AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - On Modern Attitudes and Taboos: Another mild rant

The unfortunate truth of the matter is that people are allowed to RP their characters as they see fit (within some very loose parameters, that is). The transference of "modern" morals and outlooks to our "medieval" characters is, I feel, often times unintentional. Often the person behind that drow is a friend and for some reason, the other players feel that if their characters are mean to that drow that it's really them being mean to the player behind the drow. This is not the case. It's a Roleplay server. It's not a social server. Wait, allow me to rephrase. Amia was designed to be a Roleplay server. Through it's adaption to player's needs, it has shifted over to serve those seeking a social interaction.

This is not any type of attempt to slander or minimize what those seeking a more social interaction and less of an RP interaction contribute to the server. I would go so far as to say that this particular type of player is not even a majority of the server base. Yet, they do make up a large enough percentage to be noticeable.

There is no "fix" to this dilemma, as shifting to a more RP oriented slant would in all probability alienate those who prefer a more social slant. However, if those that feel that a more RP oriented slant is called for were to stick to their guns and refuse to play huggle-cuddle-snuggle and take a more rigid stance, it may just rub off on everyone else. Lead by example. Even if that means that someone thinks you're a meanie, a jerk, whatever. If that player can not see past the character you are portraying to realize that we are here to not only escape reality, but escape into a perceived reality of another consciousness, then that's their problem and not yours.

I didn't read all of this through. I just agree with the OP, but at the same time, I think that Amia is a RP-lite environment more focused on interpersonal stuff than adventure and the like. So... while I don't like some things like hearing "Cool" as a reply to something IC, nothing's forcing me to hang around those conversations.

Yossarin wrote:

I think Modern Attitudes and Taboos are acceptable, but they need to be used and, most of all, fought against or at least foiled against other highly valid alternatives in order to make the distinction clear. If you're too much like the real world, you're boring. If you're not enough like it, you're incomprehensible. There's a happy medium in there.

Ditto.

I am famously neutral-- in which I mean, I am all about the middle ground here. This ain't medieval England, this ain't Fallout 3; it's supposed to be FR-- try to fit in with it, but no one is ever able to fully separate themselves from their age. No matter how good they are, it will never be 100%. An ideal? Sure, that's fine, but I'm not going to get too fussed over things like that unless it's just ...you know, someone standing around Cordor emoting that they're reading the New York Times.

One of my many regrets as an ex-DM is that I never found the time to run a plot about the despair and vice that would follow in the wake of a powerful hyper-magical psychoactive stimulant (psychostimulant or psychoanaleptic) drug hitting the streets of Cordor.
The substance, being made (in secretive underground labs) from pulverized mythal shards, would earn the street name: crystal myth.

at least the herb is "perfectly legal" in amia XD also shrooms, though im not sure if there are any magical ones. I feel a bit bad about what I said previously here, other than the use of the term terrorist, and I don't think in game its so bad as we imagine on the forums.

I mean honestly though, if black are terrorists banites are nuclear war incarnate, and I stick by my previous comment of other names to call them. I'd much rather hear "black are a plague upon amia, bringing destruction and trickery" than "black are a terrorist organization" tbh. their not al'cia da.

This rant has been made before. I agree it's regretable and very annoying at times. But this isn't a hardcore role play server. Same because I just love this setting. Yes people will play a race who ever they want and some even don't give a damn about rules or DM warnings... Such things always happen. Here regulary on a die hard server some times. It's sad, though we can't espect everyone to have a profound understanding of medieval culture, I happen to love 15th century reenactment, for me its quite easy but most are stuck with a holywood camelot idea in their heads.

I lament the pointlessness of this. Though who knows, if this turns one player its a gain.

Dammit Kjetta, this topic was dead...

!!!

Didn't know it was a troublesome complaining thread, aka "Hang the DM, Hang the DM, Hang the DM", figured it was just good and fun discussion.

