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Feedback ยท Delete Loyalty (accepted)

The loyalty trait has four options:

  • Self-serving: "A character loyal only to themselves."
  • Reserved: "A character who is not loyal until enough trust has been earned."
  • Pragmatic: "A character whose loyalty is practical, and may shift on changing conditions and new information."
  • Absolute: "A character who, once they pledge loyalty, won't turn their back on a person or idea."

These aren't all that useful in the way it's been executed. None of this is actually really mutually exclusive.

Reserved and Pragmatic are pretty much exactly how loyalty actually works (both at once): it gets earned (duh), and you may actually change it based on new information. Now, these

Absolute is being expressed as an alternative to either of these, but it's not. Nobody is absolutely loyal to anyone until it's earned somehow (unless they're brainwashed), so they're Reserved. And even someone absolutely devoted can and will change their loyalty based on the right new information, unless they have pathological issues: even the most stalwart devotee can have world-shattering ideology changes, or find out their liege is a total demonic bastard. The devoted second in command developing doubts and turning on his/her lord often makes a good character arc in a lot of stories!

Self-serving people just have decided nobody's earned their loyalty.

So: this trait is a poor or mistaken expression of how one's loyalty works, and simultaneously tries to express that (a) you only think of yourself, or (b) you might maybe be absolutely devoted to a cause or person, (c) in the same trait as one that tries to express how your loyalty works but in a way that it works for _everyone_.

Let's delete this trait. If there's important stuff to express here, like whether you actually are devoted to something or just yourself, we can express that better in another trait.

meta info

endorsement points: 2

created: 27 July 15 at 02:36 PM (build: 7/17/2015 2:30 AM beta)

Roel

As a person who commited the initial idea... I must shamefully agree that the current state is not any more useful than Atmosphere, to the point where I personally skim over the trait and it just... just doesn't do anything, doesn't add any information. Something has to be done, but I am not sure what could be the other way to tackle this one - my old idea failed, and I have no other ones.
But the issue is here, no questions about it.

Pinkie Pie

Well, what's being described here is a relationship between characters. "I am loyal to _____." Perhaps instead of a single trait, you define different relationships with different characters.

Roel

Pinkie Pie

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Wrecked Avent Site Administrator

Huh? There certainly are characters who are unable to form loyal connections (hence self-serving) and definitely some kind of people with an irreversible loyalty oath (a paladin comes to mind).

Velus

I am not denying the existence of self-serving people. That part of the trait is fine.

There are definitely people who are extremely loyal. First though, it doesn't say whether you are, it says that mechanically you work by putting absolute irreversible loyalty into anything you give loyalty to. Second, nobody has irreversible loyalty. Just about everyone with a human brain will re-evaluate if their cause turns out to be un-just. There are lots of stories with a paladin or similarly devoted character having their beliefs shaken to their core and shattered, and changing allegiances. That's plausible if you're devoted to a nation or a person who turn out to be evil as heck. At this point in stories, people with an oath often either escape as traitors, or start working from within via subterfuge, or continue to live out a life they no longer believe in in sorrow. People who tend to be devoted to a cause (e.g. feeding the poor) tend to be kind of impervious to any doubt unless that cause itself can be thrown into question.

As I said the remaining two just describe the loyalty process anyone goes through, even self-serving people would go through it if they had a character arc of someone actually gaining their trust and loyalty. That makes the other two the only meaningful categories, and one has problems.

Wrecked Avent Site Administrator

I mean... yes? You could morph into another species over the course of roleplay, have your gender re-assigned, have any part of your personality disrupted over the course of a roleplay. It would get mighty complicated if we listed all of the potential states you could move into trait-wise. That's also probably not particularly useful for people to know or search, either.

But! "This character has issues with loyalty", "this character's loyalty is earned easily and lost slowly" etc are all pretty useful information if their friendship is in anyway a variable in a roleplay.

Velus

Then the description needs to be improved for Absolute to say that, and the other two need to be merged into one category for no strong loyalties or something.

Velus

I've given this an edit, it's gone back to New.

Velus

This is still in new. Can the status be changed?

Lich Community Manager

The community managers agree this trait should be deleted.

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