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This is a rant, a well written rant, but a rant nonetheless.
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It is neither without base, nor without subject nor a question. It's merely rantastic.
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I've recently come across a situation that particularly irked me.

I tried to play a village berserker, who was less than intellegent.
He was a minotaur who had his temple burned to the ground by mages, while it was well written, that was the gist of it.

I wasn't Rping some tactical monster or clever mage hating minotaur.
I was a soldier who smashed mages who smashed his temple. Generally my RP got me pretty far till I bumped into this guy named Yean.

He asked me a bunch of questions then he asked me what I felt the niche of each of the types of villager covers.
I thought briefly to myself I can answer the question perfectly and regurtitate the crap I'd said a 1000 times before and heard 10000 times before as the Commander of battle.
Then I decided WAIT I HAVE CLEVER RP!!!!
So I tried to talk to Yean as a minotaur of 16 int would
IE NOT VERY SMART. My answer was apparently less than satisfactory and instead of trying to understand me or even considering I might be RPing he brushed me off like I was some etard newb being a #### and trying to waste his time.
I bet if you'd tried to club me with that crap and keep me out of the village my answer would have been the same.
What is your purpose in the village as a berserker?
Aselto hit mages on head with club them DIE!

Now to my question, whats up with people trying to shove their views on Thera on me esp village imms? I never thought of the village as a group of barbarians that sit around and all read books and calmly discuss tactics.
Why the hell is someone trying to force this view on me then sending nasty notes to the village claiming I don't know anything about the village?

Excuse the hell out of me for trying to RP something that doesn't know the answer to every damn question in the game and doesn't immediatly know the quickest path through hell or many different ways into silent or anything else like that.

Well to clear a few things up, thought I'd just drop some general notes about Yean here.

While yes, like most bards, she does value and enjoy (Village) history and lore, and often writes or researches on such, it does not mean she expects this of everyone else. Neither is it a huge factor for how she recommends or inducts. That is because she's more interested in those who can and will CREATE HISTORY. Things in the past are there to serve as inspiration for even grander deeds.

She's not adverse to inducting chars of brute strength over intelligence..afterall, Villagers ARE called barbarians. For example, if you remember the char Fualuch, who roleplayed an utter retard - I gave him his first rec, and enjoyed his rp tremendously.

No. Not a fine-dining, upper-class, palace-living sort of high elf, nor a conniving, cunning, ruthless type dark elf. Think mostly wood elf (simple, nature-loving, harmony, down-to-earth sort of refined) and you've probably understood half of Yean. More subtle details about her I'll leave in-game. Thanks.

Everyone who can induct someone into the Village has different criteria for acceptance. I've been known to induct folks:

1. Based on a really cool application note.

2. Because they've got a boatload of mage kills.

3. Because I conducted an hour-long interview with them.

4. Because I set a really hard task before them and they handled it well.

5. Because I constantly see excellent RP from them, even though they couldn't PK a level 15 conjurer.

If you come to me looking for induction, you won't know in advance which route I'll take. I warn people when they do so that it'll probably be a lot harder to get an induction from me than the Commander. Why? Because that's how Kasty sees the Village and his role in it.

Yean's got her own set of criteria for Villagers. So does Ysal. So does Vhloughvang. So did Ordasen and Thror. Yean might not want a big, dumb minotaur in Battle. Ordasen might have drooled all over himself to induct that same character. It's like Valg said, you can't RP in a vaccuum. In the end, other characters will react to your character in their own way. So you didn't get her recommendation; so what? There's plenty of other folks who would have been happy to interact with you, recommend you and even induct you, regardless of what she thought.

Here's how your conversation with her might have ended (Kasty's interpretation):

Yean: I don't think a big, dumb brute of a minotaur belongs in the Village.

You: Goddess think that, me prove wrong. Me SMASH mages, lots mages, prove minotaur big, dumb, but got place in Village, deserve hut.

On a side note, I liked your role. Thought it was solid, good take on why a minotaur would hate mages. You could have played through this and ended up just fine, IMHO.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

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Generally: Your role does not negate the roles of others.

In this case: While you're free to approach Yean any way you like, she's going to respond as Yean, the bard who wrote "Tale of Baldur, First Skjald of Battle", "Wake Brethren, for the War Isn't Done", and other epics. History is part of how Yean, the character, views Battle, and it's a good bet it's going to come up.

