Thanks, that is what I was looking for.psycho_leo wrote:Against my better judgment I'm once again posting here. The closest thing to what you're looking for might be the polll thread. The thread where they actually decided on how to run this poll is still out there, but I honestly don't feel like looking for it.HEEGZ wrote:I was hoping for a link with an admin decision but I guess one was never issued then.Zelknolf wrote:http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=36925Souvarine wrote:What was rational in the decision to not include them in the first place?
It doesn't cover the finer points, but that's enough to respond to the question.
http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=37018
Now something for my amusement.
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpre ... r-fish.jpg
Tieflings
Moderator: ALFA Administrators
Danielmn : Then maybe you should remove that little title under your picture, it confused me 
I don't want to force people to think about it if they don't care about the issue. It's only an "issue" for those who actually lost something in the process: players.
Even players who don't want to play one lost the option to do so at a future time, just like future members of alfa. We all change. I hated drows with a passion when i came to ALFA, for one, but after learning the true story behind the horrible Drizznit propaganda crap, i've spent more time as a drow than any other race. Sure the drow crew here are much better organized, but it was harder to include drow then, than include tieflings now.
But i trust that alfa will, at a point or another, come back on that decision, it's only a matter of time.
Vaelahr, next time you post your picture, no need for make up and jewels, we accept you as you are
I don't want to force people to think about it if they don't care about the issue. It's only an "issue" for those who actually lost something in the process: players.
Even players who don't want to play one lost the option to do so at a future time, just like future members of alfa. We all change. I hated drows with a passion when i came to ALFA, for one, but after learning the true story behind the horrible Drizznit propaganda crap, i've spent more time as a drow than any other race. Sure the drow crew here are much better organized, but it was harder to include drow then, than include tieflings now.
But i trust that alfa will, at a point or another, come back on that decision, it's only a matter of time.
Vaelahr, next time you post your picture, no need for make up and jewels, we accept you as you are
Coming soon in a server near you.
My god... this is still going on? 
A decision has been made. Now, I disagree with the results as much as you, but it's over. Wynna has already stated that she has no intentions to readdress the issue in the near future. So you know what? It's about time to move on and find something else to complain about.
A decision has been made. Now, I disagree with the results as much as you, but it's over. Wynna has already stated that she has no intentions to readdress the issue in the near future. So you know what? It's about time to move on and find something else to complain about.
< Signature Free Zone >
Cool.Souvarine wrote:Vaelahr, next time you post your picture, no need for make up and jewels, we accept you as you are
Here's me without makeup and jewels then;
Mountain-climbing in Wyoming last year:
"Cheese!" Taken years ago over at a friend's farm:
Not what you think, seriously. I was massaging her shoulders in preparation for some stunt work at the local fair: She is hot though, I admit.
My daughter. Isn't she adorable?
"The God of the Qurʾan is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." -- Vaelahr
Danielmn : Then maybe you should remove that little title under your picture, it confused me **
I have gotten in touch with Hialmar on the issue, since I can't find a place to edit this myself, and never put the title under my avatar to begin with. Thanks for the heads up Souv!
I have gotten in touch with Hialmar on the issue, since I can't find a place to edit this myself, and never put the title under my avatar to begin with. Thanks for the heads up Souv!
Zyrus Meynolt: [Party] For the record, if this somehow blows up in our faces and I die, I want a raiseSwift wrote: Permadeath is only permadeath when the PCs wallet is empty.
<Castano>: danielnm - can you blame them?
<danielmn>: Yes,
<danielmn>: Easily.
"And in this twilight....our choices seal our fate"
There's the difference between you and i: you had a voice in that decision, i didn't. There are some people who give up, i don't. But i am patient too. Maybe it'll take two years, maybe less or more...who cares, the point is: it was a bad decision imo, so i do the only thing a player can do in this community: post about it on the forums. I know i come late on it, i missed the real debate, but even if i had been there, i wouldn't even have been able to anything about it; so now is about as good a time to "complain" as you say, than back then or in 2 years.Rotku wrote:My god... this is still going on?
