No RP Killing

[Anonymous]

I recall it being a pretty big deal to kill someone with zero RP. Especially when you have zero RP with the person before that.

Did this change? Did we decide that no one’s story but our own matters? That all danger must immediately be killed to prevent it from coming back to get us?

I thought we were playing a cooperative, narrative story telling game. We have had so much consent-based code shoved into H7 that we can’t even write certain words, ideas, thoughts, or depictions without the correct warning labels… And yet, when it comes to killing each other, that’s totally in bounds and ok.

Sure, my character was a 63rd Enemy Guest. Yes, I accepted they would probably die… And yes, that is the most likely conclusion for what happened…

I am not questioning the death. I am questioning the complete, total lack of RP. From the point of seeing the PC that did it to death, there was exactly one say with two words given. And let’s face it, in the middle of combat, probably not a great time for posting. And sure, I lost. Not even complaining about that here.

But a character I had not RPed with at all before the fight then turned around and killed this guest. This guest, who had some fingers in pies and was developing a story across several characters, and who had, in their possession, more than once, helpless characters that they did not kill.

I want to let you know what you are promoting with this act…

Enemy guests that will not RP with you and use the tremendous coded advantages at their disposal to kill PCs with way more story investment.
Enemy guests that will not engage in coded combat at all, because they will obviously lose due to limitations placed on them by Nova.
Enemy guests that will not bother with letting people go and spreading their story.
Enemy guests that will not try to create stories and opportunities/hooks for people to use in their stories.
Enemy guests that will not be unique, individuals with well thought through back stories and nuanced moralities to engage with.

What goes around comes around. Every time you stomp on a story without any engagement, you will have your story stomped on without engagement.

You can do better. You can be better. You should be excellent to each other.

[Matias]

As someone who gave input on the outcome. Given the Lt attacked someone in the mists. We had them. It is like okay well we are probably 100% killing this person. Is there any form of interrogation RP that is not just pumping them for information and cutting off their head. I did not really see it and took a guess that an enemy guest probably did not want a prolonged scene where they were just treated as information dump and then merc’d.

Definitely knowledge they were a 63rd Lieutenant factored -heavily- into the murder of the character without subsequent RP. Had it been a regular PC. I probably would not have advised as I did.

I have kind of fiddled with the idea of 63rd Legion people being like nabbed and then venetian oathed to leave for X amount of time but that is functionally killing them too so I did not recommend we try something like that this time.

Sorry. I do believe Guests have a much lower threshold to death though because obviously monsters / LTs are in a position where the moral / pragmatic justification to kill them is readily apparent and in some cases a necessity.

[Valkuk]

I would also like to add to this matter, if you want roleplay and interaction out of the experience… Probably don’t attack someone in the middle of mist? Going to the only place in the grid in which a character is threatened for simply existing in the room, to then start attacking them and then complain “Combat is not a great time for posting” when you were the one to engage in it without a word in. Probably not the wisest of decision either if you want that cooperative interaction.

Also having been involved in the discussion Matias mentions. The point of executing without waking was brought up a couple of times, to a massive response of “Do it, why risk, this, that or else to happen?”, specially because as he mentions, people knew the character was a Lt. People are not willing to risk things going south when they don’t see a clear roleplay path and everything are disadvantages, it feels like you are risking the important thing for something that none of the parties will enjoy that much.

Do I think the no roleplay kill is a good thing? By no means. I don’t think it should be something that happens even to Lieutenants as a rule of thumb, but I don’t think people can’t complain about it either when their approach to the situation has been the exact same. “I came in without saying a word and started a system inconvenient for roleplaying- But when it ended they didn’t do it either”. I don’t mean to insult or say it’s your fault or anything, I simply try and bring the perspective of, the other parties involved might have seen it as giving the same they were dealt.

[Anonymous]

I got put into combat because of the mist monster, not because I attacked the person, just for clarity. But sure, blame the lack of RP on the victim that loses the character.

And once the fight is over, the ‘threat’ of the mist is no longer really valid. Especially since the character got moved to somewhere that the mist wasn’t.

