Community opinion poll: Planetouched as playable races 1/2

[Hialmar]

Poll Author: Souvarine

DISCLAIMER: This poll is not official and was not specifically approved by the admin, nor there is any certitude that the admin will consider using the result for further analysis of the planetouched issue.

Greetings alfans,

Today we want to learn more about what the community of alfa thinks of this issue. It is one rare occasion where each and every member of this community has the opportunity to express their opinion, each vote equal to the other. As such, here are two questions that we'd like you all to answer, whether you are a builder, a dm or a player.

A second question is in this thread:
http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=37941

[darrenhfx]

a conditional yes from me

Conditional primarily on the ease with which they can be included in server designs and their overall play balance wrt the game engine.

I'd really like to have some sort of process that could limit the number of plane-touched PCs but I don't know of a fair and reasonable way to do that off the top of my head.

[Mayhem]

There should be a "I'm willing to let the DMs decide" option.

[JaydeMoon]

And a "Isn't this issue closed?" option.

And a "I'm not sure which races are plane-touched" option.

And a "Wish they weren't getting rid of gnomes" option.

Come on now... the options are yes and no.

Would YOU prefer to be able.

If you DON'T prefer, whether it's because you don't want to make the decision, you think it's a dead horse, you want to let the DMs decide, click No.

[psycho_leo]

Wether you like it or not the final decision WILL be left for DMs and builders (even it comes in the form of Admin standing by them). The poll just wants to know your own personal opinion. If you dont have one... well... don't vote.

[Spider Jones]

I am absolutely for the inclusion of planetouched as playable races.

I see little reason to deny the option to those interested.

As far as them causin' issue for DMs as show stoppers or what have you, sounds like some passive aggressive bitterness over drow to me.

At any rate, it's no more an issue than allowing half-orcs to be playable in the Dalelands where they're seen only as likely agents of the Zhents if not simply as monsters.

Some DMs and builders actually EMBRACED this sort of idea initially and made elves kill on sight in Sembia where they certainly wouldn't ordinarily be.

Planetouched are only really as much a show stopper as you allow them to be. Certainly in some places they'd be seen as more than a curiousity, but the Realms are full of magic and odd beasts, largely it'll be a non-issue.

On the other hand, ALFA really doesn't need to risk alienating a chunk of player base interested in playing NWN2 for its exotic races. Can you not trust the application process to produce decent enough RPers to handle playing tieflings and aasimars and the like?

[Souvarine]

There should be a "I'm willing to let the DMs decide" option.

In fact dms will always have the ability to restrict a race from their campaigns, as it is the case right now.

But do you want to have the option of creating such character? or not? Do you mind if your comrades have that option?

Thinking a bit about this might help you form your own opinion.

[Mayhem]

I have thought about it. For longer than you, it would seem. I was pretty much the first to say "Let the people who will have to do the work make the decision." and I still believe that.

If you want that to count as a "no", so be it.

[Souvarine]

I have thought about it. For longer than you, it would seem. [...] If you want that to count as a "no", so be it.

Just don't assume you thought about it more than i did, that's a bit futile and mildly amusing. The binary answer is intentional to polarize the opinions.

It makes for easier analysis as well as forcing people to weight in every aspect of the issue for themselves before choosing their answer. No one is forced to vote should they feel unable to choose. If the sum of all things comes to no for you, then so be it.

Thanks for voting.

[psycho_leo]

For longer than you, it would seem. I was pretty much the first to say "Let the people who will have to do the work make the decision." and I still believe that.

The people that do the work will still make the decision. It doesn't mean that they should not be made aware of teh desires of the playerbase. You can still think planetouched should be allowed and let DMs decide. It's not one or the other.

[JaydeMoon]

For longer than you, it would seem. I was pretty much the first to say "Let the people who will have to do the work make the decision." and I still believe that.

The people that do the work will still make the decision. It doesn't mean that they should not be made aware of teh desires of the playerbase. You can still think planetouched should be allowed and let DMs decide. It's not one or the other.

NO way d00d! It's one or the other.

GET TO THE CHOPPAH!!!

[Mayhem]

I have thought about it. For longer than you, it would seem. [...] If you want that to count as a "no", so be it.

Just don't assume you thought about it more than i did, that's a bit futile and mildly amusing. The binary answer is intentional to polarize the opinions.

As opposed to your apparent assumption that I hadn't thought about it at all?

[AcadiusLost]

I see a potentially important distinction here that hasn't been well addressed in my view. It has been argued by some that planetouched are essentially human, or at least far more human than, say, elves or dwarves, that they can usually pass for humans in most casual circumstances, and result from some distant elemental or planear ancestry "re-emerging" (likely much to the surprise of the human parents). From this perspective, they seem quite reasonable as player characters- as has been pointed out, there quite a few PCs who were RP'ed similarly in NWN1-ALFA (without statistical benefits or LA adjustments, of course).

