Just my 2 cents, but the actual people on the other side of the screen should be more important than anyone's roleplay, at all times. No one disagrees. And when actual people come out and say they actually feel bad about things which are happening to them based on discriminatory roleplay, that should be more important than preserving that discrimination in a game which is meant to be fun for everyone involved. Agreed in general, hence an attempt at solutions. Though, there is a difference between walking into this situation blindly versus wanting your way after intentionally choosing a thing. RP decisions have consequences. And that's without even getting into the whole "there's enough of this bad crap in my real life I don't need it in my vidya games" side of things. Yeah that's a bit out in left field here. Sure, escapes are important, but if you want a 100% escape don't choose a conflict riddled game.
"You can buy your way out of it" doesn't seem like a great answer, even when followed with "Or someone else might buy your way out of it for you" That's nonsensical to me. A tiny expense to enjoy things your way is reasonable. Players design and customize a hundred things, this is essentially just one more.
I know I personally steer clear of Mag because play pretend discrimination and meanness towards actual people (or their characters) isn't any more fun to me than the real life sort, giving or receiving. If you don't play in Magnagora, spreading hearsay doesn't seem productive- I don't see any discrimination to actual people. IC is not OOC, which many struggle to differentiate. Mag has been pretty amazingly drama free and supportive to its own for years now. I just feel like these sorts of things come up too often and the response is often "but our ArPee" or "Justification #5 by Chanel" or "just buy a racehat and cheat the system like the rest of us" and none of those actually feel like they're helping the situation which culminated in someone feeling bad enough about something they dared risk the forums to talk about it. People sharing their feelings is so crucial. And, disagreement with a certain aspect of an opinion does not denote invalidation of their feelings. Anyhow, yes this topic does come up once in a while, even sometimes when someone doesn't get their way. There are solutions in this thread beyond a race hat. Also, I know the older Mags are tired of dealing with this situation because we enjoy being supportive and helpful especially to newer players. Progress would be a win-win for everyone involved, but that poses 2 problems: 1) Banning races mechanically restricts RP (there's always going to be someone who wants to play how they want to play. Restricting that has its own downside. 2) It creates tension since admin would have to implement the ban (Mag could ban I suppose, but we don't like dissuading anyone from anywhere); surely it sets an awkward recent precedent and situation. I can recall certain other admin restrictive step-ins regarding org population dynamics that were highly disliked in times past.
Maybe that makes me a snowflake Literally no one suggested you as such, why even say this? , but mostly I think it just means I care about people and their feelings more than the game or its story. Ok- caring about both is just fine too. And when I saw another thread from another person saying the racial discrimination in the city feels inflexible and is hitting the feelsbadman button, I felt like I have to point out that this is starting to look like a pattern, and one which involves people feeling hurt or upset and perhaps that means it's a pattern worth breaking. One can certainly and easily choose to avoid it, but that's fair.
Edited to Add: And if the RP is only important at such a superficial level that everyone's just buying their way around it anyway, maybe it's not actually that important? You're right, some contemptible RP is not terribly important when weighed against the cohesion of Magnagora. That's the big picture, which I think you're missing entirely. Do your thing, but when someone tries to threaten Mag unity/policy through force, expect to get kicked into oblivion (like a certain urchin). There's a big difference between having a frustration about a certain RP, and trying to dictate to an org. The buying around it as you say, it's a way to have your cake and eat it too. However, stirring drama is to be put down like a lame horse. City drama is stomped out hard no matter the source. We enjoy unity and plagues, though not necessarily unity plague.
Loralai thanks for your responses that seem more than reasonable. I think you make valid points, and I doubt Magnagorans would die on the hill of being resistant to change generally. Change is quite literally.... our thing. If a ban was too heavy-handed, certainly an informational note on character creation like aforementioned about the RP may go a long way to avoid frustration. I think we all can agree more can be done to reduce frustrations, verily.
If you wait a bit, I am working on an unofficial Path for contemptibles for just that very reason >_> Got some flak for my desire to do so, but tis my Guild so do what I want. Teaching a potentially new player, who is a race unable to progress normally, how to still be useful and engaged is an ideal I have in mind for it. But you are not neglected at least...just hadn't really come up as a concern before to need such a path, then the latest drama that had happened, etc etc. But I AM working on it, only have a rough idea of about 4 ranks out of the 10 so far. Also with varying titles starting with the Fledgling then Contemptible, progressing to Despicable, before moving towards better quality. Dreadlord of Scourge, or Scourgelord being a good match for the 10th rank to match the other Paths Dreadlord while being unique enough to stand out and still reflect the work put in. Just need a bit of time, and maybe IG help towards such.
