death and arrests

One of the major issues on this site is death, and other forms of “death”, such as imprisonment of your character. This is an issue by how it’s resolved on the site. Ultimately, every site with a combat aspect to it has to address this issue in some way shape or form. This site has addressed it in the worst, and unfortunately most common, way possible. By saying you can say “I do or don’t want my character to die”.

Now let’s discuss what our site is for a second. It’s an rp site and essentially, a game. We, at this site, create character’s and have those character’s interact with each other. In doing so, we write a story with these character’s for our character’s themselves, and the site as a whole. We are not however, writing a book, if we were each of us would have absolute control over each character’s actions and we don’t have that. We have control over our character’s actions but other characters have their own actions. Meaning if you do something to provoke them, they should have the right to at least attempt to kill or imprison you.

Let me use an example to better explain what I’m saying.

Let’s say the character Towa Lamira, a B-rank, makes an attempt to take on and arrest Janneline Ariel, the b-rank dark mage and major player of savage skull because she is a criminal and Towa is the site’s IC ‘police’ of sorts. Let’s say the reasoning for this is Janneline has murdered the C-rank character Akryn, for ‘reasons’.
Ultimately, Towa should be capable of arresting Janneline should she defeat her, whether Janneline wants to be arrested or not. Likewise, Janneline, should be able to murder Towa should she so desire in this situation(this goes both ways Towa has every right to kill Janneline since Janneline will probably be trying to kill her as well). Why is it that Towa has to get Janneline’s permission and vice versa when, in all honesty, one of the appeals of rp sites is that you have to get your character to adapt to issues and develop as a person.

Ultimately the site can’t just cut the red ribbon and take away your say as a player. Otherwise it would be horrendous. Thus I am promoting an approval process for both death and imprisonment of characters.

the app:

The rules in general:
1. Every death must have a purpose. Troll killing, or killing 1 or more people every two months is strictly forbidden, actually, unless there's a huge event with high likely hood of death, you should never go over 1 kill every 6 months. Basically don't try and kill people over OOC grudges or every staff member will be against you. That is not a good thing in case you didn't know.
2. D-ranks are 'immune' to death. This is for the sole purpose of fairness and the fact that nobody wants their character to die, especially so soon in the game. Only way for a D-rank to die is by choice.

3. You can't be killed by an npc unless by choice.

4. An administrator must approve a death before it's executed or attempt to execute and if the admin says no. Any rped attempt kill that character must fail. Basically, you need our permission to kill and our permission is revokable afterwards if the killed can prove they are better off alive than dead or if they can prove that they could have survived.

Well what happens after I die?

There are two circumstances in that can happen after your death.

The first is if you were killed in plot or whatever the matter may be. You died and you didn't just kill yourself off. If this happens you get 50% of your total experience that you previously had for a new character guaranteed. Based on your next app you can get even more of it back. You can get back a total of 80% of your previous character's maximum experience after death.

So if your character had say, 1,000,000 experience upon dying, you automatically get 500,000 EXP for your next character.

After your application for your new character is finished, you can get even more based on application quality. The maximum total you can get is 800,000 from this application. 500,000(which you get automatically) + 300,000 = 800,000 or 80%.

note: you can also do this via history as a means of asking players to explain how they got so strong in the first place but apps are probably better because they’re required

note: Don't make a new account. We can just replace your old name with a new name and save yourself some time.

The second circumstance is if you killed your character off because it wasn’t working out or you just got bored rping them. If you killed your character off just because you didn't want to rp with him anymore. You get to start from scratch. That's all there is to it.


Last note: Naturally, the exact same app I presented also acts as an arrest app just replace dying, with incarcerating.

In my honest opinion, in regards to ambushes/stake outs, a player should relinquish all protection from this type of thing anyway. If you have the balls to go into a job and attack someone then you should have the balls to accept your defeat and any punishment headed your way. Sure you could have someone come in and save your ass at the last second so long as it makes sense ICly of course, but overall it's your character's own life you're playing through and risking.

