Fri Jan 17 12:15:11 2014

At 8 o'clock PM, Day of the Bull, 1st of the Month of the Shadows
on the Theran calendar Aballem perished, never to return.

I wanted to roll an imperial full pickpocket thief, all about stealing from team good and giving the riches to Empire (and skimming some off the top for ol' Aballem of course)

I donated 50 gold, started ranking. Got bitched at by Destuvius for not getting enough gold. No biggie, I guess I get that. Being a pickpocket thief in the 20s I thought 50 gold was plenty for the time being but I hopped on my gold getting grind and donated 100 gold. Mind you, I'm still a Bloodoath throughout all of this.

Then I'm looking for ways to find more gold and Deaer is killed via divine might as part of her ascension to Immland right in front of me. Since she didn't yell, and I was totally alone with a semi-stacked corpse I asked myself what would a Shadow do? I swiped some of the nicer #### and glided on off thinking I was suave as ####. Que Destuvius coming in and slapping me with Anathema.

I was always under the impression that a Shadow had a bit more flexibility in that if you could indirectly break Imperial law without getting caught then by all means, especially when Imperial Law, in the cabal, states no stealing or murdering from people in town. I thought that looting is not stealing per se and I could bend a little bit as a Shadow, reason being for this that in the Tribunal laws Theft and Looting are listed as two different offenses so I thought I had a Shadow-exploitable loophole. Especially with no witnesses and no one coming back to the corpse.

Destuvius, our interaction was three sentences. You were roleplaying at me, without giving me a chance to justify anything or argue anything before effectively ruining a character.

So, Destuvius/Raybaer. Y'all win. I'm gone. I'll probably still haunt the forums from time to time but it is what it is.

I guess my beef is that Imperial Law and Tribunal Law are two very different things. Imperial Law forbids murder/theft. Doesn't mention looting. Tribunal law forbids murder/theft AND looting. As two separate things. Also, under Imperial law if someone strikes you, you can strike them as long as you have the adrenaline guild echo. However, Imperial law doesn't say you can then loot said body if you kill them in a protected town. And having been killed by Imperials in town and then looted, I don't see how what I did warranted an Anathema. But, so it goes.

I've spent years playing characters that, according to the masses people, contribute a lot to the game. And I've really gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this free game. For some reason either I've changed or something in the culture of the game has changed that my characters are now being punished regularly and what was once a joyous timesink has become a monotonous exercise of tedium that I'd rather walk away from.

...In Empire, what you can get away is directly related to how much the Empire relies on you. As a bloodoath you're not even IN Empire yet. You're below the lowest of the low. Hence, tread softly and fly under the radar. Be useful, don't annoy anyone and grind away at your donations until you're at least two more tiers up. Don't even think of doing anything shady unless you're Elite or better, or at least near hero with tons of retrievals and kills under your belt.

Yes Shadows can get a little wiggle room. However, you were not a Shadow, you were a bloodoath still needing to prove your worth. The 'laws of the shadow sect' do not apply until you can actually enter that room. It was pretty much a bonehead choice on your part and if you were anything above oath, it would have probably been at worst a demotion. However, when you are already at the bottom of the totem and do something to warrant punishment the option is pretty much anathema.

When I was a mortal in the island during your heroimm time you had a habbit of enforcing your interpertation of how a nexun should act on the mortal members.

This is perfectly acceptable behavior as a mortal leader but as an IMM you should consider taking a broader interpertation of guidelines for the cabals you oversee. It helps to promote more variety in peoples interpretation.

I am just throwing this out there as this seems to be a common criticism against you in your fledgling days. I think many IMMs ability to be open minded is something players often overlook (and in general falsely criticize, the long term guys are awesome at this <even ray ray> . This might just be something to keep in mind as you develop as an admin.

The positive is that you are clearly very involved and passionate in your duties which is a great thing and you have plenty of time to grow and learn in your new role.

I actually meant to ask this/bring this up before before based on a Daevryn PBF comment about someone breaking Imperial law by looting in town.

I have to go back and re-read Imperial law, but when I was playing Kraldinor someone pointed out to me someone was breaking the law by looting in town. I went back and re-read everything then, because I didn't consider looting in town to be against Imperial law, but wanted to be sure. My interpretation was that stealing in town broke imperial law, but looting broke Tribunal law only, not Imperial law because the writing mentioned stealing only. Maybe it needs to be re-written as stealing or looting if that is the intent because in my mind, stealing is something a thief can do (well anyone can do it, just most likely they will fail) via the steal skill whereas looting is something anyone can do via the get command. To some people it might be intuitive that looting is stealing, but to me at least it is not.

