Posted by Bastian on July 7, 2000 at 18:33:34:
In Reply to: mmmmm posted by Bastian on July 7, 2000 at 15:34:01:
> I always felt that tight management was the key to Arbiters remaining just. Every scroll that was seriously written charging an arbiter with flagging him for insufficient evidence (even though a pain in the ass) was taken seriously and investigated. The more idiotic and angry notes were just ignored. The main change since my time, in brief, is this. In my time, if somebody comitted a crime but was flagged on faulty or no evidence, it wouldn't matter if he admitted it later, there would still be investigation and a reprimand to the arbiter who flagged him. Nowadays, the lords (at least with my most recent arbiters and criminals) will just say "he got what he deserved." A personal problem I had was the extreme division in management and power given to the lords. When I had my most recent arbiter, Golmagus was around and the Lawful Evils were using the letters of the law to commit all sort of heinous acts, purely for the pleasure of killing or wanting eq. The neutral and good arbiters, one of the immortals as well basically said "boys will be boys." It is up to the goods, and even the neutrals to keep the spirit of the law prevalent (in my opinion). Another thing that has begun to bother me, even you yourself are guilty of it, is the "i'll do anything for the law" argument, made popular by Chris Warren's elven paladin. I don't think it gives Lawful Goods the right to consort willingly with evils not within their cabal, even if it does help out the law. He was clearly using it just to make it so he could do pretty much whatever he wanted with the powers of a paladins (yes he had a few roleplaying aspects such as asking Golmagus not to use zombies), but in general it was just a cheap excuse, something worthy of one of my pk chars. That's just a personal opinion on roleplay and more of an imm matter. Either way, all of this makes me want to constantly be an annoyance to the law because i'm beginning to seriously dislike the cabal (Laios, Sermak, Cathoir... I just kind of ooc dislike the cabal and have recently tried to bring it down indirectly with every other one of my chars). Ahhh well, it's part of the game and we just have to deal with it, I just feel like arbiters are becoming more and more one of the most unfair cabals to deal with. > > Today the Lords have a lot more say in policy decisions and the Imms don't get too involved in things other than whines and wars. > > Kopentol drew up a pretty heinous policy that was within the laws and Arbiter policies, but was still toeing the line and leaning over it. > > Quintius made a big to do over intent, though the spark for that debate began with the resurrection of the Hall I figure. Should there be criminal intent for a flag to be placed, or do Arbiters flag for mistakes as well? It's generally been accepted that if there was a yell, there was a flag, so that transmuter who tried to slow his untrusting groupmate got flagged and that was that. > > I had an arbiter right after you left Bastian, and I've had two since the resurrection, and I can tell you that most of the old regulations are still around and Canopus' books have been expanded upon beautifully. The only difference is the amount of micro-management.
> > The reins weren't loosened, they were just given to a different driver.