Arresting Guide

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Geras
Posts: 1090
Joined: Sun Sep 11, 2011 8:50 pm

Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:31 pm

Even if the individual Orderite chars may not have a lot personal experience with magic Wimple, I don't think it's unreasonable to the assume the Order as a whole has a decent bit of institutional knowledge about dealing with mages. And if being bound/stripped/gagged is the standard procedure for the solitary cells than IMHO those should have a !magic flag as well...

But yah, I'm not saying tone down the "brutality" of being imprisoned by the Order. I'm saying that for lower risk detainees in the common cells the gag should be omitted whenever possible, and for higher risk detainees in the solitary cell that they should be processed quickly. I suspect most of the people that get put in the solitary cell are pretty much certain to burn so...

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Kinaed
Posts: 1984
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:54 pm
Discord Handle: ParaVox3#7579

Fri Dec 09, 2011 5:44 pm

Giving people on the justice side a little more power. Reeves should have the power to carry out a sentence then and there unless it's a noble or other important person. This isn't modern times. There are no trials or juries, unless you're a noble. If a thief is arrested for thieving, it should be straight to the flogging or stocks, or at most a jail sentence for a few hours/a day until there's enough people online to make the punishment worth RPing.

Inquisitors should be given the power to enact their judgments after a review of faith on a non-noble. This idea that the Grand Inquisitor or Cardinal needs to be appraised of every single burning before hand is ridiculous. They, ICly, have a lot more on their plate than the few PCs. Warrant, jail until an Inquisitor can come, review, punishment. Cutting out the middleman, so to speak, would help a lot in lessening the OOC pain of jail.
To my knowledge, both of the above are acceptable and have always been. If they're not allowed to do so, I'd think it'd be based on who is currently in charge of those organisations choosing to limit the power of their people. The Help Files specifically state the Grand Inquisitor must approve a noble Inquisition, but otherwise, there's nothing mentioned, and the Reeve/criminal aspect has never been staff regulated.

Enix
Posts: 84
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2011 12:14 am

Sat Dec 10, 2011 6:35 am

I have been trying to avoid this conversation, really. If you ask me magic should remain just a mysterious as it was originally intended for. Sure, the Order might now a little something about it, but lets think for a moment about this day and age. If you know too much, or have had a bit of experience in dealing with magic, eventually someone is going to accuse you of possibly being a witch yourself. Magic was tainted, and in the minds of those in this era contagious in a since.

I personally have no isses with a mage or criminal escaping the Tower or jails. It adds flavor and alot more RP rather than..."Oh ye, such and such is in tower and awaits his death." How bland.....With this been said, i think magic should still be regarded as mysterious. So if a mage manages to invoke a spell while he is held in custody, i think the playerbase should regard this as a mysterious case of magic, really. Perhaps even understand the mage was powerful enough to do something like this.

I am still rather upset with a past incident regarding this, where a player IMHO planned out and executed an amazing feat for a mage, and was eventually not only pentalized for it, but was forced to submit to RPA that was what seemed like called upon AFTER the incident, thus changing the entire dynamics of the situation. This was all OUTSIDE of the Tower.

Long story short, Magic does not seem to be feared anymore. Plus there is just too much known about it where people dont have be fearful of it. People know you have to do rituals, and know that if you shove a sock in your mouth and tie your fingers together then your left powerless. I would think magic evolved, despite the code difficulties of making that happen, RP wise I would assume that happens.

My two cents

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Kinaed
Posts: 1984
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:54 pm
Discord Handle: ParaVox3#7579

Sat Dec 10, 2011 6:50 am

Magic is the next code on the table for a major revamp, actually.

This being said, I am curious about this:
I am still rather upset with a past incident regarding this, where a player IMHO planned out and executed an amazing feat for a mage, and was eventually not only pentalized for it, but was forced to submit to RPA that was what seemed like called upon AFTER the incident, thus changing the entire dynamics of the situation. This was all OUTSIDE of the Tower.
That sounds horrible, and doesn't sound like any incident I know of. It's possible that it's a different take on an incident I do know of, but I cannot recall anyone who escaped and was penalized for escaping, or "forced to submit to RPA". I'm glad you brought it up, because I'd love to hear this case out in the open and address what you've heard.

Here is what I can recall:

Historically, the first mage to escape used a gating spell. That was just left alone by staff with a thumbs up for the mage for being prepared and executing well.

The second two escapes both used meditation. We blocked off meditating whilst being arrested and meditating whilst burning because we didn't feel these were reasonable. Staff did not engage either player in RPA, although for the 1st of those two, another player did unsuccessfully attempt to use RPA to locate the mage. The mage attempted to engage RPA to get their shackles off, but I think another player picked them before we actually did the RPA.

There was a failed/successful attempt by the Manus to rescue someone on the pyre that was, after careful consideration, deemed to be 'twinking' based on the twink rules. The mage being rescued themselves chose to resist the rescue, no RPA was called in, and the twinking mages were penalized xp for the twink, but the RP was left to stand - no one called in RPA. We made River Square no-magic after this attempt because the success rate for fleeing was then about 70% of cases, which we deemed too high for game balance. There was some mage protest around this, but it was my judgment call.

Which of these cases are you talking about?

And again, thank you for coming forth to speak about such things openly.

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Rabek
Posts: 185
Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2011 4:48 pm

Sat Dec 10, 2011 11:17 pm

Kinaed wrote:
Giving people on the justice side a little more power. Reeves should have the power to carry out a sentence then and there unless it's a noble or other important person. This isn't modern times. There are no trials or juries, unless you're a noble. If a thief is arrested for thieving, it should be straight to the flogging or stocks, or at most a jail sentence for a few hours/a day until there's enough people online to make the punishment worth RPing.