However, then you have the issue of the person being ambushed which is where the rules do need to be (and are being) worked on so that it's fair on that player as well. Maybe have it so that jobs of A-rank or above -if invaded - can result in death.

As for the 'penalties' for dying, this shouldn't happen imo. If it WERE to happen then it should only be for the one instigating the attack in the first place, not for the initial victim.

Just my quick two cents before I go to work.

I can see arresting and throwing in prison happen, because honestly why else would we invade each other. But killing a character is an entirely different matter. We can't force death on people, most of us here have made an unique character they love. And I assume people don't want it to be killed or die in what way so ever without their own consent.

Also this puts the staff in an awkward and rather horrid position, where they not only play judge but executioner as well. Let's say there is a battle, and someone pulls a good move that could kill the other character. But he doesn't see it that way. Then the staff has to meddle in it to decide if that character lives or dies. I for one am not going to play that role where I have to decide when someone thinks goes unfair in their own death battle.

Hiro Villen wrote:The second circumstance is if you killed your character off because it wasn’t working out or you just got bored rping them. If you killed your character off just because you didn't want to rp with him anymore. You get to start from scratch. That's all there is to it.

This however I highly agree with, for time now I have seen people off their characters in a unfashionably manner. And just go on with a new character, same exp, same amount of jewels, and even sometimes the same magic. This is highly redundant especially when the story is a simple one like: 'Frederick jumps off a cliff and dies an horrible death'
It almost feels as a reward, for killing off their characters in a to easy way and without putting any effort in it. The same thing counts for leaving a guild as well in my opinion.

To put it simply, death comes down to people's ability to RP. I am definitely not against my character dying if she does something stupid or get caught in a situation they can't handle.

The fact is though that some people get very attached to their characters and don't want  anything bad to happen to them.

As for invasions, it's not fair to say that the person being invaded should be okay with his character dying for the reason I mentioned above~

-Sounds harder to regulate.
-The site is meant for those that have never RP'd or those that have just started and that would put them at a huge disadvantage if any player just wanted to ruin their day or had beef with them outside the game
-Will lead up to controversial issues such as more drama between players outside of their character and in character as your hate for someone could translate to those in character and you could potentially target that player
-Theoretically if death was enabled without consent, a guild could literally raid a public topic and kill all of those in it.

@Seijin, I find learning from other sites and how they do things fantastic. If you ever find time, read how other sites, fairy tail or maybe even bleach or Naruto sites, have answered these questions.

As to answer your issues I'll answer them through my proposed system:

1. Naturally, it's supposed to be systematically difficult through this method to kill somebody, and that you actually need a genuine reason to kill somebody IC and that your expected to show it through threads. In fact, this is the only situation where staff should go into 'police mode' to protect their player base and make it genuinely difficult to get approved.

2. Mostly the same thing in number one although yes it's just genuinely harder to implement which is why in the template for the app and rules proposed, there's a spot in the app to provide threads that pertain to why you should be allowed to TRY and kill. Obviously there should be multiple and just plain old fights won't suffice, it could be regular to expect at least two or three threads of interaction and prior contact to even be approved. There's also the question, "does the player want to die?" which is a simple yes or no question and easy to double check. The answer makes it easy to decide how critical you should be, if the answer is yes, he is willing to die, you can allow a little bit(not a lot or even a decent amount but a very little amount) of leniency whereas if the answer is no, you need to be as strict as possible and require the best possible outcome. I have seen similar systems(I based it off of said system) and it has worked out fantastically for them, although its easier because they specialize workloads for staff members as to make everyone's jobs easier which I've suggested time and time again but that's not the immediate issue we're discussing so moving on.

3. the system prevents such things through, "you must have administrative consent" and "d=rank mages may not be killed without player consent"(which could be extended to C-rank). The second of those immediate examples provides defense for newer rper's as well.

