Adventurers No Longer Using Scrolls - Discussion

[MTYL]

This is something I feel strongly about, hence the discussion topic.

I'll say what I have to say in points:

• I am not aware of advies being used as (effective) weapons of war, so I assume it happened on East Continent. IIRC magic was supposed to be nerfed on EC and Colonies. It would fixed the problem better than the current "solution"
• On Dwi and BT advies should be allowed (to a degree) to be weapons of war.
• Even if advies are used effectively in war, I'd say there is a damn big counterbalance mechanic... as in they can be friggin killed! Capturing advies is like taking candy from a baby. If someone is ready to try and swing the fate of one battle/one region (doubtful) for the price of losing their character - ok, I guess it's a fair deal.
• Disabling advies from using magic takes one of the more fun (most fun?) aspects of advy game away. I know most people treat entire advy game as a gig to get artifacts/scroll for their pals, but there are few of us who actually enjoy it.
• Since I've learnt more about what prompted this... my question is - has anything like that happened ever before? Did it require a lot of people actively working together? Have it broke the stagnation on the island a bit? Have it rid us of a single-region new player death-trap realm? Could it be done by non-advies? If you answer yes to at least one of those questions (or no to the first one) then banning advies from magic was overreacting.

EDIT - Forgot to summarize.

Summary: Advies should not be disallowed to use magic.

[Chenier]

Advies were never meant to become effective weapons of war and any means invented to turn them into such should be swiftly disabled.

[Zakky]

Never say never!

People will use anything to their advantage. Why should advies be any exception. What advies were intended to be and what they are are two different issues. Let them be weapons on BT alone. It is a high magic island. I don't see why advies can't be wizards. Nobles should be allowed to build hogwarts so they can train these battlemages to blow up !@#$ty realms like Bara'Khur.

[Logar]

I tend to agree with most of MTYL's points:

I am not aware of advies being used as (effective) weapons of war, so I assume it happened on East Continent. IIRC magic was supposed to be nerfed on EC and Colonies. It would fixed the problem better than the current "solution"

- It was on Beluaterra.

On Dwi and BT advies should be allowed (to a degree) to be weapons of war.

- Yes perhaps magic should just be limited to Bel and Dwi. This gives players a choice to play where it best suits them.

Even if advies are used effectively in war, I'd say there is a damn big counterbalance mechanic... as in they can be friggin killed! Capturing advies is like taking candy from a baby. If someone is ready to try and swing the fate of one battle/one region (doubtful) for the price of losing their character - ok, I guess it's a fair deal.

- As far as I am aware, all the wounded nobles have mysteriously healed and have 3 adventurers in custody with one already been executed.

Disabling advies from using magic takes one of the more fun (most fun?) aspects of advy game away. I know most people treat entire advy game as a gig to get artifacts/scroll for their pals, but there are few of us who actually enjoy it.

- I love the adventurer game. 1 of my advies is is an apprentice, another on a different island is a sorceress, but now the whole backround story and makeup of those characters is now irelevent.

Since I've learnt more about what prompted this... my question is - has anything like that happened ever before?

- No, not on this scale as far as I know

Did it require a lot of people actively working together?

- Yes. Several players have put a lot of work into creating the event which has spurred this disscusion. Not to mention the ammount of time and commitment by all those involved. They acted upon a single region (yes, the only region of the realm), but to do it again to another region would take weeks or months of further prepping. Its not like a rogue force who can march around causing havoc every day.

Have it broke the stagnation on the island a bit?

- Too early to tell.

Have it rid us of a single-region new player death-trap realm?

I couldn't possibly comment.

Could it be done by non-advies?

- Yes absolutely it can. In fact it would have been more difficult to capture the culprits. Advies doing the task have taken a huge risk of execution.

If you answer yes to at least one of those questions (or no to the first one) then banning advies from magic was overreacting.

[feyeleanor]

- I love the adventurer game. 1 of my advies is is an apprentice, another on a different island is a sorceress, but now the whole backround story and makeup of those characters is now irelevent.

Brigdha has established a reputation as a powerful sorceress on EC despite never having cast a scroll in her entire career so a huge amount can be achieved purely with RP and judicious use of game mechanics. But I agree that nerfing the use of scrolls for adventurers strikes me as an overreaction to a problem which is rare.

Looking at the event on BT which prompted this change it feels like the GMs are intervening to save Bara'Khur by changing game mechanics and removing the consequences of those game mechanics. Perhaps that's for the good of BT and the GMs are justified in doing so but given all the pressure that's being applied to make players clump into a few large realms it seems to run counter to that imperative.

Also up until now I've never heard anyone describe adventurers using scrolls as a bug so I'd certainly be interested to know when it was logged as such and why until now it's been considered such a low priority when clearly turning off the ability took very little effort.

If we are going to have scrolls doesn't it make much more sense that these would be the tools of adventurers unbound by social conventions than of nobles?

[Zakky]

I think the devs could have just simply made the action of using a scroll take all your hours instead of just one or two hours. That would have prevented too many scrolls being used all at once. Also would have prevented advies from running away afterward.

[Jored]

Not all of em got away, three got caught , but since all of ten of us got wounded some did get away.

Of the three that did this i executed two and one got away. I am very salty about the whole situation.  I understand that some people just wanted to have fun. But in you guys having your fun you ruined months of playing in trying to get our 1 region back to what it was before the invasions. Just 3 weeks ago we where back to 3 regions but was pushed back again and we were planing to attack another after this payday.

Seriously if you want to have fun on your Adventures , do so. But not at the expense of other players. By your logic the last ten players in Bara 'Khur should just pause.  If this is your attitude the island wont last long.

