Just my 2c: I think there needs to be a proper arrangement for PoWs. Just an idea but there could be a dedicated PoW area away from the fighting. As prisoners are accumulated they’re put to labour (Hey, free ore/lumber!) or are otherwise confined, but still able to RP among themselves instead of being shunted into an emoted cage twiddling their thumbs until they’re inevitably let go or escape when nobody is looking. The key reason people want prisoner RP over and done with is because it’s boring. Nobody interacts with you except maybe to insult you for a bit or conduct weird/grimderp torture RP.
Give them fellow prisoners to interact with, or guards who are dedicated to the role of being PoW Camp guards instead of a poor schmuck who got the role dumped on him and wants to go join the RPPvP asap and will probably abandon his post as soon as there’s a skirmish to be had, leaving the player RPing a prisoner alone and bored.
After, say, a few days. Maybe the prisoners stage a riot, or an escape plan, or maybe each faction has a mission given to free the prisoners. Or maybe take them all to go work in a mine or lumberyard for an evening or two. Maybe there a few can try to escape, or just… y’know, RP together. It’s better than just being shunted into a tiny building in a war camp then forgotten about. Or tortured repeatedly. Frankly I’m surprised nobody seems to have thought to put PoWs to work, there’s dozens of examples of this all over the game and I think most would find it far more enjoyable to RP out than either AFKing until friends arrive and steamroll the war camp in the wee hours of the morning, or being tortured and insulted for a few hours before being ‘exchanged’.
Just interact with your prisoners and maybe there’d be less people godmoting their way to freedom or less bases getting steamrolled to free one guy in the space of two minutes when other guilds are offline. I can’t speak for everyone but I wouldn’t mind RPing a fantasy equivalent of the Great Escape or Shawshank Redemption even if I had to be the prisoner the entire time.
Honestly, Brigante, dont be a history teacher, because all you do is quote some outdated wikipedia links, masterfully crafted to, once again, belittle everyone but brits and yanks in 20th century.
In that case, let prisoner roleplay be conducted by the people who want prisoner roleplay, for the people who want prisoner roleplay, in a place where it doesn’t interfere with the scheduled events of the campaign.
I’m fine with it if there’s a dedicated prison camp for either side away from the front line, effectively separate from the rest of the campaign so that they don’t have to deal with prison-breaking raids every half an hour, with dedicated guards who actually want to roleplay with the prisoners that have been taken, with the prisoners being people who wanted their characters to be taken prisoner in the first place and are willing to remain prisoners.
If even one of these aspects is lacking, the whole prisoner roleplay thing falls back into being an annoyance for almost everyone involved in the campaign. And that’s the problem, there’s too many moving parts for this to realistically work and be feasible. The novelty of being a prisoner might wear off even if some prisoners were enthusiastic about it to start with. The responsibility of being a prison guard segregated from the rest of the campaign might be too frustrating for some prison guards.
A significant amount of organisation would be required to make prisoner roleplay of this sort work and in the end, it just wouldn’t be worth the effort. People come to a RP-PvP campaign for the RP-PvP campaign. Creating an authentic and functional prison camp experience that’s divorced from the rest of the RP-PvP campaign will probably just make the people involved in the prison camp want to rejoin the campaign after a day or two of having to sit it out to play prisoner or babysit prisoners.
So, we’re back to the primary solution being ‘take no prisoners.’
Whoah whoah there, Shooting people who are already handcuffed is brave now? Stalin needed a butcher, and he was there. Its not like he forged some business empire of “Murder Inc” and courageously forged a rep through the ranks of cowardly assassins. In any other regime he would have been behind bars. He was useful to Stalin, and that is all. He is not some aspirational figure.
Who brought Wikipedia into this? I was talking about Blokhin, I’m a keen student of history, and World War II especially fascinates me. Just because people quote facts, doesn’t mean they googled them, there are things like books, and lots of them, so you get various views. When they all kind of agree on one thing, you kind of have to go “Maybe that’s the thing that happened” Sorry, I say ‘All kind of agree on’ what I mean is “Both sides say this happened, everyone says this happened, there is no reputable source saying it didn’t”.