A decision has been made. Now, I disagree with the results as much as you, but it's over. Wynna has already stated that she has no intentions to readdress the issue in the near future. So you know what? It's about time to move on and find something else to complain about.
If the poll had included players (who, as i said, were the only ones to possibly loose something of the outcome), then the discussion would be over in my mind, because the whole community would have spoken, but they weren't, and the poll results were so narrow that it called for a broader range of opinions. I know Wynna's stance on the issue as well, and it's ok too, but maybe another admin will see it another way...alfa is a big thing, it changes slowly and i accept that.
Coming soon in a server near you.
Two small points there, Souvarine. First, the main debate did occur amoungst all ALFA members who were wishing to have a say. I'm not sure if any of the threads mentioned above link there, but it's easy enough to go back and look at the number of 10 page threads on planetouched. That, other than the Admin forums, was the only place debate occured on the forums, to my knowledge.Souvarine wrote:There's the difference between you and i: you had a voice in that decision, i didn't. There are some people who give up, i don't. But i am patient too. Maybe it'll take two years, maybe less or more...who cares, the point is: it was a bad decision imo, so i do the only thing a player can do in this community: post about it on the forums. I know i come late on it, i missed the real debate, but even if i had been there, i wouldn't even have been able to anything about it; so now is about as good a time to "complain" as you say, than back then or in 2 years.
If the poll had included players (who, as i said, were the only ones to possibly loose something of the outcome), then the discussion would be over in my mind, because the whole community would have spoken, but they weren't, and the poll results were so narrow that it called for a broader range of opinions. I know Wynna's stance on the issue as well, and it's ok too, but maybe another admin will see it another way...alfa is a big thing, it changes slowly and i accept that.
Second, no I did not have a say in that decision - you are confusing decision with decision making process. By memory (without going back and checking the numbers) if each Admin did vote in that first poll, things would have turned out different.
And finally, in many ways now isn't as good time to complain. Infact, it's a fruitless exersice. As you know yourself, Wynna has decided to uphold this, so for the next 5 or so months, unless she has a change of heart, there is little point in going on about the issue.
Anyway, I've said my share on the issue. If you manage by some maricle to get it reversed, great work. If not, "I told you so" would be a fitting comment
< Signature Free Zone >
If everyone falls silent on the issue, it will be considered "settled." 
Personally I see it as the inevitable progress of the game, as I stated fairly clearly before. You can't block that progress forever, especially given the rather callous way the original admin decision to allow planetouched was discarded. This isn't a dead horse, it's a split in the community, with canon rules favoring inclusion. I suspect it will remain an issue until ALFA comes into compliance with canon.
Personally I see it as the inevitable progress of the game, as I stated fairly clearly before. You can't block that progress forever, especially given the rather callous way the original admin decision to allow planetouched was discarded. This isn't a dead horse, it's a split in the community, with canon rules favoring inclusion. I suspect it will remain an issue until ALFA comes into compliance with canon.
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AlmightyTDawg
- Githyanki
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While I don't know if it's necessarily "compliance with canon" - I think it's pretty well understood that the DM can arbitrarily make any ECL or even specific races off limits because it bloody well suits them - I do think the argument has a particular trajectory that ultimately favors inclusion.
It's a "horse out of the barn" kind of issue; whenever and however it gets reversed, there's no easy way to go back. Virtually every one of the better reasons proffered as to why planetouched aren't desired have self-correction mechanisms: (smart) DMs learn not to reward attention whores (or even reward non-planetouched for not Mary Sue-ing it), servers generate a basic policy of how local folks react and let DMs shift on the fly as they feel, and even players collectively get sick of them if too many sit on servers at once. The only way to justify yanking them back out as a playable race will be something mechanically unbalancing, and that's just not really there in this case. Hell, if svirfs have survived this long in ALFA, no way the planetouched are going to uber themselves out of existence.
