Fri Jan 26 16:39:23 2007

At 6 o'clock PM, Day of the Moon, 14th of the Month of the Old Forces
on the Theran calendar Kharzak perished, never to return.

Race:	dwarf
Class:	healer
Level:	51
Alignment:	Good
Ethos:	Chaotic
Cabal:	None, None
Age:	183
Hours:	211

You can look at this either way and find reasons why one way or another is right or wrong.

The only truly wrong thing about this is not seeing another person's point of view. The history is not just something for the PBF. It is a source of information we imms share to see if there is a trend. Not all of the imms play at the same time, so it really does help us in making decisions for things such as titles, induction, booting, experience bonuses, etc.

Some players may like what I do, some may not. As an immortal, the checks and balances required to remain one are so much more strict than a player. It should be that way. Immortals who have ties to other immortals have it MUCH harder. Not only do they have to do what is required to move up normally, they have to do it under the watchful eye of everyone all of the time. This is not so much much a post of me trying to convince you of how well Rayihn has done. This is a post of me saying that I know what Rayihn has done as an imm and she has my full support. You have the right to disagree. Just remember that stories told over distances by many people are just that, stories. You have to be there to know the facts.

It seems a lot of people disagreed with the comment I made about Kharzak raiding the Blackclaw Thieves Guild, and I did receive an email from Kharzak looking for further explaination so I figured I'd put it here for everyone to see.

I did not approve of a group of Fortress raiding the Blackclaw Thieves Guild - yes the guild guardian is evil. However, most of the members of the guild are not. There are elves, other goods, mostly neutrals and a few evils of the guild. When that team of Fortress raided the guild and took the items from their chest, it felt to me as though Acolytes and Maran were stealing from other goods, which I felt inappropriate. I would have rather seen the goods RP with the other goods of the guild and make a deal to get the item that they needed.

Maybe Kharzak only took one axe that he needed from a quest. To me, it was still stealing something from that guild. You can disagree if you want, that's perfectly fine, but to me in my opinion that is not great goodie behavior.

>To me, it was still stealing something from that guild. You
>can disagree if you want, that's perfectly fine, but to me in
>my opinion that is not great goodie behavior.

While we are all entitled to our various opinions on what is good and evil, one thing to keep in mind. No one is perfect, no paladin, righteous hero, no one. Good makes mistakes. Sure there were other ways to handle things. One of the best things I have ever heard describing good was this "The difference between Good and Evil, is that Good takes the hard path, where Evil takes the easiest."

Another of the best things about making mistakes is the chance of redemption. Did any of them make amends? Were they given the chance to? Did they feel they did wrong? Sure their actions were not admirable in this, but everyone falters. I just hope everyone has been given a chance to redeem themselves of these actions, but not left with this gavel of judgement hanging above their heads.

>Did any of them make amends? Were they given
>the chance to? Did they feel they did wrong?

As far as I know, no one involved considered that they might be doing something wrong.

>Sure their
>actions were not admirable in this, but everyone falters. I
>just hope everyone has been given a chance to redeem
>themselves of these actions, but not left with this gavel of
>judgement hanging above their heads.

What gavel of judgement? Tres melodrama!

We comment on these things on characters to help keep an eye out for trends. In this case, other than raiding a bunch of thief guilds in a spree, no trend, and nothing happened. A handful of us that were online at the time (including Fort cabal folk) discussed what was happening as Team Breaking-and-Entering Fort scooped stuff out of the chest like kids on Christmas morning trying to figure out what was going on, and we couldn't. So, history entries.

As an aside, the people mostly running the quest going on at the time later did hear about this and (correctly) understood why these PCs were doing what they were doing in the context of the quest. As a further aside, even understanding the reasons they didn't think these things were morally okay. :P

Bear in mind it used to be kosher (and approved by some good-aligned imms) to wax neutrals for their gear as a game balance statement.

I tend to disagree with the comment.

But, you're right, the melodrama is unnecessary. Even your char got a few bad comments. My last char got a couple negative ones too. Who cares? Sticks and stones and all that jazz.

>Another of the best things about making mistakes is the chance
>of redemption. Did any of them make amends? Were they given
>the chance to? Did they feel they did wrong? Sure their
>actions were not admirable in this, but everyone falters. I
>just hope everyone has been given a chance to redeem
>themselves of these actions, but not left with this gavel of
>judgement hanging above their heads.

