Latest revision as of 02:34, 24 June 2020

This page will attempt to cover the why and how of the decisions based around character limitations.

This page is still under revision and editing, any questions should be pointed towards staff until this page is completed to staff satisfaction

Dragons

While Dragons are present as 'quests' (slay the dragon, earn the glory, etc) they are almost always NPC material. Dispensation may be given by staff to play a Dragon, but this should not be assumed to be common, or even likely.

• • Why no Dragons?
• It is generally the experience of the staff that Dragon characters simultaneously cause more problems, and don't contribute much to the chat experience as a whole. The implication is that Dragons are powerful, so it often ends up being the case that Dragon characters do little but bluster about their presumed power, and rarely interact with other characters unless it is to further this appearance of power. While this is spot-on character trait-wise for a Dragon, a creature who has no interest in anything but their own glory, brooding in their fortress or mountain or what have you, does not promote much in the way of roleplay.
• Another problem with Dragons stems from the perception of their power - Dragon's are powerful so it is assumed that a Dragon character is inherently better than characters of other races, based on their popular role in many forms of media. This obviously creates problems, and sometimes friction if it disrupts roleplay when a Dragon comes in and attempts to just fix a situation by virtue of being a dragon alone.

• Dragons as characters are very rarely actually played as Dragons - they rarely ever appear in Dragon form, and often appear as the most attractive character claim a person can find - this leads to the "Bangable humanoid that is really incredibly powerful" problem that can sometimes appear with characters like these. We would prefer to encourage people to shape characters around their personality and experiences - their character - rather than how powerful or attractive they are.

• There is also the unfortunate tendency for Dragon characters to be seen as quaint little status symbols, which in some instances creates an air of elitism or "collecting" of these characters, which again does nothing to improve the roleplay experience. While this is not necessarily common, it is generally believed that not having dragons as a player race is better for the long term health of the chat.

This is not to say that all Dragon character players fall prey to all these problems, or even some of them, but it is better to be proactive and give the player base realistic expectations and understanding of our reasoning.

God-like beings

• These of course, are immersion breaking, or disruptive by their very nature, and fall victim to many of the same problems as Dragons. Characters with god-like power have no challenges, and easily can break a long story by appearing and just fixing a problem, which can cause unintended harm or dispute among players, particularly if a long and arduous storyline is cut down by meddling from these characters.
• The closest to these kinds of characters are the Maestro's and their corrupted counterparts, the Virtuoso's (and these are at best demi-gods, and are absolutely able to die). At this time there are not Maestro's in the world, and most of the Virtuoso's are dead or otherwise in some suspended state. Permission to play these characters is strictly staff-approved to those that have earned the position.
  • As a note for those who draw their power from gods/entities more powerful than themselves: Once they enter The Tapestry, they are completely cut off from this source of power.

Phoenixes

• Everything that has been said about Dragons can be assumed to apply to these mythical birds too. There is also the problematic nature of their persistent rebirth, which disrupts roleplay - a character who can essentially never die takes a lot of the drama out of many roleplay experiences by cheapening the consequences and permanency of death with the ability to side-step the issue, such as making fights meaningless to them as they can just be reborn, which also robs other players of the right to their earned kill.

Aliens

• Technically everyone that is not native to the Tapestry is an Alien, so this needs a little clarifying. Extra terrestrial creatures with technology exceeding modern day real life capabilities is generally what is meant here. Such technology would obviously completely break the setting when one person walks across the world with a death ray. The Skald has a fine sense of theme and cohesion, so even if these creatures do exist somewhere, the Skald is unlikely to bring them to the Tapestry - there's plenty enough oddness to go around as it is.

Ancient beings (pending revision and approval by other staff)

• This is another one that needs some explanation, as this category is very broad. Generally this description covers anything that is described as living in excess of a thousand years. Many characters that fit this description also fall into one of the categories above, so I won't repeat the problematic elements here. A unique problem of these characters though is that they potentially remove some of the mysticism of the setting if they just happened to be there and have all the answers (the known history of the tapestry is pretty short, and many plot elements rely on things being lost to time, or otherwise poorly documented).