An Update on Lore - July 2015

[dogbew]

OG Hawklight days, if I recall correct. Maybe not. I'm not as old as I boast to be.

Hawklight was the real OG, we had angels, demons and l33t wizards, even a guy who was somehow related to harateth.

 

[Rygan]

Hawklight was the real OG, we had angels, demons and l33t wizards, even a guy who was somehow related to harateth.

Werejaguar.

 

[TheDeester]

Ah, the glory days.

 

[Archbishop]

Please bare in mind that I'm merely disagreeing with you. Still like you IG, haha.

I hate to bug you, but you understand this is a fansty server? I can't say that magic wasn't obligable for everybody at one point in time, since I only came here right before the Courroption ended.

Fantasy doesn't always have to include magical elements. To make something fantasy, it needs only have elements that are strange, foreign, or extreme. While magic seems to be popular, I tend to view this server more along the lines of a medieval RP server with fantasy elements. In many ways, it feels like a combination of LoTR racial elements and GoT political aspects. While Tolkien often had magic in his stories and so did GRRM, especially early in the first era and later in the third era with the wizards, they were never truly that important in the overarching themes for LoTR and so few people even have any abilities in GoT.

Also, in many ways, the magic is more wielded by deities or in instances of extreme and dire needs, not day-to-day shenanigans.

I understand sometimes magic isn't the best thing to include in a server, since it is medival. I've seen some servers that don't allow magic, and for me, there terribly dull.

Dull is a relative term. I know it's a slippery slope fallicy but it can't be helped: Magic being opened up slightly is only a hop, a skip, and a jump away from High Fantasy, which honestly is in the realms of WoW or other unrealistic and, oftentimes, broken worlds that don't make sense.
I often find fun in the mundane, and in manipulating existing current built-in power structures. Magic just provides a 'deus-ex-machina' for anything and everything, rendering most understandings of the world to be meaningless.
Example:
I don't want people entering a castle I built. Some magician develops a magic to either, jump over the walls, fly over the walls, teleport into the castle, or walk ethereally through the walls. It's game-breaking

Even if introducting magic to the players will dive bomb and crash and burn, that doesn't mean the Staff can't re-work it and release it at a later date.
And in all honesty, if players can't handle magic, I vote back to the old system, where only two people know magic and it's hard to learn.

If magic is brought back to the masses, then the floodgate is opened, and putting the genie back in the bottle is difficult if not outright impossible. One simply needs to look at Legacy characters as an example of this. Despite changes in lore, those characters still exist.

 

[Immerael]

Here's why I think magic will help the server. On top of giving Players that don't want to be tree hugging hippes a form of combat they can pursue there are many other aspects it will help.

Consider the political effect of mages coming back. Will the kingdoms embrace them? Deem them heretics and attempt to hunt them down? Will it spark a magical arms race between kingdoms to have a Mage around? I don't know that's up to the kingdoms.

Also chars can embark on quests to find ways to counter and fight magic in some way. Places that were long considered useless will become important again. E.g; fortresses that were made to be magic resistant are now after all these years hot commodities.

Legacy chars can be played again without the wails of everyone, me included, accusing them of cheating or abusing positions since the majority of legacy chars that I am aware of are staff. Why? Because their is a plausible way to defeat them that doesn't include 1000 soldiers, 4 siege engines and a really upset polar bear. Not that I want those characters gone in any way but so long as it is plausible to defeat someone I'm fine. Notice there is a difference between Plausible and possible.

Also plate armor will become naturally restricted to places it should be. Namely war and high ranking guards on active duty and also open up positions for more creative fights. If you put on your plate armor and run at the Evocation magus in a straight line you're going to have a bad day. However if you sneak around behind in no armor with a bow you just might get the right shot.

Also it will encourage folks to RP in larger groups. Folks want protection against mages gather in a group. Dedicated group could fairly easily defeat a Mage if they fight smart and don't just rush them and count on their "I shifted my weight to my back leg" logic to save them. Tactical thinking will emerge. Mages will do the same. An evocation Mage is strong but very vulnerable to surprise attacks. If he teams up with a small group of warriors or another Mage boom, he and his group are much more dangerous. A nice side effect is more interesting RP which is what we're all here for.

 

[NIAH]

Please bare in mind that I'm merely disagreeing with you. Still like you IG, haha.



Fantasy doesn't always have to include magical elements. To make something fantasy, it needs only have elements that are strange, foreign, or extreme. While magic seems to be popular, I tend to view this server more along the lines of a medieval RP server with fantasy elements. In many ways, it feels like a combination of LoTR racial elements and GoT political aspects. While Tolkien often had magic in his stories and so did GRRM, especially early in the first era and later in the third era with the wizards, they were never truly that important in the overarching themes for LoTR and so few people even have any abilities in GoT.

Also, in many ways, the magic is more wielded by deities or in instances of extreme and dire needs, not day-to-day shenanigans.



