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echoes-of-argentdawn · 11 days ago

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Beware of a guild or associations with a group called Sic Paradisus Factus Est (Alliance), Cohort (Horde), and the RP plotline Woods of Wilk. The DM is not as respectful of participating players as it seems on paper. He writes with very good quality and even gives characters tailored scenes. He asks about boundaries of players upfront, which makes him seem like a considerate, trustworthy person. On the surface of things, he seems understanding, handles every encounter outside Wilk respectfully and with good quality. Some people have had issues with the DM's draenei being untouchable, as in always getting away with doing evil. Some people see them as driving part of a deeper story and let them dive deeper. The problems start within the Woods of Wilk story itself: Player characters are taken in by Sic Paradisus to fight a specific threat, but guess what? Only one or two from each group get to actually fight this cult and the rest are merely surviving, wandering aimlessly and getting very lackluster encounters during their scenes. This is how it works:

The DM offers Loa boons to select few people privately. This is important later, when the DM divides the group and begins to create more "tailored" scenes. In essence, players are divided into "winners" and "losers". The winners are given power, tools, key information and opportunities to slay powerful and named boss NPCs in Wilk. The losers are lucky if they can slay one lowly cultist or madman, and then they are sent to wander off aimlessly, traumatized, wounded and completely stripped from gear; "naked and afraid" style.

The DM railroads players with Wilk amnesia and takes away player agency. This may make sense with group scenes, but eventually he will start dividing the players into smaller groups and personal scenes. The only control that you have over your character is reacting to the circumstances and scenes that you are put into and moments of exploration. The direction or content of the personal scenes may not even align with your character's goals or identity (even after you have given him feedback on this). Despite all this, the DM makes an appeal with "character development", but is there any potential for character development in this?

Compromises and adjustments are one-sided. The DM may make an appeal to certain players with ´´both good guys and villains should accept losses and victories for the sake of larger narrative´´/´´we don't do instant gratification here´´. Thing is, those words are tailored to oblige you to make compromises for him, but when it comes to your reasonable wishes, he will deny you. You may ask for nothing more than to fight the cult that player characters were supposedly brought in to fight. Regardless of it DM may try to push you to directions that are very out-of-character or hollow for your character.

The DM does not address feedback and may dismiss concerns of individual players entirely. Do you feel that the narrative is treating your character unfairly, or you can not make meaningful choices? The DM's basic response is ´´It does not matter´´ (he wants to decide what should matter for your character) / ´´You are thinking too much into it´´ (he wants you to trust him blindly) / ´´this and that are replaceable anyway´´ (another dismissal if you want to fight a specific threat). He doesn't care if the player finds their role unrewarding, players can always be replaced.

Did you know that every powerful Wilk NPCs, minibosses and such are replaceable according to the DM? There are clones of many "important" NPCs. Some major threats repeatedly regenerate before your eyes, as soon as you defeat them. ´´They are replaceable´´ is the excuse that the DM uses to dismiss player wishes, when they wish to kill a powerful, but mortal NPC. If other players in your group were allowed to, why are you denied any opportunities to succeed? The DM is not short on supply of high ranking cultist NPCs.

The DM takes no accountability for the social consequences of how your character is impacted by his narrative, even if they carry outside his plot. He writes the scenes, he may push you into accepting corruption or other questionable in-character choices for an "end goal" and then pull the "end goal" away, resulting in you playing a role that you did not originally want nor ask for. Would you accept corruption, damage or trauma and constant losses, if other players are getting better options? The DM may even blame the player for accepting the choice in the first place and then be upset that the players do not trust his word anymore.

The DM can still contradict his words by giving a lot of instant gratification to certain players, while stalling other players endlessly; this correlates with whether you are in "winners" or "losers" category.

The DM will protect "winners" from consequences of their actions, no matter how reckless they are. This comes with an excuse of ´´they will miss out on everything I have written for them´´. But if you are in the "losers" category, he will hold even minor in-character choices against you and excuse more gratification of "winners" at expense of your character. Even when you have no humane way of knowing how your character choices could possibly influence X or Y.

The DM does not reward in-character effort or long term investment in his plot. He may give minor clues that lead to nowhere, tactically stop responding when your character is about to make a breakthrough, or ask your consent to do X to your character, OOCly change things in a way that twists your character's role into something that you did not want to play. Without asking beforehand, if the impacted players will be okay with him changing things. This goes against the whole idea of consenting and trust!

In addition to the issues with Woods of Wilk narrative, the DM's draenei are untouchable and he would never put his characters into similar position as he asks players to put their main characters. "Hides in Shadows" can not be tracked by skilled trackers, efforts to learn his methods in-character go unanswered by the DM, attempts to fight or counter him will result in him escaping. He wants to infiltrate every settlement with zero consequences and zero damage on his character. We could excuse it with ´´he needs this character to drive his plot forward´´, but when this plot fails to even reward the involved players? If "Hides in Shadows" is kidnapping people to fight another group of villains, your character may scarcely even be able to touch these villains. Why does he drag people into Wilk, if he does not let all characters do exactly that?

