Reinforcements? DENIED!

Today, something happened which I did not like. Something that I found to have been done wrongly, and to which I am not the only one who thinks so (or at least I hope so). Today, I logged in as Razer. I found the boarded home to be empty, so I left it and searched for other players, whereas I found Alge and his group, about to go kill some nasties in the underdark, considering how he would be bored from looking at a wall anyway and he wouldn't refuse a chance to fight, Razer proceeded with them to the underdark, or at least the entrance to it, because at that moment he got a telepathic message from Sin asking for help, because he was being attacked by cyricists.
Razer, proceeds to inform Alge of this, and his group, and having a common enemy now that one of his only 'friends' in the island was being attacked, everyone rushed to the boarded home to give a hand, like they -should-. Upon reaching the second floor of the boarded home, Razer is indicated to which room Sin was fightning in, trying to break it down with a bull rush, he hits a wall of force cleverly placed by Miss Fortune instead. Being the reckless bastard that he is, he walks to the other room and tries to bullrush through the wall only too. . ."Admin Fox: //Bluntly I can't stay and referee for long, the wall is not coming down, gonna make them have a chance to run away." Now, I do not mind the fact that my request to break the wall down was denied, what did annoy me was the fact I was basicly told "No, I'm not allowing you to help someone you have an IC reason to help, because there's too many people involved." So, let me get this straight:
The cyricists attack someone in the second floor of the boarded home, and once most of the survivors get the message and rush to help because the attack was made in a public location they easily had access to, we are denied from providing backup because There's Too Many People Involved. -> Does this mean I can have despair attack someone publicly then say "Only 1v1 plz because I can't reply to 6 attack messages at once"?
At which point having my IC reason for being there barred by a DM, I just decided to go farm instead. Since everyone who had gone there with me had been barred right there too.
Then, Me and Chris instead discussed in tells.
Fox: "Cannot literally have 12 people involved in the same fight" <- Sorry, but you kinda can if they all have a reason to be there.
Me: "Well we came to help Dant who called for us"
Fox: "6 is taking forever"
Me: "Which is why PVP is there" <- Notice that my character is Level 7 and doesn't have all of his gear yet.
Fox: "If PVP was involved, they'd all died and carted off long before you all got online, Hell, before I got online even"
Me: "At the same time, we're trying to RP it out and you won't let us, when we have the right to take part in something we didn't metagame. Sin called Razer, Razer warned Alge, Alge warned everyone else"
Fox: "Outcome is the same"
Me: "We were there to fight them and make them escape -sooner- with the least casualities possible. We were denied that right."
- It ended here-

In the end, Sin wasn't able to roleplay the fact he called for backup, because I wasn't capable of roleplaying the fact I went to help him. Alge and everyone else who came along just wasted their time getting involved in something that the Admin decided we shouldn't take part in because there were too many people involved.
Now, another thing I need to point out, is that this wasn't a DM event. This was the Cyricists, a player run group, attempting to eliminate another player. Why was a DM playing referee anyway? We've been able to do fights on our own without needing a DM online to look at -everything-. There are some technicalities, but that's why the d20SRD is there. And the other players are also there to fix anything that's needed. True, I tried roleplaying break down a wall, a DM had to be there for that, but before I was even told "You will not break down that wall because you'd compromise the entire infrastructure" <- This came later. I got told exactly what I wrote up there. "Bluntly I can't stay and referee for long, the wall is not coming down, gonna make them have a chance to run away."

Being the Public Relations DM, I was told by a player that he was pissed about this, I myself am pissed about this, and the only way to show the Admin if he's wrong or not, is by having the players who were involved, and those who weren't so they can give us an outside opinion, write what they think here.
So go ahead, Players. What do you think should've been done? Do you think what happened was just? Do you have any suggestions to what could've been done instead?
Please do write your thoughts below.

