Mantis clutch - for players

[Incognito]

Playing a variety of races and guilds has always been fascinating and I cannot help begrudge the fact that the Mantis have been closed to players.

Would the staff consider opening up a single clutch of say - 5 players (max) - at a time - along the lines of the Gladiator set-up in Allanak? (Preferably under a staff member who has some experience with the Mantis). Players could have their own PCs elsewhere and a secondary Mantis PC, so that those of use who never got a taste of that race, can do so now?

I am sure other issues will crop up, but they can be tackled.

[Ghost]

If that happens..

I SO want to join the fray!

EDIT:  Guess it can be done the way Halfling test was done?

[Moofassa]

I'm with Incog. on his thinking here. I believe that every race, including animals should be opened up to atleast some sort of PC contact. If we had maybe, 2-3 PC's playing halfling, Mantis, Gith, or whatever at a time, it would increase the depth of the encounters had by PC's with what are generally NPC's.
I'm horrible at staying completely on topic.
But!--> I'm entirely sure about having two characters at once, like you said INcog. . A primary and Second char, that would just get too complicated, and the secondady/primary would have some sort of draw back due to the fact that you're trying to run two PC's.

--> I would like to see the immortals opening up more of the races to players, maybe a select few trusted players. It would add to the incredible depth armageddon always has.

[Malifaxis]

I think, with the increased summer numbers, that it would be an awesome chance to actually do this with all the iso tribes.  Allanak and Tuluk are hoppin enough with a player max of 30... why not allow the other ten or fifteen crazy in the head folks to cycle through some of those crazy baddybads?

Personally, I would love to see a four pack of gith pcs ambushing some bunch of desert elves or humans, and then have all of them get smoked when the mantis clutch comes out of hiding.

It'd add fear to the deserts, a much needed fear.  It'd give people the chance to capture PCs from societies they've never experienced, and then torture them.

Lets make 2005 the Year of the Mantis, Pleeeeease?

em wanders off, just knowing he's gonna see that goddamn ascii mantis because Hal's gonna take that the wrong way.

[Delirium]

What is there to do as a mantis?

Besides hunt and kill and, er, hunt and kill?

[Demonaire]

What is there to do as a mantis?

Besides hunt and kill and, er, hunt and kill?

Wouldn't this provide an excellent oppurtunity to flesh out the entire mantis culture, possibly lead into RPTs involving these mantis raiding all races and causing mischief?



       - Demonaire -

[Jherlen]

No way. I'd much much rather see more noble clans opened up and more plotting and political rp going on rather than adding packs of mantis and gith and halflings to run around and eat people.

[Spud]

Perhaps..but it would also add that sense of danger in the sands. Anyone who plays a ranger for a moderate amount of time is going to know where things are and where not to go. With roaming mantis, people would have to be careful. Personally, I never feel in danger when playing an outdoors character.

[Ghost]

I think the secondary char part can be handled the way the halfling test was handled.  You know.. The staff lets you store your current char and after the test run is done, you are given the chance to get back your old char or make a new one.

[Kankman]

Everyone who wants to play a halfling - play Akei Ta Var. The cultures are very similar. Everyone who wants to play gith/mantis, special app a Haruch Kemad or join SLK. The desert elf tribes are AMAZING. The only thing that isn't SO freaking awesome about them is lack of many players.

If you're bored of cities and the usual blah, check out those d-elf tribes because it is a really freaking amazing side of Armageddon that I personally hadn't seen in the 5ish years I've been playing. If you haven't tried them out - forget about opening more ISO clans and try what we got! Dammit! :evil:

[Cale_Knight]

Is the secondary-character gladiator thing real? I only saw it mentioned in passing in another thread.

[RunningMountain]

Yes gladiators used to be a secondary character system, but it didn't last due to issues, mainly some of us were spending way more time on our gladiators then we were our main PCs, and that detracted from the roleplay actually because all we would do is spar, spar, spar, and we were meant to die anyway so it didn't matter how strong you got, we'd have 10 gladiaotrs on when there's only 30 players online, it was frusterating to the other players I think.

On the opening of restricted races, I have to disagree with it, I don't think it's going to add anything at all, the Gith might add to roleplay, because they have a culture, but the mantis, no. And as far as I know the halflings were open last year? Not sure how it went but you can take that as an example if it didn't last.

[Alnir]

Perhaps..but it would also add that sense of danger in the sands. Anyone who plays a ranger for a moderate amount of time is going to know where things are and where not to go. With roaming mantis, people would have to be careful. Personally, I never feel in danger when playing an outdoors character.

..Uh? Sense of Danger in the sands? Could I even begin to tell you how many of my pc's have run in sheer terror from..Sheesh, I don't even have enough fingers to count what I've ran from. The desert is scary enough, we don't need /MORE/ to rape our newbies. We have flesh eating elves, Rabid halflings, and stinky gith. :[

[Bogre]

I think any PC mantis would have to be a sub-breed, some sort of synapse creature, one that stands as a beacon of the hive mind for their fellows. Thus maybe it could have some rudimentary sentient thought process.

[Cuusardo]

Mantis (thri-kreen) do not have very long life spans.  Even if your mantis PC doesn't die a violent death, you wouldn't be able to play it for terribly long anyway.

[Savak]

They also eat.

This came up again a couple months ago on the staff boards, and isn't entirely out of the question.  Someone was looking at our options and what needed to be considered & addressed before moving further, but I don't know the status of that.

