[Poll] Should Orderites be allowed to have mage alts?

[Starstarfish]

This conversation brings up some questions that could possibly all be threads of their own:

- Is the premier and primary playing experience on TI meant to be playing mages to the point where we are concerned that people will not play the game and/or have interest in other characters if they don't/can't play mages? If that's true - how do we work on making the other concepts more appealing? Is it against the intention/theme for the main RP interest for people to be playing mages?

- Mages are rewarded with free rec levels for adding to the game's central conflict but we are also discussing that many mage characters don't actually actively participate in that conflict and thus aren't enemies of the Order. If that's true why do those characters necessarily need to be mages? Is it mostly for mechanics benefits and not the RP? Is it mostly for private RP that doesn't actually add to the central conflict?

- The current interpretation of Crossover policy is that one person is not allowed to interact closely with the same character over multiple alts. People have a plethora of ways to interact with a mage without every knowing 100% (without being meta) who that person is ICly let alone who plays them. In some cases/spells it's within the policy of the spell itself to not even assume/guess who the character is without breaking rules.

So ... there's a lot of scenarios involving mages where one can be breaking the letter of current Crossover policy through no fault of anyone involved.

- Given the fact that Orderites cannot codedly submit warrants the same way as Reeves (AFAIK) and other functions like ... Blacklisting from the Merchants requires external RP to help investigations/hunts the "stumble upon evidence" and accidentally becoming aware of work against your own mage/BH/antag alt is not Order specific. It's a general alt issue.

- At times we seem to all agree that because of game population we need to allow alts or otherwise vital roles won't be filled but there is overall the atmosphere of people not trusting one another (or staff being concerned) about people actually having alts and behaving to the point where we discussed (and perhaps did) implementing hardcore warnings about interacting with people too much.

Previously there was this discussion: http://www.ti-legacy.com/forums/viewtop ... 3&start=10

So this odd stance where we trust people to police about themselves against self-preservation better on the meta than we trust people to police themselves about other people overall seems a bit weird. I think maybe this conversation should be if the current Crossover policy in general is working for the community at its current health/size. Either we overall trust people not to be meta or we don't but this sort ephemeral idea that we trust people in some scenarios but not others is a tad weird.

[Kinaed]

I'd like to reiterate that the reason this topic came up was because it had been sitting in our Staff Talking Points for months, and we finally cleared away enough backlog to get to it. That it is topical for two players at the moment is pure coincidence. It doesn't even have to do with the two policy concerns raised about it in the past month.

I know people are inclined to feel targetted when something pertains to them and few others, but please let that feeling go. Whomever was in this position at the time it came up would feel the same way, and there's not much Staff can do about it. We have a long history of getting to things when we get to them.

As for the fact that this is on the forums now - as I said in my original post, Staff discussed the Talking Point, couldn't decide, so kicked it back to the pbase.

On that, it's looking like the pbase on the whole does want the system to change. As we have no substantiated policy cases regarding either current player in this position, if we do make changes, we will grandfather the existing characters.

[Geras]

I'm voting yes, and my concern is pragmatic - I don't think we'll have enough Orderites if this is applied, and a strong Order is very important to the health of the game.

If this restriction does go through, please apply it only to Knights and Inquisitors and not rank-and-file priests.

[Myrella]

How about the less restrictive option of not allowing Knight/Inqs to play mages, but allowing mages to have a priest alt. This would allow more players to fill out the Order while still keeping the opposed 'factions' separate.

[wimple]

I generally agree with Stardust. I think this situation with alts keeps coming up again and again, either in OOC meetings or on the forums. I realize this may be in part because it's taken some time since it was raised to be raised to the PBase, but it honestly feels like oversharing for me in OOC chats to have policy issues where this was an issue (particularly when it was unfounded) come up to be shared. I've been caught up in unfounded accusations before and it makes me feel like it could happen again - it can't, in my case, I just stopped playing the only alt I had at the time and haven't logged into discord since. So in a way, this continuous cycle of news about these things has just made me engage with the game and community less. Even looking at the log for this past week's OOC meeting, staff concerns about rumor mongering came up over PC deaths - I don't engage in rumor mongering or that kind of OOC talk, but it sure sounds like lots of people do if it's important enough for staff to bring it up, which makes me concerned about the community.

I think at some point, we wither make the decision to trust people to have alts and go from that perspective or we decide we don't and don't allow it across the board.