Excusing my obvious spelling errors, but i'm not feeling brilliant so i'll just say feck off it's readable


Firstly, i'd like to say i agree completely with Razer and i was one of the players who informed Razer that i was pissed off, cause for once, i geniuely am pissed off.
(Also this doesn't fit neatly, but everything he said about the ic conversations between Razer and Alge happened, blah blah blah)
These are the Reasons in which i am pissed off
-Chris's disregard of the entire situation when it turned agaisnt the Cyrists
-The Fact that a lot of situations are disregarded when the Cyrists are, for the lack of a better term, fucked
-Generally, Chris's attitude towards a lot of things on the server

I understand that Chris will say that he had not long enough, but i believe that's why he has a dm team, so that others can do the mediation. Otherwise, it just makes the entire dm team redundent since they don't do events, they can't meditate, they can't make decisions without being penilised by Chris.

Futhermore, i understand that Chris would possibly be struggling with the stresses of Exam results and such, but that only backs up the fact he has a Dm Team, they're there to actually do the main part of the jobs.. the Admin is meant to adminster advice to them, it's the job of them. It's accepted that they can do some of the work and such for fun, though that doesn't mean they have to do everything like some mysteral judging act.


Those are the two comebacks to what Razer said that i can come up with off the top of my head, but to put a long story short.

What happened was bullshit, there was not a situation in which alternatives couldn't have happened
-We had other dm's, one of which was willing to take over
-It was a Player event since there was no dm truely needed
-Another point is that if the excuse "There was a Force wall" despite being a valid bit of rp etc etc i can admit that happened, but it would only last for 11 rounds, due to nammy being a lvl 11, which would mean it lasts 165 seconds at the most. so it would be easy enough to wait and take them down (Just thought i'd say that)

Lastly, i'm fed up of all this bullcrap where near to it, every cyrist is getting prefable treatment, and it may not be happening on purpose.. But it's happening, one player saying it may be just that player stirring up crap, but personally i've had about six people mention it to me, and this is just another add on to it.

Chris, sort it, cause this is just an example of lack of thought or sheer laziness


Kind Regards, Reg

Honestly, I have to side with Fox to a point here.

He doesn't have all day to play, & we don't have enough event DM's to cover the amount of people that currently play daily.

However.

It's also on Fox to recruit more event DM's. But considering how many people have taken Fox's trust and thrown it aside for no real reason other than pettiness, I can't blame him for being picky, either.

Long story short, we need more event-oriented DM's, and/or a general overwatch DM that can handle 12 ppl fights, 20 ppl fights, 20 ppl vs 200 npc fights, whatever we might need to have handled.

I wondered how long it would be before someone claimed that the cyricists have preferable treatment.

From a neutral standpoint - they do.

They don't. Any other group of players with the same level of organisation and effort could do exactly the same thing, or at least create a force to counter them.

"Me and Sin decided that I would lose this battle, but it just got out of control with the admins needing to step in and everything"
-Ghost (Creed) mediated through me due to his forum ban.

In any case, we're venturing dangerously off-topic.

Well, I'm going to step in on my part of this. I was logged in as DM during this player event. I was there when it started and the PCs were asking for "DM help" with what to roll etc. I had previously let people know I couldn't deal with this sort of level of things today due to family issues that I'm going through. I had originally logged in to revive a player who died due to crashing. I was then asked to perform teleportation spells and then the fight broke out.

Fox then logged on MSN and I let him know about what was up, knowing about my mental state he quickly came on to take it over. Thus, when he had to leave, I did not offer to pick it up. The other two active DMs were both involved in the combat, and that's not always the best place to have the DM in charge.

On the flip side, I do see how this is frustrating for everyone involved. Being told NO is never a cool feeling. And when it was on iC stuff then yeah, I agree.

On a totally different note, only one Cyricist escaped the encounter alive, so it didn't really "go in their favour." They did not get a raise dead either, they went to hell.

