Corpse Sense

[Ungtar]

From the Realm of the Dead, a reverse sense which tells you where your body is. Or just do away with the Realm of the Dead and leave us as a disembodied, immobile ghost where our corpse lies.

Impetus for this situation is that I've had several times where I died, waited a few RL days before I was able to find a recovery team, and when they get to the (usually difficult and remote) spot to grab my body, some helpful person has already nabbed it and moved it to one of a half dozen corpse conservatories.

If I could sense my body's location from the spirit world, then I could know ahead of time whether they were going on a wild goose chase.

[Lylena]

Good rule of thumb is always to check the conservatory before going crazy, especially if you've been dead a few IRL days. Corpses are also located via other means, so...I don't know how much more descriptive this could be with what other means are currently available. Not from the spirit world, maybe, but means all the same.

[Yemin]

It may be worth asking how often those means are available vs not available in the experience of all players and how greatly this inconveniences them.

From personal experience, I know I haven't really had a problem with this, but then corpse retrieval is practically in my job description and it may be that Ungtar + a significant number of people find themselves arms in the air about it. To my knowledge, There are conservetories that are not available to all PCs 24/7 which automatically means there will be times when your corpse is found and put into one of these locations where it isn't possible to go physically check them out ICly without more corpses being made or some other consequence.

If there is a need, I'd be curious as to how many people would appreciate this.

[Ungtar]

It's a rare occurrence.

[Yemin]

Perhaps something a litle less low key might help then?

Perhaps something like a new service offered by corpse conservetory priest's to output the location(s) of someone's corpse(s) if you donate to them?

I may be wrong, but this sounds like low enough effort to cover these niche situations. Rare they may be, but each time it happens it's effectively stopping someone from playing the game. Not everyone has or cares to have multiple characters afterall and I could see myself not voting that day because of the boredom of sitting around.

[Lylena]

Votes are unreleated. If they are, suppose that's just how that individual operates.

It's a matter of someone having the time and ability to code such a service and have it added. There are many other means available in which to have your corpse retrieved. A whole newly coded function, be it hard or soft, ends up eating into the time of the coders who also play this game for fun and volunteer many of their hours.

As Ungtar states, it's not a common occurrence. I recently experienced death on another char and found myself alive back in Waterdeep. I ran into Loic and I was pointed in a direction of where I can find my corpse. That's a new feature that's pretty fantastic and helpful for the newbies.

Staff's welcome to put their input, but this is generally how I feel when making suggestions.

[Gwain]

What about characters posting to the note board in game ic that they would prefer not to be sent to the conservatory if found? They can post their desc too if they are not widely known.

[Yemin]

Votes are unreleated. If they are, suppose that's just how that individual operates.

Apologies, but I'm unsure what this part is referring to. But I do think votes matter. The game has voluntary admin and coders that make the game good for the rest of us. And for me, this translates into voting, whether on TMC directly or showing support for an idea here.

For the most part, its usually a good idea to clarify how widespread and wanted a change is and that's pretty much all I was asking. If the producers don't know or misinterpret what the customers in this case players want, it tends to not go well. If you were suggesting this is trumped by something else, then we share a difference of opinion and can agree to disagree.

As for my suggestion, I made it with the perspective that although rare when it does happen, it makes a critical difference to someone ejoying the game. As I've said above, this hasn't happened to me for a very long time and I thought to offer a way to close off the possiblity of it's occurance once and for all since death without corpse location is akin to your car not starting in the morning. For some happens rarely, but when it does, You've now missed a day of paid work etc.

As for the noteboard idea, it hold's some merit for working and I'm more inclined to throw my support behind it since player implemented solutions are immediate and save time if others also thinks it solve's the route problem.

This topic does remind me however. Sometime ago I saw a thread about possibly building a zone for the realms of the dead and having a quest for non faithed PCs to raise themselves. Something involving Cerlic the boatman and the river styx which sounded interesting.

That might be something Ungtar or someone else who suffers from this problem more than they would like would be interested in applying to build and seeing if the administration will go for it / can help shape the idea to serve it's purpose properly.

P.S. I'm waiting for the day Celric finally reveals he's an ultraloth devil and kills everyone.

[Ungtar]

Votes don't matter. Staff is going to do what they want to do. That's the way almost every mud I've ever seen operates. And since you can't really run a railroad like this by consensus, I think it's a fine.

I throw out ideas left and right. Some may stick, most won't. I'm not emotionally invested in any of them.

The whole corpse thing is more of a problem for known "evil" characters, particularly if (like me) they aren't social butterflies who hang out in Waterdeep greeting and being greeted by every other player. If I die in Howling Peak with an unknown newbie, someone is going to retrieve me. If I die 47 random rooms from Skullport with an archpriest of Nastiness then my body is going to sit there for a long time. And when someone who is an ally of my faith finally logs on, I don't want to have to say "it's been a RL week since I died, maybe you should check the conservatory first." "Which conservatory?" "I dunno. All of them."