Inquisitors should be given the power to enact their judgments after a review of faith on a non-noble. This idea that the Grand Inquisitor or Cardinal needs to be appraised of every single burning before hand is ridiculous. They, ICly, have a lot more on their plate than the few PCs. Warrant, jail until an Inquisitor can come, review, punishment. Cutting out the middleman, so to speak, would help a lot in lessening the OOC pain of jail.
To my knowledge, both of the above are acceptable and have always been. If they're not allowed to do so, I'd think it'd be based on who is currently in charge of those organisations choosing to limit the power of their people. The Help Files specifically state the Grand Inquisitor must approve a noble Inquisition, but otherwise, there's nothing mentioned, and the Reeve/criminal aspect has never been staff regulated.
Staff-side wasn't what I was targeting with my statements, no. In my experience on both sides of the law, those in charge want to have their hand in each step of the investigations. They want to approve punishments before they are given, or the people who should be giving the punishments don't want to take responsibility for it, so they pass it on to someone higher up. My statements are directed at the players in the law side of things. The largest portion of waiting for people who have been arrested, in my experience, is waiting on someone high up in the chain to come handle the case personally. I don't think that should happen.

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Kinaed
Posts: 1984
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:54 pm
Discord Handle: ParaVox3#7579

Sun Dec 11, 2011 12:00 am

I agree. Good leadership literally requires delegation. Leadership is about organizing other people to do their best to achieve an outcome, not exercising personal power. The latter often gets in the way of being able to lead too as no one likes to feel like they're in someone else's shadow.

Great leadership is not easy to come by.

This said, I like what I'm seeing out of the playerbase in this sphere, I truly do.

RabbleRouser
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:23 pm

Sun Dec 25, 2011 8:46 pm

I just need to point out as someone who has played a tortured, abused, burned and dishonored mage that received all of the treatment despite never resisting that it was the moment the gag went on that being in jail went from being tolerable OOCly to be OOCly torturous.. If there is any way to keep them from casting that is more reasonable, (like the guards beating the crap out anyone that might be casting, and in the process causing them to get backlashed bad for even trying) it should be done instead of the full on gagging. Also, I'd like to note that the Reeve's book of laws says NOTHING about gagging. It says a mage is to be bound and blindfolded but not gagged.. I'd be much less upset with my prison time had that been the case, but being gagged was torture, not just in myself for being gagged but on everyone that was with me for how difficult it made any interactions.. Yeah, it may make sense ICly, but OOCly, it makes being in jail downright intolerable as a player and should be a LAST resort only for the worst possible cases.. Not thrown on anyone that might be a mage.. If the guards can beat the crap out of them and the guards are there, I'd think letting them Just be kept in an extra cell and !evoked should suffice.

This said, if I ever get a character gagged again, I am not playing them any longer.. I'll just ask the staff to kill them and have it over with, guilty or not. It's THAT bad an experience for me.

Geras
Posts: 1090
Joined: Sun Sep 11, 2011 8:50 pm

Mon Dec 26, 2011 4:41 am

One more thought to add here that just crossed my mind... activity.

It'd be nice if people who are imprisoned didn't have the same threshold to get deguilded for inactivity, as the RP isnt always there for them.

wimple
Posts: 180
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2011 6:53 am

Tue Dec 27, 2011 12:34 am

Someone keeps directing me to chime in on the forums and I'm going to assume it's to this post because it's a recent Order post and I don't have time to look through everything else.

1) I'm all about delegating. In fact, if it's a minor person, I really don't care what happens to them. After all, penances work the same way - I don't ask priests to report penances to me (not that it's even supposed to be allowed). But if you're talking a prisoner who is a major player, or if you're new to the guild, then you're going to have to make reports. I'm all about putting people on a fast track to promotion where they don't need oversight, but realistically, if I'm in a position where someone new I appoint is going to make life/death decisions about other characters, ICly and OOCly I feel pretty obligated to make sure that they respect that so feel a need to monitor at first. That's being responsible. The problem, for a lot of law enforcement I think, is really a lack of players in the group and/or high turnover.

2) Gagging, et all. I thought it was pretty clear that this isn't standard practice for everyone - only for high risk mages and/or those with unknown power. No-one low risk. No one that just got too drunk and started spouting heretical things. Frankly, I've never had any interest in having characters involved in law enforcement. When I had to start taking over some of this stuff, I ICly got grief about how prisoners weren't being handled correctly. While it may not be in the Reeves handbook, based on what I've been told and seen with other characters that popped up again, that has been standard practice for mages within the Order. I didn't just pull it out of my hat and decide that was how it was going to be; I thought I was going on precedent. Again, gagging/solitary is extreme measures in extreme cases, if the original post didn't make that clear then I'll think about how to edit it.

3) Law enforcement definitely has a onus on getting things through quickly (which is difficult with a low player base and some players, especially leaders, who have conflicting schedules or availability that doesn't match the prisoner). It'd be great if the people who feel strongly about this made law-enforcement alts so those problems weren't problems.

I apologize if any of that comes of harshly - it isn't my intent, it's just really late and I'm tired. :)

Geras
Posts: 1090
Joined: Sun Sep 11, 2011 8:50 pm

Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:36 am

Actually it was the NPC thread I was asking you to chime in on wimple. My bad.

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