I have a massive distaste for American policy in the 20th century, apart from its more enlightened elements, and an equally strong distaste for British policy during the 20th century, apart from its finer hours. I have no idea where you would get the concept that I am some Anglophile from? If anything I am the opposite, being something of a Russophile, two of my favourite authors are Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. my favourite composer is Prokofiev, So, I suppose, I need to challenge your statement. When have I ever championed the UK or even more unlikely, the US over any other nation? I await your cordial response.
No, I just stated that Stalin was a brave person. I didn’t question if he shot/ordered people to be shot under the “enemy of the regime” label, because he did, but aside that - he did much more. But I guess western books forget to cite that.
You did. When I opened english wiki on Vasily Blokhin - it right away stated of approx. 7000 people, whom he singe-handedly massacred, and link for that was some 1996 american journal and Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book (who is brittish, btw); not a word about official russian secret services, who, usually, published all the dirty information on Stalin’s regime in the 90s. Now, I opened russian wiki to read about Vaily Blokhin and, amazingly as it sounds, I found not a single official reference on his massacres, only vague yellow press websites post-2012, who called him a butcher (citing previous co-workers).
So yeah, I’d really love to have some sources on such loud statements, hopefully from the period of time, when Yeltsin was a thing.
I think a major problem with campaigns recently is win logic. Some individuals and to an extent guilds on Alliance side seem to value winning battles and the campaign overall over actually doing RP. In a lot of battles in many campaigns I notice that they start alright, then the Alliance brings in some reinforcements to give momentum, then they start bringing in more and more and more and then if they’re not already winning the battle with superior numbers, they start walking through Horde lines amongst other tricks. Of course Horde players respond and at times don’t respond to it well and then you get a situation where one side is obviously winning due to a lack of balance. I’d say well done to the PVE RPers for keeping it balanced as from what I’ve heard that was quite fair and fun on the PVE front, and to the Horde who weren’t demoralised by the crushing force in the RP/PVP, but something needs to be done about ‘need to win even if it means causing imbalance/cheating’ logic if RP in campaigns like this is going to continue to be enjoyable and fair. That, or pre-determined outcomes.
So the horde has gone back to it’s usual excuses any time they lose a campaign because there is no horde roleplay. “The big bad Alliance are bullying us omg they have extra people that’s totally why we all left!! It’s got nothing to do with Horde guilds repeatedly overstating themselves time after time in an effort to look as though they actually exist or anything. Nuh-uh! Alliance badrp reeeeeee!!”.
Come on, guys. You’re a broken record at this point.
I would like to thank everyone for the RP we did in Silverpine - it was fun to be there with you people!
Yet I need to agree with Grelix. This situation repeats for a while on different rp-pvp campaigns. Horde is outnumbered and crushed by the Alliance - which is not good for the Alliance either.
Maybe we could try out on the next campagins some of ideas below:
Shorter skirmishes in smaller groups - For example 30 min. battle, 5 min break between the fight to change the groups. Larger side sends out different groups into battle so everyone have a fight at this day.
Larger DM support for the outnumbered side - I believe Horde can do way more than a blight bombardment to damage Alliance. If the traps could be placed on evacuation, why not on the battlefield? Maybe the area below the bridge could be filled with blight -> creating chokepoint on the bridge where Alliance could not use their full force to flank the Horde. As in real life - battle is not always fought between balanced forces, those outnumbered should not charge into open field yet choose wisely the place of battle and prepare for enemy. On this one we will need Dungeon Masters that will inform people of such and observe the battlefield before heading themselves into a fight. Maybe it is time to use cavalry in different form on the rp-pvp - like the blood elves did on the last day - it was great idea! We should make more of such things on the battlefield!
Pre-determined outcome is not a bad thing either - a well written scenario can be fun as well.
It’s okay. Keep falling back on memes rather than self-reflection of why your side doesn’t exist. Typical Horde tactic.
Frankly the horde losing campaign after campaign is lore appropriate. They’ve been battered into submission in this war. They are losing on every front; their every leader completely inept and paralysed by civil unrest and fear of being ousted. You guys picked the bad guys and now you’re getting beaten for it. Who knew. Just have the alliance call in the Vindicarr and end the war in a day, honestly.
Ilyadris, posting some of his usual incoherent and useless feedback, makes a good ending to this thread, because it just sums up why some (not a vast majority, just 200 IQ kids) on the Alliance side can’t even handle the thought of a balanced campaign
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