[SIZE=10](Yet Another Incredibly Long-Winded Acacea Post)
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Hi. I'm not sure if this will do any good, but for those it might make a difference to, it bears reminding.
There is a big difference between something that is emoted, announced, or mandated to us, and what is spoken by an NPC. Obvious, right? Not always.
You see, there is very little time and manpower available to work on the module. There are many things that are great, many things that could use vast improvement, things that would have benefited from more personality or scripting. That is why write-ups, tidbits, summaries, and server messages exist. They give you a bit more to work with in order to roleplay a place or person properly. All of these show something as it is, as you are expected to perceive them. If a GM's server crashed and he has to resort to emoting that there is a huge, cascading waterfall, it is a bit mean-spirited to say IC, "Didn't someone say there was some kind of falls here? Must have meant to the ants!" or something. We make cracks about it OOC maybe, but IC, you see a waterfall.
NPCs, however, are biased. They have flaws, faults, opinions, and shortcomings. An NPC may say "There is a waterfall two miles ahead," may be quite mistaken, or a liar. He can insist until he is blue in the face, but the DM emotes that there is no waterfall. You don't see one. That's a difference between a server description of what exists, and an opinion given by a biased source.
Another example: In various writings and third person summaries of Mistone, Queen Allurial is written as being much loved by her people. She was by all accounts, benevolent, wise, and graceful. She was one of the Seven Sisters, Lucinda's Chosen, and yet even those with no love for magic came to greatly respect and love her. So she is presented to us.
If a DM, therefore, possesses her and emotes that she speaks with grace and kindness, but the DM his or herself is honestly not that great a typist, you may poke fun OOC. But don't start verses about the Queen's speech impediment - he does the best he can, and can only set the stage for you. Part of the game is being handed a cane and being told OOC "this is a hat, sorry." We ruin the game when we are unable to pretend that it is something other than what is shown. We could use more and better showing in many cases, yes! But in the end, it is our job as players to take what we are given and roleplay it, not tear it apart IC and "refuse to see a hat," simply because it wasn't a perfect representation. We are all guilty of this at some point, but it really takes the better player to bite your tongue and try not to ruin everyone else's immersion for it. We can take it OOC and remind the GM that there are really better ways to call a horse an ox, but leave it OOC.
Your character need not have loved the queen! You may indeed play someone who is not part of the norm. But there should be good reasons for it. If it is stated, under Allurial Mistone flourished, and kept safe, then should we be using the inability to have her involved in everything as a sign of her apathy, poor leadership, etc? Our characters may find fault with her. They may even believe things that are total lies, or have a twisted perception of events. They can spread it! But we, as players, should not be trying to convince other players of it. Our character's different interpretations should be delivered in a way that still represents what we were given as a server description and summary - that this one character has a really weird and messed up view of what was in reality a good and much loved queen.
I try to roleplay my character's general flaunting of authority and cynicism regarding its effectiveness. She still loved Queen Allurial, and might have gone MA Scout, had Milo not quit. It's not because I really had all that much interaction with her - that is how she was presented to me. I could latch onto all the OOC problems that existed in Mistone and go on tirades about how they were all her fault and what a terrible leader she must have been to allow it, but instead a surprising amount of us (surprising considering the amount of chaotic characters we have) still RP a general affection and respect for her, even if our characters are not exactly bending the knee in subservience.
By contrast, Port Hempstead is a mess. As a starting city on our server, it should be one of the best known and represented cities on Layonara. It's not. There are honest reasons for why it never quite made it up to par, but it doesn't change that it's still totally messed up, perception wise. An example of one reason, V3, as most remember, was not intended as a finale or anything, but a start. Its release was very rocky and with a lot of bugs and adjustments, but it was never meant to be the end. It wasn't supposed to stay a certain way. There were big plans, huge ones, remember the first announcement for V3? There was this grand plan about how it would continue on and things would change and all this stuff would happen. V3's initial release was built, not as a perfect representation of everything, but as something that set foundations for more to come. New haks, building tools, environments, these were major. A huge amount of rebuilding was done not for looks, but because of changes to tileset files that required areas that weren't even changing to be rebuilt from scratch or be screwed up.
Unfortunately, because of other projects, the module changed owners again in the middle of new stuff. It's not so much unfortunate because of the person, but rather because whenever that happens, often older things are dropped and new people have new goals. That's fine. More big plans! More grand schemes! Which also fall through, as new module op also leaves. Later, another new dev! Even better areas! Cool new challenges! Changes that start building again on what many of the v3 goals were about, such as lifting the magic level! ...But they're all new, epic based stuff for the most part, with few changes to core things. Fantastic new things, but the fact is, it is seriously unlikely that some place like Hempstead is ever going to have any serious new things to make it cooler or better represented. It's just a question of time and effort and information. Someone working at this stage has to really be pretty passionate about their project in order to keep it going, and that's not so easy with leftovers of other people's stuff.
So, what we have instead are 'server descriptions' and OOC summaries of these places. There are no NPCs claiming glory or justice. No GMs are using guards and leaders to boast about what the places are about, while emoting OOC the truth behind the lie. We are given OOC, unbiased pieces of information to aid us in our roleplay. The city's general ruling is NG. The Silverguard train with blunt weapons to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Deliar is a primary temple, who is CG and about freedom, trade, and luck. There are more guards than just those at the gate. Trent made captain at an young age because of his good heart in a time of darkness.
