Poll - What is your opinion on exotic races?

[Nymera]

I'm not going to wall-of-text, I feel most the pertinent points have already been made.  So I'll be brief.

I would really prefer exotic races be concealed and show more consequences for their race, which, in my opinion, leads to more RP fuel for everyone.  But I'm also tired of fighting against what is public opinion and fear it just leads to unneeded player-to-player antagonism.  It is what it is now, and probably too late to drastically change anything.

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Zoo.

[Edge]

That's pretty much the situation in a nutshell. The general tide of player and character opinion is that people should be judged by their actions and/or associations before their race - it's a bit more modern of a viewpoint than most settings assume, FR included, but it reached that point through nearly a decade of RP and characters interacting and server and playerbase evolution. This wasn't an overnight process or a sudden decision by the staff or a massive influx of new players. As I stated in my last post, looking back over the years you can see the seeds of this eventual conclusion and how they developed slowly, one by one.

Despite this, there are a fair number of characters who keep their racial natures still concealed or at least on the down-low for various reasons, that I'm aware of, and I'm certain there are more that I'm not.

[Mystic Warden]

Actually, I feel my human character to be an exotic race in Arabel.

[Edge]

Sept 30, 2014 8:06:58 GMT -5 Mystic Warden said:

Actually, I feel my human character to be an exotic race in Arabel.

Yeah this line of snarky commentary comes up several times any time this particular topic rears its hydra-like heads again.

[ermmm]

I would offer my thoughts, as a relatively new arrival to the server. Somehow I think that would be a 'bad idea' (tm).

[trylobyte]

Sept 29, 2014 21:58:24 GMT -5  @belladonna said:

Sept 29, 2014 20:02:34 GMT -5 trylobyte said:

2)  ECL races seem like stat sticks first, roleplay potential second.  This is especially true the higher the ECL is, since the greater the ECL the exponentially greater the bonuses.  One of the questions the application asks is how the race affects the character's roleplay, and I think this is one most people don't take seriously.  With the exception of drow, most ECL races I see could be done almost identically if they weren't an ECL race at all, and sometimes nobody even knows ICly that the character is an ECL race.  This leads me to believe that the ECL race often isn't taken for roleplaying potential, since that's usually ignored, but is taken for all the lovely checkboxes on the character sheet.  Oddly, this sometimes inverts itself, to no less detriment - The ECL race is all the character is and is the only thing that makes them interesting.  Back to the Aviary days again, I remember a rash of half-dragon PCs that were among the most boring, flat, cardboard characters I'd ever seen - They had no personality beyond being half-dragon.

This offends me greatly.  If we play an ECL openly, we don't take the setting seriously.  If we hide the ECL characteristics, we're "not taking it for roleplaying potential."  You can't have it both ways.

As one of the ones who prefers playing her ECL characters concealed, the concealment IS roleplay potential.

Again, this comes down to a perception on other people's roleplay which, frankly, is nobody's concern beyond the admins.  Worrying about "proper" roleplay ruins everyone's fun.

This is a story server.  The important, story-line events, favor well-roleplayed, well-developed characters.  If all you're worrying about is the mechanics, you're missing the point.

To put what I said in a bit more perspective, my problem is that it tends to be 'one extreme or the other.'  I tend to see either characters where the ECL race makes no difference at all to the roleplay (either because it's not roleplayed at all or because so few people know about it that it doesn't matter) or characters where the ECL race is the only real aspect of the character (and thus there's no special reason to RP with them once you've met them once).  I'm not insulting you specifically (and I'm trying not to insult anybody; if I did I apologize) and I know that concealing an exotic race is roleplay potential, but remember that if you're too successful at concealing the race that potential will never translate into roleplay for anybody other than you.  I do see characters where the effects of the race are plain but there's a lot more to them than that, and I appreciate them (Bass and Ra'ziel are the current MVPs of blending race and roleplay, in my opinion, and I commend them for it) but I dislike the two extremes and the fact I perceive them to be the norm.

[Edge]

The problem is, Trylo, that you're judging people by the RP that they're willing to expend around YOU. The vast majority of my characters who have something like that to hide - be it race, religion, organization membership, or just plain dirty secrets or unpleasant history - do so behind closed doors with a select group of people, the people they trust and rely on. Between those characters is all that RP that you say is happening between too few people and thus it "doesn't matter". And I would be very willing to bet that the majority of other players with similar statuses behave in a similar matter.

THAT'S what is offensive about your post and your position - the idea that unless it's open and available for the majority of the server to see, someone's roleplay doesn't matter. Which couldn't be more wrong. You're being casually dismissive and disregarding of people's fun simply because you don't get to get a peek in.

[The Red Mage]

Sept 30, 2014 10:26:55 GMT -5 Edge said:

Sept 30, 2014 8:06:58 GMT -5 Mystic Warden said:

Actually, I feel my human character to be an exotic race in Arabel.

Yeah this line of snarky commentary comes up several times any time this particular topic rears its hydra-like heads again.

I honestly wouldn't consider this snarky at all when demographics can be plotted.

[Nymera]

Sept 30, 2014 11:42:02 GMT -5 The Red Mage said:

Sept 30, 2014 10:26:55 GMT -5 Edge said:

Yeah this line of snarky commentary comes up several times any time this particular topic rears its hydra-like heads again.

