Portalarium vs. Role-Play

I believe the multiple avatars should be separate, not shared per account. If I wanted to buy an additional acct for $45 I have separation, but can grant this new avatar access to my home, right? I'm unfamiliar with how all that works, but seems to me, multiple avatars to one acct should behave the same way as a user who purchased two accounts. Because buying that second account gets me around the limitations imposed by richards idea.

That way, the rp aspect isn't messed up by the early backers who wanted multiple accounts.

 

Ok here's my only issue with that really.. is that the role they give you only works well offline. Online most players will simply reject that role out of hand. Your description is almost just vague enough to work but Arabella's dialogue is just a little too precise.

Technically though.. the shared soul is not official lore. It's only Richard's verbal explanation to promote honest/consistent play.. but because he says it over and over people are already treating it as canon.

 

RP isn't messed up by any number of characters but by the people behind them. The number of account or characters on them are irrelevant in that regard.

Yes you can add anyone to your house simply by adding their name to the permissions.

 

is irrelevant if I buy separate accounts. I agree with this not lining up with any sort of story. As I can abuse the system just fine anyway.

 

Separate accounts are irrelevant if its your choice not to play that way. The idea of honest play can be relevant on a character to character basis. All that is requires is the decision by the player to be consistent with each character and the self control to not meta-game them.

 

Exactly, I agree with what you say. I don't intend to metagame, but richard's thoughts and reason why our multi avatar accounts share the same soul is not a good reason imho.

 

We do need to do a better job with Arabella's dialog about this and I'll try to get a more world-fiction compliant version next release. It is indeed canon that there are many avatars, not just you.

 

You rock Lum.. you do know that don't you?

But I'll take the opportunity to clarify a bit.. avatars is not the same as THE Avatar. The latter being what Arabella seems to be claiming. I accept that the world's definition may well have been lost/changed over the centuries. The way I read the dialogue it was 'you are the one and only Avatar' rather than you are one of many avatars who have visited in the past which I think would be quite acceptable.

 

As I said earlier I am totally in agreement with his intention.. but I find the explanation both contrived and unfortunate. All he really needs to do is say 'hey look the intention is we really want you to play your characters consistently.' and I think everyone would understand that. I don't like the 'family' name or shared reputation as mechanics but I understand why Richard wants those mechanics in place and I'm willing to live with that.. but trying to invent lore to explain those mechanics I think is a mistake.

 

I would like to think if she was still around and went through a Moongate then poof three different bodies. It is up to the player to make the distinction between their "Avatars", once they log in with a another version of themselves in the game the memories an experiences will start to diverge. Their shared soul is on a metaphysical level not a mental much less physical level. As for the well I killed the beggar instead of given him a coin, how does that affect my other accounts? I believe it falls more in line of the "Sins of the father getting passed on their children" reasoning. The players Soul has been split to create a new flesh and blood body but it is still connected on a metaphysical level.

Again...all this is total BS until the game goes live. But it sure is fun reading and making me remember all of those D&D games where I got my butt kicked by Manshoon Clones.

 

You can make this kind of argument for family groups.. and if an individual wants to RP a shared soul route that's one thing but it's not something that should be imposed. At least not in this kind of scenario in Shroad. You can get away with really vague stuff like "you may not remember but you've been here before".. but something like a shared soul just has.. issues (apart from being a very specific condition). Among them is basically a free license to meta-game your characters. So in order to discourage meta-gaming where one character avoids the consequences of another.. it encourages meta-gaming of another kind where.. in theory the player isn't gaming the system. It doesn't stop them from behavior the system doesn't track though which is where the bulk of the problems of meta-gaming are. That is with interactions between players.

 

Agreed. There is a stark irony when you consider the many times RG and DS refer to the fact that their in-game personas are not only opposite from one another, but also opposite from their RL personalities. RG reminds us in the R23 Postmortem Hangout, that his use of the word "Avatar" is derived from the Sanskrit "Avatara", literaly translated to english as "decent" or "to cross downward". In religious context, this refers to a deity possessing or taking the form of a mortal human.

One would assume that if the souls that occupy our bodies are considered to be god-like thus defining earth humans as god or demigod status by Novian standards, then some of those gods would have basic human imperfections, like moral indecision, and multiple personalities. The Christian god and Jesus are considered to be the same soul while simultaneously having a direct father and son relation. This "soul", according to the texts, can be seen sometimes as compassionate and forgiving, and sometimes as vengeful and destructive.

All we know for sure is that having this in place will sell a lot more accounts. Whether that is an intended consequence or not, we may never know.

 

How can you claim this if none of us actually have played through the story?

Honestly, I've seen weirder stuff...

Nothing is canon until the game goes live. Considering RG is the man behind this NEW series, I'll take his words over anyone else.

What makes you think that these choices will have a direct influence on all characters?

It means that the Oracle sees you for who you are, but that doesn't mean that everybody in Novia is aware of it.

I think you guys are taking it WAY too literal.

That doesn't mean you have to be a carbon copy of who you are. An alter-ego is part of one's being, after all.

So all that because of a typo?

I mean, I don't want you to feel like I'm dismissing all of these complains. I just believe that it's a little extreme to say that Portalarium and SotA isn't supportive of Roleplayers.

 

I point this out in my post

 

Based on the last hangout the thread title should be Lord British vs. Role Play because he adimantly states that this won't change.

 

@Bowen Bloodgood,

If its the lore aspect that concerns you about this, I think there are always ways around it. Something like re-incarnation? Strangers that are somehow connected by their soul?

 

Common sense. The story is designed to be played by a single character, not multiples played by the same player. The shared souls idea only came into play to promote the idea that having multiple characters you should still play consistently and not use multiple characters to meta-game. When originally we would be limited to 1 character per account. They wouldn't change the original story they worked so hard on just because they suddenly allowed more than 1 character on an account.

The consider that Richard hasn't declared it official lore and again, it's something that came up AFTER Richard and Tracy came up with the story.

Why do you assume there's a typo?

Also, I didn't say Portalarium isn't supportive of role-players. I think it's clear that they do.. or at least are well meaning.. but they could do better in the areas mentioned.

 

It's mainly Richard making these statements sure but Portalarium is his company and I didn't particularly want to single him out when my intent is geared towards the devs in general.

The intention of what he wants I hope doesn't change.. and part of me likes to think that he explains it the way he does not because he's sold on the lore aspect of it.. but because it's easy to understand his intentions.

Such as disregarding it entirely in favor of something that would make more sense and more consistent for New Britannia?

 

Meta brings the fun into your mmo!
That said: I need a second account. Shared character rep and whatnot makes the second and third character slot utterly worthless for me.

 

Want to chime in an agree with Bowen concerns. Honestly I have been avoiding lore and this line of thinking as I am sure things will be refined as we get to the final product. The changes in development is the main reason I tend to avoid most alphas and betas. In the end, either RP will center around the sandbox story provided or people will ignore it and do their own. Even on NWN server that had rich history ripe for RP and character development you would get that odd ball that would RP a vampire or robot, so who knows maybe players will end up hijacking the story and lore anyway.