Villainy and Heroism

[Archiplex]

The implications of "Hearthlaw" and scents are cool. How scents work is pretty neat too, as well as outlaw and red-handed, even if they don't really impose much of a penalty on people.

So, I think we should expand that- and before people jump on it, I don't think committing crimes should punish people more mechanically, but rather allow others to 'get' back at them more, as well as allow certain players, villages and even realms to become 'villains' of a world.
Hence: "Villainy" and "Heroism"; or more aptly understood as a Karma system.

The idea is simple: If you commit more and more crimes (except trespassing), you slowly become more Villainous. On its own, this doesn't really do a whole lot. If you belong to a village or realm, you also contribute to that village or realm's Villainy score- which raises their villainy. Every day, you slowly gain or lose Villainy, depending on: The Villainy average score of everyone on your Kin list who isn't White or Red (this one might be abuseable with alts so maybe not really feasible), the Villainy of your village, and the Villainy of your realm. If you are neutral and belong to a primarily villainous village and realm, you will slowly become a villain yourself.
Villainy does not decay naturally, but is instead reversed by committing 'good' act; The only 'good' acts you can take are punishing villainous characters; committing crimes against villains still leaves a scent as normal, but rather than decrease your villainy, increases it.

Your Villainy score can be seen as a version of the belief slider from Legacy, save that you impact it with ingame actions, rather than deciding when to move them. If your villainy slider is closer to the negatives, you become closer to becomiong a 'hero', which interacts with villains and other heroes. This is the premise of villainy and heroism; a sliding scale that changes based off your actions against other players; doing nothing will leave you neutral, occasionally being rude might inch you towards a villain. Actively attacking villains in turn, will turn you into a hero. From there, we can add special effects that seem fitting- for example:

Characters who are more heroic might gain a bonus on their effective perc*int when tracking scents of those who are villains.
Characters who are more villainous might reduce the duration of Outlaw and Red-handed when committing crimes.
Neutral characters might be able to make 'calls for help' through some method that allows their location to be tracked similar to falling meteors, but only by heroic characters.
Visual differences for villainous vs heroic characters, or custom clothing that can only be worn if you are villainous or heroic enough.
Special skills unlocked at the extreme ends of either spectrum of villainy/heroism, such as a skill that allows a villain to renounce the Hearthlaw and become permanently outlawed/red-handed (can't teleport, ever) but gains an ability similar to the Legacy "call of the hird" ability that summons allies to your position. Likewise, an ability that allows a particularly good character to become a ranger and lose the ability to commit crimes against neutral/good characters, but committing crimes against evil characters never leaves scents.
Global bounties able to be placed on villains or heroes, with proper payouts that can be obtained through some hearthlaw-related system.

[Zampfeo]

I agree with the premise that ranging aught to have more incentive and crimes more consequence, but some of the specifics you've mentioned seem a bit unnecessary. I don't think big factions should be lumped into these "villainous" or "heroic" black and whites. I like how grey and murky Haven politics are. A character-based karma system is certainly an interesting take on the premise, though.

Perhaps it could simply be that this karma system changes how inheritance works. 100% good karma would provide 45% inheritance LP regardless of body burial. Neutral karma would work as it currently is. And 100% bad karma would provide 45% of the inheritance LP via the hearthling's skull which could be harvested upon their death.

[overtyped]

The implications of "Hearthlaw" and scents are cool. How scents work is pretty neat too, as well as outlaw and red-handed, even if they don't really impose much of a penalty on people.

So, I think we should expand that- and before people jump on it, I don't think committing crimes should punish people more mechanically, but rather allow others to 'get' back at them more, as well as allow certain players, villages and even realms to become 'villains' of a world.
Hence: "Villainy" and "Heroism"; or more aptly understood as a Karma system.

The idea is simple: If you commit more and more crimes (except trespassing), you slowly become more Villainous. On its own, this doesn't really do a whole lot. If you belong to a village or realm, you also contribute to that village or realm's Villainy score- which raises their villainy. Every day, you slowly gain or lose Villainy, depending on: The Villainy average score of everyone on your Kin list who isn't White or Red (this one might be abuseable with alts so maybe not really feasible), the Villainy of your village, and the Villainy of your realm. If you are neutral and belong to a primarily villainous village and realm, you will slowly become a villain yourself.
Villainy does not decay naturally, but is instead reversed by committing 'good' act; The only 'good' acts you can take are punishing villainous characters; committing crimes against villains still leaves a scent as normal, but rather than decrease your villainy, increases it.

Your Villainy score can be seen as a version of the belief slider from Legacy, save that you impact it with ingame actions, rather than deciding when to move them. If your villainy slider is closer to the negatives, you become closer to becomiong a 'hero', which interacts with villains and other heroes. This is the premise of villainy and heroism; a sliding scale that changes based off your actions against other players; doing nothing will leave you neutral, occasionally being rude might inch you towards a villain. Actively attacking villains in turn, will turn you into a hero. From there, we can add special effects that seem fitting- for example:

Characters who are more heroic might gain a bonus on their effective perc*int when tracking scents of those who are villains.
Characters who are more villainous might reduce the duration of Outlaw and Red-handed when committing crimes.
Neutral characters might be able to make 'calls for help' through some method that allows their location to be tracked similar to falling meteors, but only by heroic characters.
Visual differences for villainous vs heroic characters, or custom clothing that can only be worn if you are villainous or heroic enough.
Special skills unlocked at the extreme ends of either spectrum of villainy/heroism, such as a skill that allows a villain to renounce the Hearthlaw and become permanently outlawed/red-handed (can't teleport, ever) but gains an ability similar to the Legacy "call of the hird" ability that summons allies to your position. Likewise, an ability that allows a particularly good character to become a ranger and lose the ability to commit crimes against neutral/good characters, but committing crimes against evil characters never leaves scents.
Global bounties able to be placed on villains or heroes, with proper payouts that can be obtained through some hearthlaw-related system.

