Viewing Allanak's IC board outside the game - Idea

Started by Malken, July 30, 2017, 02:41:39 PM

Now that most of the gameplay is centered in and around Allanak, I think there should be a way for players to read the IC board outside the game, like via the website or on the forum.

I want to play the game again but I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the main city right now, what clans are looking for recruits, what kind of characters are needed, etc, and since I don't talk to any players outside of the game, I really have no idea what I should be making.

I know that some of you will say that I should make a human warrior or a human ranger and that I should be able to find work easily with that sort of character, but what if I create a character and I get into the game and see a really cool looking job ad for a merchant specializing in jewelry?

I mean, I can understand that players from the middle of nowhere shouldn't know what's happening in Allanak but usually the IC board is kept vague enough that unless you really dig deep into a newsworthy type of "gossip", there shouldn't be anything that is way too secretive that someone outside Allanak really shouldn't know about. Also, with the way, and let's be honest, a lot of players with friends who freely exchange bits and pieces of news outside the game, it's not like anything newsworthy being put on the IC board won't get to be known from a majority of the players within a day or two.

ALSO, with being able to view the IC board outside the game, that's another extra type of "game advertisement" that could draw in players like me who haven't played in forever and could easily be lured back into the game just by seeing that cool stuff are still happening within the game itself.

Maybe I've missed something that makes that idea a really bad one?
"When I was a fighting man, the kettle-drums they beat;
The people scattered gold-dust before my horse's feet;
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back."

I was actually thinking the same thing the other day! That's a great idea, here's to hoping more will agree.

There's still proximity-based IC knowledge, though.

Might be doable if we link it to your current character's starting location, or something?  Like a 'news from home' sort of setup?

Edit:  And if you have no character, access to all of them to help you decide where you'd like to play?
She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together. --J.D. Salinger

Access to regional information should be kept regional. If you don't have a character who can enter the Blackwing outpost, then why should you get access to the gossip on the IC board there?

The same should hold true of Allanak's rumor boards.

Quote from: 'Malken"I want to play the game again but I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the main city right now

So make a character and find out? If you wanna play the game, just play, man. If you don't, that's fine too. Don't. I'm not even saying that rudely or sarcastically, just matter of factly. IC information is information you can only find out strictly IC; rumor board information is information you can only find out strictly within a certain region of the game. I think that's a pretty good dynamic and one worth keeping.

Quote from: ghanima on July 30, 2017, 03:00:10 PM
Access to regional information should be kept regional. If you don't have a character who can enter the Blackwing outpost, then why should you get access to the gossip on the IC board there?

The same should hold true of Allanak's rumor boards.

Quote from: 'Malken"I want to play the game again but I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the main city right now

So make a character and find out? If you wanna play the game, just play, man. If you don't, that's fine too. Don't. I'm not even saying that rudely or sarcastically, just matter of factly. IC information is information you can only find out strictly IC; rumor board information is information you can only find out strictly within a certain region of the game. I think that's a pretty good dynamic and one worth keeping.

Sounds like you didn't read anything I've written. Maybe you should read your own advice and don't post in threads you've got nothing useful to say.

As for those with actual useful thoughts on it -

Armaddict: What do you mean by proximity-based IC knowledge? Like I wrote, there's never actually anything -crazy- secret when it comes to the Allanak IC board, most of it is job-related and which clans are hiring. Once in a blue moon you'll get some stuff like political gossips but these are usually pretty quickly spread about to the rest of the playerbase, no matter where they are actually playing.

Maybe staff could code themselves a command where they could actually flag some of the IC messages to be read outside of the game, then? Like the job-related ones and some other type of messages, helpful to people in my situation, could get to read to get a sort of overall view of what's needed currently in the game and what type of clans are actually hiring/still open to play.
"When I was a fighting man, the kettle-drums they beat;
The people scattered gold-dust before my horse's feet;
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back."

My examples would be things like the ratsucker plots, senate hearings, etc.  Things that someone in Luir's or Storm or Morin's wouldn't be likely to hear about aside from off of a 'nakki's lips.  Things that can be further 'rumorized' as players try to explain it to other players who don't have direct first-hand exposure.

While everyone in the entire game knowing such things isn't necessarily breaking anything, at the same time it is kind of diffusing the 'genuineness' of information spread.  That's just my opinion, I know I'm a stickler on such things.
She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together. --J.D. Salinger

I had a similar idea a while ago, even posted about it, but here are some 'objections' to it (or 'concerns') that would have to be handled, I'd imagine.  (Not insurmountable concerns, but still.)

1. It might have the opposite effect on players.  As you mentioned, the board usually just has hiring/job posts.  The real plots tend to stay off the main Allanak board, relegated to the clan compounds.  Hence, it can look as if there is nothing going on, or just the status quo.