Oh well! Now it's alive again and I for one love to see crystal myth. Mostly become I want to see people suffer. I mean I know drugs and asprin and meth are hard to keep apart in pill form. Just put some incredible high lore role on it to figure out what it is. Lots of people won't make it, pop it for its unique ability and get hooked!

Really I plead for some DM to put your genious into action!

Logicality wrote:

Is nobody else occasionally nauseated by how greatly the majority of the population of the island of Amia seem to resemble, in their thoughts and actions, the members of Western civilization?

It's like walking into another episode of Star Trek the Next Generation. The only thing we're missing is a balding Frenchman.

Fact is though, no matter how well you roleplay, your culture has subtly or obviously influenced the development of your mind. Every time you use it to come up with something new, chances are it's going to throw out something familiar. And you know what, you need that to a certain degree so that you can see how the world your characters live in is very very different. But you need that distance from the familiar and modern otherwise the next thing your character may say is 'Make it so!'

Amia very often reminds me of The Wire mixed with Venezuelan soap-opera. Honestly, quite often when walking around Cordor (Amia Forest nowadays), I catch myself expecting people to tell me IC 'Yo dawg' or something along those lines.

The assumption that the FR setting is an extension of the westernized, capitalistic world, with swords and magic, is absolutely wrong.

The sole reason of creating a fantasy setting is to project one's fantasies, being capable of acting in a way one's incapable of doing IRL, someone nailed it up in the topic with the example of being a taxi driver etc.

Another problem that emphasizes the above is that all-knowing attitude, which is absolutely disgusting in a long-term, since it doesn't leave any space for others to cope with. What's the point of playing an elderly, long-bearded scholar who studies his whole life, where 15-year old PC's know everything anyway? With the shifter example - if my PC sees a shifter in a monster form, no matter -what- type of PC that is, he will either attack it on sight or run. (not to mention the fact that not even True Seeing helps with seeing through shifter forms anyway).

Yet another thing that comes to mind is the supposed IC knowledge of "I can't die so I don't give a crap anyway", which in fact is metagaming an OOC rule of the server. This results in a horrid IC attitude, of being more powerful than the FR deities (deities actually can die, y'know).

Mix this all together and what do you get?

(insert name here), level 30 character, who's not only capable of lifting an elephant and tossing it several hundred miles, with an actual library in his head, but also being immortal (and being fully aware of this fact too). Also having all their valuables glued to themselves, so they can't be stolen. In short? A god. A flawless being.

FLAW(s).

In my humble opinion, that is the 'thing' 75% of the characters on Amia are missing. Which, also, takes away the fun for others who are either trying to influence them, change them, interact with them, convince them, etc, as the RP there is simply blocked, and there's nothing left for interaction.

On the 'racist' part which seems to shock so many. 'Racism' per se is non-existant in the realms. Instead, it is what MAKES the realms, but is not named such. I'll pull the number out of my pocket, but I bet that at least 50% (if not more) of the cultures in FR consider slavery as something absolutely natural and an inherent part of it; they look upon different races (monsters, etc) with disdain and scorn, and mostly it's simply Killed On Sight anyway. Even many of the bordering FR human 'nations' look at their neighbours with distaste. Dislike each other. FR is overfilled with conflict. Civilisations rise and fall, get devoured by stronger ones. Get enslaved by stronger ones, et caetera.

Another thing that came to mind is the breathtaking combination of bizarre 'races' that people seem to play here. No clue what the number is, but the ammount of 1/8 human, 1/8 devil, 1/8 drow, 1/8 sun elf, 1/8 dragon, 1/8 dog, 1/8 horse, 1/8 rat PC's is absolutely ridiculous. Everytime I click on the bio of a PC I never saw before I am depply hoping I'm not going to see all those, frankly speaking, totally absurd numbers and impossible combinations of the most exotic of the most exotic races. Even the most sick-in-the-head arcanists on the realms when creating 'minions' or experimenting not go that far.

And last, but not least, I've been watching Amia shifting (slightly?) from a Roleplay server to a social one. No need to explain this, I suppose. Pity people want to play house in a place which was designed as a Sword And Sorcery Adventure RP blablabla.

