Mon Aug 7 18:31:28 2017

At 8 o'clock AM, Day of Thunder, 3rd of the Month of Futility
on the Theran calendar Vahrtznif perished, never to return.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=31&topic_id=59030&mesg_id=59042&page=

Looks like I had a better ratio than I expected!

To finally get those jujus back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVgMFY1JFGU

Edit: NSFW?

I was pretty ambivalent about Vahrtznif.

Mostly, I liked him and enjoyed him. You are clearly a smart, clever, and experienced player who set out to make an unconventional character. So I hope you don't mind if I give you a little bit of constructive criticism to help your next character, or to help anyone who felt inspired by Vahrtznif to try something wacky.

On the one hand, Vahrtznif was pretty fun to watch sometimes, and he was consistent in his own brand of unmitigated nonsense.

On the other hand, some of the stuff you did came pretty close to griefing (i.e. repeatedly spamming a crowded event) to the point that I once came very close to pulling you aside for an OOC warning chat.

On the freakish third hand, I wanted to do *something* with Vahrtznif but couldn't really figure out what.

The role was thoroughly entertaining and witty, but it made next to no sense and most of it seemingly had zero connection with the character. This made it very difficult for me to engage your character meaningfully when you dropped by the shrine, especially when your dialog made no sense. Maybe that was your goal?

Roles don't need to be masterpieces, but we do need them to be direct in telling us what your character's story is all about, what you expect, and what you want out of your character's life. Otherwise, we just don't know what to do with you -- so we tend to do nothing.

I can tell you this: You would have received a lot more love from Rahsael if you had a role earlier on that made sense. For a long time, I'd dismissed you as being the "chaotic stupid" type that Entropy has tried to move away from. At the end, it became evident that there was a deeper and sadder story there that could have been brought to life. But by then, your trajectory was more or less set and there weren't enough "lucid Vahrtznif" moments to fix things.

As you can see, I had strong feelings about this character, both good and bad.

But ultimately, you seemed to be having fun and most others seemed to be having fun with you. That's what really matters. I wish you the best with your next, and I hope you continue to help bring fun and wit to this game.

P.S. If you're a reader, I'd recommend "A Confederacy of Dunces." Vahrtznif reminded me a lot of Ignatius J. Reilly.

>I was pretty ambivalent about Vahrtznif.
>
>Mostly, I liked him and enjoyed him. You are clearly a smart,
>clever, and experienced player who set out to make an
>unconventional character. So I hope you don't mind if I give
>you a little bit of constructive criticism to help your next
>character, or to help anyone who felt inspired by Vahrtznif to
>try something wacky.

Nice, I never thought I'd be described as experienced!

>On the one hand, Vahrtznif was pretty fun to watch sometimes,
>and he was consistent in his own brand of unmitigated
>nonsense.
>
>On the other hand, some of the stuff you did came pretty close
>to griefing (i.e. repeatedly spamming a crowded event) to the
>point that I once came very close to pulling you aside for an
>OOC warning chat.

That's because some of it WAS griefing. I had already planned to be a minor annoyance at the Ceremony of Loss, but I scaled things up quite a bit after one of the attendees told me to remember that chaotic and stupid were not the same thing. The nature of the tell was OOC, and the text spam was designed to get on that particular character's nerves. I know the IMMs don't like that kind of thing, so I was prepared for whatever punishment you decided to throw my way. I will admit I was surprised at how well you and Whildur handled it.


>On the freakish third hand, I wanted to do *something* with
>Vahrtznif but couldn't really figure out what.

I was trying to interact with you to show the IMMs that Vahrtznif, although impulsive, could sit around, listen, and obey for questy stuff. After all, I think some of my notes made my goals pretty clear. I was a bit worried that you thought I was declining your offer for a Vahrt-related-quest when I just up and left you hanging, even moreso when I came back with the items I had gathered and couldn't get a hold of you. The scene made sense from Vahrt's perspective, but after it happened I kept thinking that there was no real way for you to understand what was going on in Vahrt's head.

>The role was thoroughly entertaining and witty, but it made
>next to no sense and most of it seemingly had zero connection
>with the character. This made it very difficult for me to
>engage your character meaningfully when you dropped by the
>shrine, especially when your dialog made no sense. Maybe that
>was your goal?

