Posted by Polemachus on March 27, 2000 at 13:55:34:
In Reply to: Damn return key....what I was going to say is.... posted by Pikel on March 27, 2000 at 12:45:14:
...for I as a player, think it better roleplay to try and get as many people as possible to appreciate the wilds and therefore join in the effort to protect it(notice I avoided using the word "fight" and instead opted for "effort").
When you run around in your little deathsquad killing heaps of people for little more reason than their being a master, or imperial, or arbiter, or duergar, or fire giant, or drow, or lich I would think(if this were happening in a world we saw as being real) that eventually the commonfolk would come to see you as a danger, one that should be avoided. If they see you as a danger, then inevitably they'll see your home turf as dangerous, possibly set it up for further destruction.
The best example I can think of is this. Let's say you and I are fairly average people. We've got a decent education, a fair understanding of how the system works, we watch a lot of news on TV and so we're fairly caught up with what the news companies want us to see and so forth. Now, we don't leave the big city much. We live together with our girlfriends in a sizeable apartment in uptown NY. The closest we've come to nature is Central Park and while we were there we were mugged so we already have a bad view of nature in general. Now, on TV we see nature activists, specifically Greenpeace, shooting rifles at a whaling ship(I realize it's usually the other way around). These people in this little dinghy are painting shit on the side of the ship, things like "Bloodthirsty killers" and "Destroyers of Nature" and "Evil Defiler Satan-worshippers from the Bowels of Hell." You and I would probably think these people were idiots, would probably think they should be locked up in an insane asylum, and we would probably also take a more foul view of nature, as these are the only representatives we've seen of it, and obviously they're not painting a very appealing picture. We decide that we're going to donate the money to the whaling company to have their boat repainted and we may pay for an Amicus Brief to send to the US Supreme Court when the next "nature case" comes up that would help defend the logging company or whatever was involved in said case. In the eyes of Greenpeace we'd likely be anti-nature.
Now, a different scenario. You and I are the same as above, only we live in a rural area. We see a lot of nature and have come to appreciate it. We see the same event on TV, only this time a little piece of our heart knows that Greenpeace is fighting for a noble cause, even if their tactics are a little out of wack. We don't come out of it having a bad taste in our mouth as far as nature is concerned because we've seen the better side of it.
Now in CF, Sylvan has basically taken on the role of GreenPeace and PETA, and wrapped it up into an extremely militant form. Average people in Thera don't get out of the city much, because the forests are mainly a place where bandits lie in wait for the unsuspecting victim, dangerous creatures lurk in the shadows of the bushes waiting for their next meal, and the Sylvan Warders might just wrap your ass up in a wall of thorns because you trampled a piece of grass. Average people don't leave the city much for these reasons. Then when they see you and your army come rushing into the city with death in your eyes and blood dripping from your fangs they take an even harsher view of the forests as you've come to represent it. They may send letters to the mayor asking that he erect even larger walls, maybe lock the gates, maybe burn all of the surrounding forests within a 10 mile radius, just so they can feel that added sense of security, and be rid of the dangerous and evil forests that cause nothing but pain.
Hopefully you now see my viewpoint and understand why it might be more logical to wage a propaganda war rather than a "kill em all and let Satan sort them out" mentality. At least, it'd be more logical in a world of logical people, but then, CF has nigh on no logical people so the above is probably wasted letters on wasted white space adding up to equal wasted bandwidth falling on empty ears.