It's pretty easy to avoid or abuse depending on which one is more beneficial. EX: If you don't want to seem murderous, You make an idol for your villages murder alts, and then presto, your main village are all law-abiding citizens!

However, if the benefits were to be made equally good for being evil or being lawful, then I see no reason why not. If nothing else the larpers will enjoy it.

[FrankMcFuzz]

Best way to encourage people to play a certain way....

Make a Ranging credo

And then make a Villain credo

Then have them duke it out >:O

[Archiplex]

However, if the benefits were to be made equally good for being evil or being lawful, then I see no reason why not. If nothing else the larpers will enjoy it.

That was the intention yeah; people shouldn't be punished for one way or another, but rather just a fluff/larpy thing.

[Sevenless]

Fine for fluff, but any bonuses that improve characters being attached to this would make the system gamed to the point of caricature. It'd feel bad and look bad from a player perspective.

[Reiber]

heroic partys get swarmed by neutral griefing nakedalts . gets rid of them, looses heroism,
villanous faction starts raiding there neighbourhood, wich consists off spoucecap grieving scum. become heroes, loose heroism when they devour the next group.

[Silviosal]

heroic partys get swarmed by neutral griefing nakedalts . gets rid of them, looses heroism,
villanous faction starts raiding there neighbourhood, wich consists off spoucecap grieving scum. become heroes, loose heroism when they devour the next group.

Neutrals should have X life span for the hero to lose heroism. (Probably something more or losing very little heroism to a neutral who started doing evil.)

The villains are easy to solve, just activate an option to never increase heroism, because after all you are a villain and that does not mean that killing a villain makes you good since you will be acquiring more power to do more evil.

[Zampfeo]

The alting issue is definitely the biggest problem for something like this. It can't be susceptible to alt abuse, but at the same time killing sprucecaps should be a high villainy action. There could be a minimum lifetime LP requirement, but this LP could simply be gained on the alt and I think the already established anti-alt 40int/100k LP threshold for a hearthling skull is out of reach for many newbies who have no idea what they're doing.

Maybe the amount of villainy gained for murder/battery could be based upon the victim's distance to their hearth fire. Like, 0-tiles away is max villainy and 100-tiles away is no villainy. That way, being swarmed by alts is a neutral action, but going into a spruce cap's camp and knocking them out until they're dead would be villainous.

[Barbamaus]

I like the idea, but I see a few issues:

The Villainy average score of everyone on your Kin list who isn't White or Red (this one might be abuseable with alts so maybe not really feasible), the Villainy of your village, and the Villainy of your realm. If you are neutral and belong to a primarily villainous village and realm, you will slowly become a villain yourself.

As you said, the kin list is easy to abuse.
As for realms, I might be missing something. As far as I knew, the realm "citizens" are all those who live in it. There's no Oath or anything. If that's the case, then realms shouldn't matter. Most people don't even partecipate in realm life, and can't really "say no" to becoming part of one, once their village gets covered by it (let's face it, moving away is not really an option).

Villainy does not decay naturally, but is instead reversed by committing 'good' act; The only 'good' acts you can take are punishing villainous characters; committing crimes against villains still leaves a scent as normal, but rather than decrease your villainy, increases it.

Probably easy to abuse. You make a villain alt, raise his score by robbing yourself, and then raise your hero score by robbing your alt back. Repeat for profit.

Characters who are more heroic might gain a bonus on their effective perc*int when tracking scents of those who are villains.
Characters who are more villainous might reduce the duration of Outlaw and Red-handed when committing crimes.
Neutral characters might be able to make 'calls for help' through some method that allows their location to be tracked similar to falling meteors, but only by heroic characters.
Visual differences for villainous vs heroic characters, or custom clothing that can only be worn if you are villainous or heroic enough.
Special skills unlocked at the extreme ends of either spectrum of villainy/heroism, such as a skill that allows a villain to renounce the Hearthlaw and become permanently outlawed/red-handed (can't teleport, ever) but gains an ability similar to the Legacy "call of the hird" ability that summons allies to your position. Likewise, an ability that allows a particularly good character to become a ranger and lose the ability to commit crimes against neutral/good characters, but committing crimes against evil characters never leaves scents.
Global bounties able to be placed on villains or heroes, with proper payouts that can be obtained through some hearthlaw-related system.

Love the visual differences, love the call for help, don't love the bonuses.
Red-handed / Outlaw status are supposed to be the "bad consequence" of being a criminal. Reducing it if you're "more villainous" makes little sense IMO.
Also if the "good guys" get a bonus to tracking (which should be per*exp, not int?), the bad guys should get it to hiding (int*stealth). But even those bonuses would be abused: any neutral person would have an interest in doing crimes against an alt, to get more INT, or to punish a criminal alt to get PER*EXP for foraging.
The "Call of the Hird" is interesting, but it should be the same benefit for both: so heroes and villains can both use it to summon friends to help each others. Otherwise the "good" bonus is waaaay underpowered than the evil one. Alternatively, the good guys might not use travel weariness, so it's easier for them to track down criminals over long distances? not sure... (but again, everyone would keep making alt to get those bonuses anyway)

In the end, I like the idea, but I think it needs a lot of brainstorming to get to a final product that can't be easily abused/botted, and doesn't reward criminals for being even more evil. Otherwise spruce caps will just get murdered left and right to get villainy points.