So there are two plans - one where it's a piss-and-moan fest for years and they don't get added, and for my money, what ALFA gets out of keeping genasi on the sidelines is a pittance compared to the agita from periodic threads like these. Or, it's the same thing only with an end, when either an admin push or another vote or something allows them into the game. I personally think the latter is the more realistic trajectory, though "advocates" don't exactly go about ingratiating themselves to the body politic around here, so it may take a while.
But what we've done here is created a split, frustration, and quite possibly lost membership over it. There are a number of things that we hold on to so that we can avoid the lax-enforcement problems we had in NWN1. Crafting has always been held by a tight leash, for example, and rightfully so. It basically broke the mathematics of canon, and any DM who let crafting slip found themselves reading that section on PCs-too-powerful soon enough. But most of those are technical or game balance related. There's a possible "population balance" issue here, and possible extra work for DMs, but let the two solve each other.
The greater the number of planetouched, the more they get treated as commonplace and just like other races - the less time DMs have to do anything unique on a character-by-character basis with the PC's backstory - and ultimately the more they just become funny looking humans. Canon fidelity versus collective action - let's see who comes out ahead.
So in the end, I'm not entirely clear what the planetouched ban nets us in the long-term. In the short term it might help DMs with the information overload as we go from Beta-to-Live (one less thing they need to learn and support), but don't overlook the broader social costs.
P.S. I personally hate planetouched and think anyone whose creativity is shattered by the lack of them is either a) not that creative, or b) a Mary Sue-aholic (or c) both). But I am also very used to swallowing my loathing for the social good.
It's a "horse out of the barn" kind of issue; whenever and however it gets reversed, there's no easy way to go back. Virtually every one of the better reasons proffered as to why planetouched aren't desired have self-correction mechanisms: (smart) DMs learn not to reward attention whores (or even reward non-planetouched for not Mary Sue-ing it), servers generate a basic policy of how local folks react and let DMs shift on the fly as they feel, and even players collectively get sick of them if too many sit on servers at once. The only way to justify yanking them back out as a playable race will be something mechanically unbalancing, and that's just not really there in this case. Hell, if svirfs have survived this long in ALFA, no way the planetouched are going to uber themselves out of existence.
So there are two plans - one where it's a piss-and-moan fest for years and they don't get added, and for my money, what ALFA gets out of keeping genasi on the sidelines is a pittance compared to the agita from periodic threads like these. Or, it's the same thing only with an end, when either an admin push or another vote or something allows them into the game. I personally think the latter is the more realistic trajectory, though "advocates" don't exactly go about ingratiating themselves to the body politic around here, so it may take a while.
But what we've done here is created a split, frustration, and quite possibly lost membership over it. There are a number of things that we hold on to so that we can avoid the lax-enforcement problems we had in NWN1. Crafting has always been held by a tight leash, for example, and rightfully so. It basically broke the mathematics of canon, and any DM who let crafting slip found themselves reading that section on PCs-too-powerful soon enough. But most of those are technical or game balance related. There's a possible "population balance" issue here, and possible extra work for DMs, but let the two solve each other.
The greater the number of planetouched, the more they get treated as commonplace and just like other races - the less time DMs have to do anything unique on a character-by-character basis with the PC's backstory - and ultimately the more they just become funny looking humans. Canon fidelity versus collective action - let's see who comes out ahead.
So in the end, I'm not entirely clear what the planetouched ban nets us in the long-term. In the short term it might help DMs with the information overload as we go from Beta-to-Live (one less thing they need to learn and support), but don't overlook the broader social costs.
P.S. I personally hate planetouched and think anyone whose creativity is shattered by the lack of them is either a) not that creative, or b) a Mary Sue-aholic (or c) both). But I am also very used to swallowing my loathing for the social good.
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Save the Charisma - Alter your reactions, even just a little, to at least one CHA-based check a day!
Quasi-retired due to law school
Past PC: Myrilis Te'fer
Save the Charisma - Alter your reactions, even just a little, to at least one CHA-based check a day!
Quasi-retired due to law school
Past PC: Myrilis Te'fer
I could not have put it any better ATD. Well put Sir.