Personally, I LIVE for corpse retrievals. 99% of the time at max level you're sitting there staring at the who list waiting for someone you know to log on and wishing you had something to do other than try to squeeze another skill boost out of third attack.

[Yemin]

Votes don't matter. Staff is going to do what they want to do. That's the way almost every mud I've ever seen operates. And since you can't really run a railroad like this by consensus, I think it's a fine.

After sampling the worst that humanity has to offer for a head administrator elsewhere. I feel it's important to state that in my experience here so far this notion isn't wholely true. I've observed and been on the receiving end of behaviour I personally consider bad administration at times but in the majority of cases the worst I see is simple reluctance to do something or other often backed up by their own reasonable opinion. For the most part, this game is ran rather well whether staff are doing what they want to do or not.

Getting back on topic however, i think death is a part of the game that could do with some improvement. From personal experience of waiting an rl half day or so when post lvl 10 newbie. The pray for resurrection and daefic aid system fell flat for me both times. It's primarily why I made a second character just to pass the time. I feel that if the game is going to offer evils and more solitary characters a place here, this should be one of the areas that needs looking at for a solution, whether it be code or player made.

Upon more thought, I don't think the noteboard idea will work out if the people most targetted by this problem are exactly the kinds who wouldn't communicate very much person to person let alone to strangers over written medium.

Personally, I'm not a fan of death rooms to begin with. The deterant for losing a game / dying should never be the game forcing you to literally not play the game till a circumstancial requirement is met. I.e. someone you know with the time to fetch you logging on.

I'd rather pay kismet an increased xp loss to get out of that than sit there. Which I think is my next suggestion for an NPC in the realms of the dead to offer in addition to giving you a glimpse of where your corpse lies in the same way conservatory clerics show you the corpse room.

it's worth noting I think that there are worlds of difference between a semi well dressed person coming into a city to look for help and a disembodied spirit you don't know asking you for help. I find the latter almost forces the helper to break character sometimes, which is also a problem.

As for your level 50 idleness I think thats down to your imagination. There are things to do and people to see at that stage. For myself I simply enjoy playing the character I logged in. My tempuran goes to kill things for a bit, which I enjoy for the sake of killing things when the mood strikes me. My Wizard likes spying on people and causing mischief. My Cleric likes exploring far flung reaches of the map and my elf likes being an elf. *shrugs*

[Ungtar]

Meh. I'm not trying to imply an issue with staff. It's just not a consensus-driven process, and I don't even think it should be.

Some of the suggestions made thus far seem to border on a character-separation issue for me.

If I'm supposed to take another character and go look in the conservatories for my dead alt, what's the difference between that and going to retrieve my own corpse?

I won't even bother to try to defend my lack of imagination at max level.

[Yemin]

Meh. I'm not trying to imply an issue with staff. It's just not a consensus-driven process, and I don't even think it should be.

Some of the suggestions made thus far seem to border on a character-separation issue for me.

If I'm supposed to take another character and go look in the conservatories for my dead alt, what's the difference between that and going to retrieve my own corpse?

I won't even bother to try to defend my lack of imagination at max level.

If not by consensus then how should it be? Don't get me rong, I don't believe every change made or implemented is purely down to how many x number of players want this, but I always viewed it as a good thing when it was part of the process.

As for the character seperation, I think I'll need more clarification to understand since atm it's against the rules to look for your own alts corpse with one of your other chars and I haven't seen any suggestion of doing so.

[Ungtar]

The very first suggestion was to check the conservatory. Since you can't do that from the realm of the dead, the assumption is that you'd have to use your alt. That's technically using an alt to look for your corpse, and as you mentioned, against the rules (citation needed).

Now I can assume the suggestion was to have your buddy check the conservatory, and then the next conservatory, etc. but that brings us back to the original problem. How many conservatories do you check?

(Ignoring the rest of the commentary because this is a thread about corpse recovery, not about administration policies.)

[Lylena]

Now I can assume the suggestion was to have your buddy check the conservatory, and then the next conservatory, etc. but that brings us back to the original problem. How many conservatories do you check?

(Ignoring the rest of the commentary because this is a thread about corpse recovery, not about administration policies.)

If you died near Skullport...likely Skullport. If you died near Waterdeep, likely there, unless you're some race that would immediately get kicked out. If you died near ZK, most likely, you're there, unless the person getting you knows that you're more a WD person. There's really only three places to check, and first step to me would be nearest to where I died. If it's not there, I'd check the notice boards.

Sadly, if you're a loner char, I suggest meeting a good bit of people just to simply meet for future circumstances like this, as they will happen, so you're not essentially RPing by yourself with yourself in an RP game. We're a community and OOCly, believe me, we all know no one likes to sit around dead all day. But if you don't reach out in some way to have someone else help you, there's no way they can help you.