IIRC, people involved in the robbery were offered a chance at ammends by being told to return everything they took from the chest except for the demon quest items. Of course, afaik, none of them seemed to remember what they took from the chest so uh yeah. A couple of them offered everything they wore/had to make ammends and they were forgiven. Other characters basically went 'I did nothing wrong, since it was for the greater good. So nyah'. If you read Dio's forums you can pretty much guess who one of the latter characters were.

So I have no reason to come down on one side or the other aside from my own opinion. Frankly, if the thieves wouldn't give up freely what was necessary for the good of all Thera then I would consider their actions evil and feel absolutely no qualms about storming the guild and taking what I need for the greater good, and hey if there's some extra stuff in there too then why not?

The thieves stole that stuff to begin with. If people want to be so concerned about the alignments of the thieves of the guild, maybe said good thieves should be more concerned about being good than in getting a good price for vital items.

Let's try casting this in some more familiar situation for contrast.

So you've got some terrorists who hide a small nuclear device in a communal location, like in a locker in a YMCA. Picture James Bond or Jack Bauer or whoever, the modern terrorist-fighting fictional character of your choice, finds out about the bomb. The cruise over to the Y. They're not members of the Y, so when the guy at the desk tries to stop them from getting in, they shoot him. Hey, that guy was probably a jerk anyway, but this already looks a little odd to innocent bystanders without an explanation and would probably be noteworthy. Hero guy heads into the Y locker room, finds the bomb, disarms and confiscates it. So far, so good.

If he then was like... "wait a minute... the rest of these lockers have stuff too! This guy over here has an iPod! Yoink! This guy's locker has some nice pants... my pants now! Hey, this facility has a Stairmaster... I always wanted one of those!" *grabs* Pretend this continues on for grabbing another dozen or so random shiny things.

I think if you stop before the last paragraph, you've got something that you'd reasonably expect of the greatest and most principled champions of the Light in the realm... and after, not so much.

(And, of course, if there's no indication that there was a bomb at the Y in the first place, the whole thing is weird enough to be noteworthy.)

Remember the discussion about the plumbers and roofers working on the death star when Lando blew it up, from Clerks? They were just workers who managed to land a sweet government contract, who were innocents and killed by the blast.

The guild guard is evil. The people who hang out there know this, and choose to leave their stuff in evils care. They forfeit any right to the stuff when they leave it in evils charge.

Remember, a roofer is led by his conscience.

But the guildmaster is neutral. Technically the items belong to the guildmaster/guild members, but the master is the final word on what happens to said items.

I think this is a topic that we've never really touched on before. I definitely understand the IMM POV here, and likely would have made the same mistakes those goodies that went into the guild did. Generally speaking though, when I open a guild it would have been to attempt to pk someone.

I'm curious as to thoughts on "What if those items were stolen from the goodies in the first place and placed there?". I thought I read somewhere on the other board that this was the case. What then?

Yeah, most of the PC members of said guild are good or neutral too, really.

>I'm curious as to thoughts on "What if those items were stolen
>from the goodies in the first place and placed there?". I
>thought I read somewhere on the other board that this was the
>case. What then?

I think you can make a case then, although to be honest, it still feels more like an afterthought rationalization thing to me than the actual motivation for doing it.

I can categorically state that some of the things taken were put in the chest by good-aligned thieves, if it matters.

There is nothing anti-good about what they did.

If all thieves are not align forced to be evil then obviously stealing is not in and of itself an evil act.

Guildguard was evil so no problem entering the guild.

Fortress while not trampling on neutrals left and right have priorities on the light and occasionaly that means having to get the tools they need to fight the darkness from non evil and non goodie people.

How could anyone know what the membership of the guild is like? We don't have imm commands and even if every single member was goodie then why would they complain about helping out other goodies by letting them in their chest. Fort members take things fromt heir chest to give to non fort members plenty.


again cf ethics and real world ethics are not the same, taking things from people is not wrong in CF its neccesary.


I think this entire argument is a piss poor hindsight thing where they should have asked the spymaster. Of course if he said no then I would fully expect the fort to repeat what they did. Its not like they took items just to say Hi shiny, they took them to fight evil which is in and of itself a noble cause.

I feel so rambly lets just conclude this post with a LET'S GO PENS and SYDNEY IS GOD

My only problem is where is the line drawn?

I'm not talking about a PBF comment. Obviously no one is going to get unempowered for this. But it purveys a misunderstanding. It used to be that you could kill neutrals for gear and it was considered game balance. Even with that gone, its a thief's guild. People who hit people on the head and steal things which do not belong to them. Frankly, how half the goodie thieves get away with being good *and* greedy simultaneously is beyond me.

