Black Ribbon - Final death?

Hi everyone, quick, potentially stupid question here, couldn’t find an answer to this on the forum.

I’ve unlocked the option to join the Black Ribbon, this little phrase stuck out a little.
&quotSo, you want into the Black Ribbon, do you? Or at least, you’re interested. Good. We are a duelling society of those who have the courage to face a final death. I oversee the duels (…)&quot
Does this mean that joining the black ribbon puts the player at risk of permanently dying?

No. You might die a regular ol’ death, but there’s no risk of actual permanent death ever.

Ok! Thanks for the speedy answer!

Well. There is one instance. Impossible to access at the moment, of course, but…

No. There was never anything to see there. It was a terrible idea even to try. Because there’s no reason to do it. Even when it was available. Why do people insist on risking everything to learn Gerard’s name?!

GASP Oh bugg–

Spoiler
But you do have a chance to inflict permanent death on certain other people…

[quote=Pinmissile]Hi everyone, quick, potentially stupid question here, couldn’t find an answer to this on the forum.

I’ve unlocked the option to join the Black Ribbon, this little phrase stuck out a little.
&quotSo, you want into the Black Ribbon, do you? Or at least, you’re interested. Good. We are a duelling society of those who have the courage to face a final death. I oversee the duels (…)&quot
Does this mean that joining the black ribbon puts the player at risk of permanently dying?[/quote]

Well. There is one instance. Impossible to access at the moment, of course, but…[/quote]

That particular one didn’t actually do as advertized. People far braver than I tried it and they’re still around.

Well. There is one instance. Impossible to access at the moment, of course, but…[/quote]

That particular one didn’t actually do as advertized. People far braver than I tried it and they’re still around.[/quote]

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. =P

(I just realized that might actually need some explanation, so:

Yes, but the game /did/ advertise it as permanent death, and it was totally possible to do it, so it’s worth mentioning. Not as worth mentioning as I made it out to be, though, so instead of me being all stern and disapproving, I gave you a long, drawn-out hissing noise instead.)
edited by Snowskeeper on 9/18/2014

The permanent death option of course was nowhere near the black ribbon story and was behind a very large number of warnings not to do it.

The game is a little free with the big punishments, generally. I’ve only played for a few months and try not to gripe more than my share. But given that people can literally buy back their souls, it seems odd that a significant number of Legal Documents and maybe a fine helping of Nex can’t pay off a judge to forget your face. (I started the game in Newgate and haven’t been back, but keeping suspicion in check is only half the battle.)

There are a few places in the Flit that will take you straight there if you catch the wrong breaks. You can find yourself losing all of your progress in various endeavors (not just casing) over a luck check you stumbled into while on track for a big profit, with suspicion of 0. They’re even calibrated to 9, so a certain item won’t let you escape the arrest temporarily.

Feducci, likewise, has taken away some players’ plot ability to return to the Surface, at least per canonical rumors.

By comparison, the Bethlehem and the Colonies play out more like a suspicion reduction farm with a few small storylets to access. I can understand if grievous punishments are expected to be unexpected, or if they should come accompanied by warnings, but those are steep penalties given the life of a character.

For example, I let Ph**** die in Sunless Sea. I was really upset about it, but I’m probably only going to level that captain to, oh, 100+ in Veils before beginning my case for endgame. New captain, new game, Ph***** will be alive.

Tick off some judge in Fallen London? Better keep your Social alibis fresh for the long hard trek for that cider.
edited by Gerald Edgerton on 7/23/2015

What big punishments? Get imprisoned a few times (not just one) and you lose access to the most efficient Suspicion reducer, but it’s not as though there aren’t other options or you can’t just spend some time in New Newgate like you would in the Beth or the Tomb Colonies and come back. The Slow Boat is exactly the same as the others, except that the non-cards option becomes more difficult the more you do it.

As I understand it, all players’ ability to return to the Surface is probably gone from time spent in the Neath, regardless of whether they’ve had a ride on the boat or not.

Am I missing something?

(Although I do agree that it would make sense for enough money spent in bribes to help with that pesky “permanent” record.)

Well, the player’s aunt certainly seems capable of returning to the surface. I’m pretty sure one of the sidebar texts stated that that the surface only removes the “Neath Magic” so to say from things, such as Prisoner’s Honey turning into normal honey and turning you from “Not really dead” to “Quite permanently dead”. So unless you’ve paid the boatman a visit you should be able to return.

