>ARMIFER: ... the freedom to choose how to react to a mountain in your path presupposes the existence of a mountain you are not free to wish away.

>JHALIASCLERIC: "You are free to do what you want, so long as you recognize there's a mountain in front of you"

Hmm, I think you've read it wrong. I'm seeing him saying the opposite of what you see. I see him suggesting the mountain may not really be there.

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"4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." ~Wittgenstein, 'Tractatus'

>... the freedom to choose how to react to a mountain in your path presupposes the existence of a mountain you are not free to wish away.

"Presupposes" tends to be a rebuke for making a questionable assumption.

I won't ask Armifer what he meant because it's just a discussion and not a clarification of policy...

Good chat, I guess? Never did get to the 'RP possibilities after given limitations' topic... oh, well.

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"4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." ~Wittgenstein, 'Tractatus'

Sorry, felt the thread name needed a change.

>Among many, many, many other examples Sartre uses, he points out that the freedom to choose how to react to a mountain in your path presupposes the existence of a mountain you are not free to wish away.

This means limitations exist and in choosing to respond to them, you are acknowledging their existence. In logical terms, when accepting the freedom to choose a or b, given c, one forfeits the freedom to choose "not c".

Moving back towards the original point of the topic: Mechanics and definition are the polar opposite of freedom. RP "games" exist where the only "mechanics" to speak of are the post boxes. Usually there are some definitions in there to place some kind of rules, but largely these "games" (if they can even be called that) allow absolute maximum freedom. Your character does whatever the heck you put into the text box, each entry basically being the equivalent of an ACT. Alternatively, there are games like Tic-Tac-Toe. These games offer just enough freedom to make it a game (a chance to choose where to put your "x" or "o"), but are almost pure mechanics. Checkers offers more freedom than Tic-Tac-Toe, Chess more than checkers, and on and on. The more choices that are available to the player, generally, the more complex the game and the more difficult code is to write for it. On to DR, this is a game with huge amounts of freedom and insane levels of complexity. Largely, due to the desired amounts of freedom, the GMs use definition as limitation to your RP, rather than mechanics. Smile, act frown, etc. are actually designed to afford your characters more freedom than the mechanics would usually allow. Still, the sliding scale remains between mechanics and definition and freedom to RP.

Mechanics are central to a decent game as they provide structure and in an RPG, potential for advancement and acquisition. They are, however, what prevents you from "being born hunting dilos", what prevents a Barbarian from throwing lightning bolts, and prevents a your characters from jumping over the Faldesu. Definitions are the set of non-mechanical restrictions. You can type "smile and spreads his huge leathery wings..." and the mechanics won't stop you, but your character's ability to have huge leathery wings (unless we're talking about an item) is already defined out of existence. In the case of necromancers, your ability to turn yourself into a skeleton is defined away, as is your character's ability to be a student of Velmix or engage in the demonic. Most definitions, even ones that seem arbitrary such as producing a character with a special relationship with a guildleader, are important. In this case, the GMs do occasionally take control of the guildleaders and would likely be unaware of and/or unwilling to acknowledge the special relationship you claim to have. There are a limited few actually don't seem necessary, however. If a restriction is not absolutely necessary, I am personally against it.

>This means limitations exist and in choosing to respond to them, you are acknowledging their existence. In logical terms, when accepting the freedom to choose a or b, given c, one forfeits the freedom to choose "not c".

The problem with this interpretation is 'the mountain'. Unlike 'a shared interpretation of a collectively constructed roleplay milieu', a mountain cannot simply be ignored. One does not "forfeit the freedom to choose 'not c'" when 'c' is a mountain; that option never existed. Not acknowleding the mountain would be some sort of severe, hallucinatory negation.

You guys posted some other good stuff I'd like to reply to, but I gotta go, so... later. Have a great Saturday!

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"4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." ~Wittgenstein, 'Tractatus'

>>Further, some level of hand-waving of mechanics is defined as allowed. I believe the exact amount to be different than some of the other posters in this forum. Perhaps I misinterpretted, but I took one of the red posts above to mean "some hand-waving is acceptable, even expected, but the exact amount of hand-waving that is acceptable is not entirely defined".

I took it to imply that some handwaving is acceptable, but you have to assume you have hands to wave or an audience to wave to. I.e., disregarding the games lore to suit your own designs is not acceptable.

"Mechanics and RP" in response to this post :

This is not meant as a hostile criticism towards the OP but it seems the "philosophies?" being presented throughout this conversation are placing a great amount of emphasis on just One/Any individual PC vs. Mechanics and/or GMs.

What Im finding missing here is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the game ; interacting with other players. At which point the game is less PvE and a little more PvP in the non-violent sense. Even more so then some of the lore it is within this framework that the game is made and where the boundaries of mechanical free mechanics are set.

Part of the point of the community, however, is that we are each bound by the lore dictated in some part by the GMs.
A house of bricks is build with bricks, not a bit of bone, an anvil, ten toothbrushes, four towels, a beach ball, and a couch.