It goes back to the legalese of words mean things, so you have to be sure to use the right words to cover what you are saying.

The distinction between looting and stealing, to me, is an out of character mechanical one. In game, you're still taking the guy's stuff.

Why I mentioned the intuitive piece and possible re-wording.

Is an Imperial who's fighting in town not allowed to disarm their opponent? I always thought the no stealing bit was because it could provoke combat and Imperials weren't meant to provoke combat.

Once you're fighting you're fighting. It specifically says you don't need to worry about Tribunal law once someone attacks you or another Imperial in town, before that person can reenter their guild again (while bloody).

But to get back to the point, stealing an item from someone's inventory versus their corpse, when the above situation isn't in effect, seems like very much the exact same thing. Any distinction you'd make between get sword corpse and steal sword victim to me is arbitrary and OOC.

If there's a distinction between taking stuff from a corpse you made vs a corpse you found that's fair, but that's still a distinction between looting and stealing.

Breaking the Tribunal law is a chaotic act.

nt

This has always been kind of a sticky issue because, historically, different Empire imms have interpreted it each way.

Ahahaha.

Love that I got slapped with an anathema over a debate in Imperial law that even Empire imms disagree about, as a Shadow, without any chance in hell of it ever being discovered by mortal eyes.

One week after I got power-stripped over the death of an outer while other Scions killed the Inner with no repercussions.

Jesus Christ.

could just take it as a learning point and remember what the expectations are if you come back again. My first leader character, who generally got things right, followed a very similar character that got everything wrong. However I get two such incidences in a weak would feel like a huge kick in the nuts.

Hope to see you back.

>Ahahaha.
>
>Love that I got slapped with an anathema over a debate in
>Imperial law that even Empire imms disagree about, as a
>Shadow, without any chance in hell of it ever being discovered
>by mortal eyes.

You were not a Shadow. You were a bloodoath.

What turns me off to a (seemingly) growing number of the playerbase is that they feel there should be no consequences for their actions; that somehow consequences = this OOC vendetta against them personally.

Anathema for breaking Imperial Law as a bloodoath? You deserved it. Now, you're obviously skilled enough of a player to both role and roll with that punch. Go make that a focal point of a developing role. You don't want to? Then delete and roll something you will have fun with. But don't bitch and moan because you made an RP choice to break Imperial Law and an Empire IMM made an RP choice to boot you.

Even a 20 hr old character is half a week of work down the drain. As I stated below you guys should take a step back from the punish stick, and re-examine when you really need it.

In this case, do you really expect me to believe that if Destuvious had bothered to RP beyond a 3 liner and an anathema that he couldn't convey "don't do that again EVER" in an effective manner? Come on.

Also:

"What turns me off to a (seemingly) growing number of the playerbase is that they feel there should be no consequences for their actions"

I myself don't believe there should be no consequences. I do however, believe that your rewards AND your consequences are often far too extreme. You guys are there not only to administer, but to GUIDE the player base. Awefully hard to guide somebody when you beat him with the stick so hard all he can manage is a '#### you' whenever he thinks of IMMland eh?

I think as we get older and our time more valuable, the same repercussions seem harsher to us.

So you know what, I follow the cabal rules unless I'm in a position where I'm willing to eat an anathema or whatever other punishments might happen.

Honestly, it was one thing when it was like, "You're getting anathema'd because you didn't warn someone about something" and it's a whole different ballpark when you're breaking a pretty obvious imperial law as a bloodoath or letting your groupmate kill the outer guardian to your cabal. With Drond and that other guy (I forget his name) I was on the other side of this argument because I felt those were legit, given the circumstances (Drond was the Shadow Lord and the other guy just didn't warn a blade about an enemy...totally legit). But in this case, I mean come on, you broke Imperial law right in front of the Imms (knowing they were there, because you saw Daeaer get slain) as a bloodoath and you ate an anathema. You asked for a boot and you got what you asked for.

Some people are just looking for stuff to complain about, seriously.

Follow the rules to your cabal and you won't have these problems. Stop trying to get away with stuff and then starting huge dramatic victim rants when you get caught.