[quote=marcmagus]What big punishments? Get imprisoned a few times (not just one) and you lose access to the most efficient Suspicion reducer, but it’s not as though there aren’t other options or you can’t just spend some time in New Newgate like you would in the Beth or the Tomb Colonies and come back. The Slow Boat is exactly the same as the others, except that the non-cards option becomes more difficult the more you do it.

As I understand it, all players’ ability to return to the Surface is probably gone from time spent in the Neath, regardless of whether they’ve had a ride on the boat or not.

Am I missing something?

(Although I do agree that it would make sense for enough money spent in bribes to help with that pesky &quotpermanent&quot record.)[/quote]

The normal punishments, as I see it, are the losses of progress and (initially very large) opportunity cost of time lost regaining your sanity, vitality, dignity or freedom.

The &quotbig punishment&quot (re: Wounds) is your alleged state of captivity. For RP purposes, I actually agree with you. My character has had no boat rides, at least AFTER starting the game in Newgate, but is suspicious of exactly what you say. That said, it’s established that people think differently, and many NPCs do flee to the Surface, either from you or with your help.

The &quotbig punishment&quot (re: Suspicion) is indeed the loss of the use of Ablution Solution, but depending on your needs that’s potentially a BFD. 110+ Shadowy? You’re past the protection of the Topsy King, or any other grindable storylet. Unable to return to your lodgings in the middle of what you’re doing? Social actions are out. That leaves opportunity cards, which are actually my favorite form of menace reduction since I don’t need to ask acquaintances to spend turns on my behalf. That said, if you’re looking to increase Shadowy, you’ll probably want to engage in hundreds of Shadowy checks and budget to fail at least 10% of them. It’s still manageable if you’re an even moderately influential person, but it turns suspicion management into a frequent issue. Frankly, I enjoyed budgeting for the post-PoSI changes in menace reduction, but I was at least on fair footing with other PoSIs. If Mr Veils can give me a new face but some judicial bureaucrat can still spot me, that’s weird. I steal contraband and then sell it back to the mark, and if my marks include Feducci, Hell, the Bazaar, and Baseborn and Fowlingpiece, and if I’ve perma-killed Black Ribbon duelists, it seems I should be able to bribe the judge, threaten them, have them dealt with by friends in high places, or fade into the Game and become somebody else with a clean record. Sure, general awesomeness should make it hard to force me to the Tomb Colonies, but that liability at least doesn’t get irreversibly worse for individual players.

Most permanent &quotpunishments &quot(permanent banishment from Court) are counter-balanced by other traits, such as access to new content. If my character becomes such a familiar face in criminal court, you’d think he could at least invest in having his operations maintain their status while he’s in - or even advance them from inside jail, perhaps with Criminal connections and opportunity cards as a required currency. Prison makes one hell of an alibi; if I achieve 250+ augmented Shadowy, who’s to say I can’t organize a heist from my cell?

My point is just that for being some of the only irreversible hazards that affect players individually, the insta-kill menaces are easy to wander into with the mindset that an 85% chance of success, with low menaces, is cause for comfort.

Holy Threadomancy, what prompted this?

Firstly, the things that take you directly to jail, like stealing from The Bazaar, do not affect your Criminal Record.

Secondly, Neath judges are not easily threatened or bribed. They work under the constant threat of Eldritch horrors from beyond the stars. The fact that you’ve murdered a couple of blokes is something they see everyday. Plus the judges tend to be actual Lords with no need of money precisely so they can’t be bribed.
Not to mention that Victorian judges saw actual murderers and gang bosses and still threw them in jail all the time.
Now they should be scared of The Masters, and are, which is why you can use those connections to get out of jail.

Just because your character has done some great stuff, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t powers in the Neath that are equally great. The jail is run by face stealing, candle eating monsters from an unknowable continent across the darkest zee. Getting out of there shouldn’t be a cakewalk no matter your Shadowy.

Ultimately, Suspicion is a menace area. It’s not supposed to be pleasant. It’s supposed to be a punishment for letting a Menace get too high. If you could get out in a single action, or keep your Casing or just generally ignore it, you’d have no reason to manage the menace.
Criminal Record makes it a more unpleasant menace area than others, but it’s also the only place where you can escape immediately if you draw 2 fortunate cards and where you can gain an Acquaintance.

I know it’s annoying, but menace management is part of the game design. It keeps you from blowing through the game too quickly and provides tangible barriers to advancement. It’s the stick part of the carrot and stick.
If you’re really that bothered by New Newgate, just keep on top of your Suspicion(Ablution Solution isn’t that great to begin with. Social actions are the best way to reduce menaces.)
If it’s really so annoying, advance max out your Shadowy so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

But it’s part of the game for a reason.