But the point is, where is the line drawn between idealism and gameplay reality? I could extend this logic to looting evils (IE, looting an out of range evil who died to another goodie who left his gear strikes me as greedy and non-good), you can extend it to request (he's requesting a sword that he probably never intends on using, how greedy), to a myriad of other things. And yet its totally cool to bring 10 people to kuo-toa to die trying to get a paladin a sword, while there are evils around...

And the end result would be a whole lot more restrictions on what's good and what's evil.

And, even then, I'd be ok with that. I dare say I'd be in favor of that and that powergamey gear-whorey goodies really annoy me. So long as its consistent. But I'd say the range of what's acceptable and poor behavior is a dynamic one. It'd be cool if we got solid rulings on these things that we could count on being the same, day in and day out.

The stuff the forties took was armour and weaponry - i.e. things that would enable them to fight for their cause better, not treasure or baubles.

And even if the gear was left by goodies, surely it's a good action to allow the cabal that's meant to *epitomise* good in Thera to use it when it's just lying around. After all, isn't that what the request function is for?

One thing which hasn't been noted is whether the characters which left the gear even complained in the first place, which begs the question of whether it's even an Imm prerogative to call the responsible parties out for it in the first place.

So I just think that Raiyihn doesn't have a point whatsoever, personally. Her comment: something about being responsive to the sensibilities of the community of Blackclaw fort just smacks of roleplay fascism and certainly isn't in keeping with the CF rules of lightwalker behaviour I have encountered in some 5 years of playing.

>The stuff the forties took was armour and weaponry - i.e.
>things that would enable them to fight for their cause better,
>not treasure or baubles.

Of course it was. That's the nature of the game. When people talk about shinies, they're not talking about items with high barter value. They're talking about coveted gear.

>And even if the gear was left by goodies, surely it's a good
>action to allow the cabal that's meant to *epitomise* good in
>Thera to use it when it's just lying around. After all, isn't
>that what the request function is for?

Uh, no.

If one of my friends asks to borrow something from me, I'll probably say yes and be happy about it.

If the same friend instead breaks into my house without asking and takes the same thing, I'm going to be upset.

Asking for something and getting it is not equivalent to breaking and entering. It's just not.

>One thing which hasn't been noted is whether the characters
>which left the gear even complained in the first place, which

They did.

>begs the question of whether it's even an Imm prerogative to
>call the responsible parties out for it in the first place.

Tell me how they were called out? A note was made that it happened.

>So I just think that Raiyihn doesn't have a point whatsoever,
>personally. Her comment: something about being responsive to
>the sensibilities of the community of Blackclaw fort just
>smacks of roleplay fascism and certainly isn't in keeping with
>the CF rules of lightwalker behaviour I have encountered in
>some 5 years of playing.

What it really comes down to is that a sizeable group of good characters does not bust into an empty (i.e., no PCs inside) guild and run out with more than a dozen pieces of gear every day. In fact, that would be the first time I've seen it in over 12 years here. It is worthy of note.

I'm SOOOO in favor of having goodies whacked for killing goodies for gear. Or whatever reason. Or neutrals.

I'm totally fed up with people making up reasons to justify themselves doing evil ####.

Let me make this clear: I'm not trying to character assassinate or anything. I'm just trying to support an alternative point of view. Furthermore, I like Rayihn, having interacted with her mortals a bit and her Imm incarnation a little as well. I just happen to disagree with her on this point.

1) Myrakie, BEFORE the demon quest, has attacked/stolen from Forties numerous times and helped Imperials more than once. While this is perfectly valid neutral behavior, expecting the Fortress to bend over and take it and going "Oh hey, she's neutral, we won't attack her or her associates no matter how much she anally violates us" doesn't seem to me to be the ideal fort behavior. You may disagree. I'm not trying to say she hasn't helped goodies ever in her life, I'm just saying that she isn't exactly the perfect innocent, and her behavior probably doesn't lean towards cultivating incredibly good relations with the Fort.

2) I don't see why any goodie would have any compunctions in taking things from a thief guild. They were undoubtedly stolen anyway, and the Fortress could no doubt put the things to far better use than any others. Also, the items in the thief guilds don't reset when the server crashes, which means those who need them (for questy purposes, maybe?) often have no choice but to break in. I've seen limited items stay in thief guilds for over three weeks.