The DM misleads and omits information when asking OOCly players to make choices. He may imply that there is something meaningful for certain players if they skip certain scenes, but omit the part that there will be an important follow-up scene or that there is an opportunity for the character to achieve a goal that they had worked towards. And then blame the player again.

The DM may let your characters find important items to study, but later insistently ask if he can assault your characters and take back all the loot he has given to you. So, why is the DM giving the players loot again?

The DM wants to learn player weaknesses and strengths OOCly to "make things happen", instead of making any IC effort to learn them. He expects you to spend months, if not years, pursuing knowledge about his characters, but fails to treat you with any value.

The DM may promise you extra scenes in Wilk if you wait that he handles scenes of other people first. And then eat his words to focus on giving extra scenes for players that he was already prioritizing, leaving you RP locked in Wilk and usually in the dark about follow-up. Another contradiction to his rule of "not RP locking people into Wilk". Even if the DM eating his own words can be excused with forgetfulness and ´´~ it is his plot after all ~´´, it is also our player characters, our time and our monthly subscription money that we could use on more rewarding roleplay. There have been attempts to show compassion and patience, if it has seemed that he has been overwhelmed. But he does not say anything.

And time in Eye of Wilk loops, and thus there is also time anomaly in Woods of Wilk. In the Eye, every outcome is predetermined and foreseen for all characters, including players. The DM can also use this as an excuse to rewind time and lure in more and more players, while making your achievements meaningless. You can experience your own copies appearing there and this also makes the DM's characters technically immortal.

In the Eye of Wilk, there is a Tomb which contains a secret that both the Cohort and Sic Paradisus Factus Est seek to acquire. Eventually the players will be led there with having even less control over fates of their characters.

The DM also has multiple discord servers for the same plot, involved characters, as well as at least three discord accounts. Not all were "lost because of technical issues". It correlates with people "fading away" from his guild and plot. Have you ever wondered why such a skilled writer with good world-building skills and apparent respect for boundaries of people, has so few roleplayers sticking around long-term? This post is not to name-and-shame the DM, nor an attempt to create drama. This is a consequence: a warning for roleplayers who may dismiss the risks based on how it looks on first impression. Would liars and manipulators succeed in forcing people do what they do not want if they were obvious? No.

´´It was as if the DM's whole personality changed at the moment he was being asked to treat players fairly. And the way how he treated you has been weird ever since.´´ - A bystander

This is not about the DM being inexperienced and overwhelmed by large numbers of people either. He has been on this plot for years and multiple people have seen him recycling players as if they were trash. This is done so he can pretend to be clueless and innocent, as per his own words: ´´We used to be good buddies with This and That, but he suddenly stopped playing with me. I don't know why, but I suspect it was because my draenei are too powerful.´´ Omission of information on his behalf, again. The real issue is not the power level, but how he treats players. The DM gaslights people over a long time so that the OOC conversations are harder to record and show as proof. If you are involved with this DM or his alts, do yourself a favour and record every OOC conversation. Do not trust Elephant addon to keep logs. Take screenshots. No, it is not just in your head.

Would you prefer to be forewarned, instead of experiencing silence of the lambs when a wolf in sheep's clothing keeps running rampant and constantly seeking for more "victims" for his narrative? Most socially acceptable approach is leaving the plot and protecting your own fun, but staying silent enables these kinds of people to continue abusing trust of other roleplayers!

Most of us want to have a break from the uncontrollable real life while roleplaying, so why would we want to endure the uncontrollable circumstances in roleplay? Roleplay is a creative outlet where we can build our own narratives and if a DM invites us to be part of his horror story, he should respect the players.

We are paying for the game monthly, and if the players are asked to put their time and energy aside for this plot, is it too much asked from the DM to make it worth it? Or being transparent about what he intends for each player character before the players consent? This is not about spoilers, but respect for boundaries of roleplayers; constantly being in the losing end warrants a boundary as much as graphic descriptions of violence, rituals, horror and sexual themes. Constantly being asked to put your character into a questionable position and having the narrative reward of it pulled away warrants a boundary. Those who were given "winner" experience may never understand this, as the narrative treated their characters very differently, the scenes given to them were vastly different. It may make them feel special and on a pedestial - everyone loves that feeling! And so, it is easier to make excuses for the DM, instead of listening to warnings or standing up in behalf of the "losers". But it is only when the DM faces the consequences of violating players, that he will be pushed to better himself.

If you end up being drawn into this plotline, do not normalize his excuses, a good DM will always work with players when they are not asking the DM to bend over backwards for it. A good DM will treat all involved players fairly within reason. A good DM will let every participating character to have spotlight and shine, instead of reserving powerful boons and important foes for select few only!

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