Tieflings Number 2

[Mikayla]

I wasn't joking either Helios - I am supporting your team! Consider me your first cheerleader.

[Mulu]

In NWN2 ALL tieflings have horns! Without technical tinkering, we cannot make tieflings match canon! OH NOES! Technical limitation! No tieflings. Requires tech work to make them match canon. I win.

Joke or no, that's cosmetic. There are very few heads and options available for any race. Adding a head hak when it becomes available isn't exactly Toril-shattering. In the meantime, that's what the description field is for. And I still haven't heard a valid reason for exclusion beyond, "I don't like them."

As for admin issues, according to Rusty it falls under DMA, and he's the DMA (and he's also the one who threw out the prior admin decision), so that is the admin position that will need to be changed for inclusion. As an aside, I'm quite sorry to hear you're not running for re-election as PA Mik.

[HATEFACE]

Join in mIRC #TeamTiefling if you're interested. Otherwise it'll just degrade into one of those sexual vampire S&M chatrooms. A lot is riding upon you people who are interested in the inclusion of planetouched races. Either sit there and do nothing and have nothing, or do something and at the very least say you've tried.

[Souvarine]

Will log in there if i can find how to make IRC work when i'm back home. Might take an hour or two though, work to do.

[JaydeMoon]

As for admin issues, according to Rusty it falls under DMA, and he's the DMA (and he's also the one who threw out the prior admin decision), so that is the admin position that will need to be changed for inclusion.

Again, it seems you only see what you want to see or underline that which is pertinent to support your statements without going the rest of the way.

My mom used to do this with her bible quotes. She'd quote the half of the scripture that validated her point while leaving out the part she didn't need. Best example is the verse where children are supposed to respect and obey their parents. She never seemed to follow up with the very next verse that said parents should not vex their children. Anyway...

Right, according to RUSTY it fell under DMA. However, BRAND SPANKIN NEW ALFA POLICY put forward by Wynna and voted into effect by the Admin body has changed this seemingly unilateral action for future decision making procedure.

So when it comes up, DMA will say, "HEY! That's in MY Domain!"

And PA will go, "Well, my players all want it and we have to figure out how to implement it for players so it's in MY Domain!"

And TA will say, "Well, scripting and schtuff falls to tech and that's MY Domain!"

And then lead will say, "Yes, it's in all three of your Domain, so the three of you vote!"

And the vote will be 2-1 in favor. And then it's passed. And then we have plane touched. By the end of February, quite possibly! Maybe sooner!!!

Whereas, by YOUR logic, you hope that someone runs against Rusty and as long as he (or someone else who doesn't like plane-touched) holds that office, there will be no change and we will be forced to endure Tiefling thread eleventeen until one day Mulu runs and gets voted in as DMA.

I like the first way better. All that we need to get that process going is a nice and serious proposal.

Maybe, by now, Wynna has got one.

[Mikayla]

Mulu:

As for admin issues, according to Rusty it falls under DMA, and he's the DMA (and he's also the one who threw out the prior admin decision), so that is the admin position that will need to be changed for inclusion. As an aside, I'm quite sorry to hear you're not running for re-election as PA Mik.

The Planetouched question goes far beyond the DMA's office. Indeed, I actually think the Planetouched question only touches upon the DMA's office tangentially, in that Rusty is concerned about how the DMs feel about the inclusion of the races. Of course, we do not ask said DMs how they feel about the inclusion of gnomes, or drow, or half-orcs, or any of the other standard races.

In PnP campaign, a DM would be free to insitute house rules on Planetouched races and ECL and LA races and all of that - in ALFA, however, such rules have to apply across the board. This takes the decision out of the hands of the DM/DMs. Whether to include a race or not, how to treat it as far as the core-rules go, etc. are all questions beyond the scope of the DMs - they are part of the very infrastructure of ALFA and NWN. We do not let the DMs re-write the leveling rules, or the feat rules for instance, so I do not see why we would let them re-write the rules on races.

So, whose domain is it? Player Admin's? Well, not really though it does touch my domain - the availability of a race is certainly of great concern to the player base, both those who want to play the race and to those who don't want to be faced with inequities. So, I believe the Planetouched question (and the ECL question) tangentially touch the PA's domain.