3) Its for the greater good. I don't see why you can't justify it with this. Honestly, goodie tribs, goodie outlanders, goodie ragers, goodie everything but Fortress use that justification all the time when killing other GOODIES and they're rarely called on it, whilst the Fort killed an evil guildguard and took some shinies and catch flak over it. I honestly don't see the Fortress putting a neutral thief's profit margin over the greater good of Thera. They might do it in sorrow, but damn it, they better do it. Hell, I've seen goodie thieves threaten my forties for threatening to kill their guildmates in the thief guild. That isn't even for the greater good. Thats for the guild's profit margin. Does that call down any punishment? I'm not exactly complaining here: I think that it shouldn't call down any punishment, guild loyalty is perfectly fine. But that, to me, is much shadier than what went on in the demon quest.

I just think that if the Imms want to call down on not-so-good acts, there're a bajillion ways to justify this that are perfectly IC and I've seen much worse goodie behavior (in my opinion, at least) done and gotten away with.

By the way, I played Seonex who interacted with (and hated) Myrakie before the quest, and I played Orzetrion who interacted with (and liked) Myrakie during the quest. I also did not participate in any way on the raids of the guilds.

I think both "sides" (playerbase/immstaff) need to be a bit more aware of the History command and its uses.

Playerbase: Please keep in mind that we use history to jot down things. Often these things are "bad" things. I know that I, personally, almost never history someone for doing things "the right way" unless they do something exceptionally right (like when Dravon sorta laid down some smack over Nexus CB that killing ragers/taking the head wasn't the only way to boost magic). However, when we see something wrong or even marginally so, it often goes into a history. Why? Like Daevryn mentions above, it's to keep a tally. Maybe one "grey area" thing happens. Then nothing else. At that point, no harm no foul.

Immstaff (mostly as a note to self, other immstaff are pretty good about this): Twist, please keep in mind that players have feelings, and when they read their history via a PBF and read a negative comment from you they take it personally (Eqithan). So if you notice something negative about someone, try to continue watching in case you eventually notice something positive. Then make note of that. There is one currently active character that I've noticed I've got more than the usual negative comments on - and I've been trying to continue watching so that if there is anything positive, I can comment on that, too. (Only marginal luck in finding positive things so far, sadly. I may have to simply stop commenting at all.)

I wasn't really involved at all with the Kharzhistory stuff, but I will say that I think it's totally cool to have killed an evil guildguard to raid a thief guild that possessed the one item that could save existence. Taking all the other shiny stuff? Meh, smacks of greed, a bit. Not worth uninducting from Fort or anything like that, but definitely worth one negative comment in a history. That's my view on it. Keep in mind I make comments about chars who whine too much, who talk smack without backing it up, who don't seem ballsy enough, etc. Rarely do I (or any other Imms) act on those comments unless there are several instances of that behavior.

Taking all the other shiny stuff? Meh, smacks of greed, a bit. Not worth uninducting from Fort or anything like that, but definitely worth one negative comment in a history.

Yup. The character wasn't made neutral, uninducted, unempowered, etc. over that error. A note was made as a heads-up. If no note is made, it's hard to spot trends. I'm not shedding any tears over that.

The character was later made Elder Prophet of the cabal. If we thought the character was "ruined" or horrible because a single negative history comment was made, it would have been easy to just pick someone else, or leave the spot open for a bit.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

While I was observing the events at the time, I still marvel at why the Fort didn't just find a thief to go in an get it. They could pay the thief...if one wasn't around, maybe wait? Who knows? The events may have been immediate.

I dunno man. It's a thieve's guild, meaning most of the stuff in their chest is most likely stolen. Killing the tainted-by-darkness-and-should-probably-be-destroyed-anyway guild guard in order to retrieve an item that's going to prevent the destruction of the entire world? Seems alright.

>I dunno man. It's a thieve's guild, meaning most of
>the stuff in their chest is most likely stolen.

Some probably was. Although, that being said, is stealing inherently evil in CF? I'd say no.

>Killing the
>tainted-by-darkness-and-should-probably-be-destroyed-anyway
>guild guard in order to retrieve an item that's going to
>prevent the destruction of the entire world? Seems alright.

Yeah, that part is definitely cool.

A blunt but nonetheless true meta-post on this whole conversation:

1) A lot of y'all have terrible double standards on good-align RP based on whether or not you like the player. If, say, Lauraine had busted into a guild like that and run off with a pile of non-quest-related limited gear, no matter the intention or what was subsequently done with the gear, this thread and others would look a lot different. (Hypothetically that goes both ways, although at the time of this incident I didn't know who played any of the characters involved.)