>>Emphasis IS most definitely being placed on the construction of the individual.

I think my point was missed. I understand this is the Emphasis . But in relation to mechanics one must approach it from a multiplayer game standpoint. Im saying the equations won't work because DR is not a Single player game. Individual + DR + RP = schizophrenia.

"construction of the individual" should start from the standpoint of the game community , lore , GMs , etc. , etc. At which point if done successfully "Even more so then some of the lore it is within this framework that the game is made and where the boundaries of mechanical free mechanics are set. " Meaning Mechanics won't be an issue for you.

>>"construction of the individual" should start from the standpoint of the game community , lore , GMs , etc. , etc.

If I am interpreting this correctly, I am being told that my character should gather his identity from the group rather than first produce then, through participation, add it to the group. If my interpretation is correct, this is a collectivist argument and I'm not even willing to attempt to think in that direction. To do so would be an grievous breech of my person principles.

>>If I am interpreting this correctly, I am being told that my character should gather his identity from the group rather than first produce then, through participation, add it to the group. If my interpretation is correct, this is a collectivist argument and I'm not even willing to attempt to think in that direction. To do so would be an grievous breech of my person principles.

Your interpretation is incorrect. What is being said is that you shouldn't ignore events that have absolutely happened in your character's history any more than you can ignore your character's age or the fact that your character cannot permanently learn spells from another guild. Similarly, you can't play as if you were a twelve-hundred year old Half-Krolvin king and remain within the context of your character. What you can do is interpret how your character leads up to that point, and what your character brings from it. Your character was absolutely, 100%, attuned to Arcane mana by Zamidren Book, and given a choice of joining or else. Your character did not choose the "or else" option. This leaves many things open to interpretation, such as how he regards Book, the Philosophy, life, the Immortals, Necromancy, Necromancers, and so on. Note that Book does not currently shun people who do not follow the Philosophy -- for example, Xerasyth.

You don't have to alter your character's backstory much, and you don't have to change how you play. You just should make sure that there is a blip on his radar about being attuned to Arcane magic by Zamidren Book, a Philosopher of the Knife. You could've had your private tutor prior to Book, or after Book, but your relationship with Book does exist, regardless of the nature of said relationship. You could be absolutely interested in denying your relationship with Book exists. But you (the player) need to know that if your character states he has never, ever met someone going by the name Zamidren Book (either Book himself or the theoretical doppel-risen), he is absolutely lying.

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You typed Roar Help. Good for you!

I would, except you keep posting further comments indicating you aren't understanding things, or still disagreeing with things, or painting yourself as a victim being told how to play the game.

there is usually enough lore given though to construct a creative background for your character, without resorting to fiction that is unsuited to the genre, and without crossing over the boarder of things which are impossible.

For instance -

I have my necromancer played as part of a family of Muspar'ian S'kra Murs who are descended from a matriarch who was one of the high priestesses of the dragon temple in Muspar'i during the reign of D'zree.

Is she in any way or form an actual relative of d'zree? no. D'zree was known to have purged any known relatives, as being perceived "threats" to her rule. As being important, her ancestor was out of the way enough - all the way in muspar'i - to have not been involved in the wars themselves, yet still "guilty" enough of various "crimes" of dragonpriesthoodness to have been killed - burned at the stake, with no favors, and is not ever named -- prior to the negotiations which brought Muspar'i to be under the "protectorship" of Therengia. Yet she has no "royal" lineage, is not in the line of dragonpriesthood succession, yet still had the "hidden" diaries of dear old granny to thank for her curiousity about necromancy et al.

Although that too was a choice to be made within the family, as others within the family went in totally opposite directions. her sister, for instance is much the devotee of ushnish, is a member of the clerics guild, and is absolutely horrified by what her sister has done, regards her as smozh, and mourns her as if dead. <they have never mechanically "met" being as both characters are played on the same account.>

The necromancer sister "knew" enough information - gleaned from grandma's hidden diary - so that when she was taken to the crossing on her initial "visit", she was introduced to gauthus by grandpa, an ex-thief turned WM who was grandma's widower, but failed gauthus entrance "exam" because when gauthus tried to teach her about how to cast a spell, she managed to <temporarily and accidently> turn gauthus's familiar a very rottenish "color" at which Gauthus told her in no uncertain terms that that sort of magic was totally forbidden. <which didn't stop her from being curious about it, of course> <all of this is fiction- but is "possible" - being she turned out to have WM-type during her "attunement" - Therefore, she went looking in other directions, and had been looking at various directions, locations, and information - biding her time, absorbing, learning .. for a while, when one day Zamidren Book, who had written books she had researched, came to town. And... after conversations with such, well, the rest was the story common to all the philosophers.

I give this as an example of a story-line that is feasible within the framework of the story-line that we have been given.

