Shattered Kingdoms

The rule as written unless there's been a ninja update very recently require

1. A miscreant killer for hire to warn his target after being engaged to kill them - fail.
2. A griffon hammer to announce to an unaffiliated delf that they're about to get rocked - fail.
3. A rogue to warn their target they're about to be back stabbed - class destroying fail.
4. A miscreant/diabolical who spies nice gear on someone to send them into logout mode whenever said miscreant is around - hoarding win!


There are so many more examples.

Just eliminate this crappy rule and return to the old subjective (gasp) one. You can't have a fun game when RP is this tightly policed.

My suggested edit:

1. THE GOLDEN RULE
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This isnt an
abstract concept in Shattered Kingdoms. This rule has tangible
caveats you are responsible for following that include, but are not
limited to:
-Respect the fact that other players are here to enjoy the game as well.
-Out of character harassment will not be tolerated.
-Gear your roleplay to be inclusive of other players.
-Be patient and respectful when dealing with newbies. Take time
to make sure they understand what is going on before treating
them harshly, even if they would seem to deserve it. Without
newbies, the game eventually dies.

If you HAD to include more in the third bullet, I'd add, "This includes roleplay with the victims of PK," and allowing that RP to occur AFTER the PK has taken place. But I don't think this clarification is necessary.

If people are going to complain about griefing, make a separate anti-griefing rule that is specific but not too limiting. An example would be:

-Avoid killing the same character again so quickly that their character is still naked (perhaps exempt griffons).
-Avoid killing the same character more than 3 times in one RL day.
-Victims who provoke their attackers, rejoin formations with enemies, or otherwise put themselves at risk are exempt from this consideration.

EDIT: Also, if you're going to have a no-griefing rule like above, make sure it's only investigated by complaints rather than waste immortal time that could be spent on other things by having them have to micromanage it.

Well my suggestion stands, then. There has to be rules for people who want to avoid PK just as there are rules for people who want to participate.

As far as "enforcing the rules" no one anywhere has ever managed to do this fairly. Watch your local sports ball and you will see that they fail and there is an advantage to having a home game. Any GM with their salt will tell you a game rule is a guideline not a law. Rules as written will never be perfect. Even legal standards of practice go though more revisions due to mistakes and over sights than they to republications and a mistake in one of those can be life and death. While I am all for rules being enforced on some level I often wonder if the game would be healthier if there where less so. Case in put there are more posts of Thuban enforcing the rule since they took the job than afterlife threads in the same time.

I get the feeling the translation of the golden rule rather than reaching a middle ground has been pushed to an extreme. It is important for those who dont want to be involved in PK to remember that people find PK fun just as much as it is the other way around. I personally dont enjoy PK much at all but I understand that people will want to PK my characters and some times my RP pushes me to get involved in it.

I don't think the rules of this game should be enforced via an OOC mechanism. In this game, being griefed by another player is infinitely less of an annoyance than the game itself. I've been playing this game a few times a year for more than 15 years and I could list lots of experiences where a player killed me and I didn't really know what was going on. But I could list many many more examples of a non-player mechanism killing me and causing me a great deal more inconvenience and probably even deleted characters. Maybe this has been fixed, but I once got attacked by an imp and managed to run all the way back to my little home base of the temple in Teron. 45 seconds later, it showed up and killed me. Why? Where was the RP? Just a random imp running half the world to kill me because we crossed paths on the road?

In 2003 I was upset because I made a necromancer with a home of Exile and managed to get to initiate, but some powerful guy from the hammer of light killed me and I made a post on the forums about how that really sucks and I don't even know who it was and they didn't talk to me and stole my corpse and all my stuff. Here is the PM response I got from an Imm at the time:



In 2016, there would be an investigation, a public banning, an appeal and a 100 post complaint thread in a separate forum. Let's stop this madness.

An online game like SK has a very different dynamic than a standard gaming group with a GM. Each has different needs, and nuggets of "GM wisdom" don't always apply. I get the sense that players here don't want the staff to consider rules guidelines and make GM-style rules interpretations and judgment calls on the fly.

Any objections to this?

That is basically the same thing we have now.

There is a thin line between jloots and griefing as the very act of doing it causes the other person to lose time having to get back to life and regear. That is never fun and lets be honest, we wouldnt have this discussion if nobody ever looted one another.

Im not sure what the correct solution would be.

It takes out the hard RP requirement at least, which I think is what's been enforced so strictly/driving away a lot of the older players lately. Am I wrong?

The rules as I suggested above don't touch on greifing or jlooting. I don't personally feel that they should in rule 1. Maybe that could be another thing to discuss?

I must have misread what you intended to describe.

Would you say that role play after killing would be acceptable instead of the required pre-roleplay before killing someone?