The port is not the only place with half blood issues, just the only one anyone ever uses for them, making it look far more contrasting and isolated than it is. Fort Vehl is not a haven of freedom and justice, its a pit of squalor. A half-orc is highly unlikely to be murdered in an alley in Hempstead. He might in Vehl. Part of the reason for the temple is fighting back against the nastiness that is all over the place in Vehl, not because it is a shining example of anything. They're there to fight what it is, not celebrate it. Their long struggle with it has jaded some of the clergy into believing criminals deserve "whatever they get," as well...
The port is led by a trade council, headed by the Vaerans, who are also good and in general supposed to be wise with a good head for the economy as well. Not necessarily a part of the description, but something the attentive might note - the Vaerans are not new to Hempstead, nor written for them. Anyone reading the Prunilla writeup can see the Vaeran sisters in the Dragon's Whisper... Harmony, the oldest is the one that was a driving force behind fighting the tyranny and darkness in Port Hempstead; her daughter leads the trade council now. Meadow, the middle one, is rumored to be the chosen of Prunilla, even though she never claims a title. Peace, the youngest, is the head priestess at Castle Mask on Dregar, having got the wanderlust early on. Anyone familiar with the halfling tribes in Mistone can easily recognize that the Vaerans are an entire clan, as well...
There are a lot of interconnecting things floating around. Is everyone expected to know these things? Of course not. That's silly, it's floating everywhere and half the GMs don't notice them, either. None of us is likely to see even a corner of a whole writeup of it until a few fabled handbook releases. But there is a difference in sincerely not knowing, and ignoring the GM telling you that there is a waterfall. If we have read OOC how a place is supposed to be, then we should be trying to RP ways that it meets that, not how it doesn't. Our characters may not like them, may disagree with them, but it should be presented in a way that goes with the props we were given. That's part of the game. Our characters are not living in the 21st century.
Kingdoms are not perfect IG, by any means. But just like we need to break laws and sneak into places with GM help, we don't decide that they have a completely different face than what is given us as a server description. The guards may very well slip up and let something else in perhaps... but we don't decide it happens for us. We don't stand in the middle of Prantz casting spells because we can. Havoc is encouraged! Rebellion is encouraged! But you have to do it within the realms of the game. You can't say, "I strike him with this spiked cane!" if you have been told it is a feathered hat... nor emote that fat exploiting Froigrin cheated you out of thousands of gold in order to feed her growing hoards of millions. Anyone who has any understanding of what Deliar is about knows better. We have to roleplay the standard in order for the failings to stand out.
Likewise, please, the GMs are severely limited in communication and tools to represent every place perfectly. We have tools of our own that we can use, there is no need to be take everything harshly IC because of OOC circumstances. It is part of our role to help show how the environment is, according to the server, not create huge rifts in perception because of how we decide it is. There are things that completely do not fit, and times when GMs make mistakes - a Silverguard bullying with blades, perhaps, or referring to a queen of Brelin - but a simple tell may determine if it is just an honest mistake, or something intending to be a biased interpretation. Indeed, even the churches are pretty poorly treated in this way - character opinions and arguments are great, but too often tirades are made based on OOC information and opinion, and exist to attack a given OOC statement of the ideal. If they aren't meeting it, take it up out of character and see how the whole fares.
When you see something bad happen in a city announced to you OOC as largely good and fair, if it did indeed happen as the GM intended, then shouldn't it be treated as out of the norm. Shock! Dismay! Rumors of a Rael supporter amidst a city like Port Hempstead should be a huge deal... if you use the props we are given. If you decide your hamster is a dragon regardless of what GMs ask of you though, it's just a lot of confusion and only adds to the problem.
Why don't we help places become what they should be, instead of causing a rift in perception in order to deny what they are? There's no need to be silent about things that don't fit. Make suggestions. Point them out. How many rants have I gone on about how poorly the city is represented according to how it is supposed to be? That doesn't mean I take it IC. My character has met the Vaeran sisters... One of them is even the chosen of Prunilla... She helped destroy the Shadow Thieves... I'm not ruining all of the history and personality just because someone stuck a sign on the lawn. The day someone tells me, "The Vaerans have been forcibly removed from office and the city begins sliding into corruption again," or something, is when I will RP that interpretation, and I will certainly want to know more than that, since such a huge amount of stuff will be wiped out for the sake of it. I'm not going to force it because of accidents, though - I'd rather think of ways to make the inconsistent fit back in.
Otherwise it is like losing Ozlo to a faction mess-up. Or failing to stab Bloodstone in the spine, because when you rolled attack, the server lagged and spewed out 6 rolls - your first was a 20 and your last a 1, and GM decided to take the 1... Your PC uses a custom head and shows up headless, but try as you might to RP that he does in fact have a head, there's always a few people that refuse to acknowledge it IC, even after GM acknowledgment of head... This isn't about one city. Port Hempstead is just one huge part of a larger, core issue - sometimes we are told how a place is, but they just don't support it and come to bat. We can say, OOC, how hard would it have been for you to do X and support this better? Sometimes the answer is, "Very difficult," and sometimes "not very," but it doesn't happen, but either way, we play along. We can bring down empires with our characters, but not as players decide one doesn't exist. If they sometimes don't seem to do a perfect job in representing one because of mechanical limitations and time, we can still pretend - what is added to the module and GMing at this point is largely based on pure personal motivation and stubbornness at this stage in the game, so not everything is ever going to make it. :) It would be nice, but we can do a lot on our own with what we've got.
[/soapbox] :o Long. *Hides.*