I wasn’t aware that insta-kill Suspicion Menaces don’t affect Criminal Record. That significantly mitigates the problem I had with them. A boat ride (and all that escaping it entails for most of us) is a perfectly fair punishment for losing a fight to somebody who kills their opponents. My point there was just that a warning wouldn’t be out of order, since many players care very much about what Londoners SAY about mortal injuries.

My point about the person with 250 Shadowy isn’t that jail should diminish as an inconvenience, but rather than the permanence of the criminal record is a much bigger deal than the actual jail sentence.

If I have shadowy 200+ and high connections, including the Masters, and have, say, 6 suspicion, it’s just weird that the Constables will still take some random friend’s word, but that I can’t persuade Pages that my criminal record is a wrongful incumbrance born of scurrilous rumors.

Well, that’s because your Criminal Record is a matter of…well, record.
It’s written down in the books and everything. There’s no one individual, even Mr Pages, who can expunge it. They are the Masters of the Bazaar, not the Masters of London. They are a powerful influence, but not the only powerful influence.

Plus the people in New Newgate see you coming back again and again, which is the only the Record really affects.
It mirrors how, in the actual criminal justice system, if a judge & cops keep seeing you, they will further and further doubt your innocence; regardless of your actual innocence.

It’s a good way to encourage players to manages their Suspicion Menace, rather than let it ramp up to 9, then keep flipping cards until you get the 2 you need to escape and erase all your Suspicion.

If it’s really ever bothering you that badly, feel free to send me any Suspicious reducing social actions you’d like.
I’m sure most other players will say the same thing.

That’s very kind of you, and most appreciated.

I’m not too worried about criminal records from the accumulation of evidence; rather, I intend to engage in regular heists in the future, and getting a permanent punishment for failing a single one seemed excessive. Realism and stability are already pretty much out the window; escaping jail, even when you were sent there under your own name, still means you get to stay out while becoming a notable member of society. I realize people in the Neath don’t have Google, but you’d think that a judge, realizing that the protagonist was never supposed to be out of jail, would give you nigh-infinite suspicion. Going insane doesn’t result in a massive/permanent loss of persuasiveness, and repeated trips to the tomb-colonies don’t undermine the credibility of scandal reduction. Disbelief must periodically be suspended.

If we’re acknowledging the historical bureaucratic infallibility of judges, why make a repeat offender easier to convict? That neither makes modern legal sense (burden of proof and all that) nor is historically accurate. In the application of prison sentences, conscription or other non-capital punishments, convicts of wealth or status received lighter sentences, not heavier, and being able to afford a lawyer greatly reduced the likelihood of conviction. (It’s actually unusual that Abaddon & Bael can’t work something out. They defeated London and were able to ransom her soldiers generously, so it stands to reason that the Embassy’s military is indeed older and more formidable than London OR Newgate. And it’s not like we don’t know what means of payment they prefer.) Career criminals were considered to be of the lowest social class above vagrants, so zeroing Notability/Waves or deducting primary stat CPs (scaling with the total) would rapidly become srs business for a capped character that somehow ended up in jail. The infliction of 9 Wounds by hanging would also be much more historically accurate, and a much more proportionate penalty, for problematic convicts. “Oh, you think it’s funny to get out of jail quickly? Let’s try jail and a boat ride.” That would also, in terms of alleged canon, prevent a return to the Surface, but that at least isn’t a permanent change in gameplay. Also, it’s dramatically powerful - maybe somebody on the Surface expected me to come back, but I got into some trouble, was sentenced to the noose and can’t endure sunlight anymore. Provided first-time convicts are warned that they’re risking the noose if they return, that would still be “fair” compared to punishments for other menaces. A player who prefers to navigate the game without guidance getting a few convictions shortly after achieving PoSI being stuck with their criminal record as a capped character? Disproportionate.

This doesn’t seem to bother anybody else, so I’ll drop it. Thank you for being willing to discuss it, and I’m sorry for accidentally changing the overall direction of the thread - the first post was intended as an observation about Feducci/instakills/other unexpected punishments.

Worth mentioning about death and the ability to return to the surface: it’s implied that, if you’re sufficiently soaked in Neathy magicky nonsense, you won’t be able to return regardless of whether you died or not.

Sunless Sea makes it quite explicit. Death is always permanent in that game, and yet even if you never die, the surface will still kill you eventually if you go there.

Unless you lived at Hunter’s Keep.