And the upside is...by the time the decision gets reversed, if it ever does, my PC will be high enough level where he can KOS em all. As a matter of fact, I just might make a Teifling hunting ranger. 
And the upside is...by the time the decision gets reversed, if it ever does, my PC will be high enough level where he can KOS em all. As a matter of fact, I just might make a Teifling hunting ranger.
Zyrus Meynolt: [Party] For the record, if this somehow blows up in our faces and I die, I want a raiseSwift wrote: Permadeath is only permadeath when the PCs wallet is empty.
<Castano>: danielnm - can you blame them?
<danielmn>: Yes,
<danielmn>: Easily.
"And in this twilight....our choices seal our fate"
It's discussions like this that make me question remaining in ALFA.
We're in a fantasy setting with dwarves, giants, orcs, and demons and somehow the idea of having a planetouched PC breaks immersion? What about ALFA 1 where half the population of PCs comprised of lesbian elves?
The main thing that breaks immersion for me is having zero players to role play with. And if ALFA keeps on obsessing over how to limit varying schools of thought, I can't see how it hopes to attract outsiders or retain insiders.
We're in a fantasy setting with dwarves, giants, orcs, and demons and somehow the idea of having a planetouched PC breaks immersion? What about ALFA 1 where half the population of PCs comprised of lesbian elves?
The main thing that breaks immersion for me is having zero players to role play with. And if ALFA keeps on obsessing over how to limit varying schools of thought, I can't see how it hopes to attract outsiders or retain insiders.
Current PC: Helga Hornraven
Next PC: Coming Soon
Next PC: Coming Soon
Ah rats, i did confuse the things...one would think those who make decisions are also in the decision making processRotku wrote: Second, no I did not have a say in that decision - you are confusing decision with decision making process. By memory (without going back and checking the numbers) if each Admin did vote in that first poll, things would have turned out different.
alfa is so complicated.AlmightyTDawg: Interesting post really. Oh and screw Mary Sues, they are funny things to play with for about 2 hours, after that they're extremely boring. Flawed characters are living characters: the more real you make them, the better. But an aasimar paladin is as plausible as a human one in the Realms.
How cliche or stereotyped you portray them doesn't have to do with the race...it's just easier to glue a stereotype on a drow than a human, for example (an easy one since drows are born in the human psyche out of stereotypes!). It's because we know the complexity of the humans more than we know that of the drow (or any stranger). In truth, drows are as varied as humans, if generally further in the evil spectrum.
You'll always meet good and bad apples...good concepts, bad concepts...no matter what the race. Hell i've seen clean stereotypes so well played that it didn't matter actually. As long as everyone have fun...
Coming soon in a server near you.
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AcadiusLost
- Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
- Posts: 5061
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Unfortunately, this seems to be the heart of the matter - for a majority of the DMs at the time of the Admin poll, inclusion of planetouched PCs was sufficiently disruptive to lead them to vote against their inclusion in ALFA. The basis of each voter's decision may be in question, but I'd wager a good portion of them believed that planetouched PCs being ingame and interacting with plots, static quests, etc, was sufficient to qualify as "not fun". The decision process Rotku refers to polled the DMs and builders first, and that is where the issue stopped. Would it still be "fun" to play a PC of a race that frustrated and/or antagonized the DMs on your server of choice? The options of exclusion, ignorance, or downright persecution don't seem like particularly "fun" ones to me. Having fun is important- but in a multiplayer setting, that needs to take into account others- if player A is only happy playing a tiefling, and DM X quits because they don't want to DM a world in which tieflings are PCs, then that damages the fun for player B who could care less about tieflings or no tieflings.Souvarine wrote:You'll always meet good and bad apples...good concepts, bad concepts...no matter what the race. Hell i've seen clean stereotypes so well played that it didn't matter actually. As long as everyone have fun...