[Rordan]

More often than not, knowing the general location of where you are is enough to get rescued. If you are travelling in unknown lands, it's your responsibility to note landmarks such as the names of forests and the general direction of the nearest city that you came from. That is adventurer survival 101 as far as IC is concerned.

When someone dies, their soul departs (Unless it comes back as a wraith or other undead) to the realm of the dead to await judgement. It makes little IC sense to be a disembodied spirit at your corpse.

Now, being able to sense which room your corpse is in is kind of..useless. If you're inside a unique area, it might be useful. Otherwise, if you are in the plains, it won't render any information. A simple locate object spell would yield the same results.

Tl:DR? Get as much information about the area you're travelling in so if you die, people can find you. We don't need a corpse sense ability, it's a feature that will take time away from other things that need to be fixed. Also always check the corpse conservatory before going out to find people's corpses.

[Areia]

I could very well be mistaken, but I believe I've been able to find corpses in every conservatory in the game through one command. One or two conservatories might be blocked from this, I don't remember exactly. But my point is that checking every possible conservatory isn't really as difficult as it sounds for the majority of characters. And if the dead PC doesn't know anyone with this ability, chances are that someone whom it knows does know someone.

If a corpse is lying somewhere which this method can't discern, the owner of that corpse was most likely soloing an area which was never meant to be soloed. Most of these even give you very obvious warnings about danger and such. I do run these sorts of areas myself, but with the understanding and acceptance that death is always likely and very difficult to recover from. I don't think that's unreasonable for these areas, which were built with strong group running in mind.

I don't think all the systems in place regarding dying are perfect. I've had one particularly nasty experience with being unable to find someone willing or able to help for reasons beyond my IC and OOC control that ended in a 300-hour-old character being deleted, as well as other less extreme issues. But as I don't think that particular sort of problem relates to finding lost corpses, I'll save those thoughts for another thread.

Edited to add: Don't be afraid to ask for help, even if you think the person will refuse. I know a few characters (One darkly clad wizardess comes to mind who are logged on regularly and who won't refuse a request for corpse retrieval from anyone, no matter how evil or whatnot they might be. Raising/resurrection might be another issue, but at least you can insure your corpse is somewhere easily accessible for your evil friends when one does log on.

[Ungtar]

I think most of you are missing the point that the issue I previously had was that someone MOVED the corpse, not that I died when I was lost or that I couldn't find anyone to retrieve it.

They did not take it to the conservatory, but rather dropped it in Daggerford at a temple. I never even found out who did it. I didn't want to give out that much IC information, but at this point it seems necessary to illustrate the issue properly. That person probably thought they were helping so I didn't complain or anything, but the guys who went looking for my body in the UD had a pretty frustrating time.

[Yemin]

Fair enough, I go back to my original suggestion then. Considering there were multiple people without the standard method of finding corpses between them. Just have a service at conservatories shown with the heal command that shows you the location of the corpse in question.

[Andreas]

I don't think we need a "corpse sense" skill/spell in the game.

When you're out adventuring, hopefully you are traveling in a group. This game is (now) designed for group play. While I'm one of the older players who did play when solo adventuring was a completely viable option, I know that things have been implemented to encourage characters to adventure in groups now rather than do content alone.

Pay attention to your surroundings and path of travel. If you're traveling in the wilderness and run into something that kills you, you should have a decent idea of where you died to be able to describe it to others so they can hopefully retrieve your corpse and see you raised.

If you've died relatively near a corpse conservatory, then ask for someone to check and see if your corpse has been left there. Never assume your body is where you died.

Get to know people! If you're evil, there are other evil characters you can associate with who will hopefully (maybe for a price) aid you should you find yourself dead. If you're good, then get to know other goodly characters who will usually be willing to assist. If you're neutral, you can associate with whomever you please (to some degree) and build your collection of known people who will hopefully help you should you need it. Even if you play a character of solitary nature, try to meet some other characters. This is, after all, a role play intensive game. The idea is for players to role play with each other, not spend all their time alone.

Pray for resurrection. Sometimes it's a slim chance, but there have been times when the Imms have raised my characters because my characters prayed for help. There might even be some interaction with a deity or representative of a deity that can affect your role play.

Supplicate resurrection. If you have enough favor in your faith, you can supplicate a resurrection. You will probably still need to get help to go get your belongings on your corpse, but at least you'll be back among the living and can work with that situation.

[Lylena]

I think most of you are missing the point that the issue I previously had was that someone MOVED the corpse, not that I died when I was lost or that I couldn't find anyone to retrieve it.

They did not take it to the conservatory, but rather dropped it in Daggerford at a temple. I never even found out who did it. I didn't want to give out that much IC information, but at this point it seems necessary to illustrate the issue properly. That person probably thought they were helping so I didn't complain or anything, but the guys who went looking for my body in the UD had a pretty frustrating time.

Ahaaaa...yeah, that makes all the difference in the world.

If I decide I'm moving a corpse, I always take it to a conservatory so there's hopefully a lot less guesswork as to where/what/when.