2. Quality Control.  This would be two-fold.  (a) We'd only want information that is plausibly global (see below on what I mean by this).  (b) We'd also want to have the information look good -- so poorly formatted posts, etc. would have to be quality controlled.  I like the idea of having a staff 'flag' certain posts --- related to HRPT stuff -- as exportable.  Upshot though is this would take a dedicated staff member, and thus time.

3. Local vs. Global Information.  As mentioned, some information on the Allanaki board should not be available to, say, an SLK in the far region of the Known.  That said, I actually don't think this is much of a worry, since (a) there are very few PCs who would NOT know through caravans, word-of-mouth what is going on in Allanak and (b) those few PCs can filter that out if they want, since they are likely veteran players to begin with.  In general, I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages on this particular concern.

as IF you didn't just have them unconscious, naked, and helpless in the street 4 minutes ago

I'll go so far as to suggest that ANY tavern board, no matter where it is, would have information readily "overheard" by any PC.  Virtually, there is at least one Sun Runner in every city/outpost. That virtual SR VNPC is telling his tribemates over the Way whatever is going on, whenever there is something new to report. At least one of those virtual tribemates is pals with an ATV, or Soh tribe member. At least one of those VNPCs hangs out in Luir's, and is tribemates with at least one person who frequents Red Storm and Morin's.

Virtually, all these VNPCs already know about anything going on. If it's secret, it won't be on those tavern boards in the first place. If it's on those boards, then it's free information for whoever, virtual or non-virtual, wants to find out. The character you haven't created yet is a VNPC, right this minute.

By the time he's approved, he will already be an adult. By that time he will have heard, or overheard, or attempted to hear/overhear, every single publically-available rumor in the entire Known World - PLUS his own clan.

So I don't see any problem at all with posts that are on publically-available tavern boards in the game, being made available here on the GDB.
Talia said: Notice to all: Do not mess with Lizzie's GDB. She will cut you.
Delirium said: Notice to all: do not mess with Lizzie's soap. She will cut you.

Quote from: nauta on July 30, 2017, 03:36:40 PM
2. Quality Control.  This would be two-fold.  (a) We'd only want information that is plausibly global (see below on what I mean by this).  (b) We'd also want to have the information look good -- so poorly formatted posts, etc. would have to be quality controlled.  I like the idea of having a staff 'flag' certain posts --- related to HRPT stuff -- as exportable.  Upshot though is this would take a dedicated staff member, and thus time.

I agree with pretty much with everything that's been said so far, and to your #2, I would say that Staff already reads the IC board pretty frequently I would guess, to make sure that what goes on it is supposed to be there, otherwise they just delete it. So I don't think that any extra work would need to be done by Staff except to add a command like "forumflag #22 #26 #30" and have it appear somewhere outside the game. Of course, I'm not a coder so I don't know how much work goes into that :)
"When I was a fighting man, the kettle-drums they beat;
The people scattered gold-dust before my horse's feet;
But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back."

Quote from: MalkenAlso, with the way, and let's be honest, a lot of players with friends who freely exchange bits and pieces of news outside the game, it's not like anything newsworthy being put on the IC board won't get to be known from a majority of the players within a day or two.

I've played desert elves and had no idea what sort of gossip was filtering in Luir's, let alone in Allanak. And I enjoyed not knowing and wondering. what was happening. Not every player is out there exchanging IC information.

Quote from: Malken on July 30, 2017, 02:41:39 PM
ALSO, with being able to view the IC board outside the game, that's another extra type of "game advertisement" that could draw in players like me who haven't played in forever and could easily be lured back into the game just by seeing that cool stuff are still happening within the game itself.

Rumors are spun by groups of people at whatever serves as the local water cooler. You have to be situated among those groups of people to learn the latest gossip. Being logged out, uncertain if you want to play the game or not, is not being situated among those groups of people. For that matter, a noble who never goes into the commoners quarter should also not have access to the IC rumor boards. They should have an aide go gather that information for them. Because they're not there.

I'd like to see more wide scale information as a whole made public, such as bringing the chronology page back to life. There are lots of  big events over the past few years that could be seen as worldwide knowledge. And that's the sort of information available whether you're logged in or not, or whether you even have a character or not. And perhaps there could be a separate OOC board for casting of roles, so that as you say you have an idea what's needed. But when asked my opinion if the IC rumor board should be made available to all just because some players already exchange that information outside the game, I vote no. Keep it such that if you want access to that information you need to be there or have someone deliver it to you (and hope they aren't lying).

If you don't want to know what's going on in Allanak, don't read the board.

That was easy.
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What about... we have forums and subforums. I don't think it would be unreasonable to have a forum board that basically just has copies of the IC board posts.