Basically, I was not directly involved after I handed the reigns to Fox. I see both sides of it. I think perhaps it could have been dealt with better yes. I also think both sides lost their temper a bit afterwards and perhaps a breather is needed before a sit down and talk is organized to sort out negative feelings.

This is why I beleive we should have player Advocates. Basically they aren't DMs, but they work in conjunction with the DMs to figure out this kind of stuff and calm everyone down. It keeps it from becoming "half the server is DMs" and it allows players to vent without fear of "wrath from above" they basically are designed to solve these things before they begin.


Neutral party, wasn't involved, didn't see any of this as I was at work (had a shitty day at best) but here's how I see it looking over this. Pardon my language.

The cyricists were doing whatever, and didn't take the precautions to remove the player's ring and such.

Said player sees that he's royally fucked so they called for reinforcements.

Reinforcements show up, cyricists lock themselves in the room.

Basically a hopeless situation unless the cyricists have some form of invisibility, or a DM is on to let them jump out the window.

The idea when the DM tried to intervene was to make it fun for everyone, without getting everyone killed (cause really, it REALLY sucks to be killed, especially with the Perma rules around SoS)

The point was to keep as many players from dieing as possible, because it would effectively remove what little evil resistance there was because of bad planning on their part.

Would the Cyricists have been able to put up much of a fight? hell no. Should the cyricists have been offered a chance to escape certain death if they had tried to run instead of fighting? I beleive so, as long as they didn't drag the player they were initially attacking along with them. The server is no fun when everyone is evil, or everyone is good. It mainstreams everything.

Those of you who played on the old SoS server when Balor was running things should recognize that this is becoming the same good/evil fiasco but in reverse. The cyricists on the old server gained so much power because they slowly but surely slithered their way up the ranks and corrupted the good. When the good were weakened enough, they struck and then there were so MANY evil people that there was no point in making a good character because it was about a 70% garuntee that they would be killed before they ever had a chance to put up a fight. Neutral guys weren't much better off because the cyricists would turn to them for sacrifices.

In this same sense, we're creating a wholly good guy scenario, where the good guys are so numerous, and so powerful that there is little point in playing an evil character because your chances of surviving long are a lot lower. Sure, naturally a good guy server might be funner for the new guy, but really I think we should be trying to maintain a balance.

My point being: Yes, I agree that the cyricists were royally screwed. Yes, I agree that Fox trying to get them to escape was probably borderline meta, but at the same time, the cyricists are really the only evil resistance on here, so I don't think we should necesarily be trying to kill them at every turn, but try and keep it in check.

The Cyricists need to be more careful in the future, let this serve as a lesson that you should make sure your enemy has had any form of escape/call reinforcements cut off from them. Keep to the shadows until your ranks/strength swells to be able to combat the good guys, explain to the person OOCly that your sorry but its kinda how it goes as its how your faction RPs and such so that they don't get too upset. (maybe even cut down sacrifices to only opportunistic strikes) If there was very few good guys I would expect them to get special treatment to keep things balanced, in the same sense, I feel the cyricists should get a little treatment to keep evil from dieing completely.

The good guys need to, yes, be cautious and make it their job to try and keep the Cyricists in check, but outright destroying them will do little good for the server as its like taking away an RP option. If the good guys numnbers ever dropepd so low, I'd be rooting for some treatmnt for you guys too.

Kakashi on Crack wrote:In this same sense, we're creating a wholly good guy scenario, where the good guys are so numerous, and so powerful that there is little point in playing an evil character because your chances of surviving long are a lot lower. Sure, naturally a good guy server might be funner for the new guy, but really I think we should be trying to maintain a balance.

I think I should point out the following.