Make Fain have a player again Would work well to fix such things, could even RP with Him to earn exceptional status, maybe through service, combat prowess, whatever, and be able to progress as normal if starting as contemptible to get the best of both RPs including the 'redemption' aspect?
Sorry. I really didn't mean for it to come across like you weren't doing enough, because you have been great. Mostly I wanted an answer to this particular way I've felt about the whole thing, especially with recent drama.
It seems like most of what needed to be said has been said, but I figured I should probably chime in with my two cents because, hey, it's MY city. There's a couple points to hit here, so I'm going to bullet them to avoid writing a novel.
- The Sutekh issue really isn't relevant to the question in general. Yes, it was a situation that arose because of the way contemptibles are handled but, at least so far as I've seen, once it was resolved it didn't create any extra lingering contemptible tension.
- As someone who plays the game almost entirely for RP, I will absolutely jump at any opportunity to RP, even with a contemptible. I don't hate them at all, its just an entirely different type of RP that I'm assuming people who play contemptibles are specifically looking for by playing that type of race in this type of city. My character might be thinking "how dare this creature approach me", but I'll be thinking "oh, this could be interesting". Please do feel free to come over and chit chat, Kailanna will be vain and snarky, but she's that way to everyone anyway.
- Somewhat connecting to the above as well as the next point below, I think it's important to stress to new players the way certain races will be treated in the city, so they can separate the "people in this game are shitty to me" from the "these specific people are shitty to this specific person for long established RP reasons, and the players behind them are actually very nice". I'm generally of the mind that if someone knows a race is treated a certain way, and chooses to play as that race, they're specifically interested in that kind of roleplay.
- I would strongly disagree with any push to ban the contemptible races from the city because it would be a hard deviation away from the entire Magnagoran philosophy. Like Malayn said above, Magnagora will never turn down a useful tool just because its a distasteful one. Additionally, if the Magnagoran goal is to dominate the Basin, that means all the contemptibles (along with everyone else) will eventually be Magnagoran. Finally, Mag is strongly based around a rigid hierarchy, and hierarchies need people at the bottom just as much as the ones at the top.
- On the OOC front, I entirely support things like Shango's separate contemptible path for the Infernals. Behind the scenes, we've actually done a lot to improve the quality of life, so to speak, for contemptibles. We've loosened some of the restrictions on how undeath is handled and added some loopholes, and we've also found an RP appropriate way to see that participation rewards can be paid out to contemptibles despite those typically being restricted to people at max city rank. I'm also always open to any other suggestions for things we can do to make the experience good for everyone without compromising the roleplay.
- On the more IC issues, I wouldn't say its likely contemptible laws will change any time soon, but I'm also going to say it's definitely not impossible. Just to use the Sutekh situation as an example, the reason it went nuclear wasn't because someone tried to change the laws. He just tried to ignore the laws and jump all the way to the top all at once, despite many, many people saying straight out "Don't do this, it won't go well. Seriously, don't". That was obviously going to be swatted right down. Now, if someone quietly established a base of support, got a bunch of people over to their way of thinking and nudged things in the right direction, who knows what could happen? If you want to change things in Magnagora, you have to do it the Magnagoran way.
- Also on the IC issue, for all the people clutching pearls about people being mean and racist and so on, we're not talking about a situation where people hate other races because they're shitty people. In this case, God literally came down and said in no uncertain terms "Hey, fuck those guys". There are obviously other reasons too, and the snooty nobles, being snooty nobles, will jump on the opportunity to clearly establish people being beneath them, but the fact that a capital G God told them these guys suck means we're going to continue to treat them like they suck until Fain comes back and says "Hey no worries, we're cool now." Or maybe until a couple others of the Twelve get together and say "Hey, Fain was being a drama queen, lets let that one go."
- And finally some food for thought, everyone wants to say how terrible the viscanti are for being so shitty to the contemptibles, but lets all remember the entire reason viscanti is a race at all is that they had to band together because everyone else treated people who were tainted like demonic lepers and kicked them out. They're literally a race of refugees who were discriminated against, probably primarily by merians and elfen. So who's really the bad guy here? Have fun peeling that onion!