Like with clans you're thinking of joining, you could ask for access to your regional forum. You now have access to the IC board posts from that region on a board that no one can post in. Staff would copy over board posts that are the type anyone would know. When you're no longer in that region, you ask for acess to a different region's boards.

Would it be perfect? No. Not everyone uses the GDB. But it could meet the goal of allowing an incoming player to check out a region's rumors for the region their character is from before formulating a character idea (like you request Sun Runner docs before you app into the clan). And it would allow people who just haven't been able to log in a while to not look like idiots ("What do you mean you didn't know the whole City is on fire, FIRE KANKS?"), while also limiting access so that not all players have access to information all over the world.
Former player as of 2/27/23, sending love.

Quote from: Synthesis on July 31, 2017, 03:13:51 AM
If you don't want to know what's going on in Allanak, don't read the board.

That was easy.

Well.  It would have been, if anyone had come out and said 'I don't like this feature because I don't want to read the board on OOC channels.'
She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together. --J.D. Salinger

I find myself agreeing with the theme of Lizzie's post.

Quote from: Lizzie on July 30, 2017, 03:40:38 PM
I'll go so far as to suggest that ANY tavern board, no matter where it is, would have information readily "overheard" by any PC.  Virtually, there is at least one Sun Runner in every city/outpost. That virtual SR VNPC is telling his tribemates over the Way whatever is going on, whenever there is something new to report. At least one of those virtual tribemates is pals with an ATV, or Soh tribe member. At least one of those VNPCs hangs out in Luir's, and is tribemates with at least one person who frequents Red Storm and Morin's.

Allanak isn't only for 'Nakki PCs, and if there is anything "secret" going on, it doesn't belong on the rumor boards anyway. They're for hiring, party/festival information, and city-wide plots that anyone with a passing interest would overhear in the bar.

On one hand, I like the idea of "having to send someone to Blackwing to see what those elves are up to" and "If you want to know whats going on in Allanak, GO there, or hire someone else to".

On the other hand, I also have been in positions like Malken where it'd be nice to know that "new Templar Hardnose is looking for a human aide with a focus in floristry" or whatever. Make a character to apply, and worse case scenario, your playtimes don't match up or you aren't as good a fit as someone else. In which case you spent a couple hours adding something to the game in the form of minor competition.
Quote from: IAmJacksOpinion on May 20, 2013, 11:16:52 PM
Masks are the Armageddon equivalent of Ed Hardy shirts.

July 31, 2017, 11:03:24 AM #14 Last Edit: July 31, 2017, 11:07:21 AM by lairos
Not taking into account what some people may or may not do in terms of OOC gossip as the OP mentioned, which no one is oblivious to, this can be both good and bad. Would it be nice for people creating characters to know who is hiring? Sure, but the position could be filled by the time you make one. The biggest problem with this is the age old "Hiring should be done IC only" this opens up to essentially hiring via whatever form of OOC means you wish to see these posts. We have had many, many posts that have been moderated for this very thing. It may not sound constructive, but there are clans that are seemingly always hiring. If there is a particular place or House you would like to work for, why not make the character anyway and try to go work for them regardless?

I think I can understand your intent and I am sure a lot of us have been there, but I think it opens it up to things that COULD be too IC and again the issue of essentially hiring outside of the game. At the same time, keep in mind that not everyone who is hiring posts on the rumor board either. I would rather see the chronology page to be updated and maybe even have one that is more narrowed down and focused per area like the Tablelands, Luirs, Allanak, Red Storm.
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Just to play both sides here, Lairos, you're saying that the reason this idea 'could' be bad, is because ... of OOC hiring? Meaning, posting on the Discussion Board that your family is looking for members, OOC hiring?

I definitely get the "If you want to play a Salarri, play a character attractive to a Salarri position" but it seems the OP is more leaning towards "trying to fill a needed role in game". If they happen to see New Templar #2525 is looking for hunters, maybe that'll inspire them? Its not exactly information you wouldn't know, as Lizzie made mention of it could only take 24hours to create a character, check the boards, suicide, and create a character anyways.

Your mention of the Chronology Page being updated doesn't sound like it'd solve this issue, but may have enough merit for its own discussion (plus tavern Rumor updates)
Quote from: IAmJacksOpinion on May 20, 2013, 11:16:52 PM
Masks are the Armageddon equivalent of Ed Hardy shirts.

July 31, 2017, 11:30:48 AM #16 Last Edit: July 31, 2017, 11:37:58 AM by lairos
Quote from: Riev on July 31, 2017, 11:08:35 AM
Just to play both sides here, Lairos, you're saying that the reason this idea 'could' be bad, is because ... of OOC hiring? Meaning, posting on the Discussion Board that your family is looking for members, OOC hiring?