[Logar]

I think the devs could have just simply made the action of using a scroll take all your hours instead of just one or two hours. That would have prevented too many scrolls being used all at once. Also would have prevented advies from running away afterward.

I quite like this suggestion

Seriously if you want to have fun on your Adventures , do so. But not at the expense of other players. By your logic the last ten players in Bara 'Khur should just pause.  If this is your attitude the island wont last long.

To be fair I don't think anyone could predict the full effect of this event, I certainly didn't. I agree it was pretty devastating.

[Witch-king]

Dear Vita or other GM who intervened in Bar’Khur,

I am all fine if due to the complaints of one player group game rules get changed to the better (subjective though) but then please not to the disadvantage of another group. I am not sure if you realised but due to the post-event that you took away the commoner’s ability to cast scrolls, the player of Josiah has gone around and celebrated your intervention as his god’s deed and as being therefore supported IC. I am not sure if this is the play between friends we all want but so be it.

Now, since the commoners were not able to continue the attack and suddenly all critically/seriously wounded chars including the judge in Bara’Khur got the “ok” status in the middle of the a turn (that must have been also an intervention as this is otherwise impossible, right?) this gave them the advantage to execute my and a second commoner who again got caught from a char that got unpaused (before the intervention). Whether the unpausing was intentional or not to just intervene ICly, I can’t say. I also do not know if there were more interventions to help Bara’Khur in their situation they are (or were).

I thus kindly ask you to revive my commoner as well as well as all other commoners (Giovanni till now) who got executed as well. Otherwise it is clear that the GM intervention helped one player to execute the char of one other. See, chars can heal, walls can be rebuilt and regions or realms retaken or refounded. But my char or the one of the other chars once dead, are dead. No return possible there and that is what makes the GM intervention asymmetrical from my point of view and I am sure you can see a reasoning there. Because if this was a bug nobody knew about and we were playing along the for us legitimate game mech, then why should we be punished with the death of our chars? Both sides were victims of a bug in this case.

Regarding the general topic whether commoners should be able to cast scrolls, let me outline shortly the view from the other side: In a declining game, I tried to give players a RP that was within the game mech and the rules and which they accepted well and made the realm of Angmar thrive. We are one of the largest realms with a good noble count and the best commoner count (till now). We work together on a RP which we enjoy a lot, part of that are training missions for the commoners. Wudenkin was a kind of master exam in spellcasting for some of them since a Daimon loving cult had risen there and Angmar/Daishi deeply disliked it. It wasn’t just for fun to go kill a realm but a story behind it. To make the long story short: advies are no weapons as it is said in here. They are all independent chars with their own will. They could have done something else if they want it. A weapon is something that is without own will and gets fired when used. A scroll is a weapon. A commoner is a char. Otherwise we should also forbid portals as well...

Thank you for your time to read these lines.

[Jored]

I have been reading through the scroll lists.

From what i can gather the following was used to strike Wudenkin

4 x Hammerfall   (This ritual creates a hammer of mystic energy that bashes on the fortifications in your current region, damaging them.) There might be more but i got wounded right after so i didnt get all the messages - What if i might ask is the counter to this?.

??? x Accident    (This difficult ritual will cause another character to suffer from a serious accident, getting wounded in the process.) This must have been casted as hammerfall is not suppsed to wound players only fortifications. Since every single Bara Khur noble got wounded a few needed to be casted. Again how do i as a Player counter this type of attack?

4-6? Summon Undead (This scroll describes a ritual which can summon undead in your current location, possibly causing an undead unit to spawn within the next few days.) There was a total of +/- 14k Summoned - Again i dont have all the details on those.

If you want to play with magic fine, but then there should be counters and defenses worked in as well. From what i can understand there is no way for a counter to the type of "fun" you decided to use on us.

[Witch-king]

Arresting and killing an advy is a pretty good counter.

But I agree with the suggestion that scrolls should take more hours.

I was myself surprised how well the attacked worked...the advies had high spellcasting skill and most spells worked on the first try is surely a big reason.

[Zakky]

Scroll of accident needs to be nerfed. It needs to have a chance to kill advies. I don't know why this scroll is so easy to use.

[Jored]

Arresting and killing an advy is a pretty good counter.

So you are saying just arrest every single advy you see and execute them immediately, since how do i know what they are planning on doing in a region. Since i dont have any defenses against them just kill em strait out. You know how many people this will alienate.

See, chars can heal, walls can be rebuilt and regions or realms retaken or refounded.

Before or after you march your huge armies down to clear us out now that we are screwed. There are no more walls. There are no militia. There are no more troops left. There are no more Gold left. We will not get taxes , so those with a few men left will all dessert. What you did here was totally to wipe certain players off the map. You ask for your advys back after the fact, fine. But once you get them back we are still screwed and everything we have been playing for since the Fronen/Bara Khur civil war has been undone and made naught

[Witch-king]

With all respect, first you torture, then you execute.

I expected to see Khamul tortured so you know from where he received his orders.

So now you have lost every chance to blame Angmar red handed for this attack.

About the rest, I just saw a battle report where your realm won a battle with 8k men of militia! Wow!
As I said before I do not know what else’s the admins did to help you I have not see a scouting of Wudenkin.

I also must say that the player of your ruler complained to us on the ruler channel that your realm is frustrated some weeks ago and that there is nothing worth fighting for so you will just raise militia in your city and wait for the inevitable. He even asked also other realms to give up and form bigger realms so we have a better density. This combined with that all-out-attack religion like Mordok gave at least to me the impression that Bara’Khur was just waiting for a last battle or assault or war before going down anyway...

[Bronnen]

I've seen tons of players use GM intervention IC. Not sure what your issue is there.

If you really don't understand why using commoners as weapons of war with no defense is wrong, i don't think anyone could convince you. Use nobles to destroy other nobles, as intended.