Solution to this?

a) Make more subraces require a platinum award (application). So the DM team becomes a filter for the ridiculous ammount of what is to be extremely rare or totally non-existant stuff in the Realms.

b) Unfortunately it's awareness problem, which can not be fixed with a simple patch or something. I recall plenty situations when I asked them OOC, mostly out of curiousity, what was the reasoning behind taking an action with their PC's which simply would not occur in my reality. In 100% of the cases I got a DONT TELL ME HOW TO PLAY MY PC response... where I was simply ASKING not telling.

c) Slightly more rigid system of the DM-input IG. As an example, I recall on another PW, where my priest of Moradin cast a Magic Weapon spell on a duergar-made axe, which was crafted purposefully to kill dwarves, instantly receiving a DM tell: "As you lay your hand on the axe and utter the prayer, an overwhelming sense of divine dissapointment strikes you, and you feel the divine link between yourself and Moradin slightly weakening.[...]" etc etc.

Hope I didn't offend anyone with this post, but this is in very short how I see things here.

EDIT: Also, Ace Of Spades' post should be stickied somewhere separate. Or used in the 'Welcome to Amia' subpage.

a more minor thing than has been bought up so far but I've met a character on this server that refered to women as 'babe' and the like and another character that referred to everyone as 'dude'.

both are pretty immersion breaking imo.

I would just want to quote your post Wolf In The Throne Room, and keep reposting it till I get a life time ban from the whole of Amia, then learn to get around it to keep posting it.

You're are absolutely right, beyond argument. I've said this often enough myself. But in the end it does come down to the fact that long distance, none face to face contact makes humans extremely self centered and egotistic. Because in the end, you and everyone else are just a few pixles on my screen. Why would I care about what a few pixles combined in a certrain pattern to form a text tell me? What are you going to do? Alas such is the world. Just think of how much braver you are talking to a person on the phone then in face to face with them. This I fear is a flaw deep in human nature itself.

Personally I just try to play it aswel as I can but finding myself having to curve my own medieval style of looking at things in order not to be always in conflict with others. In my mind an independed women is an extreme rarity unless they are whores, just to give an example.

Wyjyn: Loving all of you (and above all Disco) since 11 Jan 2007.

It wouldn't surprise me if women were collectively more independent in the FR setting than in a generic time period fantasy setting, to be honest.

More a bit yes... Probably. But I doubt you would get hordes of female adventures, both trained and educated and treathed in the same way as men. Heck don't even have then in real life in the western world.

I actually think independent women are fine. From my understanding of FR lore in most places women have a largely equal place.

If you realise that women being subservient in medieval society was largely a result of christianity you realise that a polytheistic society where most gods not only don't have a problem with women but there are many goddesses as well it's hard to see sexism being as big a thing.

that being said I think all the women that run around wearing next to nothing would likely be treated as whores and beaten/thrown into the back alleys if they ventured into more profitable areas of town.

Here was me thinking most human societies are/were male dominant for the simple reason that at any given percentile amongst healthy adults, men are so much stronger than women that they can just beat the crap out of them until they agree that Daddy is in charge.

In FR, there is no physical disparity: you start at 8 STR regardless of your trouser plumbing.

Well the best and quit good sounding reason for women being all over the world (with few exceptions) being a stap down on the ladder was this:

In the beginning most religious activitie consisted out of worthshipping earth mother dieties, gaia if you will as some guy I think in the 70's tittled it. The mother that gives birth to all life and all life being equal in the struggle for survival for then human and beast where alike with humans having no great edge over them. Now the female is the one that gives birth in the human race, like the earth mother (who always was depicted as a pregnant women) and as further proof of the closeness of women to the earth mother there was the moon that wanes and waxes in a simular pattern to the female period.

Eventually humans went from hunter gatherer to farmers, instead of breeding for the tribe like animals (merecats make a good likeness of primative human sociaty actually) farming became the center of life and for farming the sun was more important, the sun being the opisit of the moon was thus concidered male and there the shift in relations took place, women over time becoming more and more a posestion next to life stock, a symbol of the man's prosparity. (ok shortest explaination I could make of it. Would fill a few pages if I was to type out that theory in all the detail I heard it in).

hadeismetirion wrote:

... In my mind an independent women are an extreme rarity unless they are whores, just to give an example.