Dull is a relative term. I know it's a slippery slope fallicy but it can't be helped: Magic being opened up slightly is only a hop, a skip, and a jump away from High Fantasy, which honestly is in the realms of WoW or other unrealistic and, oftentimes, broken worlds that don't make sense.
I often find fun in the mundane, and in manipulating existing current built-in power structures. Magic just provides a 'deus-ex-machina' for anything and everything, rendering most understandings of the world to be meaningless.
Example:
I don't want people entering a castle I built. Some magician develops a magic to either, jump over the walls, fly over the walls, teleport into the castle, or walk ethereally through the walls. It's game-breaking



If magic is brought back to the masses, then the floodgate is opened, and putting the genie back in the bottle is difficult if not outright impossible. One simply needs to look at Legacy characters as an example of this. Despite changes in lore, those characters still exist.

I could be entirely wrong. I could way off base with my response here as I am in no way an authority and I don't know anything about how it's going to be handled. However, I don't think this is going to be in any way an influx of world breaking magic. It will still need to be learned through a teacher, and I trust the staff and those they've selected not to give it to a player who cannot reliably RP its effects and use. I could be wrong, but I feel like it's not going in the direction of ages ago where every Bob, Joe, and Tom can bring meteor strikes down or whatnot. It'll still be a tightly monitored system, likely because of the newness.

The truth is that many folks have been asking and hoping for a wider array of opportunities in this regard. This is an attempt to give a significant portion of the playerbase a chance at achieving it, not necessarily having it. It's one of those things that I don't think can or will please everyone, but I don't imagine it'll have too much of an effect at first as it'll take some time for folks to be taught anything. It'll give everyone a chance to test the waters and see it roll into effect slowly.

But again. I am Jon Snow in this.

 

[Lannis]

So does this mean I should stop working on Floata-Magna?

The Floata-Magna dream lives on

 

[Tybalt]

It's rather impossible to debate a system's power-level without being able to see it.

Cogitation, at least the original version, was built in mind to be at par, or in many cases far under, what martial characters could do in combat. Really the only reason people would want to go into it was for the flavor and the creative application of the spells. If you were wanting straight power, it would have been better to have fought with a sword instead. I had figured most magic schools were going to be like that...


Ugh, that was a thing wasn't it.

With two years of RPing under my belt, I think I can say having supernatural abilities that a regular man doesn't have, it would be hard to adjust the lore to keep it from being OP. And I don't need to be In-game to say that. Also, I never complained about these because they were part of the lore, magicwise, Iv'e had my character personally KO'd with a single thought by Cognition magic and captured, blown off the roof of a tavern, and completely stunned with no way to combat it.

That ain't too bad. But I have heard of people having their legs snapped in half through thick walls, have a whole bandit Organization shut down by a mystic that could track their lifeforce throughout the NK. @BrianAT16 @ace134 @The Courier

Not saying it's impossible. But it will be really hard to create a balanced magic system.

 

[Teeke]

I've been brutalized by mystics, cogitators, and thaumaturigists. and still i'd do it again.

 

[SpartanDory]

With two years of RPing under my belt, I think I can say having supernatural abilities that a regular man doesn't have, it would be hard to adjust the lore to keep it from being OP. And I don't need to be In-game to say that. Also, I never complained about these because they were part of the lore, magicwise, Iv'e had my character personally KO'd with a single thought by Cognition magic and captured, blown off the roof of a tavern, and completely stunned with no way to combat it.

That ain't too bad. But I have heard of people having their legs snapped in half through thick walls, have a whole bandit Organization shut down by a mystic that could track their lifeforce throughout the NK. @BrianAT16 @ace134 @The Courier

Not saying it's impossible. But it will be really hard to create a balanced magic system.

i dont doubt that this happend, all im going to say, is powergamingy things like that happened even without magic

 

[Raith]

With two years of RPing under my belt, I think I can say having supernatural abilities that a regular man doesn't have, it would be hard to adjust the lore to keep it from being OP. And I don't need to be In-game to say that. Also, I never complained about these because they were part of the lore, magicwise, Iv'e had my character personally KO'd with a single thought by Cognition magic and captured, blown off the roof of a tavern, and completely stunned with no way to combat it.