So the fact still remains… Zero RP killing LT promotes people using LTs to kill people instead of RP. I am telling you now, whatever justification used here will in turn be used on the other side… “Well I know they are Hand, and we want to hurt their efforts in that borough.” So, I am going back to my initial point: Is this really the behavior we want to promote?

[Matias]

So just to be clear. You would have been fine with potentially 1 to 3 hours of RP with the knowledge that you were almost certainly going to be killed at the end of it? You just wanted to be interrogated and have some slim chance of talking your way out of death?

[Evalina]

I don’t know the situation but it stands out as strange to me that killing seems to be the goal here and roleplay the optional sidequest. I presume there’s more to this unsuitable for this forum that makes this discussion maybe hard to have (?)

[Matias]

Well the question here is…

If you encounter 63rd LT is their purpose on grid to be an antagonist and killed?

If yes, then killing them at some point is a presumption.

Obviously the killer consulted other people (Hi I am one of them) and we determined that attacking someone in the mists was a fairly aggressive act.

So you have a 63rd LT whose very existence causes Legion raids to have Lt npcs that make them difficult and who is sworn to bring Hell to earth and thus threatens all factions and societies. Then on top of this they attacked someone in the mists which is again was interpreted as a fairly aggressive act.

Now if 63rd Lieutenants are not presumed to be kill targets than this is a very different conversation. My understanding is that like Monster Guests, Legion Guests are kill targets.

[Evalina]

???

They are roleplay generators, antagonists. We’re incentivised to kill monster guests but certainly the polite thing is to let them do some story if they’re trying that.

I don’t know what your source is on their existence spawning NPC Lt’s but that’s not in any helpfile I know of (?) and sounds unlikely anyway unless Nova intends for us to PK every last Lieutenant on the grid at all times. Which would ruin the point.

Speaking of ruining the point.

This sounds bizarre to me? Why would anyone put effort in telling story and creating compelling villains if you’ll deem them ‘kill targets’ and get rid of their effort ASAP with no thought or care about whatever they may be planning. Which presumably would have been RP, perhaps even fun. These guests exist to be villains – villains don’t generally exist to just be shot, but to tell a story with arcs and drive through it other people’s story and world. If it was just about murder then I implore you to look at the wonderful commands lieutenants have and the way they can completely ruin your day using them. They do not, in fact, need to fight you in the mist (or anywhere) to stomp you if they feel like it.

Sorry, I really hope there’s some context here, because if we’re just deleting people because ‘Well we’re supposed to’ then that’s a serious WTF to me. Like, consider your fellow players, even a monster does put effort in their monster. There’s a reason we usually let them show that effort and talk a bit, when possible… And lieutenant guests aren’t monsters. They’re evil yes, but evil like the Hand is evil, just, slightly more so. Are we going to PK T5s too once they get on the grid?

[Thomas]

I’m very confused, since I’m hearing two things here:

1.) There was a mist monster that put everyone into combat.
2.) The LT guest initiated combat.

These seem to me like really different scenarios.

However, assuming that the LT guest initiated combat, which is to say either their player is not being forthright or there was some confusion — I’m not sure how that justifies a no-RP kill as good RP manners even in the ‘worst case’ scenarios. Attacking people to render them helpless and antag them has been one of the primary ways to engage in antagonism on the game, and what we have been told about LT guests on both Ask the Staff and in the help file is that they are supposed to stir up antagonism.

Is the argument that the LT guest shouldn’t have initiated combat, and should have instead used control incapacitate, where there is no way for their opponents to escape antag? Is the argument that that LT guests aren’t worth RP at all?

I agree that at the end of the day, after some antag and RP, executing a LT guest may make sense when executing a PC member of an evil faction may not, if only because there’s (presumably) not a political capital cost. But is it your position that say, executing an I10 person without RP is okay? That executing a fleshformed character is okay?

Is there a file somewhere that says that the IC reality is that all LT guests are supposed to be hunted and killed? They don’t have their location broadcast like monsters, so something -seems- different about that in terms of code — though like Evalina, I think it’s pretty poor form to kill a monster guest without RP, too.

We’re discussing OOC etiquette, so what do you think the end game should be? Should it be that people not make monster or LT guests? Is it that they should be more aggressive, and only engage in coded aggresson without RP? What should we be incentivizing people to do, OOCly, with their LT guests?