I politely invite you to look back at my post near the bottom of page 1 of this thread (Posted: Sat, Jul 17 2010, 5:25AM). In some other "generic medieval setting," your objection might be valid, but we aren't playing in some hypothetical Arthurian-England setting, or whatever. We're playing in the Forgotten Realms, and in the canonical FR, female adventurers are commonplace.

Yes I know. That's why my ingame stand isn't that extreme. But I like to use extremes in my examples, its gets the meaning across better

Uberuce wrote:

Here was me thinking most human societies are/were male dominant for the simple reason that at any given percentile amongst healthy adults, men are so much stronger than women that they can just beat the crap out of them until they agree that Daddy is in charge.

In FR, there is no physical disparity: you start at 8 STR regardless of your trouser plumbing.

Agree with this. If it were down to religion and farming, then surely hunter gatherer tribes would have as many female leaders as men? To my knowledge they don't.

hadeismetirion wrote:

I would just want to quote your post Wolf In The Throne Room, and keep reposting it till I get a life time ban from the whole of Amia, then learn to get around it to keep posting it.

You can count me in for that too, I still remember someone playing a Tiefling/Aasimar/RDD/Palemaster. Albeit it was played as an example as of what is wrong with Amia, at least seen by the player, did it get on my nerves because: It was a God Mode Sue character, and because Aasimar/Tiefling do not mix. I couldn't care about the rest if they are reasonably well explained, but the Aasimar/tiefling part got me the most.
That and the respawn metagaming...

Quote:

Fact is though, no matter how well you roleplay, your culture has subtly or obviously influenced the development of your mind.

There are degrees. Sometimes it's hard to pretend you're in a fictional setting when you can smell the Jesus in someone's sentence, to no small extent; even more when most other characters agree with the Judeo-Christian idea and it becomes the IC norm.

I recently saw a group try to ban prostitution. This group worships a war god, whose clergy, by all accounts, could care less about prostitutes in a world where prostitution is a legitimate way to gain wealth and prestige in most cultures. How can one explain their motives? Ignorance of FR lore is one thing, and shared by everyone; I certainly can't claim to know a ton about it. But to not even try is what makes this a modernized setting.

The remedy to this would be research done individually, or DM intervention in an IC manner, such as a hierophant of the church of the above example stepping in to ask why they're wasting time on that issue. However, I don't see alot of it, nor would I expect the DMs to start policing everything if they're okay with how things are. This is not a reproach, but an example that comes to mind is the massive freakout when someone kills a young being that, anywhere else in FR, would be killed on sight; there, the DM character gave in to the demands and the main point of view that prevails in the IC story is "killing children is wrong and it's normal to accept evil beings" (paraphrased).

I don't mind it that much, I know there are other servers where they play really hardcore and I don't have the patience to do that much plotting.

On the topic of metagaming infinite lives, that can be annoying and we had that happen just yesterday, when a lone elf (another one of the hundreds of evil ones) tried to attack a party of five by itself, for little to no reason, because what's the loss? Unless there are harsher death penalties, that's pretty much something to get used to.

A final note is on the fact that everyone with a bit of lore (or even none) can claim to know of events that happened on demi-planes that no mortal even has access to. This is something that I feel should have DM set guidelines; then again, the setting itself is alot looser with knowledge than a hardcore setting (Shadow Weave being so commonplace comes to mind). This is a pet peeve of mine, I have to admit: characters who walk around as if they had full access to frwiki.com. Because those characters, while knowing a full list of things they wouldn't reasonably know (because the creature and deity articles are interesting) also often act like Judeo-Christians (because the nations and cultures articles are so dry and, to be fair, often incomplete).

My point then, overall, is that it's annoying, but it's also not a hardcore server.