That ain't too bad. But I have heard of people having their legs snapped in half through thick walls, have a whole bandit Organization shut down by a mystic that could track their lifeforce throughout the NK. @BrianAT16 @ace134 @The Courier

Not saying it's impossible. But it will be really hard to create a balanced magic system.

well, to be fair about it; a good way to combat cogitation is to bring flour with you
Mysticism.. well. they're short ranged spellcasters, so long range is your ally.
Thaumaturgy.. well, you got to figure out what in the world their enchantments on their equipment are before you can try to take them on
Evokation, well as Immerael said; surprise attacks work on them

 

[SpartanDory]

well, to be fair about it; a good way to combat cogitation is to bring flower with you
Mysticism.. well. they're short ranged spellcasters, so long range is your ally.
Thaumaturgy.. well, you got to figure out what in the world their enchantments on their equipment are before you can try to take them on
Evokation, well as Immerael said; surprise attacks work on them

this, its all a process of learning, just like how we are supposed to somehow deal with people in plate being op and able to just walk around like tanks, you have to ICly find ways around it, such as the armpits, or war hammers. you can probably find or buy enchanted robes/talisman to ruduece or void magical effects, in my opinion, the only reason people are getting upset is "my plate armour is no longer the most overpowered thing on the server" or its just a logical opinion on preferring to have a more historicly correct than fantasy server, which I'm fine with

 

[pyrocide]

With two years of RPing under my belt, I think I can say having supernatural abilities that a regular man doesn't have, it would be hard to adjust the lore to keep it from being OP. And I don't need to be In-game to say that. Also, I never complained about these because they were part of the lore, magicwise, Iv'e had my character personally KO'd with a single thought by Cognition magic and captured, blown off the roof of a tavern, and completely stunned with no way to combat it.

That ain't too bad. But I have heard of people having their legs snapped in half through thick walls, have a whole bandit Organization shut down by a mystic that could track their lifeforce throughout the NK. @BrianAT16 @ace134 @The Courier

Not saying it's impossible. But it will be really hard to create a balanced magic system.

Please note that I said in the original version of cogitation. It was changed drastically after I took a break from the server. It's also completely possible those mages using such incredible versions of cogitation were entirely abusing the system, which was impossible for you to know due to the spell lists not being public, and I sympathize with you if that happens to be the case. If you'd like to see the original list I believe I have it stashed away on a google doc somewhere.

 

[Friosis]

We are a Low-Fantasy server. Some people, myself included think the fantasy should end with the fantastical map and the extra races, while others think we should have more fantasy elements (magic, gods things, ext).

No we're not, this is far from a low-fantasy server. Since when was HW EVER a low fantasy server? You have gods coming down and blessing lands or turning into dragons to burn down cities, people returning from the dead through a magical group of mages who worship a god of life, a god of life who moved so called ley-lines for her worshipers... Exodus's have immortal kings teleporting people from planet to planet to avoid a ravaging world destroying corruption.

You may make your town low fantasy, but HW is far from being anything but fantastical.

 

[Ace19]

Human characterists are low fantasy as are human abilities, At least I think thats what he meant

 

[Friosis]

Human characterists are low fantasy as are human abilities, At least I think thats what he meant

Well earthspawn and elves as well as demi-gods all have abilities outside the normal spectrum of human characteristics. Earthspawn because of immense strength, elves for their extremely extended life-span and demigods... Well I don't know what a demigod can do so yea.

This is just an explanation for as to why the server isn't low-fantasy, as for magic making a comeback... I personally believe a system of magic I have described before, where the magic was either extremely situational, random, or weak overall. I've seen effects of magic completely destroying the RP potential of groups, and I think there needs to be a way to fight against magic rather than it being as powerful as it was. I believe the staff are wise enough to choose the correct people to give Magi status to, and keep the power of these magi in check.

Some people might say magic isn't a necessity, however I beg to differ. Plenty of race lore, and lore of Hollow World itself is focused around, and actually requires magic to support it. From Silver Elf lore to the Gods, magic is a very commonly talked about and known force, even player-made groups have focuses on magic and how it works within their organization. I personally think that if magic were handled well, as I no doubt believe it will be, it could introduce plenty of new RP opportunities for everyone, and give some people a new avenue of creativity for their characters and RP. Even more so if the inquisition and exalt were started up with the introduction of magic, as there is some juicy IC conflict possibilities there.

 

[Faelin]

Can we bring back Vyres? If only for comedic effect

Like we'd bring you back for comedic effect after I'd banned the crap out of you, ayyyyy- Ayyyyyyyy- Ayyyyyyyyyy-

(I've been inhaling bonfire smoke all evening don't judge me I love you really)

BUT, serious Cherry is serious! Thread number 1 should be up in a wee bit, just diddling formatses.

 

[Ace19]

Haha, Buisness idea, Make Dwarves resistant to Magic like DA

 

[Faelin]

Oh - and I'm cool with debate guys, but the fantasy level is really not something that's going to be futzed with in the immediate future. Some folks in the community like higher fantasy, some lower - hopefully what we have is sooome sort of balance of that. However you define it, mid-low, mid-high, whatever, this is more or less how it'll stay for now.

Though (just as trivia!) the server was, actually, once purely Medieval/Renaissance, I believe. Only for a very, very short period of time, however.

Theee more you know~

 

[Faelin]

{Please hold onto your pants, I'd rather not wake up to 57 forum messages tomorrow morning}