, people seem to have the memory of goldfish.
I am not trying to turn this into a rant, or an online argument. I am merely defending my point. If there is something I am missing, or if I am just being narrow-minded, by all means correct me.
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I hear what your saying.
At the end of the day, if you want people to truly fear you IC, they have to fear you OOC as well unfortunately. And that means FD's generally.
Too many people not fearing you when you feel they should? FD one of them after warning them and they continue. Or get someone else to do it for you.
Or, beat them down and take their most prized item and don't return it till they give you respect.
There are obviously law issues to deal with (not to mention gank squads), but you have to think of ways round that.
There are other options as well as actually attacking people of course, but true fear comes from knowing someone will actually do something directly damaging. Just the way it is.
Hold on. I think the RP'ing fear topic has been discussed a multitude of times before.
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Fear icly has to be earned from the player base your character can be the most mechanically powerful ever made but if you do not do scary stuff you aren't going to be feared.
Yes, I am aware of that. Maybe I should have specified that my character -should- be feared for IC reasons. I never mentioned anything about mechanical power, except in the context that people abused it. And do realise, I am not talking about fear in that everyone should bow down to every powerful character, but more so they should not be insulting said powerful characters.
Then if all you can do is that you arn't going to get ic fear step outside the box and do something,make them know you can kill them at will then you will get fear.
This would be a possibility, but without PvP of some sort, people have a hard time fearing you. Even then, people seem to have the memory of goldfish.
I am not trying to turn this into a rant, or an online argument. I am merely defending my point. If there is something I am missing, or if I am just being narrow-minded, by all means correct me.
In my opinion, fear is garnered by villains who are constantly doing something that would incite terror, not someone who may have achieved something once, but hadn't continued, which would explain the memory of a goldfish. Fear isn't permanent once stricken; it must be maintained, actions offing topping the ones before that caused the emotion in the first place.
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The fear of FD lasts longer than most anything else though.
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Why would a character who faces death every day by the hands of goblins, ogres, orcs, undead and worse be scared by someone else waving a knife and throwing insults? The truly scary characters are those with a unique twist to their menace, that you won't find on your typical adventure.
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The fear of FD lasts longer than most anything else though.
This is true, but it also leads to OOC resentment. My character is naturally powerful, if I were to FD someone it would inevitably lead to claims of powerbuilds and abusing lower level players. In all honesty, I will stomp all over your toes in game but I would rather not even step on them OOCly.
Why would a character who faces death every day by the hands of goblins, ogres, orcs, undead and worse be scared by someone else waving a knife and throwing insults? The truly scary characters are those with a unique twist to their menace, that you won't find on your typical adventure.
Because, those things do not walk around the city and are not going to be killing you most likely. They are a threat that is optional to your character. Players do walk the city and can make your life hell.
In my opinion, fear is garnered by villains who are constantly doing something that would incite terror, not someone who may have achieved something once, but hadn't continued, which would explain the memory of a goldfish. Fear isn't permanent once stricken; it must be maintained, actions offing topping the ones before that caused the emotion in the first place.
Perhaps this is where my problem lies. Due to the alignment of my character, I can not go around chopping people to pieces and leaving body parts and letters strewn across the server.
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It can lead to OOC resentment. But honestly, if you give someone fair warning, and they don't do something about it, then, well, it's part of the game, its a full pvp server.
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Perhaps this is where my problem lies. Due to the alignment of my character, I can not go around chopping people to pieces and leaving body parts and letters strewn across the server.
And this may be why your character isn't feared. FD isn't the only way to make an impact.
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Because, those things do not walk around the city and are not going to be killing you most likely. They are a threat that is optional to your character. Players do walk the city and can make your life hell.
So you're supposed to be scared of things that you voluntarily face on a day-to-day basis, just because you're not volunteering to face this particular danger?
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Fear is a bit subjective. After all, what one dude finds frightening needn't apply to someone else.
Yes, I am aware of that. Maybe I should have specified that my character -should- be feared for IC reasons.