I honestly wouldn't consider this snarky at all when demographics can be plotted.

To be fair, even if every single player was a half-dragon, Arabel still has an NPC population of thousands of humans.

[Edge]

Sept 30, 2014 11:42:02 GMT -5 The Red Mage said:

Sept 30, 2014 10:26:55 GMT -5 Edge said:

Yeah this line of snarky commentary comes up several times any time this particular topic rears its hydra-like heads again.

I honestly wouldn't consider this snarky at all when demographics can be plotted.

What makes it snarky isn't whether or not it's technically true, even if you ignore, as Kirin pointed out, the overwhelmingly-human NPC population.

What makes it snarky is that it's a smart-alecky "I'm so clever" type comment with little more purpose than to irk tempers.

[trylobyte]

Sept 30, 2014 11:40:13 GMT -5 Edge said:

The problem is, Trylo, that you're judging people by the RP that they're willing to expend around YOU. The vast majority of my characters who have something like that to hide - be it race, religion, organization membership, or just plain dirty secrets or unpleasant history - do so behind closed doors with a select group of people, the people they trust and rely on. Between those characters is all that RP that you say is happening between too few people and thus it "doesn't matter". And I would be very willing to bet that the majority of other players with similar statuses behave in a similar matter.

THAT'S what is offensive about your post and your position - the idea that unless it's open and available for the majority of the server to see, someone's roleplay doesn't matter. Which couldn't be more wrong. You're being casually dismissive and disregarding of people's fun simply because you don't get to get a peek in.

Okay, that's a fair point.  I am, admittedly, not very good at thinking things through from multiple angles, especially when it's a subject I find touchy (such as ECL races and how common they are).  With that in mind, then, why not keep the race but reduce the amount of mechanics-based power they give?  That way you can keep all the roleplay you like without appearing like you're doing it just for the statline?

[trylobyte]

Sept 30, 2014 11:48:21 GMT -5 Edge said:

Sept 30, 2014 11:42:02 GMT -5 The Red Mage said:

I honestly wouldn't consider this snarky at all when demographics can be plotted.

What makes it snarky isn't whether or not it's technically true, even if you ignore, as Kirin pointed out, the overwhelmingly-human NPC population.

What makes it snarky is that it's a smart-alecky "I'm so clever" type comment with little more purpose than to irk tempers.

We already ignore the NPC population.  In saying that the reactions towards ECL races have been defined 100% by the players, we accept the fact that the reactions of the NPCs in the setting don't mean anything.  They have 0% impact on the attitudes towards ECL races because the players have a monopoly on that.  Therefore, they are effectively irrelevant.

As for the comment, yeah, it's snarky.  But it's more done as a joke than as something specifically meant to piss people off.

[Edge]

Sept 30, 2014 11:51:49 GMT -5 trylobyte said:

Sept 30, 2014 11:40:13 GMT -5 Edge said:

The problem is, Trylo, that you're judging people by the RP that they're willing to expend around YOU. The vast majority of my characters who have something like that to hide - be it race, religion, organization membership, or just plain dirty secrets or unpleasant history - do so behind closed doors with a select group of people, the people they trust and rely on. Between those characters is all that RP that you say is happening between too few people and thus it "doesn't matter". And I would be very willing to bet that the majority of other players with similar statuses behave in a similar matter.

THAT'S what is offensive about your post and your position - the idea that unless it's open and available for the majority of the server to see, someone's roleplay doesn't matter. Which couldn't be more wrong. You're being casually dismissive and disregarding of people's fun simply because you don't get to get a peek in.

Okay, that's a fair point.  I am, admittedly, not very good at thinking things through from multiple angles, especially when it's a subject I find touchy (such as ECL races and how common they are).  With that in mind, then, why not keep the race but reduce the amount of mechanics-based power they give?  That way you can keep all the roleplay you like without appearing like you're doing it just for the statline?

On the one hand, it wouldn't horribly bother me. None of my exotic race characters are impressively built, statistics-wise, and I don't think such a change would harm them overmuch.

On the other hand, I think the vast majority of this problem of "clearly exotic characters are only being taken for the stats" is on the person making that assumption, not on the people being assumed at.

[trylobyte]

Sept 30, 2014 11:56:30 GMT -5 Edge said:

Sept 30, 2014 11:51:49 GMT -5 trylobyte said:

Okay, that's a fair point.  I am, admittedly, not very good at thinking things through from multiple angles, especially when it's a subject I find touchy (such as ECL races and how common they are).  With that in mind, then, why not keep the race but reduce the amount of mechanics-based power they give?  That way you can keep all the roleplay you like without appearing like you're doing it just for the statline?

On the one hand, it wouldn't horribly bother me. None of my exotic race characters are impressively built, statistics-wise, and I don't think such a change would harm them overmuch.

On the other hand, I think the vast majority of this problem of "clearly exotic characters are only being taken for the stats" is on the person making that assumption, not on the people being assumed at.

Didn't say they're only being taken for the stats.  I do think there are quite a few people who take them primarily for the stats, though.  Hard to argue with how much they get for free.

[Edge]

I'm not going to debate the semantics of the narrow gap between "only" and "primarily" in this context with you. I have better things to do with my time and I presume you do too.