Shattered Kingdoms

There isn't an actual "timer" to it. Oathbreaker is based on an "indefinite" period of time. As was stated earlier in this thread, you must be willing to put in the effort to overcome it in the eyes of the immortal handling your case. I can think of a few instances of this happening and the one in particular I have in mind took over a year IRL.

I don't think there is an actual minimum time requirement, if that is what you are asking. When I inquired about having oathbreaker removed on a character, I was told to provide logs of RP over an extended period of time that demonstrated my character's interaction with the new faction he wanted to join.

Since it takes about 20 to 25 hours for me to GM a character, I decided it was easier to simply make a new character. Being in a faction is more important to my enjoyment of the game than any other factor, so it was an easy decision for me.

Finney's one of the biggest twink players just in case anyone here who's new was wondering just how prevalent his mindset is in SK.

Given the statistics that Dulrik quoted earlier in the thread, I would argue my mindset is very prevalent.

People don't often switch factions on characters, true. However, I'd wager that it isn't because people have no problem ditching their character and rerolling instead of RPing it out, but rather that people don't often play characters who want to switch across totally separate cabals.

I am still uncertain what point you are trying to make - either about oathbreaker or the mindset of the people that play SK. I don't have particularly strong feelings about oathbreaker one way or the other, since it has very little impact on me.

I imagine it might be more irksome to a player that doesn't level quickly and has to choose between leveling a new character, an extended period of having no faction while they RP the faction change, or simply quitting SK.

As for my personal mindset, I think my contributions to the game (both IC and OOC) speak for themselves. Nearly every person that plays SK benefits from the time and effort I have freely donated to make the SK zMUD package and MUSHclient settings.

If you quit the harlies can you join anything else?

To my knowledge...if you quit any faction, Harlequins included, you can only re-join the faction you quit (assuming they will take you back) unless you do the RP required to bypass oathbreaker and get inducted into a new faction.

I did a search and here are two relevant comments I found concerning oathbreaker (basically, don't quit or get kicked from your current cabal with the intention of joining a new one, since it will likely never happen):

First, just as another point that's worth making, there is no restriction on switching between cabals and tribunals in the same nation. You can leave Keeper and join Hammer, leave guardians and join Druids, vice versa. It's going outside of any given country's faction that is limited.

That said:

Just before I made that post, maxman was asking what the RL time limit on getting oathbreaker removed was. Your response was "Well, it's a subjective term that's coined as an 'extended period of time' but I'd rather just delete that character and roll a totally new one to GM in 20 hours to get into the cabal I want." This response indicates that you don't really invest that much into your characters and don't have any qualms about trashing them if you'd have to actually perform lengthy RP to get something done on them.

I'm just letting maxman (and anyone else new to the forums) know that your viewpoint, while completely valid and not necessarily hurtful to the game, is not the average viewpoint of the playerbase. Someone who plays SK primarily for the RP and not for the mechanics probably A) isn't all that interested in learning how to GM a character in 20 hours and B) would be willing to go through a period of time in between cabals if he honestly felt that his characters' RP was leading him to leave his current faction and join another one. You seemed to dismiss this concept outright as if it was a waste of time if not unachievable, and while to you it may be, to many players the possibility of having a changing character concept is a really important feature.

Even for you, this is a giant stretch. Being part of a faction is the most enjoyable part of the game for me, and if for whatever reason that is not possible - it is preferable to create a new character rather than to play one not in a faction. I could spend months or even a year working around an oathbreaker flag, but there is no guarantee my character could join a new faction. See the two quotes from Dulrik and Algorab above.

Your conclusion that I view my characters as throwaway or don't invest much into them is laughable. Frankly, you are not even qualified to speak about investment in characters, since you basically quit SK over a tweak to necromancers and now you want to lecture me about investing in characters. Try playing the game first.