No disrespect intended to your accomplishments Gold, but if you haven't gotten the general fear after IC events, maybe they weren't so terrifying to the people as a whole, perhaps more directed to a selected group of foes, who now know you mean business? (This might even be due to ignorance. Brag more!)
FD is -one- way that people learn to fear for their lives; Rightly or wrongly, it does get a bit ooc in this regard. You know person X will never FD you, while person Y will. So you might take more liberties with X than you might normally would in purely IC situations. This isn't necessarily something voluntary; It's very difficult to simply compel fear from yourself.
There have been people who've earned that kind of fear without the kind of FD we're talking about. Vrudashen of the Scarlet Talons, as far as I know, barely killed a handful of people in his one-year stint with the PC. Gregorious Fallow didn't kill anyone at all that I know of. They were still highly feared and hated by most of the characters around at that time.
Granted, levels perhaps played a part in the above examples; But there are many high level characters (even evil) who just weren't frightening at all. Perhaps the fear really stemmed from the fact that the aforementioned characters repeatedly got away with everything they did. That's where real fear stems from; Being made to think that your character has no recourse, is absolutely helpless in the other character's hands.
(This is of course, subjective, as I cannot speak for the playerbase as a whole)
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No disrespect intended to your accomplishments Gold, but if you haven't gotten the general fear after IC events, maybe they weren't so terrifying to the people as a whole, perhaps more directed to a selected group of foes, who now know you mean business? (This might even be due to ignorance. Brag more!)
No offense taken. Again, perhaps I was misunderstood or a little over-zealous in what I said. I merely meant that as a player, I am shocked at what some characters have said towards mine. Perhaps it is a bit of OOC confusion on my part. It just seems like either we have the ballsiest adventurers who are just asking to get beat, or perhaps I have just taken the wrong point of view on the issue.
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Yeah, Vrudashen (And Danika as well) and Fallow were highly scary despite extremely small (if any) FD.
I know Fallow certainly beat people up though.
But yeah, if a character is constantly getting away with a bunch of really nasty stuff it really can make you feel helpless. I know I did while I was playing Novo with regards Vrud and Fallow. They were just too clever. To be honest, I still don't know how they did what they did, or even -what- they did in some cases.
Like I said, there are other ways, but knowing that if you mess with a certain character, you'll get taken down and that special item for a plot will be taken and used against you (or your blood for some ritual or something, or worse, your characters life) can be effective. It's not about lording your power over people though, just making sure they know they can't give your character any crap or there will be consequences.
In the ideal scenario, your mechanical power should only need to be there as a deterrent.
Or a way to escape so you can enact an evil plan on the offender.
It can be done. But your friend suddenly being gone after they insulted some guy you've been insulting recently can really scare too.
This has gone way off topic
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My thoughts on the subject are that there is a big difference between instilling fear and bullying people. For adventurers, bullying probably isn't scary. They aren't the type of people to take bullying lying down, because bullying only works on certain types of people. So talking down to someone in the Guildhall and saying semi-threatening things probably makes your character look more petty then scary.
Instilling fear, on the other hand, is what a good villian does. They don't harass you in the Guildhall, they catch you out on the roads when you don't have any friends and scare the hell out of you because you know you don't have anyone to back you up. They don't pester you, acting tough. You just -know- they are tough.
Cornering people in dark places with nobody around is a good plus when it comes to intimidation.
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http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tarkin_Doctrine
"Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station."
―Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin[src]
The Tarkin Doctrine, also known as the Doctrine of Fear and officially known as Imperial Communiqué #001044.92v, was a message originally sent direct to Emperor Palpatine from then Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. The transmission detailed methods for maintaining order and increasing security within the Galactic Empire. It became one of the most important documents regarding Imperial policy.Rule through the fear of force rather than through force itself. If we use our strength wisely, we shall cow thousands of worlds with the example of a select few. These examples would need to be highly visible worlds, whose punishment would be further revealed through our control of information via the hyper media.
Bane is Grand Muff Tarkin!
