CLOK BBS

Hello everyone, it's me, Drayla. Most people refer to me as Navii these days though, because Drayla has been pretty much abandoned all this time. You see, after Drayla lost all of her belongings when her wagon was stolen, I realized that she didn't fit in anymore, and I had nowhere to go with her. The short version: her RP is critically broken. The long version: I started Drayla wanting her to be a wilderness survival type of character. She joined the Udemi, and thrn I realized how much I hated druidry. So, I chose to RP her as someone who could commune through the Gaea, but anything more than that was a huge struggle for her. That is why she practically never uses druidry and doesn't care quite as much as the other druids when it comes to over-logging and such.
Then, her personality was more defined by Tavri. When she first started playing, her and Drayla became close, almost like sisters. When Tavri became involved in an event that really only involved a few Udemi and was kept quite hush-hush to everyone else, it further defined Drayla's personality. I found it easy to RP her, and often found myself with RP awards, and it was the best time I have ever had on CLOK. However, Tavri left, and the story she was involved in seemes to have dwindled away and become forgotten, leaving Drayla the only one still affected by it. This makes her feel alienated from everyone else, and her RP doesn't make sense anymore.

The whole goal of this post, and the reason I posted this in the Udemi section and not General Discussion, is simple: I feel like Drayla's RP either needs slight tweaking, or it needs to stay the way it is, but either way would cause some sort of impact in the guild. I would like to request of the GMs that Drayla either be allowed to leave the Udemi, her meager druidry powers completely stripped of her and her current RP left intact, or tweak her RP a bit, and start over the events that had begun earlier, but have Drayla take the burden this time in place of Tavri or someone else. This is the only direction I know to take Drayla from here, other than requesting that she be deleted so that I may recreate her and completely start over. I know what I ask is huge, and these sort of things are normally completely out of the question, but seeing as my only other option is completely forgetting about her and never playing as Drayla again, I figure it can't possibly hurt to simply ask. I would very much like to bring Drayla back, and if she does return she won't be leaving again anytime soon. And with that, I leave this decision with the GMs and hope that I don't step on toes with this post.

I'm sympathetic to your situation, but we can't really shift one character's circumstances to another and retcon the occurances, just because the original character hasn't played the game in a while. That would make things quite awkward if that first character ever returned, only to find out their unique personal experience and story was "stolen" by another. In this particular case, I've seen Tavri a few times in the past couple weeks. Population tends to dip over the holidays, when people are often busy in the dreary real world.

Regarding leaving a guild, it might be possible, but it would be highly unlikely you'd be allowed to join another one. We don't want to set precedent for guild-switching, which we are very strongly against. Once a case occurs, people begin to cry "But X did it, why can't I?", or, people begin to come up with "character development" aimed solely at setting the up to be allowed to switch guilds. It would also be a little hard to swallow suddenly losing all your guild-based abilities and skills.

Curiosity: Why the hatred of druidry? I'm not gearing up to defend it or anything, just wondering what about it you detest so much.

And one last note: We don't allow deletion/"rerolling" of characters. It would be really awkward to meet Drayla, whom you knew and shared experiences with as a Udemi, only to have her say "Oh no, I'm another Drayla, the same except I'm a Templar." It could effectively be a guild-switching mechanic which, as stated above, we are strongly against.

I can understand all this, and I myself am not totally guiltless when it comes to extended absences. Really, my hatred for druidry doesn't really stem from mechanics or anything. It comes from the fact that at the time I was unaware that druidry was more of a support magic than anything. I'm okay with using most other forms of magic in CLOK, like sorcery, because I can cast raw magic at enemies to build it up and get abilities to make it even better. With druidry and aeromancy though, I find them more tedious than helpful, as aeromancy is more passive than other forms of elemancy, and druidry is more of a support magic than an offensive or defensive magic. In short, it doesn't fit my playing style, and so I have thos resentment of it.

About leaving the guild: I know it is something that you all are strongly against, and the instances in which it was allowed can be counted on one hand, and that is why I ask about it with the idea that it has a small chance of occuring, and if it doesn't, no harm will be done. If I were to switch Drayla from Udemi to any other guild, I would put her in the newest guild, the Snowpine Lodge. I've always seen Drayla as a bushcraft character, and that won't change. That being said, I'm not really sure that not being in a guild would really hurt anything either. The only thing that makes Drayla fit in with Udemi right now is her feelings toward the Infested. She wants them stopped. She wants the Resen eliminated and the Infested cured or helped in some way, and if that is not possible, then wiped out.

[paragraph scrubbed by Rias - outed details regarding another character's personal/private situation]

I thank you for the timely response, and for your explainations, and for you taking the time to even think about any of the things I have suggested. If I could say nothing else about CLOK (which I certainly can) I could easily say it's GMs are the best when it comes to player interaction and discussion.

Note: please don't post details or allusions to details of another character's personal or private experiences and situations on the public BBS.

Whoops. Sorry. I think I should probably move on from this topic before I find myself in trouble.

If Drayla is bushcrafty and seeks to fight the Resen, why not stay with the Udemi? They're bushcrafty and fight resen. As far as I know (Rithiel can chime in on the subject), druidry is not required to be a Udemi, just an option available to them and one that many Udemi are likely prone to have a knack for.

Actually, you make a good point. In fact, it might be better for me to continue playing Drayla as an Udemi who does not use druidry either by choice or inability. I think I just got caught up in the way most people have begun playing their Udemi, which is a heavy focus on the druidry side, with a strong desire to protect the wildlife. Perhaps I could help bring the Udemi back to a comfortable medium again by showing new players that they are not just druids, but bushcrafters and rangers as well.