I wound up voting no, not because I don't trust players or their alts, but just because I'm generally sick of this issue coming up. I think it'd be great if priest/priestesses being an exception would work, but I have the feeling that will not work well in practice, because it's just going to keep coming up and we'll keep having the conversation until it's not permitted.

[Kinaed]

Hmm, I have to admit, Wimple has a point. I also know that blocking players in the Order from having mage alts won't fix that particular problem - because if it's not this, then it will probably be something else that players don't trust one another about. It happens pretty much any time a stressful IC situation comes up and anyone can imagine a way their opposition might be cheating. It's also not unique to TI. The fear of cheating is just human psychology when engaging in high conflict scenarios, which storytelling frequently invokes.

That aside, I think it's narrow to believe this question is predominately about people cheating or feeling like people are gossiping. Rather, a large part of this question is about the design of IC information flow, player exposure in game structure, and what is best for the game experience of all involved.

[Dreams]

Hmm, I have to admit, Wimple has a point. I also know that blocking players in the Order from having mage alts won't fix that particular problem - because if it's not this, then it will probably be something else that players don't trust one another about. It happens pretty much any time a stressful IC situation comes up and anyone can imagine a way their opposition might be cheating. That's not unique to TI, that fear is just human psychology when engaging in high conflict scenarios, which storytelling frequently requires.

That aside, I think it's narrow to believe this question is predominately about people cheating or feeling like people are gossiping. Rather, a large part of this question is about the design of IC information flow, player exposure in game structure, and what is best for the game experience of all involved.

I will ask this question, then - to be answered or not answered.

If someone has had either a mage or an order alt at one point, are they going to be barred from making one or the other once that character dies? Because if the concern is knowledge being passed about, a recent death could mean a passing of knowledge that you can't get rid of - you don't forget simply because the character died. Even if, eventually, the knowledge doesn't mean anything, they have it upon creation. So, is it going to be locked in permanently? Having knowledge in one's head doesn't change just because your character dies. So, if this is a problem, then recently dead would have all the information for either side.

AS A NOTE: I am not saying that this should be implemented. I'm just saying, if simply having knowledge is a problem, then there are many occasions when this could be an issue, not just having the alts simultaneously. And, it's impossible to stop it completely.

If someone is going to cheat, they are going to cheat in whatever way they can no matter how many 'blocks' are put into place, and we can only hope that it is reported and caught. If someone is going to be trustworthy, then they are going to be trustworthy. All this does, really, is punish players who are doing things right, rather than those who are doing things wrong - those who are absolutely downright determined to do things wrong, they will do them anyway by some means.

[Vee]

As my very southern mother would say, "I don't have a horse in this race," given that I've never played an Orderite nor a mage (#merchants4lyfe), but I voted yes because I'm going to agree with Kitty on this one. If a person is going to cheat, they're going to cheat no matter what policies are in place and I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to crossover until they've been proven to not deserve said benefit of the doubt.

Also, just given how small our pbase is, I think it'd be more harmful than helpful to place more restrictions on alts. But I definitely understand the concerns and the various hypothetical scenarios raised throughout this thread.

[galaxgal]

I voted a belated no not out of distrust for the playerbase as a whole, but because it seems like a solid common-sense heuristic to prevent unintended incidents and the unintended chilling of player conflict via crossover accidents.

This conversation brings up some questions that could possibly all be threads of their own:

- Is the premier and primary playing experience on TI meant to be playing mages to the point where we are concerned that people will not play the game and/or have interest in other characters if they don't/can't play mages? If that's true - how do we work on making the other concepts more appealing? Is it against the intention/theme for the main RP interest for people to be playing mages?

This concerns me the most: if being a mage is that much more favorable over being an orderite, then that warrants feedback and discussion of why that's the case - or why people wouldn't want to play alts in some unrelated essential Guild if they can't also have magic.

[AlwaysShunny]

Voted no. From what I've read in helpfiles, and from what I've seen in practice, mages are perpetually in conflict, directly or indirectly, with the Order based on their mere existence. Passive Order characters interact in confidence with Knight and Inquisitors on a greater frequency than the rest of the playerbase. Knowledge picked up in these encounters will affect a mage alt, subconsciously or not.

I'm not a fan of the 'for me but not for thee' treatment this is getting. I don't view this much differently from the Reeve-Brotherhood rule that's in place. It sucks that I can't trust the playerbase not to metagame, but metagaming seems an endemic issue.