Wolf In The Throne Room wrote:

Slightly more rigid system of the DM-input IG. As an example, I recall on another PW, where my priest of Moradin cast a Magic Weapon spell on a duergar-made axe, which was crafted purposefully to kill dwarves, instantly receiving a DM tell: "As you lay your hand on the axe and utter the prayer, an overwhelming sense of divine dissapointment strikes you, and you feel the divine link between yourself and Moradin slightly weakening.[...].

That's absolutely phenomenal. Kudos to the mystery DM. I can only hope I'll get to experience some of that here.

I agree with that, the whole heaven and hell thing are even part of the setting somewhat. thank you but i'd rather live my life than fear some impossible etherial burning later on. im pretty sure the afterlife is what you make of it just like life is so meh.

Didi wrote:

Uberuce wrote:

Here was me thinking most human societies are/were male dominant for the simple reason that at any given percentile amongst healthy adults, men are so much stronger than women that they can just beat the crap out of them until they agree that Daddy is in charge.

In FR, there is no physical disparity: you start at 8 STR regardless of your trouser plumbing.

Agree with this. If it were down to religion and farming, then surely hunter gatherer tribes would have as many female leaders as men? To my knowledge they don't.

well then your knowledge is wrong. As has been stated the first religion entering hunter-gatherer society were worshipping earth-goddess figures. This is even true across huge oceans when there is no way for one religion to spread, meaning it came up independently in each. These societies typically were lead by women.

Your theory only holds true if the majority were lead by women - do you have a source for this?

yes, but unless you want to go out and pick up some fairly beefy books that might be hard to find giving you a reference probably wont be much good

Wyjyn: Loving all of you (and above all Disco) since 11 Jan 2007.

Ok serious discussion time!

Firstly, theoretically speaking it is most likely that women invented/discovered agricultural processes because they tend to gather and men tend to hunt. I find your view about the sun very interesting though, might illuminate some stuff on elven roleplay and the subraces for some out there.

Secondly, have/do matriarchal societies exist? Yes, but rarer than male lead ones and often males run the politics of it anyway...women can just veto stuff really, they tend to hold a sort of 'unofficial' power. The rare society that really has a female hierarchy, and I have none to reference but I have heard of one in the Indonesian context, functions almost identical to a male lead society. In fact, the women behave very much like men and vice versa.

This all probably illuminates the truth of it: that society needed, when agriculture was required, to defend itself from other Peoples and the best system (the one that survived) for that defense involved a masculine system, as we have culturally defined it now, and that masculine system is probably better off being run by men as they are physically stronger.

The ancient greek where terrified of the power of women, thus prefered to marry them off as quickly as possible and prefered to keep them in doors. They concidered a virgin women to be full of unreleased energies that could be a danger less she was married off and bedded. Something reflected in their amazone myths.

But I personally love Viking women best. The man owned the land, the women what the man build on top of it. They used to have a key on their belt as sign they where married and would with that lock the man out if he annoyed them. Or challange them to glima, traditional wrestling. What legends tells such matches between husband and wife could last for days.

Personally I'm revolted by what modern sociaty has made of most women. Can't stand the types that harken to all the nonesense of how they should behave and what they should use. They are so filled with pitty fears and odd ideas. Just give me a valkyrja!

As a bit of anecdotal support, in Sparta, both men and women entered the state school..the Agoge and both were trained to a very very high standard. There are several different historical mentions of teenage girls wrestling bulls to the ground for sport.

Of course, that said, this was also a society who's men reveled in war because (again, anecdotal) marching to combat and fighting was often mentioned as being easier than the training they underwent each day. And perhaps it is telling that the only way for a spartan man to have his name on his grave was to die in battle. The only way for a woman was to die in childbirth.

Make of it what you will.

Zinovy wrote:

I recently saw a group try to ban prostitution. This group worships a war god, whose clergy, by all accounts, could care less about prostitutes in a world where prostitution is a legitimate way to gain wealth and prestige in most cultures.

I would be happy to RP a discussion between those people and Xaviera.

