Descriptions

exactly' date=' Vinter. Its an OOC thing not to care about the dragon.[/quote']

Hahaha are you kidding me? It's an OOC thing to not "rem all;drop all" when you see me approaching.

are you asking me to get naked? im confused.

You bet.

score.

It is an OOC thing to not care about the dragon unless your character has a fear of dragons (like Fliblin did, the RP getting his was fun). The concept of, "Who cares about dragons, the EQ is better," is purely driven by a PK mindset. It's one of the pieces of evidence that this mud (at least much of the pbase) is more PK oriented than RP.

It's rare to see a description done prior to level 10, if even done prior to 15. The majority of characters I wait around to approve with the little yellow D next to their names keep ranking and training from 1 on up and I'm gone by the time they decide they want to work on that description.

IF we see more descriptions being done prior to level 5, then raising the dcheck level might end up on the plate for serious discussion. Procrastinators gonna procrastinate and Zoidberg might eat you! :3 :3 :3 :3

It is an OOC thing to not care about the dragon unless your character has a fear of dragons

It's an OOC thing to write a description at first place.

It's an OOC thing to CARE about a dragon, how does your character know he will get a dragon for good description to begin with?

How is it an OOC thing to write a description? It's not like everyone is just a big floating blob of nothing, you have to have looks..

If it were up to me, you'd have to have your description approved before character creation is complete, or at least level 1.

This game has -always- been more PK oriented than RP. Although roleplay is mandatory, there are not really any extended roleplay arcs on the individual level, largely because the mechanics of the mud favour playerkilling as a path to progression as opposed to socializing. Quite simply, player killing is most often how you increase your character's influence. This is largely true for most muds I have played (FL, Achaea, WoT-mud), although there are exceptions (one of my favourites was Aetolia).

I feel that I am straying a bit from the original topic of discussion, but consider this:

• It is not safe to simply be standing in the same room emoting or talking for extended periods of time. It is not possible to have extended roleplay sessions that last for several hours or more without the chance of suffering attacks or even death.
• Our emote system used to be one of the better ones out there in muds. Colour distinction for spoken text in the emote itself, as well as tmote/smote gave players a lot of creative freedom. These days, other muds tend to have this as well. In fact, I feel limited sometimes when trying to emote in FL because of the character length limit.
• There are huge incentives for becoming good at PK, less so for roleplay. While a certain standard of roleplay is required for almost all endeavours (cabals, quest classes, quest races), a person that excels at playerkilling but is an average roleplayer will generally speaking have more success than a character that is average playerkiller and excellent roleplayer. This is because a person with average playerkilling skills will suffer loss of lives/equipment/cabal standards more often and will be regarded by the community as a less impactful character.
• There are no social structures with any meaningful hierarchy. Being a citizen of a certain city means that you have your recall point there, not that you are a part of a group striving towards a certain goal or upholding specific ideals. The same is true for guilds. Even within cabals, opposing alignments (or just neutral/evil alignments) can mean that you will have little reason to get to know each other and cooperate.
• The capture the flag mechanic and FL's tradition of solo combat means that there are no raiding parties to attack your enemies' strongholds or that groups of defenders work together to stave off invasions. FL is one of the only muds where single player versus player combat is idealized.

What I love about Forsaken Lands is the immersion. There are no OOC channels or chats or random happy-smiley tells or secret elitist roleplayer cliques that judge and ostracise. You can just log on for as long as you want to - half an hour or several hours - and have fun. In the past, I left because it was hard to enjoy the game with an ever diminishing playerbase. Too few people enjoy the harsh environment that is Forsaken lands; the requirement of constant in-character behaviour as well as the severity and abundance of player combat deaths will be a constant deterrant to most people in the RPG community.

I love this game so much.

EDIT:

This post took way too long to write. It was a response to Spark's post.

If it were up to me' date=' you'd have to have your description approved before character creation is complete, or at least level 1.[/quote']

That would be more in-character actually, although more newbie unfreindly.

Writing a description at 15 is like, "Hey, I was born 50 years ago but, but I think now is a good time to decide how I look."

This is because a person with average playerkilling skills will suffer loss of lives/equipment/cabal standards more often and will be regarded by the community as a less impactful character.

I don't know about others, but I don't share that view in any way. I personally love RP-oriented characters.

I'll write descriptions!

$2 apiece or $5 for four!

I'll even toss in a deal of 10 for $10!

Now you got me interested Valek.

That's short change. I'll write your whole Demon/Avatar/Lich/Sader/Psi app. Never failed.

Edited for inappropriate words. <--Stifling a culture! :>

Oh yea. Ill roll 5 trash chars for you to pad your PK list, AND feed malforms. As well as give shoutouts for your awesome RP and PK.

slides Nameless some money and nods

I'm guilty of hitting 15 before a desc is written. Just old habits. Generally though, if I see an IMM on 'who' I'll write it then regardless of level/hunting party.

Since the dcheck command was implemented, I have not seen a desc waiting for more than 1 day (perhaps 2 at max but as a very rare occurance) UNLESS there was something wrong / needed to be discussed first, before the desc could be approved.

Examples:

-qrace restring, desc fitting, both should be approved at the same time

-2 chars with the same desc or nearly so, we need to figure out who copied from whom first

-4 new chars rolled, all with similar descs, what is going on here

-char has been told to fix / change something by an Imm but decided to just ignore the request and hope another Imm will approve it

...

It is for good reason that you need an approved desc before you can rank past level 15. For one, we like characters to be fleshed out, with a true rp backing and this is much more likely if you have to think about how they look like. We also do not wish to see chars pking before they even got their desc approved, for similar reasons. Silent pk is being discouraged (few exceptions) and we wish to further rp.

Any Imm will be very happy to help a new player with their desc, we all have spent countless hours doing so in the past. A lot of players will do the very same over newbie chat. Moreover a new player will not realistically hit level 15 in a matter of 30 minutes or even an hour.

I don't see us upping the level for desc approval anytime soon.