But if not DMA or PA, then who has primary responsibilty? Well, the Tech Admin does I believe. The Pillars of ALFA say that ALFA uses the D&D rules in the Forgotten Realms. So, to the extent we are able, we should follow canon for both of those - and its up to the tech team to implement such things. If something can be implemented as per canon, then generally, it shoudl be. If there are problems, then its up to the tech team to find a solution.

Given that we know that D&D and the Forgotten Realms include Planetouched in canon, AND that NWN2 fully supports said races, I believe it falls to the Tech Admin to implement said races. If people cannot stomach the idea of the Tech Admin deciding the issue alone, then I believe it falls to all the Admin as a group as per Wynna's recently enacted changes to the charter.

So, that is my position - this is for the Tech Admin to review, analyze and decide. If there are protests from the other Admin, then I would make this an Admin-wide decision in accord with Wynna's latest charter changes, and thus, a Majority of Admin will make the call.

[Mikayla]

Jayde:

And PA will go, "Well, my players all want it and we have to figure out how to implement it for players so it's in MY Domain!"

Jayde, I like you a great deal, but don't you ever dare to speak for me unless I ask you to. My position can, and has been, laid out by me above in great detail, and as you can see, your presumptions are incorrect. I believe this matter belongs to the Tech Admin.

[psycho_leo]

Whereas, by YOUR logic, you hope that someone runs against Rusty and as long as he (or someone else who doesn't like plane-touched) holds that office, there will be no change and we will be forced to endure Tiefling thread eleventeen until one day Mulu runs and gets voted in as DMA.

You forgot to say how the tiefling haters will then come back to power and start it all over again.

[JaydeMoon]

You are WRONG!!!

Once they are in it'll be impossible to pull them out cause there they will be!

That was our mistake with putting in the droez!!!

Now look! Droez climbingin out of teh underdarks and livin in our citeez!!!

*points an accusatory finger at Mikayla*

There's on1! Gat her!!!

[Killthorne]

You forgot to say how the tiefling haters will then come back to power and start it all over again.

Best way to take your hatred out for tieflings is to ninja for Tyr... in-game of course.






You know.. this topic looks rather silly from the outside-in. Let 'em play their stupid tieflings! Again, I've seen soooo many players that have some sort of demon blood/connection in ALFA, that I am surprised it hasn't just been given the green light yet.

I'm even more surprised they all didn't just get together, and form some sort of "I'm-doomed-by-demons-just-like-you" company that travels the land, bringing dark rain clouds and tear-spiked ale wherever they went.





~Killthorne~

[Mulu]

And of course I don't actually want to play a tiefling, or an aasimar, so there's only so far I would go personally on this. I'm not an advocate of plane-touched, as I stated before I ban all LA races from my own games as well as half-orcs, however I am an advocate of having ALFA follow its pillars and canon and making ALFA attractive to applicants. I do think removing them, particularly the way in which they were removed and the presumptions accompanying that removal, were ill-conceived, and for that reason alone it should be revisited. By creating a bunch of bogus tech hurdles, banning plane-touched became fait accompli. I think that was facetious, and a discredit to ALFA's future.

[JaydeMoon]

Jayde:

And PA will go, "Well, my players all want it and we have to figure out how to implement it for players so it's in MY Domain!"

Jayde, I like you a great deal, but don't you ever dare to speak for me unless I ask you to. My position can, and has been, laid out by me above in great detail, and as you can see, your presumptions are incorrect. I believe this matter belongs to the Tech Admin.

My apologies if this seemed like I was putting words in your, Rusty, or Cipher's mouths.

Not my intent. It was meant as a hypothetical example based on the PA, DMA, and TA as entities of office simply to prove a point, not as the individuals who currently hold them.

For future clarification, if I am speaking about the people actually in the office, I will use their actual names.

[Amar]

Part 2 of the Proposal has been added. Up to 4 Pages in OpenOffice.
http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... 071#455071


And yes Jayde, Ill sign it for you.

[Souvarine]

Case: Planetouched Inclusion within ALFA as playable races.
Subject: Decision making process proposal

Foreword: First and foremost i would like to thank everyone who contributed to this thread, and whoever came with ideas mentionned in this proposal should be credited with them.

Generally speaking, i wish to improve the decision-making process that was accepted and planned by the former admin, but ended too abruptly. My objective is to offer a process in which parties can be satisfied with the fairness of the decision that might come out of it concerning the inclusion, or not, of planetouched characters in ALFA.