Now on to everyone else:

@Frederick: In terms I can put simply, there are ways to solve these things. One way, if were talking about staff members getting attacked, is use of the 'admin' or 'npc' accounts and using those to announce approval of a death request and not announcing which staff member approved it, making it anonymous(this also requires a lot of maturity and unbias from said staff members however and I approve the admins doing this although not all the mods).

If we're talking about executioner, the system simply alludes to allowing a single attempt to kill, which can succeed or fail based on rp ability. The system also requires 'purpose' and good purpose at that. You can't just kill somebody in a fight, there needs to be a deep reason to kill which is where the app, although simple enough to understand, requires some detailed explanation if you expect to get approved, which should not happen.

@Legacy: We were on different pages until near the end where you said something about where A-rank invasion missions regard these things. And I never actually mentioned 'penalties' which there are none. You get a majority of your experience back if you die, unless the death was lazy and non plot or site related(Read the support I got from Fred).


Ultimately here are some lasting things to think about. We, as a site, can do better in regards to this. I know so as most of our admins are dedicated to this site and also fairly intellectual. The system I proposed is, I believe, good. Although not perfect and our site could probably fine tweak it or find something a hundred times better than what I proposed its still alright and even improvable. Naturally, take death out of the typical arena pvp stuff as it's a relatively OOC thing where people just pit their character's against one another. I just always get that itching feeling whenever I see situations like in the example above and almost nothing happens for either character except the two hate each other, which is the only option. In the above example under what we currently do, Janna can't kill Towa, despite having reason, and Towa can't arrest Janna, despite having the job to do such.

The possibility of death, at least later down the road, opens up a lot of possibilities for development and making our player base, which as seijin said, is fairly new to rp, get better at rping in all sorts of manners.

Hiro the fact is it can ruin someones story, while death is good it can turn someone off from the site if they come in get a good story going, get invaded and die. I can't agree with this sorry.

Death is agreed between players only. This is quickest way to piss people off and will stop the S-rank killing off competition that may ensue. This would promote bullying if you lost 1/2 exp per death.

Jailing at least gives chance to RP it out and find ways to escape or clean record. People forget that actions have consequences and jailing/kidnapping be preferable.

All I see is some scenario going down like this

> Players hate one specific player
> One of them invites them to a public thread with combat enabled
> Multiple players jump in to kill one specific player
> That one specific player will not want to continue
> Drama

Theoretically, I'm sure any S-Rank or H-Rank could destroy C-Ranks without any help. So limiting it to only D-Ranks that get the exemption from being killed wouldn't even work well.

I am not sure how I feel about this myself. However Seijin in regards to your concerns about abusing or OOC killing I feel Hiro has adressed that well with staff checking killings.

I mean if you see a thread that is just total bs "trap killing" all it takes is an admin going "lol nope" and bam no death occurs.

Not sure about the rest of this.

Regardless of whether or not an admin is there. bringing an admin into it would cause drama as well. It would also be annoying to have to wait for an admin to approve of whether or not you're dead.

> Omg this admin didn't approve of his death! He or she must be bias!
> Omg this admin allowed them to kill me! He or she must be bias!

Seijin wrote:Regardless of whether or not an admin is there. bringing an admin into it would cause drama as well. It would also be annoying to have to wait for an admin to approve of whether or not you're dead.

> Omg this admin didn't approve of his death! He or she must be bias!
> Omg this admin allowed them to kill me! He or she must be bias!

Basically this is the reason staff won't step in on things like this, so saying 'let the staff decide' isn't gonna fly here. I for one wouldn't want to step in between two people and say 'You're dead, start again.'

To be honest I thought the sacred altar was introduced for this reason:

I.e. If you die you can be revived (it just might take a while)

So much like dragonball z death is essentially meaningless apart from for plot and shit.


Also, I feel that invasions should ALWAYS be death enabled. Particularly if a legal invades a dark. Why? Because dark guys are evil and they are gonna try and kill you? You invade Sinali she isn't going to just beat you and let you walk away. She will kill you, eat your flesh and make a chair from your bones. XD