[Thomas]

I want to drill into this, too:

“If you encounter 63rd LT is their purpose on grid to be an antagonist and killed?”

It’s quite clear that the purpose of T3s+ is to be an antagonist. The game systems make non-antagonistic RP difficult, and the files are more explicit about T3s being antagonists than LTs, even. Is the sense of the community that they should be killed without any RP?

[Matias]

I think its pretty clear where the uncertainty is but to walk through again.

In the mists combat happened. The Guest character attacked a PC and dealt damage to them. I think when we say soandso attacked we can assume it was not just that a fight had started but they actively dealt damage. So ambush in the mist. Considered a fairly aggressive act probably a higher threat than ambushing someone outside the mists.

The Guest character lost. The Guest character was a known 63rd Legion. The character that won the fight confirmed their identity and discussed options with characters online. (Hi again). Given a mist ambush and a known Legion character the discussion was basically. Well Legion are trying to bring Hell to earth. They are extreme threats in boroughs the Legion controls. We have one. Do we A) interrogate them and kill them. B) Kill them. (note it is my understanding their purpose is to pose a significant obvious threat which justifies killing similar to that of monsters). Advice swings towards well we are probably going to kill them because they are obviously evil and foolishly attacked someone who could handle them. Do we want to interrogate them and subtextually do they want to be put through interrogation with little to no chance of surviving. I guessed not.

Lop of their head. Proceed with the day. Another one bites a dust Lieutenants be warned.

Was it ideal. Nope I said as much above. Was it wrong. I do not think so based on my understanding of the purpose of T4 Guests that are actively working for hell with powers that far exceed other T4s.

Could I be totally wrong and I am a dick for the advice I gave. Sure! I accept that and normally I would have been in the camp of let do some token RP but that just not how the chips fell.

So the questions from the above series of events.

1. Are Guest characters that have an obvious reason to kill them: Monsters / Legion need any reason beyond we caught you to justify killing them? Ideally with RP which I agree is best practice.

2. Warnings of if you kill Guests they are just going to kill you kind of miss the point of Guest character as a tool for players to create content. They are not regular characters. They are free every 2 months (it seems) and so I would say the bar to any extreme action against them is lower than a regular PC and they owe regular PCs content because that is why they exist right?

3. Lets assume there was 1-3 hours of interrogation with a 99.9% chance of killing the Guest character. Would that have been better? If it was better would it be acceptable? If not acceptable, why not?

4. Looks like I may have misread this because it is in the Lieutenants helpfile which made me believe it happens because Lieutenants exist but help lieutenants final paragraph. I see now re-reading it that it could just be them saying Lts exist in raids forever regardless of whether a Guest Lieutenant exists. Maybe ATS but I think I probably misread it.

[Thomas]

So, to those four questions:

1. (Do Lieutenants have an obvious reason to kill them?) Monsters do, and it’s made explicit. Lieutenants don’t. They may — seems like a good subject for an ATS.

2. (Content Creation) I don’t think the ‘if you kill LTs they are just going to kill you’ is a very legitimate argument, I agree. But LTs get an ‘I win’ button in the form of control incapacitate, so if the result of engaging in coded combat where PCs have a chance to win is that they get killed with no RP, I don’t think PCs will be given a chance to win. I agree the bar for extreme action is lower, but ‘not RPing’ isn’t extreme action. It’s an OOC, not an IC decision.

3. Yes, as the regular player of antagonist, I do so to create RP. When I play an antagonist I know they will get theirs — indeed, my Big Antagonist in H6 is one of the only people to have gotten killed. If the story makes sense for my character to die, great. Doing so without getting any RP would strike me as extremely disrespectful.

4. I don’t think there is a relationship between LT guests and raid LTs, but perhaps an ATS is neccessary. That’s not how I read the help file.

In a broad sense, it strikes me as problematic to ‘guess’ that someone else doesn’t want RP and instead wants to be killed. Let’s imagine that’s the case — the player of the LT is done and wants no RP. What is harmed by waking them up and having them say “I won’t say anything, kill me now!” or be stoically unresponsive? On the other hand, if they do want RP, killing them without waking them -does- harm that interest.