What we have as options coded in MotB/NWN2, though, are fairly over-the-top artistic representations, more believable as half-djinn and the like, than the more subtle "planetouched" that canon seems to support. Fire genasi actually appear to be on fire (should they set inns on fire by sleeping on flammable pillows?)- water genasi have squid tentacles (complete with suckers) or coral growing out of their heads, the list goes on. What we've been delivered with the game is a reinterpretation of them as monster races, basically. The aasimar models offered by NWN2 are pretty reasonable, and the tiefling ones aren't too bad (though the fact that /all/ the tiefling heads have horns is frustrating as well). But the genasi especially pose a problem from a canon perspective. Some people want to play them as per the "lightly" planetouched perspective, but what are the options? Choose a freakish appearance, and make your description say "((Actually looks nothing like this, please ignore and treat ### like a normal human with a slight odor of brimstone))"? To me, even as a player, this would be a frustration. DMs have a more convoluted path via the DM client to read the examine field on a player as well, complicating even that workaround. I can't believe anyone would really want to send a barrage of tells every time straightening out the natural reactions other players have to the PC's appearance via the engine- it's immursion breaking, and a continual frustration.

With regards to DMs being able to just ignore PCs they don't want to deal with- I don't think I'm alone in my sense that the DM bears a responsibility to attempt to represent the world via the NPCs. Ignoring a (flaming) fire genasi who walks into a suspicious rural bar and orders "a cold one", is going to frustrate other players who are around as well - they rely at least in part on the DMs to provide a world in which actions draw consequences, otherwise you end up with the odd situation of the PCs being the only ones who react to "monsters" in town, and CvC (hopefully actual combat would not be an early resort, but let's face it, most other forms of actual confrontation require a high degree of mutual trust and cooperation between the involved players) would be a fairly natural result.

So, couldn't we just change the appearance of genasi ingame, to get rid of this whole "monster race" problem? Certainly, that would alleviate most of my concerns. However, it's got at least 3 major problems:

1. Character Creation: since haks don't load at character creation, we can't change what appears at this stage. Any changes made will have to happen through scripted systems we write from scratch, /after/ the PC enters the module. I've done this for skills, and it's taken many, many hours. It's still got problems I'm trying to iron out.

2. Models: What would we replace the genasi models with? Are there sufficiently humanlike alternatives on the vault? Enough heads to provide those who want to play genasi a choice? (even 3 per gender, per genasi would mean 12 new high-quality heads we'd need).

3. Choice: I'd wager most ALFAns spend a fair bit of time scrutinizing their PCs' appearances in the creation GUI, choosing colors, hairstyles, etc- after all, you may spend years wearing that skin around ALFAdom. Would we really want to find all that scrapped upon entry to the module, and reassigned some kind of generic-standard genasi head? Even if we had a full range of options, we really don't have anyone with the skills to make a GUI-driven close-up examine and reselect screen to choose between alternative heads.

For now, I'm abstaining from the poll above. With the models as they are, to me the Aasimar and Tieflings are more or less acceptable, but the genasi as offered are akin to adding kobolds or the like as player races, which is not what I believe ALFA is about. The options /currently/ as I see them, are allow genasi as coded in MotB, and just bend canon to assume they really do look that wacky, and should be treated as monsters ingame in many regions (which I dislike for all the above reasons), or leave them out for now, until/unless a more reasonable reinterpretation of them as a player race become available to us.

[Mikayla]

If the models can be changed by our folks here, then that seems an acceptable and practical way to go.

[JaydeMoon]

A lot of things can be changed.

The question is who is willing to change them.

Not the current set of builders, scriptors, and DMs if you believe the last poll of such was an indicator.

Now we have an eloquent statement as to why it may be troublesome to add in plane-touched... they are not represented in NWN2 as they are in Canon. One of Mulu's key points is that if ALFA goes by Canon, and the plane-touched races are Canon, then we should incorporate them into ALFA.

This seems to make that Mulu's point irrelevant in that we can not, at this moment, present plane-touched PCs as they are presented in cannon. To make them canon-worthy will require scripting and work on the part of scriptors and builders. If Acadius Lost says it can take some time to do, then I am inclined to believe him over those who have not been scripting yet say it's a simple process.

I'm still in favor of plane-touched, but it's obvious that they can't be put in and considered matching cannon at this time, which means work will have to be done if we assume that we want them to match canon. Who will do this work?