>>I'm not sure if you are implying a negation of my assumption of "limitation" in RP decision making. Or if you're being more zen, circumspect.

You're misreading me, though to be fair I was being glib and vague.

The subtext of the statement, which I didn't go into half due to laziness and half because I was curious what'd come out of it, is that contingency (the facts of the world we have no control over) is the necessary condition for absolute freedom. Freedom is freedom to act upon something, which necessarily requires that there is "something" there to begin with. There is no freedom in a world where we have free will (in the most extreme idea of 'free will' as a dialectic opposite to determinism), there is only the possibility for solipsistic nonsense.

Which when translated into the topic becomes...

>>Similarly, you can be any kind of Necromancer you want, but you can't ignore that you became a Necromancer through Book, etc.

This.

-Armifer
"In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

I think there's a fundamental problem that really isnt something debatable if you just feel IG lore is too arbitrary to follow.

The biggest GM error with the Necro Guild was not naming it the Philsopher's Guild, just to avoid this stuff from coming up again and again.

Declaring that you're not a Necromancer under Book/the Philosophers of the Knife is like declaring your Paladin is actually from the Monk Guild or that your Thief is a Bandit Guild member who never joined the Thief Guild, etc.

Now you are just being obtuse. Armifer has said straight out PC necromancers do not come from anywhere but Book and the Philosophers. To continue to argue otherwise is childish.

>>I haven't seen any part of IG lore that specifically forbids necromancers from learning some type of necromancy outside the of the "Philosopher's Guild" prior to joining it. There are, in fact, character in game who have done exactly this. The fact that this is "not allowed" is, at least to date, a purely arbitrary restriction based in the ooc setup of the guild, not the "lore". As far as I know, there isn't a reason for this restriction aside from one (or more) of the devs declaring it.

I would argue that it is not at all only an arbitrary development mechanic, and that it's not at all OOC. I would further argue that the GMs set it up this way deliberately from both a gameplay and a story standpoint. Yes, there are other Philosophers, but Book's the one they refer to as "The Triumphant One" for a reason. He scared all of the other Philosophers into submission per the lore we have so far, killed the ones who wouldn't give in, and has recruited enough that the number of Philosophers has exponentially increased. As others step forward to claim their role as a guildleader, that may change. Alternatively, the new guildleaders could very well only accept those already practiced, at which point Book is still the go-to.

Ask the friendly gentleman in the guildhall about Book to get the thoughts of one of his former peers, or look it up on e-pedia.

If you would like to have your character dabble in a bit of the Philosophy prior to joining -- by all means. Keep in mind that your character, however, wasn't fully Attuned until the events leading to his joining Zamidren, and that if he was previously attuned to other mana, he lost it. The magic he has now is specifically (story-wise) Zamidren's interpretation of the Philosophy of the Knife, incorporating necro-alchemy with Kigot's work.

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You typed Roar Help. Good for you!

>The subtext of the statement, which I didn't go into half due to laziness and half because I was curious what'd come out of it, is that contingency (the facts of the world we have no control over) is the necessary condition for absolute freedom. Freedom is freedom to act upon something, which necessarily requires that there is "something" there to begin with. There is no freedom in a world where we have free will (in the most extreme idea of 'free will' as a dialectic opposite to determinism), there is only the possibility for solipsistic nonsense.

And just as there must be obstacles to have free will, there must be some point or small measure of disagreement to have a discussion. Unfortunately I can find nothing to argue with in your statement. So perhaps it was better for the discussion that I misread you earlier. :D

Only thing: I am trying to visualize what the 'extreme opposite of determinism' would look like. Would it be omnipotence in a material plane? Or simply a 'field of chaos' (in the physics sense) of an undifferentiated plane?

In either case, 'absolute free will' wouldn't make for a very interesting game world.

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"4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." ~Wittgenstein, 'Tractatus'

>>I do indeed disagree, though my disagreement is on a conceptual level at this point.
Which, I daresay, is why people are still arguing this with you. You've been told you were wrong, and rather than say "Oops, my mistake" you continue to give answers stubbornly positing your correctness. If you are surprised people are still discussing this, or still arguing with you, stop blithely stating you are still correct.
>>that a necromancer came to be a Philosopher from the outside.
This suggests to me you haven't read enough of the game lore. This claim is akin to saying one doesn't need to study under Yoda to become a student of Yoda.

>>Don't remember reading this anywhere and it seems like a bit of a stretch seeing as Book, Markat and Xerasyth existed before the Philosophers and others likely did as well, but it's the only response I've seen that addresses the question being asked.


Something was "done" to you when you joined. Im not trying to be cryptic , just don't want to post guild secrets . Books house is the only place to get the works .

>>The fact that this restriction exists is not the discussion. The question is "Is this restriction in some way vital to the game, or is it ultimately just a restriction?"

Yes, it's vital to the RP and lore of the game. Why? The GMs who created the guild say so.

Next question.