I will analyse the requests of Wynna through her post mostly in order, but i would also note that i am not offering an "implementation proposal", because in my opinion, some questions are impossible to answer at this time and require other actions as a consequence.


Of global scripting and technical tasks requirements:

My first comments will go toward the building community. These are folks who write the global scripts and make alfa base resources, basically the technical core of alfa. I believe these are the most concerned by the inclusion of planetouched characters.

Wynna requested the following items to be addressed:

Provide an estimation of manhours required to script a workable global plane-touched solution.
and
An offer to do the scripting and a schedule by which proof of concept may be seen.

At this time, i believe that we cannot answer these questions. I personally, and the vast majority of those who proposed or commented this item, simply cannot see the angle that a builder might have here. We may lack the knowledge of the 2da files, haks or global, alfa-wide scripts that would need to be modified due to the inclusion of planetouched races. That is why the first action to be taken would be to ask imput from the builders who have those concerns.

A question could be devised, such as this example, and either sent as a pm or on the tech forums for 2 weeks. The idea is to get as much builders to provide information.

1. Please Describe a specific global content that needs to be created or adapted for alfa as a result of the inclusion of planetouched characters.

Precision: The interest here is to find the amount of extra workload added by the inclusion of the races to those who are building the alfa technical core and global script and effects. As such: the content must be specific to the planetouched races and not required for any races already in alfa, as it would be done anyway, regardless of the decision. We also need to know if it only involves tieflings or aasimars (or both).

Imaginary examples of valid issues:
Scripting collision occurs when calling for planetouched character regarding event X Aasimar resistances prevent them from suffering damage while slowly dying.


Once we have amassed the valid issues (TA could collect these), we will be able to provide a realistic estimate of how many extra manhours will be required to address each of them.


Of local scripting and dm related content:
Moving on to more detailed issues, particular to each servers.

Wynna mentionned the following local scripts that might be required
NPC scripts
KOS scripts
repulsion scripts

NPC, KOS and repulsion scripts are required by the other races, so we should not write these completely in my opinion, solely on behalf of the inclusion of races which may or may not require them. That said, adapting existing scripts is certainly a possibility. It would also solve the issue of respecting alfa standards which are very important.

I believe AmarSldstil, Zelknof and Almightytdawg approached this subject better than i did, so i would suggest these three brave souls to determine if those scripts are really hard to be adapted (or even written, should it be their fancy). i would simply like to add my personal view on the issue. I will try to avoid repeating what they have said, because i assume all proposals will be read and taken into acount...but i think i will fail, so please forgive redundancy.

We are talking about humans here, really. Very few planetouched have gross features differenciating them from humans enough to warrant a specific script to be called for, and as such, it is hard for us to know in advance which script will be required or not.

It may happen that a specific script become required due to the inclusion of planetouched character though. For example, if planetouched should be blocked by a magical barrier on server X, then in fact this will have to be designed and is valid "workload" that we could address. Obviously, there is still need for canon sources to at least hint at what is looked for. We cannot just get the tieflings KOS because they are assumed to all have horns and red skin; it is simply not the case.

In the same line, NPC scripts would be mostly those used by humans. Since tieflings have -2 CHA and aasmar have +2 CHA, the usual characteristic check used for a npc should be used to determine a social reaction of the npc (merchant for example). In most cases, ALFA merchants currently say the same thing to everyone.

Unlike drows and/or half-orcs, planetouched would be specifically KOS in extremely rare circumstances as far as i know the forgotten realms. The Hostile AI faction covers most of these cases. That is because to the foreign observer (orc or city guard), a planetouched is a human. Since scripts for KOS will be made for current races like drows (IF they are made at all), they'll simply be copy-pasted for planetouched where applicable.

Now, to see the global picture, there will be cases where a tiefling (notice that i didn't include aasimar here) will show particularily obvious features, which would normally trigger the evil alignment association. Good roleplaying and communication as well as the description field where appropriate will see to those concepts, just like they do for a drow on the surface or half-orc currently. Every ALFA member is assumed to be mature and responsible for his concepts, eventually including planetouched ones...so my take on this is that one cannot use player bad behavior or ignorance of background as an example to prevent inclusion of a race or another.

All said and done, DMs have expressed concern regarding this issue and we would need to know the server specific cases where canon warrants the writing of new scripts related to the planetouched. In order to get this information, i would proceed in the same way as i did for builders, by submitting a form to the dms of ALFA.