2) The funniest thing to me is that I was the one to first notice Team Fort busting into the guild and grabbing stuff like a bunch of soccer moms at a day-after-Thanksgiving sale and start conversation about it on the immchannel, and if I had been the one of the four or five of us to comment in Kharzak's history, we wouldn't even be talking about it now, either because a) you love my #### and can't get enough of it, b) years of my #### have resigned you to it as a necessary evil of playing CF, or c) a little from column a and a little from column b.

1) A lot of y'all have terrible double standards on good-align RP based on whether or not you like the player. If, say, Lauraine had busted into a guild like that and run off with a pile of non-quest-related limited gear, no matter the intention or what was subsequently done with the gear, this thread and others would look a lot different.

The double standards don't stop there.

I'd specifically cite Vlad's moral outrage regarding a negative comment about a character, written roughly simultaneously with these and these comments about a character.

(The major difference being Kharzak is gone, and the negative comment about that character had no claimed in-game impact. Not sure what happened to the moderation there.)

His take on this issue just might be about an unrelated grudge. Business as usual, of course.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Counterpoint :

If it was you, we'd immediately exclude the poorly constructed comment (and lets face it, it was an unwarranted comment, even if I don't think that's such a big deal) as being driven from a lack of experience as an immortal.

With Rayihn, people realize she's new.

That's the only difference. I don't think its about people "loving your ####" or people viewing you as a "necessary evil". Its about the fact that its obvious you're not going to fly off the handle and do things without cause and its obvious that you're put in your time.

In general, who friggin cares? Graham had his right to express dislike of the comment just as Rayihn had her right to express dislike of his action.

Anything beyond that is just bandwagon syndrome.

>In general, who friggin cares? Graham had his right to express
>dislike of the comment just as Rayihn had her right to express
>dislike of his action.
>
>Anything beyond that is just bandwagon syndrome.

Basically, the only real possible result that can be "won" by Team Bandwagon in this argument is that a lot more comments will be put where players will never, ever be able to see them. We're still going to see things and make judgement calls with the information we have at the time. Hell, nearly every character I've played past let's say 100 hours has had a PBF comment that I disagreed with.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather see that than a lot of PBFs for serious characters that have zero comments... and that's as much of a choice as you get.

>Hell, nearly
>every character I've played past let's say 100 hours has had a
>PBF comment that I disagreed with.

Valg dinged Nhiala for suiciding to remove a flag, since I was sphere Honor. And yet I was made leader and eventually imm'd.

(Personally, I didn't see anything dishonorable about committing sepuku to remove the flag.)

Valg dinged Nhiala for suiciding to remove a flag, since I was sphere Honor. And yet I was made leader and eventually imm'd.

With me being one of the people who voted for Nhiala, even. As Daevryn and Death_claw point out, the staff gets a lot of experience interpreting these comments, and we know how damning something is or isn't.

It's also worth noting that the punishment commands (align change, etc.) scale with the staff member's level. If, for example, Rayihn decided that this character deserved to be made neutral, she'd have to ask someone who's probably been on staff since 2002 or so. That person is then responsible for asking about the whys and whens, and making sure the character deserves the change.

But a fairly tame negative comment? Let's not break out the Kleenex just yet.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>
>>In general, who friggin cares? Graham had his right to
>express
>>dislike of the comment just as Rayihn had her right to
>express
>>dislike of his action.
>>
>>Anything beyond that is just bandwagon syndrome.
>
>Basically, the only real possible result that can be "won" by
>Team Bandwagon in this argument is that a lot more comments
>will be put where players will never, ever be able to see
>them. We're still going to see things and make judgement
>calls with the information we have at the time. Hell, nearly
>every character I've played past let's say 100 hours has had a
>PBF comment that I disagreed with.
>
>I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather see that than a
>lot of PBFs for serious characters that have zero comments...
>and that's as much of a choice as you get.

So taking your ball and going home is the new 'high road'?

There are always going to be two sides to an opinion. If some people only wish to think that their opinion counts, so be it.

Putting a comment on someone can be after an extensive watch or a momentary glimpse. It is just something that is noted when it is seen.

In this instance, there are folks who say it was bad form and others who say it wasn't bad form. When two sides are going back and forth over the same thing with a difference of opinion, that is all it is.

This is not taking your ball and going home, this is a 'no foul, get over it'.

>So taking your ball and going home is the new 'high road'?

It's not a road or the high anything. It's just reality.

I'm a rational person. I don't have a moral obligation to provide you with anything, including quality PBF comments. If you push and push and it becomes a big enough headache for me, I'll do something else with that time.

nt

heya...

Diddent talk much with you.. but you where a pain in the ass.. like healers normely are :-)

hope to see you in the fields. agin