Cyricist members (As far as I'm aware) : Me with Despair, Ghost with Creed, Fox with Cassius, Amadahy with Niamh, Ven (I just totally forgot his account name) Nammy as Miss Fortune, Auken as Jennifer, Melongrenade as Rastan, Bottomoftheabyss as Crawford, and I think I'm still missing one.
This isn't a wholy good guy scenario. There were evil characters involved too (mine for instance, though it wasn't Despair in this instance) who decided to fight them instead. The difference is, only 4 cyricists characters were actually online, while everyone else was playing something else. This isn't a good reason for us to just avoid helping characters we have an IC reason to help otherwise.

On another note: There isn't much you can work on when a player ran event is one group of players killing another player who is a thorn at their side. If anything they should've picked somewhere else to pull it off than the Boarded Home. Why? Because it gives players, like myself and the others who were involved, the chance to go there to help. A chance which just got a big "DENIED" sign.

Again, Chris might've not had time to stay there, I'm fine with this, but at the same time we had myself who could just quit to the DM client and pay attention to the rolls, if it was necessary. Again, we've been able to have IC fights without DM involvement. I don't see why this was any different.

Alright, I see your point. I'm not really aware of numbers and such here regarding players but assumed there was a large portion who were good.

I have to agree though that the timing, place chosen, and methods used from my current understanding of the situation were what generally made this so abd for them. Even if they had drug him off to a nearby temple (like that crypt one) they would have been better off than simply attacking in such a public place.

Hopefully this event will cause people to be more cautious in the future? Doubtful, but hopefully nonetheless?

This playerbase has proven that it is incapable of maturely mediating differences of opinion, or in fact even so much as knowing what spells do what, and the appropriate counter. See; Clarity defeating Scrying. It does not defeat scrying, yet people have been adamant that it does.

In short, it is obvious that when players come to loggerheads ICly, particular with certain parties, that they are not in fact mature enough to handle the situation presented, and thus a "referee" must be present to ensure that everything flows smoothly, and we can perhaps half the consumption of time for everyone. Ergo, a DM interjects to mediate the flow of the scenario.

In traditional Dungeons & Dragons dice combat scenarios, DMs place a limit on the number of players able to participate in a given campaign or scenario in order to prevent each individual battle turning from a ten minute skirmish to a three hour battle royale. The same principle was OOCly declared, and in a somewhat warped way, ICly maintained.

As for "Get someone else to referee", I am actually disgusted in your attitude. So you people want me to pull either the three DMs who were involved in the battle out to sit and fill my boots, or, press the woman who's family member just had a heart attack, into duty after she already had to cope with it for god-knows-how-long. Yes. Really appropriate. It did all get sorted out in the time I was there, but your complete disregard for the enjoyment of those involved, or the emotional wellbeing of the staff, is -duly- noted.

Yes. You people show no OOC consideration for others, particularly the people playing "good guys", because you tend to be more vindictive and destructive than the supposed villains, when asked for an Out Of Character stance. So clearly, perhaps some people need to consider the kind of person they are.

When I make a decision, I expect that it may not be liked, and I understand that you may feel hard done by. But I always have a reasoning behind my decision. A reasoning that I feel is completely valid. At the end of the day, that's the important thing.

And for the record, I was absolutely disgusted at the attitude of a particular player in the scenario. When I asked, admittedly not particularly politely, that they hurry up, yes, roughly two hours of me sitting there playing referee, I was met with the remark; "This situation was not for you, Fox". Yes, it maybe isn't, but I'm a person, just like the rest of you, and I'm perfectly fucking entitled to be bored, and now even irate, over the fact that I have done people a service, when I had better things to be doing, and been spoken to like that.

I do not have to run this server. I give up my time and energy to try and provide an enjoyable environment for you guys to play in, and uproars like this is how you thank me when the slightest thing does not go your way, even though your "side" during the encounter came out as the winners.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

I feel like I should thank for that. Despite what others might have said. I'm glad there was a DM there, and he did his duty. I could understand also why he would not want more people in there.

