Official Road to Purgatory-Beta Forum

Harms, confirmed Beta-Account

Greetings and Salutations, Gentlebeings

Today, I come as a humble seeker of knowledge, a wanderer lost in the desert of ignorance, asking for advice on a matter dear to me.

The question, I am forced to ponder, is one we should all consider, regarding this world we have been allowed to travel, the world of Mundus. Namely, how are we to regard the ability to communicate with each other outside the game, across vast distances? How are we to deal with information learned on the forums, can we use them at our convenience? Are we to separate the things we learned on the Forum and the Internet from the things we can act upon on Mundus? Is it cheating to use something we learned here, to gain an advantage on Mundus?

I don’t think there will be a conclusive answer and I don’t think even Pantheon could actually enforce any rules regarding such behaviour, but regardless, I would like to know your thoughts.

Why, you might ask? I found myself in such a situation, just recently, and in hindsight, I am not too happy with my behaviour and how things played out.

The situation was one caused by my own carelessness, I didn’t adhere to the old wisdom that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Some of you might have seen the video of the fight between Orcs and Centaurs, maybe even read my comment to it. A little later, once my respawn-timer was over, I returned to life on Mundus, spawning in the Guest-House that I had designated as home, causing a bit of concern and disbelief from the natives. I guess it is one thing to hear about the ability of Travellers to return from death, a whole other thing to see it in person, especially as the respawn-animation is apparently a little disconcerting. But that is not really the concern here, it might be a different topic.

Anyway, I respawned and was soon asked what had happened, by a pair of Orcs I considered friends, who had even helped me acquire quests in the past. I told them about my experience, how the battlegroup I had been part of had hunted down the centaurs, how a potential ally was discovered and a trap by our enemies seen through, culminating in a description of the night-battle. At this point, I have to admit that my recount was coloured by the video I had watched, partially because it gave a much better viewpoint than my own experience, turns out that a video that you can rewind and watch again allows for better observations than being in the middle of the action, who would have thought.

Sadly, my recollections were spread and even distorted in the local town, I later learned that one of my friends had a prior feud with the leader of the battlegroup and spread what he had learned from me, maybe even adding his own biases, causing rumours to erupt, especially as said leader wasn’t too well liked in the first place.

Envy is a terrible thing, even in a society based on personal power. Or maybe especially in such a society.

The rumours that spread were that the leader of said Battlegroup had recklessly thrown away the lives of fellow orcs, using powerful magic that killed both friend and foe. Things turned out bad for me, when the rumours were disproven a few days later, when the Battlegroup returned, with a few losses but with the previously taken prisoners alive and mostly unharmed. They had suffered some trauma, apparently they felt cold, even when huddled in front of a fire and couldn’t relax when alone, but they were alive.

The source of the rumours was quickly traced, not like there are too many options, and I was called out on the market-square and a certain Traveller tore me a new one. The public nature of that, combined with the fact that quite a few people were grateful to the leader of the battlegroup meant that suddenly, a lot of people looked at me funny. And I mean that quite literally, getting stared at like you are some sort of animal in a zoo is not a fun experience.

Ultimately, I decided that rather than face the consequences, I would make like a tree and leave. Might not be my proudest moment, but it is what it is.

Now, what I want to know is, what do you think? When is it legitimate to use things learned on the forum or the Internet in-game? Do you consider it okay at all?

And with that, I’m out.

Harms

Jeanyra, confirmed Beta-Account

Isn’t that a normal thing to do? I mean, using information gained on the Internet.

People have been creating guides for video-games almost from the start, long before the Internet was a thing. So, yeah, I consider it okay.

Tarrin, confirmed Beta-Account

Funny enough, the question is just as old as video-games are, even if there is no correlation.

It has been a question in the pen&paper community for decades, ever since some nerds got together in a basement and started to throw some dice and roll some fireballs, where is the line between what you, the player, knows and what your character would know.

I think with Road to Purgatory, that question is one that needs to be asked, how far does one want to immerse themselves into Road to Purgatory? Part of me wants to say, play as your character, without invoking outside knowledge but then, how about someone who knows how to shoot a bow? Or, as some people have written, magic is based on knowledge and imagination, so should someone be forbidden to use their knowledge of physics? There would have to be some outside standard of knowledge you are allowed to use, in addition to a physical baseline, at which point, the whole, immersive charme of Road to Purgatory would be lost, at least in my opinion.

Sadly, the more I think about the question, the less certain I get about the answer.

Morgana, confirmed Beta-Account

As the one who tore you a new one, as you describe it, I obviously lean towards leaving knowledge gained outside the gain, out of Mundus. But, after a few days of thinking about it, I have to admit, the answer to your question is more nuanced than a simple, leave it out.

The whole point of streaming and making videos is that people watch you do cool or interesting things ingame and often, people want to mimic the things they’ve seen on stream. That’s a transfer of information, is it not? If I wanted to be stringent, I would have to stop uploading snippets, to tease streams during the life-game but that’s not what I’ll do.

So, where do I draw the line?

I think conveying information to natives of Mundus is where I draw the line. You can act on things, hell, I watched videos on other spellcasters myself and tried to gain inspiration from their actions, I even once used another person’s stream to confirm something, but when you start the natives that someone did something, without you, having the ability to see it in Mundus, that’s no longer okay. Or something like that.

Tobiuno, confirmed Beta-Account

As someone who has written a guide, I obviously think that you can use information gained outside, but, similar to Morgana, I think your actions should have some limits. Stream-sniping, for example, is something I don’t condone, even with the delay baked into the ingame-system, it could turn into a problem. Sure, you could say, don’t stream important things but even your position and direction can be important information, if someone wants to do you harm.

Normally, I’d say don’t be an arse about your behaviour but given that we are talking about an online-game, there will be people who act like an arse, just because they can.

Howardlight, confirmed Beta-Account

To illustrate my point, allow me to answer in two parts:

Part one:

Use everything you have to purge evil, take every advantage you can get in your struggles, for only our actions will curb the spread of that plague. If you can act on information to prevent that spread, do so. If you can use your influence to hamper evil, do so.

All in the name of the light!

Part two:

We are all playing a role in a game, to have fun. If you destroy your own fun, or the fun of others, don’t act on information. If you enjoy fiddling with things, to figure out how they work, don’t look for a guide-video.

And, for the love of all that’s holy, never ever bring the conflicts and drama of an online-game out of the game-spaces and into the real world. It is fun to verbally joust on the forum but once it leaves the game-spaces, leave it.

Ingame, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to bash a certain dark witch’s head in, outside the game, if there is ever a convention or something, I’d be more inclined to buy them a drink. Or something.

Conclusion: Conflict between characters is cool, conflict between the people playing the game is not.