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It's pretty much exactly how Vrud, Danika and Fallow played it.
They got away with so much stuff, people were terrified. They thought if they got in their way, they'd get dealt with; and that the villians would get away with that too, just like they got away with everything else.
Consequently, very few dared to get in the way, and they remained openly evil for a very long time.
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There's a big difference between making people Fear you and Bullying.
Marin was frightened, nay terrified by the pair Vrud and Danika. But they didn't bully Marin once, that I remember. She was terrified, not by what she (and I) knew, but what she didn't know about them. Mystery is the thing that instills fear in CoA. It's not what you know they've done, its the rumours and implied acts; it's the the things that you make up in your own mind that they could have done or might do that instil fear in this environment. FD is far less important than mystery. As Bablefish said… you often don't know why you fear the great evil characters, you just fear them!
Bullying is also very different from many PvP incidents. Bullying is a form of abuse. It comprises repeated acts over time that involves a real or perceived imbalance of power with the more powerful individual or group abusing those who are less powerful. It's not the same as a PvP incident that happens once when, due to words and insults, a fracas ensues and someone ends up bleeding in the gutter. That happens every night in pubs and clubs across the world. Bullying is ongoing, long term abuse and is far nastier. The fracas type PvP needs no Tells beforehand, and the Tells, as others have commented, will interupt the RP. The bullying over a long period of time, I think, needs some OOC communication to ensure there are no OOC wounds.
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This thread has gone so far off-topic that I don't know if it's recoverable!
I think the OP was talking about IC bullying/taunting/smack-talking in front of unpossessed NPCs. In other words, he was talking about initiating one form of PvP (verbal), when you know that another player will be accused of cheating if he responds with another form (physical combat). There are, in my experience, two types of PLAYERS who do this. The emphasis is on player, because it has nothing to do with the character.
The first type is the player who would do this elsewhere. They may be taunting your character, but if you asked OOCly –or even ICly-- they would take it somewhere else so that PvP could escalate without OOC consequences. That's why I suggested a friendly tell. "Hey- sorry there are guards around, but you were here and I'm here. If your character wants to take it further, just say something IC and we'll go elsewhere." Then you're saying that you aren't being a jerk, exploiting the fact that a DM isn't right there at the moment. You could do it IC: "Let's take a walk.", but I maintain that the OOC goes a long way. I know there are some who disagree (and these people tend to be concerned about deep immersion and they tend to play evil, PvP-oriented characters), but I tend to think that friendliness in potentially awkward situations can go a long way. If both players know each other, there's no need for a tell. You probably both already know the script.
The second type of player really is just a jerk. They're trying to aggravate you as a player. They are actually a bully, and they'd probably run away if a DM possessed a guard. Don't waste your time playing with them, because they're really only out to have fun, and the only way they know how is at someone else's expense. A tell won't do any good because they're really just trying to aggravate you. Hopefully they'll grow up and become good players. Maybe they just need to adjust to the online environment. Try being nice, then avoiding them. LaF did that for me when I metagamed his crappy disguises across two characters! I never stopped being a jerk, but some people do.
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After rereading this in the light of day i had a couple of thoughts.
Firstly bullying is not fun for the victim I can't think of an example where it would be.
Secondly FEAR if you can't inspire fear at level 5 then you don't deserve it at level 10.
Thats always been my view start as you mean to go on.Peace out.
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None the less - in order for character to be terrified by large populace, you'll need to PvP. Not maybe FD people - just jump on one or two groups from the shadow, abduct someone, torture him, take a few things from him, maybe chop a limb or two - then throw him out on the road, let the others see what happens to those, who dare to oppose you.
@down: Pardon, back on track it is.
Another problem with insults and general bullying is (especially when done with weaker characters towards the stronger ones) the fact, that they're witnessed by a fair deal of bystanders, supporting sides quite often. And if you don't react in a crude, but effective matter of breaking someone's nose inside for being not a very nice person, your character might appear like, well, a wussy.
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Get back on topic or stop posting in the thread.