When I do events, or plan them, I try doing it with small groups of people, so I dont have to read 20 emotes a minute, which .. I cant keep up with. When people are casting spells, killing people and all that, it is VERY frustrating and difficult to keep your cool and try sorting things. If I was Fox in that situation, I probably would have done the same thing. It was a roll fest, and with the six of us, we could even then hardly sort ourselves out. But we were patient, and followed through with RP. Okay, now imagine 20+ more people? It just doesnt work that way, for me, atleast.

I'm having trouble putting my thoughts to words, like always, so bear with me.

Basicly: If your going to have 20+ people in a fight, its not going to work unless its actually PvP
- Cons? There's a rule against PvP if you didnt accept it on your part, so I could see people going ape they didnt get spared. But how would they know?

But, if you have 2-6 people, I would say thats the perfect amount for a fight. You dont even have to have dice involved. Suggesting all players arent out for only their character to win, it works out fine. RP it out.

-Cons? You cant have a lot of people, or it simply turns into a mess. When several people are attacking one person, they get frustrated OOC and things turn into a mess if you're doing it by rolls. -- it's still doable, just simply not as fun, in most cases.

And, as I was there, I was relieved to hear that Fox had done this, now just because most of it has been covered by the fellow players that were there, I'm not going to type twenty paragraphs just to argue about this, as I'll be honest, it is a tad ridiculous.

Just think about this all of you complaining reinforcements, us players who took part in this player run event had worked hard all day on planning this and everything, you getting involved, and I'm not going to try to be nice about it, would've really been a pain as a lot of effort -was- put into this.

And secondly, for at least 1/4 of this player event, the players were afk and stuck waiting for each other, I'd say that is -AT LEAST- 30 minutes or more. With how late in the event you all responded we technically would've been done ICly because IG the character don't just pause to take a smoke break, have their comp. crash, etc.

And ONE final note on top of all of this just because I've heard -many- of you complaining about it lately, even though, and I'm being honest here, this is completely irrelivent. If -you- willingly engage in PvP with another character, let alone initiate it, stop complaining when you're looted. Expect it. This is a survival server, you have something that the other person wants, Guess what? They're going to take it whether you grovel OOCly or not. I myself have faced this, as I willingly engaged in PvP, was killed, and lost a custom weapon of mine along with -everything- on me. I'm not complaining about it. I'm talking to you who do complain. Stop. It is -utterly- ridiculous.

There you have it,
~Jennifer Mars

Fox wrote:In traditional Dungeons & Dragons dice combat scenarios *Skip bit in the middle* The same principle was OOCly declared, and in a somewhat warped way, ICly maintained.

I'd like to point out, it was oocly delcared to only those who were there before and not those who ran to the saviour and it was ICly maintained at all.

Fox wrote:As for "Get someone else to referee", I am actually disgusted in your attitude. So you people want me to pull either the three DMs who were involved in the battle out to sit and fill my boots, or, press the woman who's family member just had a heart attack, into duty after she already had to cope with it for god-knows-how-long. Yes. Really appropriate. It did all get sorted out in the time I was there, but your complete disregard for the enjoyment of those involved, or the emotional wellbeing of the staff, is -duly- noted.

As once again pointed out, one of those dm's was willing to do such a thing, Razer.

Fox wrote:Yes. You people show no OOC consideration for others, particularly the people playing "good guys", because you tend to be more vindictive and destructive than the supposed villains, when asked for an Out Of Character stance. So clearly, perhaps some people need to consider the kind of person they are.

Clearly you haven't noticed which section of people have used exploits etc etc >.>
Though, agreed some of the apparent 'Good Guys' Have left in hissy fits and once again for the sake of pleasentness i'd rather not name..


Also @Kakashi on Crack I reread some old forum posts done by you..... I'd like to say.. Feckin' hell you've grown up over the last three years >.>
Lastly, what's done is done... So Someone lock this thread and let it breed under the barrel so to speak

JenniferMars wrote:
Just think about this all of you complaining reinforcements, us players who took part in this player run event had worked hard all day on planning this and everything, you getting involved, and I'm not going to try to be nice about it, would've really been a pain as a lot of effort -was- put into this.

