CLOK BBS

So, I've just had a few ideas on things that I think would make for good RP, but I wasn't sure if they were things that would even work, so I thought I'd ask about a couple of them.

First, I was wondering about thaumaturgy. I know mechanics-wise it is limited to only monks and templars, but lore-wise, one would not have to be either of those things to harness thaumaturgy, correct? So, my question is, could someone actually have thaumaturgic powers and not be a member of the church if they RP'd well enough?

Second, I was wondering about larger scale things. For instance, say someone became highly interested in a section of the Vatnfjall ruins, or they were just plain fed up with the canim. Could a large group of skilled players actually drive the canim out of part or even the entirety of the ruins through a series of events or something?

I guess my curiousity can be summed up in my third question: What is the limit to what we can achieve through RP? If we want to do something that would need even just a little GM involvement, how do we do so? Do our ideas need approval, or do we RP them out and just hope someone notices and either helps us out or says "No, you can't do that"? This is really the only thing holding me back in my character developement, as I don't want to have a character working towards goals that can never be achieved because they don't fit with the overall plan of the game or some other reason.

I can unfortunately answer only one of your questions.

Thaumaturgy. Thaumaturgy is a discipline and while the Church surely wants to help everyone, they most likely guard the secrets of thaumaturgy closely. It can be used to harm people, albeit at the cost of dimming ones inner light and such and individual is unlikely to discover how to to use it anyway. However, the Church could still view it as a possibility and thus keep Thaumaturgy to themselves.

Let me start off by saying Rias is the lore guru (especially when it comes to thaumaturgy) so please look to him over anything I might say on the matter. Now with that said, this is what I have heard.

First question: I have heard it is indeed possible for a thaumaturgist to exist outside of the tutelage of the church. These would be incredibly good-hearted people that for some reason do not have access to the church or perhaps never heard of it. However, they would not have the same discipline that a trained church member would have so they would not know how to channel it as well. Now whether or not such a person could be a player... you would need to discuss that on a more personal level with Rias.

Second question: Absolutely! We love it when players get together for a common cause to make a world changing event happen. Keep in mind though that it is a VERY good idea to ask the GMs personally via e-mail or some other communication to make sure the event is 100% kosher but from what you have listed so far, it sounds like you are looking in the right direction.

Third question: There are a few tools you can use to make sure your RP is in line with the world lore and mechanics. The first one I already mentioned is e-mail. Feel free to mail all the GMs at clok@contrarium.net or an individual GM who has the guru-ship over a specific area such as, rias@contrarium.net. Next is the REQUEST command. For example if you would like to speak to the Shadgard Trash Collector, you could try the REQUEST command to ask to speak to him, if you have a reasonable IC reason to do so. Keep in mind though, that this DOES NOT guarantee a response from the GMs or the NPC in question.

Lastly, please take some time to familiarize yourself with the lore, if you have not already. We have plenty of information on the wiki and bits scattered throughout the forum. When you have a deeper understanding of the games foundation, it makes it easier to do small off the cuff events and you will find it far more likely that a GM might support the action. However not all player events require a GM to intervene. If you are going to do something on the spur of the moment, try to plan something that can be done through player means only. Such as venturing into a dangerous area with a group, exploring, group RP and interaction etc.

Hope that answers your questions, if not keep um coming.

Thanks, Noctere, you helped out a lot, actually. I'm fairly familiar with the lore, at least what can be learned of it through the wiki and digging through the BBS. I was just wondering if it were possible for players to actually cause world changing events (with GM approval of course) or if those were limites to whatever the GMs cooked up. As for the thaumaturgy question, the reason I asked was because I have a character concept in mind, and while becoming a member of the Church or learning to use thaumaturgy isn't the main focus of the character, I was wondering if X could happen if Y.

Thaumaturgy can technically be learned by anyone, but those who come into it on their own without any training are extremely rare (St. Vito, the original thaumaturge, being one of the very very few), and I don't intend to let this be the case for any player characters, sorry. I would say it might be a possibility if someone wowed me enough, but I don't want to give any false hope. So, lorewise it's a thing, but it doesn't apply to player characters.

The Church doesn't jealously guard the art of thaumaturgy. They do, however, consider very carefully before choosing someone to train because they don't want their effort to be wasted on someone who's going to learn from the initial training only to have their light fade quickly because they aren't a good fit. Adding to that, there are only a very select few in the Lost Lands who are capable of training completely unlearned people into the thaumaturgic discipline (five at the moment, I think), and lorewise it's a very thorough and personal kind of training tailored a bit differently to each individual, so they can't exactly just host a weekly class to whoever has an interest.

Yeah, yeah - gamewise you learn it in an instant by just typing "ask NPC about [ability]". I trust that our players all understand that lorewise it's far more involved than that, and hope they'll roleplay along those lines. It's supposed to be a very deep, difficult, disciplined, personal kind of training. You don't just learn a few secret magic words and poof, you're a thaumaturge.

Just a response to the hypothetical Vatnfjall situation: The players might be able to secure a section for a time, but consider how much effort it would take to keep that area of the ruins secured. Doubtless the players have other things to do, and NPCs, not being Undying, are probably not as eager to put their lives on the line to help keep it secured unless there's an extremely good reason for them to put their lives at risk.

So to answer: You can potentially do all sorts of things, but keep in mind the Lost Lands is a very dangerous place overrun with all manner of nasties, and things like securing areas in normally-hostile territory aren't likely to have much in the way of permanence without some support from NPCs which, as stated above, isn't easy to secure and only happens in rare cases.

The Lost Lands is dangerous, and it's meant to largely stay that way. That's why we haven't let people burn down Tarueka, clog the tunnel leading to infested diggers, destroy the bandit fort near Ebon Pass, etc. (That last might be possible temporarily, but again, don't expect the position to be secured for long. Some group or other is going to be tempted to take it for themselves at some point.)

And of course there's also the fact that area building is long and hard work, and we don't want to just let players "destroy" or "cleanse" them and then have to make more and more areas.

Anyway, just some thoughts on the idea of securing hostile areas specifically.