...the way they got punished, but what Drond did (group with a SCION to get both their items back) was a much clearer violation of Imperial law than what BluestThumb did. As noted earlier in the thread, there is nothing written down for a character to know that looting a corpse in a protected town is a violation of Imperial law. The Scepter is supposed to be in the Throne room at all times.

Again, I wouldn't have punished either of them, since I'm told Shadows have historically (for 6+ years) been able to break Imperial law as it suits them for the betterment of the Empire/sect.

>Again, I wouldn't have punished either of them, since I'm told
>Shadows have historically (for 6+ years) been able to break
>Imperial law as it suits them for the betterment of the
>Empire/sect.

I don't think I've ever seen an Empire imm actually approve of this, exactly. More just an almost total lack of oversight for the cabal for a long time. Zulg was much more interested in trying to find ways to increasingly automate the cabal than to oversee it personally (and has said as much, don't think I'm insulting him) and Enlilth often couldn't play at Empire O'clock.

Edit: The flipside of that is, it could be really hard to get rewarded in Empire. I think that's going to be a lot easier now. I have a feeling some of what were the serial Empire players really preferred to just be able to do whatever they wanted and neither get punished nor rewarded for it.

sfs

You're right, I didn't respond to that one. I read it on my phone on a break at work and then got sidetracked. Responded now.

And if I remember correctly, Tanadin was a chaotic IMM.

Seeing as how Empire hasn't had more than one noticeable IMM watching it since Khaso deleted, that's probably why I (and the rest of the playerbase) got that idea.

At the same time, perhaps have an IC event where you could show that Empire is now under "new management" and thus returning low-hour players like me wouldn't be reticent to roll up imperials.

Was just crusing the forums for ####s and giggles and saw this and figured I would pipe up. "Tanadin" as the Immortal wasnt empire, but he didnt run the sect hence why it was always through an alias. It was the wizard behind the curtain, where some had the idea it was him but he would never admit to it.

As for how I let the shadows play, I encouraged mistrust, and deceit within the cabal as everyone was always team black hat at the time. It is also true that I also encouraged Shadows to kill other Imperials however they knew the price. If you made it happen and it was never know it was you who set them up, made the kill, etc..you got rewarded. You failed...I disavowed you, denied I ever said it and you got antha :p But the shadows knew the risk and choose to take it. Jhy was awesome and took out an annoying as frack healer of the time and thats how he got shadow lord.

I was all about Imperial Law over Tribunal law and there was wiggle room in his eyes. However there is also nothing wrong with how Dest handles things as its to be expected from an order driven Immortal.

Just chiming in since Jhy brought it up

IC acts have consequences or else the game has no meaning in terms of RP.
Destuvius anathema your char.
The guy controlling him is acting IC just as much as the player of the thief.

I never understand why players don't see or accept this as a good facet of Cf. what happened in the past is not meant to be a certainty of what outcomes will be in the future, or. Else the game is static. I prefer the dynamic realm for CF myself.

Damn iPad typing sucks.

...it has an effect of making you never want to roll an Imperial (since there is only one real IMM watching it and he's still cutting his teeth so to speak) or SCION (which seemingly has no Immortals directly over-seeing it). So, yay evil Outlander?

Edited to add: Forgot Scarab just opened his cabal back up.

"Nererial's Role Chapter 8"


Role

Chapter 8

Blood Reckoning
Added Mon Aug 11 03:14:01 2008 at level 29:
Nererial called for a Blood Reckoning against a Black,
who demanded he strip off to prove he'd taken nothing
from the corpse. Angered at the accusation, but
far moreso by the demand and ensuing threats, Nererial
forced the Black to put his words into deeds, or fail
trying. A few gold coins had perhaps been kept, but
they were going to go towards the good of the
Empire, and besides, the Black would never expect
coins to be left by the conjurer that killed him.

Everything else, was returned. Nererial has limits,
if only for those that serve the Empire.

The Divine Sect is the greatest of Sects. They will
not bow down to the lesser Sects.

It is done now though. The Black was slain, and
his tongue silenced. At least in public.


This character went on to become High Priest.

At this point, nobody who reads the forums can be surprised that Destuvius is more on the orderly hardass side of that spectrum.

I mean, I feel a little bad for you, but van you honestly say that you had no idea that you were taking a risk by doing what you did? I give you too much credit to think that.