Roleplaying isn't a bunch of people standing around, each with their own monologue. A conversation with Yean will go in a different direction than a conversation with Ysaloerye, or a conversation with any of the mortals.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

By the same token, if Yean's RP as a history-centric bard is unnecessarily screening out potentially sucessful ragers, then perhaps some other Battle Imm should exercise his role and instruct her to adjust her admission criteria.

(Just playing devil's advocate- I've never played a rager before and know absolutely nothing about Aselto, Yean, or their interaction.)

For someone accusing me of 'looking for passwords' is ridiculous, because as a player, that's exactly what I detest and try not to do. If you thought I was, I'm sorry. Neither did I ask ANY question about secrets or events in history. It's good and nice if a char knows about such stuff, but I don't think it's a requirement to know so much for the induction interview.

I wasn't convinced that Aselto would be good for the Village so I asked him to find out more about it/the paths IF POSSIBLE, but the only real thing I asked you to do was..get one more mage kill? That was it.

I've inducted or at least recommended enough of really fine-line Village rp chars, as well as super-dumb cloud/mino berserker chars that told me 'I smash mage, they die!', with the 'my village/temple got burnt' route. I think that's fine if they want to play it that way and have fun doing so. But when I asked how many mage-kills you got later on, to see if I should induct you even though I wasn't convinced, you only had 1, when you already had 3 recs.

I'm sorry our chars clashed this time round, cos I really enjoyed and had a good time interacting with all your previous chars..and know exactly how capable you can be. All I'll say is don't let me discourage you from rolling another rp-specific rager, try again whenever you feel like. If you despise Yean so much, try Kasty or Ysal :p But when you're up for more Yean-style rp, I'm ready for whatever you got next on the list. Good luck, and peace out?

Thats not what I got from your note, maybe I'm mistaken I dunno.
Maybe its something we should keep in mind.

Surely.

She's like the nicest person ever. Also, Tahren makes an excellent point. I don't think Yean was trying to #### on your RP, just challenge it. Sucks that it didn't work, but thems the breaks.

There will be no white flag above my door. - Dido

Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to cry
So come on courage
Teach me to be shy
Cause it's not hard to fall - Damien Rice

What doesn't kill you makes a fighter, footsteps even lighter - Kelly Clarkso

I still don't feel as though the Whats the password style entry for battle is stylish, nor do I appreciate having a nasty note sent out about me to the whole cabal because I didn't regurtitate the password to her, chastisting the people that gave me reqs for doing so!

And once again! Its not like I can't answer her questions to the letter, I've got every smidge of battle history logged just for when I do feel like rolling a Know it all rager.

It felt like less of a challenge and more of a Poo on them for accepting you.

And as a side note, I've had my RP challenged before getting into the village I'm not new to the hard in village route, Delekan had a VERY tough induction against Ysaolyre the old bag!!!
And I enjoyed every moment of it. *I did grumble a few times, but It was more wanting to beat up Ysa because it was dark-elf against dwarf, than getting irate because I refused to answer the whats the password question*

I wasn't there, I don't know jack about Yean or Aselto. From logs, I thought Yean was a she, so if not, I apologize.

To play the devil's advocate, I have to wonder if Yean's reaction would be more or less exactly as she reacted. She's a bard, right? Wouldn't a deep knowledge of Battlerager lore be most important to her?

It might not seem fair, but it may still be in character for her. Sometimes "good RP" results in "tough path". I'd tough it out. If you're not a minotaur of words, then use actions instead.

The last thing to remember is that if you're roleplaying a moron well, you should probably expect to be treated like one. That probably pisses you (player) off, because you're not a moron. It's counter-intuitive, but I've found it takes a lot more brainpower to really roleplay a dumb race. And patience. A lot of patience. You say you've been a commander. You would probably agree that "me smash mage" isn't exactly the most interesting interview response.

So how do you make dumb interesting? I dunno. Dumb is hard.

Generally though, I pretty much gave up on it, I'm hardly the person who won't take the hard road *Dark-elf sword/h2h defender?*. It felt less like she didn't get me, and more like she wanted to know if I knew the secret password.

Thats what Irked me.