The first 6 chapters of the role were supposed to answer some choices about Vahrt, such as:

Why Arkham for a duergar?
Why anti-paladin?
Why carry around mandolins?
Why is a supposed actor not joining heralds?
Why entropy?

while also showing the world from Vahrtznif's perspective (senseless; which was supposed to reinforce why he went entropy).

>Roles don't need to be masterpieces, but we do need them to be
>direct in telling us what your character's story is all about,
>what you expect, and what you want out of your character's
>life. Otherwise, we just don't know what to do with you -- so
>we tend to do nothing.

I kinda had a feeling this was a problem, which is why I through in the Mannifred Notes chapters eventually. One issue there is that I only added one of two written chapters, and didn't notice that until later in Vahrt's life.

>I can tell you this: You would have received a lot more love
>from Rahsael if you had a role earlier on that made sense. For
>a long time, I'd dismissed you as being the "chaotic stupid"
>type that Entropy has tried to move away from. At the end, it
>became evident that there was a deeper and sadder story there
>that could have been brought to life. But by then, your
>trajectory was more or less set and there weren't enough
>"lucid Vahrtznif" moments to fix things.

This was something difficult for me, as a player. I wanted to RP Vahrtznif as booksmart (for a duergar), but totally lacking common sense. In a way, I was aiming for stupid and chaotic rather than chaotic stupid. That was a challenging aspect of the character.

>As you can see, I had strong feelings about this character,
>both good and bad.

Great, that's the kind of reaction I like.

>But ultimately, you seemed to be having fun and most others
>seemed to be having fun with you. That's what really matters.
>I wish you the best with your next, and I hope you continue to
>help bring fun and wit to this game.
>
>P.S. If you're a reader, I'd recommend "A Confederacy of
>Dunces." Vahrtznif reminded me a lot of Ignatius J. Reilly.

I'll have this read before I roll up my next, thanks for the suggestion!

>That's because some of it WAS griefing. I had already planned
>to be a minor annoyance at the Ceremony of Loss, but I scaled
>things up quite a bit after one of the attendees told me to
>remember that chaotic and stupid were not the same thing. The
>nature of the tell was OOC, and the text spam was designed to
>get on that particular character's nerves. I know the IMMs
>don't like that kind of thing, so I was prepared for whatever
>punishment you decided to throw my way. I will admit I was
>surprised at how well you and Whildur handled it.

This was really frustrating to me in the moment. I was rooting for you to get denied, although after the fact that seems like it would have been an overreaction and I'm glad the imms there handled it better than I would have in their shoes. I wish you'd channel all your awesome creativity into something less ####ty, the whole character felt OOC to me. For a long time I thought you were just a certain necro's buddy trying to pad his K-D ratio in case it helped with his Becoming. Reading the rest of this I guess there was a bit more there than I ever saw.

>This was really frustrating to me in the moment. I was rooting
>for you to get denied, although after the fact that seems like
>it would have been an overreaction and I'm glad the imms there
>handled it better than I would have in their shoes. I wish
>you'd channel all your awesome creativity into something less
>####ty, the whole character felt OOC to me. For a long time I
>thought you were just a certain necro's buddy trying to pad
>his K-D ratio in case it helped with his Becoming. Reading the
>rest of this I guess there was a bit more there than I ever
>saw.
>

First of all, I was all of Thera's K/D ratio padder. I have a feeling that there was an info leak into all the cheat rings of thera that I was an easy PK, because there was a while when people were hunting me down and wrecking me before people started to avoid fights with me (see: feeling bad).

On to less important matters, there's a real issue with a lot of players in this game (which you have made me think of). Too many people were getting upset at Vahrtznif over silly things.

- One character expressed contempt over my name alone. Maybe my name should have been changed, but I had a feeling the IMMs weren't going to do so because of the low player count and the fact that the name really wasn't doing any harm. Besides, with the right origin story, a duergar adopting a nickname given to him as his rightful name isn't so hard to believe.

- Some players, yourself included, had a clear bias against Vahrtznif outside of RP. As a player, I dislike a lot of people OOC. As a character, I strip all of that and build opinions of other characters separately of my OOC bias (which is important to consider when I can easily tell who is playing who). I have befriended people in game that I otherwise don't care for on the forums. The lack of ability to separate OOC from IC is a problem that too many players have. I should give you some credit, however, because I don't believe you ever sent me particularly OOC tells -- something not all my enemies can say.

