Wheel of Time MUD

I collect warrants like baseball cards. Think I have nearly a complete set. Just wish I didn't have a FD warrant, I've never done anything wrong up there!

We've been talking about this upstairs, tossing around some ideas. We'll probably have to find a compromise between ideal things for players and managability by Staff. The current ones may lean too much towards the latter.

One talking point is that if we're going to make it easier to warrant, perhaps perma-warrants should go or become way harder to get.

Just posting so people will not feel ignored, since I don't expect there to magically be a new set of warranting rules on short notice.

Elysia wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 08, 2023 8:05 am

One talking point is that if we're going to make it easier to warrant, perhaps perma-warrants should go or become way harder to get.

Do perma-warrants even exist at this point outside of extreme cases where people repeatedly get warranted?

Person A gets a warrant for doing something. They request a pardon, get a pretty simple quest, and they get their quest and they get pardoned.

Person B gets a warrant. They repeatedly do the thing that got them the warrant while having a warrant. Eventually, for some reason or another, they demand a pardon and are provided with likely a difficult quest.

Person C gets a warrant. They repeatedly do things that got them the warrant for YEARS and are just generally considered permanently warranted.

There are complexities to those three, primarily to do with the perspective of the warranter/pardoner (i.e. is Eol going to remember this person did this thing one other time 3 years ago and already received a pardon for it) but they are basically the only scenario we see and I don't really think we have too many people falling into the C category besides perma-shitters.

Let's say wotmud is an ongoing Wot-based story we're all creating.

There's a set of things that are desirable and a set that is undesirable -things that interact with the story in a way most people like or dislike.

In storytelling terms, we can say - things people do builds tension, and some tension is GOOD tension, and some tension is BAD tension.

In warrant terms - sometimes we give warrants because we want to roleplay or pk that situation. Sometimes we give warrants to actively discourage a particular behaviour.

The problem is often that we don't have a consensus on what is good tension, and what is bad tension. Things that were seen as good before, can be seen as bad now - and so on.

My understanding of the laws of Shienar - and the spirit with which I applied them was that the primary REAL role of the Lancer laws was to ensure that there was a purely north pk zone on the map.

Thus, a player who broke a Lancer rule but did not disrupt north pk in any way would be creating GOOD tension. A player who broke a Lancer rule and created a same-side pk situation would be creating BAD tension. [not factoring in afk/ld clearly bad things here]

There are warrant scenarios that you chuckle over, RP around, try to give quests that would be fun for the player.
There are warrants that you basically think are wasting everyone's time, that involve a lot of legalese that actual lawyers have to get into, that just irritate and upset people and put them off the game.

Removing jurisdiction for us beyond 2n was indicating to me that imms are okay with same-side pk anywhere.
Permawarrants would make sense in the BAD tension scenario.

For managing GOOD tension, I think it's good for clans to exercise freedom within their rules, lets the story go in an open way.
For managing BAD tension, it's important that clans and imms understand what imms consider the spirit of the rules to be.

here's the thing: 99% of people don't pk people with warrants, they just restrict those players from enjoying that zone under normal circumstances. For example, the power of a fal dara warrant is not that a lancer is going to come looking for me, it's that I no longer have mob support and it makes pking in that area where a majority of the pk in 2023 centers around.. so if I like to pk, now this warrant has really put a choke hold on my character's ability to enjoy that part of the game. I also have to commit to admin duties like emailing staff/clans/explaining to my clan what happened, etc and that turns into something that no longer resembles the game I signed up to play casually for free of charge.

That starts to feel like a lot of work, which I get plenty of at my 9-5 (plus whatever else they squeeze from me). I'd say just practice empathy towards your fellow player, the community is small. Use common sense and good judgement if you can, when you can. Bout all I could ask for. As far as increasing jurisdictions of clans, I mean.. what exactly do you want to be able to do? Like I said, nobody hunts wanted's anymore, Thiefbane aren't active. I don't remember the last time I was online and another clan hunted down and killed a warrant that wasn't a DOT or every once in a blue moon we'll get some rando mc that some Sedai might put down but, outside of that it's pretty harmless out there (unless your a fc that is ). I just can't see what more clans could get other than increased power to inconvenience someone.

Here's an interesting concept.. Make wanteds worth double or one and a half the QPS, and if you don't catch them in 2 weeks time, the warrant goes away. Life goes on either way + now clans are incentivized to actually follow up on warrants.

If you use common sense and good judgment, you won't get a Lancer warrant. It sounds like you're upset at the idea that an action in the game would have a consequence, which is what roleplay is.

loret wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 09, 2023 10:45 pm

For example, the power of a fal dara warrant is not that a lancer is going to come looking for me, it's that I no longer have mob support and it makes pking in that area where a majority of the pk in 2023 centers around.. so if I like to pk, now this warrant has really put a choke hold on my character's ability to enjoy that part of the game. I also have to commit to admin duties like emailing staff/clans/explaining to my clan what happened, etc and that turns into something that no longer resembles the game I signed up to play casually for free of charge.

So it's ok for people to the things that cause a warrant, but it's not ok for them to have any consequences from doing said things. It just sounds like you want to be able to do w.e you want whenever you want and not have to answer for anything that is against the laws of where you are. Why even have a warranting system at all then? Let's just call it DM mud and get it over with at this point.

loret wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 09, 2023 10:45 pm

I also have to commit to admin duties like emailing staff/clans/explaining to my clan what happened, etc and that turns into something that no longer resembles the game I signed up to play casually for free of charge.

People f-ing around up north just doing whatever they want results in less fun for those who like to RP being good and fighting for the light, like they signed up for. Also it causes a lot of admin duties like reading mails, replying in threads about people f-ing around, catching them on to issue a warrant, reading the mails from them pleading they did nothing wrong, setting up quests for them to get rid of the warrant etc. No longer the game we signed up for.

Bottom line: Just don't f-around up north and we all get the game we singed up for.

this isn't like something going on constantly is it? I don't remember the last time I saw someone same side up north. Just seems overhyped like it's every day up there and it's just not?

People got FD warrants (at least when I was on Council) because you samesided during pk, you stole equipment or scalps from pk, you attacked a Lancer, or you attacked a White Tower character. The whole SS debacle aside, FD warrants were pretty limited to people samesiding during/immediately following DS pk, getting people killed (mostly with quake), or stealing things. If you don't do that dung, then you wont get a warrant.

And if you think that asking for a chortlesnorfling pardon quest is too much, then I really don't know how you are approaching this conversation in good faith. As other have said, really just seems like you want to act without any repercussions.

But to actually engage in the discussion: Borderstones made the warranting system make little to no sense, at least up north. The fact that Shienar's "jurisdiction" ends at 2n makes no sense from a game standpoint or from a lore standpoint. The real problem with the warranting system is that it is never going to be sustainable. Too much forum lawyering (some from actual lawyers). There are too many loopholes, too many ways to abuse the system, that I just don't see how it can ever be implemented in a way that makes sense without one side being upset.