A question could be devised, such as this example. Dma could send these to the dm bodies under them, or i could (given a list of the dms, hdms and server builders and any other eligible person)

1. Describe server specific content that needs to be created or adapted for alfa as a result of the presence of planetouched characters on your server.

2. Please provide the source or reasoning supporting the specific content required.

Precision: The content must be specific to the planetouched races and not required for any races already in alfa, as it would be done anyway, regardless of the decision. We also need to know if it only involves tieflings or aasimars (or both). In cases of question 2, it is simply to avoid subjective decisions.

Imaginary case of valid issue:
Question 1. A faction on my server has means to detect and react to aasimars characters in a unique way. Question 2. The faction is mentionned in sourcebook X. They venerate celestials, and are potent magic users which should detect the heritage...their reaction would logically be Y.

Imaginary case of invalid issue:
Question 1. The city of X would kill all tieflings on sight. Question 2. They kill all evil creatures as per sourcebook X.

This would be invalid because the scripting content (KOS) would not be specific to planetouched characters, regardless of their inclusion or exclusion from ALFA.

Once we have amassed the valid issues (DMA could collect these), we would be able to provide a realistic estimate of how many extra manhours will be required to address each of them.

DM perception that plane-touched are a problem to deal with and a reasonable plan for dealing with any potential over-population by plane-touched.

I would proceed by giving more information to the DM community in order to get a more detailed portrait of the player community. Simply put, i would continue the process that was aborted, that is to poll the players:

Some questions like these could be addressed to the players, via a forum poll (left for 2 weeks to allow for maximum visibility):

1) Do you want ALFA to allow you or other players to create planetouched characters?
a) Yes
b) No

2) Do you intend, at a point in the future, to create a planetouched character?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe, but not consistently

I don't know what would result from this; it could be completely anti-planetouched, but i know that the decision-making process would be more comprehensive with the information gathered, and i know that it would actually make ALFA sound like it cares about the opinion of its members, all facets included, when such a large issue surfaces. Perhaps the admin will find it constructive enough that it will start to make player polls more often(!).

I would propose myself to analyse the result objectively and offer recommendations on the survey if need be. I would put the time necessary to do that. The PA would be the logical body to do so, but elections draws near. Those recommendations could be submited to the admin for approval and then proceed with the decision now that so much more is known about the real issue at hand.

new areas for plane-touched enclaves

My take on this matter:
Planetouched characters do not require more or less static areas than those already built for evil and good humans from the start. If their own dm wants to build them something, it's not really related to their race's inclusion (it's rather a good sign of dedication from the dm's part).

PC models

This one is a tad easy, the planetouched have as much option toward PC models as everyone. No more no less, and as stated before, it is already implemented and supported by the game, and no race deserve more work on it than another as far as pc models are concerned.


Conclusion

So by asking questions to those who detain the knowledge and have concerns about this issues, we might be able to realize where the workload is needed, and i assume, address these concerns as best as we can. If we realize that valid issues are so time-consuming as it is feared, it is pretty clear that we won't push our builders to do it. Either we will take the lead or we will put the idea on standby. It is, however, our belief that the inclusion of planetouched characters would not represent an unrealistic number of tasks or manhours.

From the player poll, dms will actually find out if the overpopulation problem seems to be an issue. Players will find out if the majority of their comrades are for or against the option. Interpreting the poll will be quite a challenge though, because conclusions will not be black or grey. This is why i suggest having someone producing recommendations and offered myself to do so, in order to help the Admin analyse the results.

So there you have my "adaptation proposal". As i have said, it is more a decision-making process improvement or modification than an implementation proposal. But i believe it is a fair step in the right direction.

[Amar]

On those scripts Souvarine, I actually thought of something interesting that may be usefull outside of the Planetouched specifically.

A simple little script that can be plugged into any vendor, with a list of races to go along with it. Anyone of those races who talks to the vendor will be met with a "I don't do business with your kind."

There are lots of races that have harsh feelings against them in a multitude of locations. I like the idea of someone's Elf not being able to buy stuff in a thayan enclave because none of the merchant will deal with an Elf.


EDIT: Also, If anyone feels something should be tweaked in my proposal, feel free to PM me about it, and ill work to incorporate the changes if I can.