It seems to me like there’s no circumstance where the better choice is to execute. If the LT player wants no RP, you can wake them, they can mouth off a sentence of ‘kill me now’, and you execute. If they want RP, you can wake them, then RP. In both cases, it works out for all the players involved. If you don’t wake, then great, it works out if the LT player wanted no RP, but if they did want RP, there’s a risk of ruining someone’s experience. Given that, why does it make OOC sense to not wake?

[Anonymous]

1. Are Guest characters that have an obvious reason to kill them: Monsters / Legion need any reason beyond we caught you to justify killing them? Ideally with RP which I agree is best practice.

Do you truly believe hate wins the day against demons? Pretty certain that is literally not the way to fight demons, and is a common theme/trope in many, many shows. Hate does not defeat hate. In real life, in fiction. So killing them, just because they exist, is never going to earn you the brownie points you think it will. What makes you think ANY character is made to be killed? With as much time as it takes to make ANY character, I would say no one makes one purposefully to get killed, UNLESS that is the story they want to tell. Even Monsters do not NEED to be killed any more. They don’t make living nightmares. They cannot attack on their own even. And they can take a Fabled char off grid for a while instead of killing everyone. So … literally, NO character is KOA.

2. Warnings of if you kill Guests they are just going to kill you kind of miss the point of Guest character as a tool for players to create content. They are not regular characters. They are free every 2 months (it seems) and so I would say the bar to any extreme action against them is lower than a regular PC and they owe regular PCs content because that is why they exist right?

I am not warning you that guests will start killing you. I am telling you what goes around comes around. I am saying that other LTs are seeing this, seeing this situation, seeing that providing good antagonistic RP does not mean anything to a large number of people, and will adjust accordingly. If this behavior is to be the norm, that’s fine. Just know that perpetuating it results in it returning to you. Do you spend 20 hours making a character, then 60 hours playing them, and want them to die because combat just happened to occur near them?

3. Lets assume there was 1-3 hours of interrogation with a 99.9% chance of killing the Guest character. Would that have been better? If it was better would it be acceptable? If not acceptable, why not?

Why is it a 99% chance of death? Because you chose to make it 99% chance of death. There was, statistically speaking, with a proven track record, a 0% chance of death if this particular LT captured the PC in question. Why? Because they literally did not kill three people already. Assuming the worst in people earns you the worst in response. With your stance here, do you think an LT that captures you is going to be more inclined to let you live through their capture or not?

4. Looks like I may have misread this because it is in the Lieutenants helpfile which made me believe it happens because Lieutenants exist but help lieutenants final paragraph. I see now re-reading it that it could just be them saying Lts exist in raids forever regardless of whether a Guest Lieutenant exists. Maybe ATS but I think I probably misread it.

The final paragraph of Help Lieutenants applies purely to Raid NPCs and has absolutely nothing to do with LT Guests.

LT Guests are purely the On Grid representation of the 63rd. They are there to remind you the 63rd is a thing, the 63rd is powerful, and the 63rd is evil. They are NOT steel ducks at a plinking range to be killed for cxp cap increases. They don’t get karma from hurting people. They don’t earn karma at all as far as I know. Their only purpose is story, background, and reinforcing theme.

[Anonymous]

“All Lieutenants must be killed” is psychopathic behavior. Previously, this was a frowned upon, essentially OOC excuse for anything, just as a reminder. You were not allowed to play someone that just ran around killing someone. Not sure where that rule is or if it even still exists…

[Matias]

Since you are still posting!

1. I totally should have suggested. Wake them up and see if they have any last words or they try and bribe you for their life. I did not think of it at the time, my bad.

2. I am sorry you got no RP killed but unfortunately I was not in a position to ensure you were RPed with so my advice was well if no one wants to interrogate them.

3. I agree if Guests are not default on the should be killed or have a strong reason to kill than it was very bad break of etiquette. I shall ATS.

But yeah I apologize for my part in it. I laid out all the thinking at the time. I agree RP is always the ideal. I agree wake them up and poke them with a stick is a minimum that is easy, should have suggested it.

[Author]

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