At a risk of sounding like a troll: Guy Fawkes put a lot of effort into his gunpowder plot. It was a real pain that someone betrayed him and the queen's army got involved.
We had a reason to go there, we didn't metagame what was happening, Jenn. I understand what you mean, when you plan something and it doesn't go as you have planned it, it usually pisses you off. And in the past, when the cyricists were Creed, Despair and Cassius, we've had plans ruined, but not because we didn't execute them right and someone called for reinforcements, but because we got metagamed instead. If that was the case, yeah, I'd agree with the above sentence. But we -had- a reason to go an help, you are basicly asking us not to because of the time you put into it. I don't think the Queen's army would've stopped if Guy Fawkes said "Come on, I've been working -really- hard on this." I think they would've still hanged him.

As for people going AFK during most of the confrontation, or PCs crashing, I logged in, I was doing my stuff, I got a message for help and we came to Aid. Was I aware that the fight had lasted for the past 2 hours? I was only informed of this after I had been denied the right to be there. And even then, I just thought it was because there was too much OOC bickering going on with rolls and the like, rather than people going AFK in the middle of an IC fight, or crashes. At which point, yeah, I'd agree with you, ICLY there are no pauses. But at the same time, ICly none of us leave the island, and at any time Dantalion could've sent out that help message. He did when I actually was around, and I answered it, plain and simple. You can't criticize us for doing so, because I believe that there have been other large conflicts in which other people joined in when they logged in, that could've already been over if it weren't for the fact people need time to type, because in DnD a round lasts from 4 to 6 seconds. That gives you a chance to attack 3 times in one round, if you're hasted and your BAB is below 11. If it's 11 or above, 4 times. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes for each person to type their attacks four times, and it's enough time for someone to run from the other side of the server to come and help them. Yet, I've never seen anyone complain about this to this day. And even if this is stated now, people will still do it.

But again, this was something that we weren't aware of. I got a message, I informed others, we went to help. This is the way things went like ICly.

This entire thread is utterly pointless. What, you want us to all log back in and re-assume the positions, so we can re-do it all over again with you guys coming to aid instead? A retcon? Fuck off Razer, I cant be bothered; go and wet your pants.

Just kidding, you raise a valid point, my friend. Though I think that many people would make the whole thing too confusing, and PVP in those tight quarters would be a clusterfuck.

True, but at the same time it would highly motivate Fortune to teleport herself and Jennifer out, whilst you just went ethereal. <- This being -one- of the possible courses of action. One that if you had taken two of the people involved wouldn't be in hell. I did state before, my objective when I went there with an army that big was to make you retreat. ICLY I'd be out to kill you, OOCLY I knew that there was likely an escape plan prepared, or even if there weren't most of us are usually crafty enough to find a way to get out when the situation starts getting messy.

However, on a side-note, there was a time when if a fight got too big, instead of people typing everything in at once, they'd actually do a turn system. They'd write down who'd do their actions and when, then proceed on that circle, which allowed things to go smoothly, even if it didn't give you much maneuvering for counter-attacks and the like. Not to mention, since it was close quarters, some of the people who went with us wouldn't be able to go in and fight. And, the people that could fight well in the group that came were Alge and Osric. Razer isn't that much of a fighter yet, the only reason I end up winning dice battles is because the STR modifier I have on him is 11.

I'm just saying, this could've been handled differently. Even though your first post was an attempt at trolling me (as far as I can see) it does hold some truth to it, this topic -is- pointless because it won't change anything. We can't go back and just re-do everything, I'm just saying the situation could've been handled differently. In the end this ends up being nothing more than a thread where people can vent.

Edit: And at least it is working in that sense.

Well...uh.... LOCK.