Just an aside: Serenwilde bans illithoid and undead. Viscanti (when not undead) are encouraged to undergo a rite of cleansing which burns away the taint in moonfire. We just had one done recently in fact. And it's hard to just ignore being a viscanti in our forest when you have Lisaera always watching with those owl eyes, but we make sure people are okay with going this route of cleansing ICly and OOCly.
- I would strongly disagree with any push to ban the contemptible races from the city because it would be a hard deviation away from the entire Magnagoran philosophy. Like Malayn said above, Magnagora will never turn down a useful tool just because its a distasteful one. Additionally, if the Magnagoran goal is to dominate the Basin, that means all the contemptibles (along with everyone else) will eventually be Magnagoran. Finally, Mag is strongly based around a rigid hierarchy, and hierarchies need people at the bottom just as much as the ones at the top.
Just to add to these reasons, also while a ban might lessen the number of people pursuing the route it wouldn't really stop it.
Serenwilde, for example, still gets people here and there wanting to play illithoid but the ban means either they just can't join, have to race change, or get booted. So we also get a bunch of the same arguments about it being unfair.
If you wait a bit, I am working on an unofficial Path for contemptibles for just that very reason >_> Got some flak for my desire to do so, but tis my Guild so do what I want. Teaching a potentially new player, who is a race unable to progress normally, how to still be useful and engaged is an ideal I have in mind for it. But you are not neglected at least...just hadn't really come up as a concern before to need such a path, then the latest drama that had happened, etc etc. But I AM working on it, only have a rough idea of about 4 ranks out of the 10 so far. Also with varying titles starting with the Fledgling then Contemptible, progressing to Despicable, before moving towards better quality. Dreadlord of Scourge, or Scourgelord being a good match for the 10th rank to match the other Paths Dreadlord while being unique enough to stand out and still reflect the work put in. Just need a bit of time, and maybe IG help towards such.
Make Fain have a player again Would work well to fix such things, could even RP with Him to earn exceptional status, maybe through service, combat prowess, whatever, and be able to progress as normal if starting as contemptible to get the best of both RPs including the 'redemption' aspect?
Sorry. I really didn't mean for it to come across like you weren't doing enough, because you have been great. Mostly I wanted an answer to this particular way I've felt about the whole thing, especially with recent drama.
Side note, it is done. Hopefully it'll ease some of the issue of feeling like you're left to your own devices a bit.
- Also on the IC issue, for all the people clutching pearls about people being mean and racist and so on, we're not talking about a situation where people hate other races because they're shitty people. In this case, God literally came down and said in no uncertain terms "Hey, fuck those guys". There are obviously other reasons too, and the snooty nobles, being snooty nobles, will jump on the opportunity to clearly establish people being beneath them, but the fact that a capital G God told them these guys suck means we're going to continue to treat them like they suck until Fain comes back and says "Hey no worries, we're cool now." Or maybe until a couple others of the Twelve get together and say "Hey, Fain was being a drama queen, lets let that one go."
- And finally some food for thought, everyone wants to say how terrible the viscanti are for being so shitty to the contemptibles, but lets all remember the entire reason viscanti is a race at all is that they had to band together because everyone else treated people who were tainted like demonic lepers and kicked them out. They're literally a race of refugees who were discriminated against, probably primarily by merians and elfen. So who's really the bad guy here? Have fun peeling that onion!
This is a large part of why this issue matters to me at all - I like the racial roleplay in lusternia, even the aspects of racism. It's unique to other IRE games that the races in this world actually matter, have a history directly connected to the lore of the game. I don't want to think of racial choices purely as a matter of useful skills or flavours of description the way they are elsewhere.
- I would strongly disagree with any push to ban the contemptible races from the city because it would be a hard deviation away from the entire Magnagoran philosophy. Like Malayn said above, Magnagora will never turn down a useful tool just because its a distasteful one. Additionally, if the Magnagoran goal is to dominate the Basin, that means all the contemptibles (along with everyone else) will eventually be Magnagoran. Finally, Mag is strongly based around a rigid hierarchy, and hierarchies need people at the bottom just as much as the ones at the top.
Just to add to these reasons, also while a ban might lessen the number of people pursuing the route it wouldn't really stop it.
