Punishment and Heresy in the UD

Greetings everyone,

Over the time I have been here I have really pondered our existance.

We are a truly chaotic bunch and I have seen a trend of the word heresy being used and in 99% of the cases falsly.

I do believe we lack true consequences to our actions .. we live in a world where death is not permanent and it does color the RP in many ways because of this. But I would ask you all to truely look at what the word heresy means:

Heresy can be defined as a belief that conflicts with established Church dogma. We take it as an accusation levied against members of another group which has beliefs that conflict with those of the accusers. It is usually used to discuss violations of religious or traditional laws or codes, although it is used by some political extremists to refer to their opponents. It carries the connotation of behaviors or beliefs likely to undermine accepted morality and cause tangible evils, damnation, or other punishment. In our religion, it also implies that the heretic is in alliance with the religion's symbol of any other Deity other than Lolth.

In my time I have come to this conclusion... unless one can definatively prove that the other worships a Diety other than Lolth or Seveltarm then they are a heretic.

Killing a Yath = NOT Heresy unles you meet the above defination.. you kill her to sacrifice her to another Diety other than Lolth. If you are a Lolthite this is acceptable... if you are caught you are not a heretic just a failure.. which is just as bad

Now we can not go around killing each other over every little thing... since again we have no true consequences... so this is what I am wanting to discuss.

Heresy = Death/Banishment KoS in the UD

Failure = Indentured Servitude

Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time. - In our world a Rothe for a fixed period of time depending on the failure that is comitted.

For example - Drow House Master plots the downfall or assassination attempt of Rival House Master if they fail the Rival House Masters takes them as rothe for a set period 2 weeks RL time.. Failed House Master looses all Rank and Station and is a Rothe for those 2 weeks owned by his rival that he failed to kill. After the two weeks they are then shebali.. the are not given back rank or title but must earn it again since they failed.

Now we are all adults so if someone fails it is not log off and not play that character for what ever time is agreed upon to avoid consequences since that would defeat the purpose of this type of punishment.. Failure is a big thing in our world and perhaps something like this would temper those choices if we had some tangible consequences.

I would really appreciate feed back or even ideas along this the perhaps we could implement with the DM's in game for us.

Thank you
Shadow

Heresy: A belief in conflict with established Dogma. (e.g. Spiders are weak and inferior)
Apostasy: Formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause. (e.g. Worship of deities outside the Dark Seldarine)
Blasphemy: Irreverence towards religion (e.g. Squashing a spider)


I do agree with the broad strokes of your argument here, there aren't really any consequences to actions - and that shows up very strongly in the Underdark.

I think if we want to start implementing new systems like this though, it needs to be done cohesively, not in dribs and drabs, and there needs to be either a consensus or DM arbitration on what exactly the UD here is, where it differs from canon, and some sort of summary available on the forums for new folks.

Quote :

I think if we want to start implementing new systems like this though, it needs to be done cohesively, not in dribs and drabs, and there needs to be either a consensus or DM arbitration on what exactly the UD here is, where it differs from canon, and some sort of summary available on the forums for new folks.

Exactly my thoughts and why I started this thread. I would like to see everyone player and DM alike input into this since I do not think we have a system now that is working. With our consequences there is no way to measure success vs failures with in a Drow culture.. since death is somewhat meaningless in our world we need to come up with more creative way to show the status besides well my build can kill you build so I am right you are wrong or I am Female/Yath and you are a male .. since that does not work.

If a Yath fails... what happens.. nothing really... but perhaps they loose rank and station as well.. a Yath'tallar demoted to Yath'abban.. now she hold no power over those she would have before and is weak... she must follow orders as the rest of us do to those that are in a position that hold more power. With out some type of consequence then really there will never be shifts in power.. something we as Drow should have or what is teh point of plots.

So I would encourage all to input into this thread their ideas and we can then compile them and perhaps add some level of cause and effect to our UD.

Shadow

Fear of failure, or the humiliation that comes from failure (such as being made a rothe, or getting utterly stripped of rank) is central to Llothite society, from what I've read. It's what tempers the Drow's innate ambition for power - and encourages them to be wise and cunning in their plots.

I feel that these sorts of reactions (ie, making people rothe or stripping them of rank when they fail) is preferable to the death penalty, because humiliation and coming back from it, brings EXTREMELY interesting RP opportunities!

I have been thinking about this for a day now. I like the idea very much, it gives consequences for actions but not really sever consequences like permadeath. this will also give players an opportunity to attempt more difficult and challenging RP.

I personally have avoided any type of assassination attempts to my enemies simply because success or not, there was no reward or consequence. I think this would work well for both players. The important thing to remember is that the players need to communicate first OOC. It really can become fun and interesting for both players if they can seperate themselves from their characters success or failures.

If another player spoke with me OOC and said their character hates my character and wants to kill her. I would be like oh heck yea! Let us try it and see which character survives and fails. It plays out like a story to me. If your character fails, I will have fun with my new rothe for a few weeks!

A problem I see with this is that some players just cannot play a slave character. It conflicts with their personality too much. I will give an example with _seveltarm_, he made a lvl 1 slave character and was going to RP with my lvl 1 slave character but he failed miserably It was just too difficult for him and he deleted the character.

If we players could make this work then I think it would be a nice change to the norm.


Kind Regards,
Vilesinger

I don't know, I think Permadeath or Perma-screwed should always be available to players that totally PERMA-pigeon-hole their own pc's. A great example would be mine own. If only others would follow suit.

I believe permadeath is the players choice not anyone elses. To many people forget this.

We all know permadeath is the player's choice. I don't think anyone on here honestly forgets it. But in one hand we can't say fully that "a player's actions will bring about a player's results" if we always avoid the permadeath situation.

Perfect example:

A human walks into ShadowDale and claims Bane is worthless and mortal. They kill him or something. Maybe go as far as even ban him from the city, after they kill him. Than he the same one that got killed/banned from ShadowDale walks into Myth Drannor and starts killing elves for fun. Well they kill him and ban him there. Than he does it at Freehaven, and lastly even comes down into the UD.

At this time he is KOS everywhere, and with everyone. Now he wants to retcon it or change it so he can now come back to ShadowDale. Not only is this pretty silly, but it puts a great deal of work on the DMs that legit story lines with other players and for those players that have actually stayed within some reasonable limits and actions.

FuzzieBunny wrote:

I believe permadeath is the players choice not anyone elses. To many people forget this.

It is the players choice. Always. The staff may request a player accept an exile or something of that sort; but as long as they have an ally willing to resurrect them... Perma death doesn't always have to be a requirement to a situation.

Secondly another issue often arises in Permadeath's, the players sometimes return and wish to replay that character. Which in itself brings about a whole slew of issues. Unfortunately it is a more common occurrence than people would expect :\...

I no longer play a Drow myself, but just speaking from the almost twenty years of experience I have under my belt of it, the only major flaw I see in the proposed system is power vacuum. Say they fail and become a Rothe, someone needs to fill the power vacuum, particularly with the church example... the vacuum being filled implies someone of lower rank filling it, and as such, once the failure is no longer a slave, can just kill the lower leveled priestess that filled their spot and just like that, the loss would be minimalized, if not nullified. It just seems like the consequences of failure are hard to make stick, I guess is what I'm saying.

Edit: The obvious answer here would be "Let the punishment fit the crime". Don't make it a fixed time period for everything, but rather keep it fluid. More heinous screw ups should equate to longer servitude.

Was this ever resolved? I am curious as to the outcome of this.