I said 'could' because as it stands presently it breaking a forum/game rule, one that has been cited numerous times, unless staff are wanting to discuss the removal of that particular part of the rule. Posting for "looking for family members" is not viewed the same as "House <redacted> is looking for <redacted>" and are set in two very distinct categories. The latter is considered against the forum/game rules.

Quote from: Riev on July 31, 2017, 11:08:35 AM
I definitely get the "If you want to play a Salarri, play a character attractive to a Salarri position" but it seems the OP is more leaning towards "trying to fill a needed role in game". If they happen to see New Templar #2525 is looking for hunters, maybe that'll inspire them? Its not exactly information you wouldn't know, as Lizzie made mention of it could only take 24hours to create a character, check the boards, suicide, and create a character anyways.

As far as the comment of suicide? Sure, but that is also frowned on as well. I get what they are leaning for, but as I mentioned, it is against the rules as they presently stand. It would end up being the same as someone from a House coming to the forums and posting "Hey we are hiring!!". If that is the only desired result, we may as well avoid any possible slipup of info that shouldn't be shared other than IC and just add that hiring OOC is 100% allowed and allow everyone to post on the forums that they are hiring.
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If we did remove that rule, and the other objections were resolved somehow, we could just junk the Allanaki board altogether and have a sub-thread called "Allanaki rumors" on the main gdb (much as clans no longer use their rumor boards but use gdb threads).

IMAGINE never having to use the IG editor to post a rumor!!  Such heaven.

The only rumor boards that would remain in the game would be the one in Blackwing, Morins, Luirs, and Red Storm.  (You could maybe keep the rumor board in Allanak.)

Huh, the more I think about this, the more this melds with another idea I had: I'd like to split off rumors on the board or have two boards: one for job postings the other for bona fide rumors.  You could have two threads for that.

That said, I bet that rule that Lairos is referring to is in place for a reason.

as IF you didn't just have them unconscious, naked, and helpless in the street 4 minutes ago

Quote from: nauta on July 31, 2017, 11:51:23 AM
That said, I bet that rule that Lairos is referring to is in place for a reason.

I could be convinced that reason is because staff in "the early days" didn't want to be policing the discussion boards, combing for inappropriate posts.

These days, as well, there are times where I've posted something to the boards without thinking, and it really WASN'T appropriate for a Rumor posting at the time. Online staff were very good about catching it sooner than maybe a Helper would on the GDB (and thus, also, exposing the helper to my inappropriate post).

I do think most people either do not use the GDB, or Lurk at best, so I don't know about putting these announcements on the GDB per se. At the very least, the Allanaki Rumor Board might be an interesting thing to have, if nothing else than to show how "active" it is. :3
Quote from: IAmJacksOpinion on May 20, 2013, 11:16:52 PM
Masks are the Armageddon equivalent of Ed Hardy shirts.

July 31, 2017, 12:05:37 PM #19 Last Edit: August 05, 2018, 09:54:01 AM by Molten Heart
.
"It's too hot in the hottub!"

-James Brown

https://youtu.be/ZCOSPtyZAPA

Quote from: Molten Heart on July 31, 2017, 12:05:37 PM
Part of the fun in playing is finding out IC information, giving it away for free to those who don't even want to make the investment of creating a character and logging into the game only waters down the game and removes value for those who do log in and play.

Part of the fun "FOR YOU" is an important part to remember. However, I do feel bent to agree that if you don't want to play, knowing Merchant FoofySilks is looking for a particular set of skills might not tickle my fancy to play, and if it does, I might not be as involved in the character because I made it "for a reason".

On the other side of that, is that sitting around waiting for people to come to you, or be available, is maddening and not fun at all. If you're an offpeak player, sometimes just waiting for a certain PC to be around to advance your own plots is all you do for a playing period. When you have to make a character, simply to find out if the clan you were interested in pursuing is active during your playtimes, thus 'wasting' a lot of time looking for information? That's not fair to expect from a player, either. "Do it because that's how I do it" isn't a valid reason.
Quote from: IAmJacksOpinion on May 20, 2013, 11:16:52 PM
Masks are the Armageddon equivalent of Ed Hardy shirts.

July 31, 2017, 12:55:26 PM #21 Last Edit: August 05, 2018, 09:53:53 AM by Molten Heart
.
"It's too hot in the hottub!"

-James Brown

https://youtu.be/ZCOSPtyZAPA

Which is still, supposedly, against forum rules, but the idea is interesting and has merit. We do it with Allanak Gladiator announcements, and when things like LuirsFest are planned, they're posted there.

Quote from: IAmJacksOpinion on May 20, 2013, 11:16:52 PM
Masks are the Armageddon equivalent of Ed Hardy shirts.

I'd like it to NOT be a requirement to use the GDB to play the game, but I feel that IC rumour board outside the game would display to players that things are happening in the game and get more players to join in.
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