Here are my thought processes:

RE: Anathema- I'm a thief in Empire. Only oath, but I can get notes to and from the Shadow sect so I assume I'm a pseudo-shadow, or at the very least I can act like one. I think I read somewhere that Imms usually try to leave Imperial law sort of stuff in mortal hands. There is NO way I can get caught for this IF this is even a broach of Imperial law. Which, let me pull up the Imperial Law/Trib Law helpfile real quick. Okay, it explicitly isn't against Imperial Law. It's against Trib law, but screw them, I'm an Imperial. Not a Trib.

Destuvius comes down and nails me with the anathema, no RP, no chance.

RE: Scion Power-Stripping- Damn I just heard titled/tatted/veteran/apparent next in line for leadership Scion tell <active character> that it would be a shame if he killed the Nightwalker.

I have two choices: A) Let's get into an argument with that character, who is also my semi-mentor in the cabal and gave me a rec/pushed for my induction. B) Let me take my happy ass away from the cabal and remove myself from the situation so if anything happens it's on the characters who ARE there.

I chose B. I got berated and stripped of my cabal power. I was, however, told that Mirozah would bear the brunt of the punishment since she told <DUDE> to kill the Outer. I later found out that Mirozah got the EXACT same punishment as me. Awesome.


If you honestly can look at those situations and don't say 'Okay, maybe this player got the shaft a little bit,' then I..just..damn. Maybe I have victim mentality after all because I'm just at a complete loss for words.

You'll get a 'You're not a member of that cabal!'

That should give you a good idea of how little being an Oath gets you.

CF, being human-run and dynamic, is going to come down to interpretation disagreements every now and then. Like others have said, you got hit with it twice in a week, which sucks, but it does happen. I hope that doesn't make you want to quit forever. It's happened to most all vets at one point or another.

I had an Empire warrior accidentally attack the High Priest whose name was way too similar to the enemy he was fighting. The HP didn't die or anything, but the attack went through, he fled, and I was anathema'd. Did I delete? Nope, I liked the char, so I kept going and got a title and third legacy down the road.

I had an Empire High Priest that was exploring the Loch, did the Brianna questline for the first time, and get titled and marked as a Disciple of Zurcon. What do you think happened? Straight Anathema. It happens, you roll with it. I enjoyed the char, played it out a bit longer, the Imm came down and said 'sucks to be you, stick it out a bit and we'll fix you up.'

I'm not sharing these stories to tell you you're wrong and Imms are right or that you overreacted, but just as a way to get you off the ledge and keep on keeping on.

>Here are my thought processes:
>
>RE: Anathema- I'm a thief in Empire. Only oath, but I can get
>notes to and from the Shadow sect so I assume I'm a
>pseudo-shadow, or at the very least I can act like one. I
>think I read somewhere that Imms usually try to leave Imperial
>law sort of stuff in mortal hands. There is NO way I can get
>caught for this IF this is even a broach of Imperial law.
>Which, let me pull up the Imperial Law/Trib Law helpfile real
>quick. Okay, it explicitly isn't against Imperial Law. It's
>against Trib law, but screw them, I'm an Imperial. Not a
>Trib.

Okay, that wouldn't have been my thought process.

>Destuvius comes down and nails me with the anathema, no RP, no
>chance.

I didn't see the interaction, but you described having at least a chance, if not a great one, to respond and defend yourself.

>I have two choices: A) Let's get into an argument with that
>character, who is also my semi-mentor in the cabal and gave me
>a rec/pushed for my induction.

This kind of goes back to the thing in my other post about "Generally, players won't police other players, they'll try like hell not to."

>I chose B. I got berated and stripped of my cabal power. I
>was, however, told that Mirozah would bear the brunt of the
>punishment since she told <DUDE> to kill the Outer. I later
>found out that Mirozah got the EXACT same punishment as me.
>Awesome.

I voted for Mirozah to lose despoil, but I'm not the only person in the discussion. That aside...

I don't think you're going to find this answer the least bit satisfying, but you'll never really know if your punishment would have ended up the exact same because you gave up right away. As soon as I saw your reaction to your Archmage talk and the way you played it, I was pushing for you to get Nightwalker really soon. I definitely wasn't doing that for Mirozah, despite Mirozah going at the Archmage's directives with a real passion.