At any rate, it's not an impossibility.  Just don't hold your breath on it happening "soon."

[moab]

Mantis playing in the day was cool - but it really is lacking as a PC playable race.  They are too single minded, too much an insect that hunts and eats.

It has been years and we are, I think begining to see reasonable elf half-elf roleplay finally.  We still, as a group, have problems with Muls, Half-giants and halflings.

If we can't play those properly, can we play something so completely alien?

Further having played a gladiator and a Mantis I have to say that the actual play is very similiar.  It is one dimensional.  The actualy inscect culture isn't, of course, but at this time, there isn't much to do.

We could, in theory build an interesting culture to follow and slowly educate the player base on how to play the bugs, but in the end (as others have said) the effort invested would be better used in other quarters.

[williamson]

I've played all the alternative races in the past. Of all of them, I think that gith would add much more than the others. The mantis and halflings are naturally isolationists. The gith, however, are naturally evil and make a perfect  enemy for so many. I vote return of the gith!

-Williamson

[Anarchy]

I'd love to see the gith opened as a race. When in the desert - if your an human/half-elf/dwarf your more worried about a pc d-elf attacking then an npc. If your an d-elf - your worried about other some human/half-elf/dwarf pc trying to off you in the desert, with gith PCs however - adds a better colour of fear to the desert world.

[Anonymous]

Gith before Mantis.  Roleplaying just another part of the hivemind would suck.

[LoD]

This topic seems to surface time and again when someone thinks it'd be neat to be able to play one of the sentient races in the game that doesn't conform to the same social or behavioral mold.  The problem is that these races don't have enough in common with the current player character races to allow for complex relationships on multiple levels.  

Almost every current race fits into a role that can be played in a non violent manner: friends, merchants, lovers, rivals (friendly or otherwise), spies, political pawns, performers, etc... many of which would not be possible with the gith, mantis or halfling races.  This lack of depth in potential RP scenarios leads to a lot of raiding and player killing.

While the individual culture of the races may not be inherently prone to twinkish play, the lack of a rich and diverse environment, full of subtle challenges and constant interaction on several levels, is a sure fire way to send someone to the "dark side".  Since these roles would no doubt have to be special application only, you now throw in a lot of extra work for the Imm Staff because they need to prepare for and monitor these players.  Those players that do actually get to play the race may have, at any given time, 1-2 other players running around to interact with, maybe 4-5 during peak times if they are lucky.

Since these races may live in dangerous areas and would be hunted on sight by many of the other PC races, the turnover could be rather high which would further chip away at the numbers of consistent players and chance of non-combat oriented RP.  Many of these players would then shift to hunting to keep levels of boredom to a minimum while trying their best not to PK.  This would become increasingly difficult as other PC's discovered there was were some PC gith and figured they'd RP and hunt them down.

The only race I could ever see being played by PC's in force would be the gith, and this would only ever be if the gith nation becamse loosely allied with another PC race, such as one of the DE elven tribes.  Something that would allow some other portion of the playerbase to interact with them on a non-violent level and actually develop relationships and commerce.

-LoD

[Anonymous]

The only race I could ever see being played by PC's in force would be the gith, and this would only ever be if the gith nation becamse loosely allied with another PC race, such as one of the DE elven tribes.  Something that would allow some other portion of the playerbase to interact with them on a non-violent level and actually develop relationships and commerce.

I've always liked this idea.  I don't remember who was the first to bring it up but the best idea I heard was having gith living in Red Storm since there was some precedent for that.  It would both challenge the new race (since Storm is the hardest starting point in the game) as well as liven up the region a little by focusing a group of outdoor roles there.  Having Red Storm as a place of play would also give them a refuge of sorts.

[EvilRoeSlade]

There is already a race of desert elves loosely allied with the gith.

Settled in the plains far west of the city-state of Allanak, this elven tribe is known for its association - and sometimes even cooperation - with the gith tribes roaming the wastes. They have been known to send parties to Allanak to sell their wares.

Okay to use as background.

I say open both tribes up.

[Bogre]

Mmmmm, gith. The history and culture the have is so great, even if they are just slavering barbarians.

[WarriorPoet]

Mmmmm, gith. The history and culture the have is so great, even if they are just slavering barbarians.

Agreed.

I want to play a gith, if only for the reason to start an argument and challenge someone to a crazy dance-off around a fire, or demand a storytelling contest. I've thought about that since my first days at Armageddon, reading up on the strange beast that killed my first character.

I think that the gith culture, speech patterns, and other little nuances would be very different, but still humanoid and familiar enough for people to work with without their roleplaying becoming outlandishly strange, yet still managing to flourish and add to the culture themselves.

I've, maybe incorrectly, always kind of imagined gith to be more spiritual than the other races, with shamans and alot of ceremony in everyday life, even if the ceremonies are extremely primitive. Nothing to back that up, that was just how I've always pictured them, as a player, and I've thought it would be fun to play.*

Forget mantis. The only insect that should ever be playable is race: kank. Go for gith or halfling, if we try anything new. I probably wouldn't play a halfling, but I would like to RP with any 'biter PC's. Fun fun.

-WP is so sleepy.

*Edit:

Roleplaying: Gith society is highly tribal, much like nomadic elves. However, gith tribal culture is extremely ritualistic and sometimes cruel. Symbolism, tradition, and attention to correct processes marks gith society apart from others.

I'm an ass. Must have seemed in and been filed away.