NPCs from the Monarch Quest

[Geras]

And I should add that I'd be really sad to see you withdraw from TI Rabek, as I really and truly enjoy RPing with you.

I'm going to throw out another compromise here: what about applying with those chars to other positions? Grand Inquisitor is open, which seems a natural home for Angold - applying for that position as Angold wouldn't be giving any advantage over any other player or character, as a fresh char could apply into that position with the same background easily. Angold would just get to keep some existing RP active, which as others have pointed out, would be nice for the people who had chars rping with Angold as well.

Anschel's not as cut and dry, but there are quite a few GL positions open or possibly opening that could have similar results (ie 1-2 Reeve GL positions, 1 Merchant position, etc). People can't app straight into being a count right now so that's a bit more of a problem, but I wonder if there's a creative way to get around that?

We really need people to fill these positions quite badly, and they wouldn't really be keeping their pfiles. They'd be keeping the names, and otherwise they'd be getting treated like everyone else. Thoughts?

[wimple]

I'd love for the players to stay and don't think nulling anything that got them out would be that big of a deal. I had several people send me tells during the quest, wishing that Angold could stay because of the good things it was doing for church RP.

If the issue is keeping their noble titles, perhaps they could spurn those, as a result of losing the quest, and thus just be gentry. Their positions in guilds and outside of that would then be their home. Gentry and their guild positions aren't anything that would require an app.

[Temi]

I won't weigh in on the actual question here, since it's about player opinions, but in the effort of peace-keeping...

I know that Rabek and Kinaed don't communicate well and my taking over that correspondence is probably a good idea, however it was initially put. Any suggestions made by Kinaed were, I'm sure, made with the thought that she was being nice and relenting for Angold as well, as she wasn't aware of the wrap-up RP that makes that a very tricky situation. That said, it's not entirely impossible that something might happen if we decided that way, but there's no getting around that it's very tricky, and probably would have been handled differently given the assumption of a chance.

There have been some serious miscommunications, such as whether this was completely changing that earlier decision or just saying 'okay, fine, if you want to see what everyone else thinks, go ahead'. I don't think anyone actually meant to start trouble or be unfair to anyone else, just a lot of feeling blindsided and unexpected backlash, which hopefully we can further keep from this thread and in general, however justified it certainly looks from any one viewpoint. If you see anything that seems snipey, please just ignore it, and comment based on the merit of the arguments. If you can't ignore it, I'd be glad to hear your view on the topic (read: the NPCs) in game as an alternative medium to posting upset.

[RabbleRouser]

Allow me to chime in in the absolutely NOT department, though most of my points have already been touched on, revolving around them being NPCs from the get-go and pre-argreed upon were temporary characters and not free nobles everyone gets to keep as booby prizes for failing the question.. The reward to win, if an NPC got the win was to keep the NPC and the cost of failure was them being retired as NPCs and not suddenly being turned into NPCs.. Only way I could see an exception would be a twist on the Death rules in that they must be paid for, in full.. Not once but twice - Double their cost in XP... Or with 100 QP to save them from death... I did not get to KEEP a dead character just because I was clever in the way I tried to survive and they should get no kudos for 'dieing' either.

What's more.. At least one of the NPCs I will not name I feel should be found very much dead in a 'live by the sword, die by the sword' type fashion as they came in and first things they started doing as an NPC was killing off PCs, including one of mine and YES, I have a grudge.

[Kinaed]

Well, this was a rousing discussion of sorts. Thank you everyone who chose to participate in the discussion. I'm going to wrap it up now.

I feel that there were excellent, valid points raised on both sides of the fence, and I admire the care displayed by those who want to help their fellow players keep beloved characters. However, the various points about why it should not happen (when weighed up by my value systems, priorities, and so on) weighed up more strongly on the balance scales for me.

Taking this thread as a whole, my final decision on the subject is that the NPCs will have to retire as originally planned.

Thanks again, everyone, for participating in this decision.

Warm regards,
Kinky