>If you honestly can look at those situations and don't say
>'Okay, maybe this player got the shaft a little bit,' then
>I..just..damn. Maybe I have victim mentality after all because
>I'm just at a complete loss for words.

I think you did catch a couple bad breaks where things did go worse for you than they might have, but I also do think you're blowing it up bigger than it is a bit.

Aside: I'm surprised you were trying to ditch the Shamanman rep. Sure, you had a reputation for recklessness in those days but I think you also were near-universally loved.

Edit: I also would like to point out that we had no idea that was you until today, and even if we had, there wouldn't have been any kind of grudge there despite you know who and anything they had to say "anonymously". I don't assume that's something you have any real control over. More than once "Man, whatever happened to Shamanman? I wonder if he still plays" has been said in our house.

>Aside: I'm surprised you were trying to ditch the Shamanman
>rep. Sure, you had a reputation for recklessness in those
>days but I think you also were near-universally loved.
>
>Edit: I also would like to point out that we had no idea that
>was you until today, and even if we had, there wouldn't have
>been any kind of grudge there despite you know who and
>anything they had to say "anonymously". I don't assume that's
>something you have any real control over. More than once
>"Man, whatever happened to Shamanman? I wonder if he still
>plays" has been said in our house.

I would just like to state for the record that I'm among those who had been totally sad that I hadn't seen shamanman in forever. Shamanman for Chieftain! (Since it totally fits the shamanman I love.)

Huge fan of shamanman back from my playing days.

nt

I had other stuff to say but that seems appropriate enough given your impact on the cabal so far.

=)

Destuvius is doing a fine job in general. Empire was an ailing cabal long before he stepped in as a patron imm. A lack of mortal leadership presence is a much bigger issue.

I eminently enjoyed the first go round of that (even though I never had a problem with Tanadin in any of his IMM incarnations).

Jhyrbian's post with Navarro in particular.

nt

You know what kills Empire? Having 3 enemy air forms + enemies that don't have anything better to do than spend hours trying to gang that one lone imperial + logging in to 7+ Fortress people online + Scarab/Scion siphoning away potential members.

I don't blame Fort for trying to bring it to their enemies but there's so damn many of them and as much as people claim that there are rewards for toughing out crazy odds, there really aren't many in practice.

Destuvius is the best thing Empire has going for it right now.

I remember playing a bard and practicing my skills in the air above Galadon. Next minute I am transferred to the ROTD by (I assume) Sacer and denied for multichar-ing. Apparently the poor guy practicing in the mists at the same time had an .au in his IP as well. Not even a chance to explain. Simply "You are playing two characters at once. Goodbye". THAT is how to ruin a character. Yours is just a speedbump. Roll with the punches dude!

Less stick please. While RP is paramount, this is just a game and when you 'ruin' someones character and waste 30 hrs of their time...they will not like you in return.

Again, this is another example (unfortunately on the same poor recipient) where you guys could've not been so punish-happy and saved face/a player.

The stick should be used when necessary, I think you guys are in short too quick to use it when lesser punishments would've carried your messages just fine.

Obviously there's always room for improvement on almost any interaction that takes place in the game. That being said, I think you have to understand that most of the "punishment" scenarios are a bit zero-sum. You can't make one player happy without making another player unhappy, so all you really can do is try to be fair.

For example, one that I've seen come up on the forums this week. A couple people are playing Battle berserker; someone playing a mage dies to them. The mage player starts complaining about parity and ganging. From the mage player's perspective, unless something very overt happens (uninduction and negative title, probably), nothing really happened and the Battle guys got away with it and probably will do it again.

I've seen this a ton of times as a cabal imm. Somebody in my cabal does something ####ty by that cabal's dogma, and I crack on that player via tell or cb -- your "little stick" approach, so to speak. Then an hour later I see someone bitching on the forums about the crappy thing they did and "got away" with, and a half dozen other people agreeing.

You also have to factor into your punishment calculus that, with some rare exceptions, players are very reluctant to police other players on their same side at all. Tribunal tends to be decent about it, but that's about it. I can about count on one hand the number of times I've seen an Empire leader pass out a significant punishment for breaking Imperial Law, and most other cabals aren't far off that. In a sense it falls on the imms to either take up that slack a bit or decide to give up on standards altogether.

I'm not saying there's no merit to what you're saying, only that there's a bigger picture with other things to weigh as well.