To reply to the whole banning of Prostitution:

Cordor has a law against it (oddly enough) but it's not too too heavily enforced, and has policies that'd been tabled (not sure what came of them beyond that) , to reduce prostitution but hopefully in a way which will create more constructive jobs for the women in the community.

Yes there's some modern attitude in there, but it doesn't mean that there isnt' a valid reason for such a different attitude to exist from the 'norm'.

*agreed with below thread*

The point is IC actions are not because OOC hard feelings.

Let's try to avoid specific incidents ... there are two sides to every story.

I think that specific incident were pretty clear. It had very much modern attitudes.

yeah banning prostitutes is pretty loltastic.

but then I've seen a character get kicked out of cordor for 'sexual harassment' by a guard on more than one occasion.

There is one cordor guard in particular who pretty much acts like a modern day police officer, its pretty painful to watch.

Banning prostitution Loltastic, huh?

And the guard behaving like a modern police officer's probably because Cordor has some damn tight training. (They need to, considering Cordor's Adventurer guard which was PROBABLY the unit you dealt with is basically a high-end enforcement unit and more probably then not , the equivalanto f their detective unit)

I would've thought that Cordor would have a whole list of excuses *cough* laws to kick adventurers out whenever possible. If muttering some 'nonsense' about 'sexual harassment' can kick a troublesome adventurer out of the People's city, I'd imagine the guard would go for it.

LEt's not make veiled jabs at characters, thanks. We don't make snide rmarks about "that one forum guy who makes bad posts in this topic" or something.

Grymia wrote:

Banning prostitution Loltastic, huh?

And the guard behaving like a modern police officer's probably because Cordor has some damn tight training. (They need to, considering Cordor's Adventurer guard which was PROBABLY the unit you dealt with is basically a high-end enforcement unit and more probably then not , the equivalanto f their detective unit)

It doesn't matter if they have 'damn tight training'.... it's just not the mindset enforcement officers in such a setting would have.

You are not the DM and that's not your decision to make.

Considering the thing's Cordor has gone through in it's history, I'm amazed more stricter reforms haven't gone into place yet.. but I can theorize why.

TormakSaber wrote:

You are not the DM and that's not your decision to make.

I wasn't making a decision I was having a discussion... same as everyone else here.

Vhalus_VoA wrote:

TormakSaber wrote:

You are not the DM and that's not your decision to make.

I wasn't making a decision I was having a discussion... same as everyone else here.

I believe he was trying to say, that you can't speak the mindset of law officers of this setting as you're not a DM.

Disconnect the jerk-mode cord and plug in your imagination cord. Sure the term might seem odd but not everyone knows ye olde tyme thingies.

Sexual Harassment ~ Being A lecherous sod that cant keep his paws to himself so he gets tossed on his arse out the gates for being a creeper.

Role With them Punches, and react to it IC the best way you can if you feel its 'disconnected' or 'ruining your immersion'. Just immerse yourself further. Filter it in your brain and react. I do it. I know others who do too. Not everyone's great on the fly, or knows everything, gotta learn it sometime. But if the efforts there just roll with it. Its way easier on you, and your blood pressure. Oh, and showing a bit of respect to other RP'ers that are putting forth effort and trying the benefit of the doubt is the way to fly so says I.

Given, time, patience, chance, fostering by involvement, you'll be surprised one day by someone if you give them enough of a chance. And chances in RP are cheap. They cost freetime. Which is cheaper than even a penny.

On the original topic, I think that racism is almost more prevalent today (in the real world, I mean) in more ways than it used to be. The problem is not that everyone is bringing the real world into Amia..

Yossarin was right in his post on the first page! The problem is their lack of creativity and their lack of support/reasoning for having their views.

Hahaha. Also, I agree Yoss. You are very good at being creative

It's bad that you know you're so good already, because then how are we supposed to compliment you?!

Estra and Yossarin, Sitting in a tree. K.i.S.S.i.N.G

Don't compliment him. RP with people and help him have fun.

On Modern Attitudes and Taboos: Another mild rant

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