We're still a good ways from Live, and with the clean-slate that the Beta to Live switch will offer, there is still time for reconsidering here and there before things are "out of the barn" entirely. It's possible that minds will change on the issue before Live- but hearing endless bemoaning of the issue doesn't seem to me a very encouraging sign on that front. If anything, it is going to tend to further entrench the opinion of those who think anyone who wants to play a planetouched PC is going to be a headache to deal with, in and out of character.
HA! I have it!!!
A ranger tiefling whos favored enemy is other tieflings....
There can be only one... AND IT SHALL BE ME!
A ranger tiefling whos favored enemy is other tieflings....
There can be only one... AND IT SHALL BE ME!
Zyrus Meynolt: [Party] For the record, if this somehow blows up in our faces and I die, I want a raiseSwift wrote: Permadeath is only permadeath when the PCs wallet is empty.
<Castano>: danielnm - can you blame them?
<danielmn>: Yes,
<danielmn>: Easily.
"And in this twilight....our choices seal our fate"
DMs can decide what they dm for, they are not forced to entertain anyone, as far as i know there is no rule forcing them whatsoever. So dms who don't want to deal with tieflings won't have to...just like one who dislike drows so much as to ignore/exclude them won't dm on north underdark (most likely)AcadiusLost wrote:
Unfortunately, this seems to be the heart of the matter - for a majority of the DMs at the time of the Admin poll, inclusion of planetouched PCs was sufficiently disruptive to lead them to vote against their inclusion in ALFA. The basis of each voter's decision may be in question, but I'd wager a good portion of them believed that planetouched PCs being ingame and interacting with plots, static quests, etc, was sufficient to qualify as "not fun". The decision process Rotku refers to polled the DMs and builders first, and that is where the issue stopped. Would it still be "fun" to play a PC of a race that frustrated and/or antagonized the DMs on your server of choice? The options of exclusion, ignorance, or downright persecution don't seem like particularly "fun" ones to me. Having fun is important- but in a multiplayer setting, that needs to take into account others- if player A is only happy playing a tiefling, and DM X quits because they don't want to DM a world in which tieflings are PCs, then that damages the fun for player B who could care less about tieflings or no tieflings.
We're still a good ways from Live, and with the clean-slate that the Beta to Live switch will offer, there is still time for reconsidering here and there before things are "out of the barn" entirely. It's possible that minds will change on the issue before Live- but hearing endless bemoaning of the issue doesn't seem to me a very encouraging sign on that front. If anything, it is going to tend to further entrench the opinion of those who think anyone who wants to play a planetouched PC is going to be a headache to deal with, in and out of character.
I have searched for months to find a dm as a drow back in alfa1. Some dms did accomodate me for a while, but i understood when they didn't like drow. Was it hard? hell yes. Was it worth it? i believe so. Simple talk solves most issues.
As i see them, there is a difference between drows and tieflings: they'd be treated like scoundrels, deseased or cursed folks, outcasts but not KOS everywhere. Drows are the enemy and a threat on the surface, in a military way, they don't really go there for fun, so accomodating drows was harder.
A tiefling is akin to a dirty beggar, a leprous man for most commoners...so they can be treated harshly, banned at times too, most tieflings can pass for a sick human when dressed in rags (depending on the traits of course). Remember that they are not half-fiends, they don't have parent fiends.
In alfa tieflings will have to live a low life, but that's exactly what the -2 cha implies too. Following that thought, they don't need more camps, npcs nor any more quests than evil humans or half-orcs do...builders are probably planning to accomodate evil players (tell me they are
). As for the aasimar, they'll fit very well in the typical "save the damsel from fire beetles" static quests and would be welcomed in most cities, if only because they're mistaken as nobles.
For those who want to play the "scorned guys" in alfa (drows, half orcs, duergars, etc.)" it's more dms of choice than server of choice, we go where we get the dms that like to play with us, usually not the other way around.
As for the "constant bemoaning" entrenching positions, i don't see the current thread as bemoaning or any sort of flame war, actually. We're just discussing over the exclusion fo the planetouched. Those who ain't interested in the issue anymore most likely don't even read or simply skim it for a laugh.
Coming soon in a server near you.