- Full looting should not be seen as a problem when it is done for IC reasons. In general, I believe full looting is OOC punishment for people being pooper peeved about something that happened in game. However, I think there are numerous valid reasons for characters to full loot IC. I had an isolated full loot/sac in game, which I believe was justified IC (I will post the log in a couple of weeks on Dios), and that set quite a few players off. No one dared ask why I did it (save for one, actually), but some still vowed I would never walk back to items on my corpse. Lucky for me, I don't cry about losing my shinies.

I am always open for feedback. Rahsael has given me some useful advice that I will consider, but no IMM or player can presume to tell me to "channel" my creativity into a mold that suits their definition of an acceptable role or playstyle. How am I being creative by restricting myself to your mold?

Again, feel free to offer advice on ways to improve; I'm always looking for suggestions on how to write better roles, RP my roles more effectively, interact with IMMs in terms of character-given or world-driven quests, and most other aspects of how to stick to my characters in IC ways. What you should not feel free to do is try to make me become a different type of player.

The sad part about all of this is that I feel like I am having more fun than a good chunk of current players because I am focused on playing how I want to play, and not getting mad when things don't go their way. I was always happy to see other characters played by people with this same mindset, but I believe those players are now in the minority.

Vahrt is my first char back in awhile, and he was designed to be a nuisance. I had a lot of fun, even with those of you that were not very nice to Vahrtznif (he wasn't nice to others, so I know it was deserved).

Lochlan - You might think I was suiciding to you, but I wasn't really. I was testing out ways to PK you without worrying about dying, because my ultimate goal was to force you to distend by killing me enough times. I wanted to like you IC, but that would be breaking role too badly. The "testicle" you now hold is something that will never be obtainable in the game again, so hold on to it!

Rahsael - Vahrt was hating on you, but Stevers appreciated your willingness to go along with it. I had a feeling I knew what you were going for with Vahrt, but I couldn't risk him regaining memories (which I ended up going with anyway after the Oath).

Buon, Garnizzeh - Thanks for being helpful when I joined the Empire. I hope neither of you thought that Entropist Vahrtznif would remain in the Empire for long, though. His role is to spread chaos, not order. You guys were accomodating and helpful cabalmates, though!

Ninjin - We had limited interactions, but your character was refreshing for reasons you could probably guess. You're tougher than just about everyone else I fought, not that you need me to tell you that.

Aiya - I was waiting for you to realize that giving me items was a bad idea, because I usually lost them within 24 hours of receiving them.

Orilyn - You made my last con exciting. I think I laughed harder at how pathetic those last few moments were than at anything else throughout Vahrt's life.

Entropy, get it together! There is not near enough Entropy going on.

I interacted with a ton of other people that I enjoyed, but these names are fresh on my mind from the last few days.

PS in case anyone was wondering, I took the Oath on a whim and decided to try and get others anathema'd as a means of spreading chaos. It didn't work, because the Emperor kicked me out immediately. Still, that was fun! Good luck with my next.

PPS What was wrong with my last name?

Looks like we cross-posted, Fartsniff.

You could totally make an era-defining Entropist if you just scale it back a little bit.

A little bit of advice from Robert Downey Jr.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y3FzVQi-R8

I enjoyed helping you rank up. You were the most entertaining player to be around. Hands down. Too many people play stuffy stoic types, like everyone in CF is born again Christians that just finished AA or something. That or carbon copies of every other race/class/cabal that came before them.

Sorry that last bit did not go as well as we planned. I'm still not very good at the game and it's even worse that I'm too lazy to spam master skills/spells. I'll get there and I hope we cross paths again on the same side.

I think we did pretty good considering half our trap flat out failed to work, but sorry it ended with your lasts deaths. Now I know why you suddenly logged out and were talking with such finality. Maybe my own rage delete was in haste, which I intend to remedy (thanks immortals for having that feature!).

That last bit was a ton of fun. In case you don't log things, I'll post some logs up on Dios of those final, pathetic fights. Good to have you around, so you should indeed revert that rage delete. Otherwise, GLWYN