Serenwilde, for example, still gets people here and there wanting to play illithoid but the ban means either they just can't join, have to race change, or get booted. So we also get a bunch of the same arguments about it being unfair.
Well, and so does Celest. Seems that before I came back there was a fair amount of viscanti/illithoid drama in the news posts. So while, yeah, it doesn't really go away, I suppose it was more wondering how people view the issue in light of the drama with Sutekh. But I think Kailanna's post is a good explanation on many perspectives there, ic and ooc.
Comments
- The Sutekh issue really isn't relevant to the question in general. Yes, it was a situation that arose because of the way contemptibles are handled but, at least so far as I've seen, once it was resolved it didn't create any extra lingering contemptible tension.
- As someone who plays the game almost entirely for RP, I will absolutely jump at any opportunity to RP, even with a contemptible. I don't hate them at all, its just an entirely different type of RP that I'm assuming people who play contemptibles are specifically looking for by playing that type of race in this type of city. My character might be thinking "how dare this creature approach me", but I'll be thinking "oh, this could be interesting". Please do feel free to come over and chit chat, Kailanna will be vain and snarky, but she's that way to everyone anyway.
- Somewhat connecting to the above as well as the next point below, I think it's important to stress to new players the way certain races will be treated in the city, so they can separate the "people in this game are shitty to me" from the "these specific people are shitty to this specific person for long established RP reasons, and the players behind them are actually very nice". I'm generally of the mind that if someone knows a race is treated a certain way, and chooses to play as that race, they're specifically interested in that kind of roleplay.
- I would strongly disagree with any push to ban the contemptible races from the city because it would be a hard deviation away from the entire Magnagoran philosophy. Like Malayn said above, Magnagora will never turn down a useful tool just because its a distasteful one. Additionally, if the Magnagoran goal is to dominate the Basin, that means all the contemptibles (along with everyone else) will eventually be Magnagoran. Finally, Mag is strongly based around a rigid hierarchy, and hierarchies need people at the bottom just as much as the ones at the top.
- On the OOC front, I entirely support things like Shango's separate contemptible path for the Infernals. Behind the scenes, we've actually done a lot to improve the quality of life, so to speak, for contemptibles. We've loosened some of the restrictions on how undeath is handled and added some loopholes, and we've also found an RP appropriate way to see that participation rewards can be paid out to contemptibles despite those typically being restricted to people at max city rank. I'm also always open to any other suggestions for things we can do to make the experience good for everyone without compromising the roleplay.
- On the more IC issues, I wouldn't say its likely contemptible laws will change any time soon, but I'm also going to say it's definitely not impossible. Just to use the Sutekh situation as an example, the reason it went nuclear wasn't because someone tried to change the laws. He just tried to ignore the laws and jump all the way to the top all at once, despite many, many people saying straight out "Don't do this, it won't go well. Seriously, don't". That was obviously going to be swatted right down. Now, if someone quietly established a base of support, got a bunch of people over to their way of thinking and nudged things in the right direction, who knows what could happen? If you want to change things in Magnagora, you have to do it the Magnagoran way.
- Also on the IC issue, for all the people clutching pearls about people being mean and racist and so on, we're not talking about a situation where people hate other races because they're shitty people. In this case, God literally came down and said in no uncertain terms "Hey, fuck those guys". There are obviously other reasons too, and the snooty nobles, being snooty nobles, will jump on the opportunity to clearly establish people being beneath them, but the fact that a capital G God told them these guys suck means we're going to continue to treat them like they suck until Fain comes back and says "Hey no worries, we're cool now." Or maybe until a couple others of the Twelve get together and say "Hey, Fain was being a drama queen, lets let that one go."
- And finally some food for thought, everyone wants to say how terrible the viscanti are for being so shitty to the contemptibles, but lets all remember the entire reason viscanti is a race at all is that they had to band together because everyone else treated people who were tainted like demonic lepers and kicked them out. They're literally a race of refugees who were discriminated against, probably primarily by merians and elfen. So who's really the bad guy here? Have fun peeling that onion!
Serenwilde, for example, still gets people here and there wanting to play illithoid but the ban means either they just can't join, have to race change, or get booted. So we also get a bunch of the same arguments about it being unfair.
Side note, it is done. Hopefully it'll ease some of the issue of feeling like you're left to your own devices a bit.