On training backstab

[Tisiphone]

Yay, I feel appreciated now that I'm in someone's sig.

In more serious news. Now I want to make/modify the organizations talked about...but I can't, since I can't actually connect to Arm.

Which means I want you all to do it for me! Go make assassins now and band together to take over the world!

On a seperate note, though, solo rp may not be for some people, but 'tis currently the 'best' (most often IC justified) way to train backstabbing, and the staff is pretty generous with skill boosts.

[Rindan]

Four is great if thats your thing, but it's certainly not definite. Solo RP is like masterbation. It's fun for while, but after a while you'll want the real thing. And if you wanted to RP all your skills, you could just find a mush to play.

You can RP training without it being solo RP.  If anything, I would think that would be far more enjoyable to do it with a partner.  Two would-be assassins who team up to train on each other could devise countless RPed assassin games that all stop short of using the backstab code.  To name a few:

1)  Have a partner sit with his back to a door.  Sneak in, and see if you can tap him on the back of the neck without him hearing you.

2)  Have a game where one person is the 'victim' and gets lost in the city and pretends to be a mark.  The other assassin has find him and tap him on the back of the neck without being seen.

3)  Make it a running game where you try and sneak up your partner and tap him without being seen.

4)  Practice together on dummies your power and accuracy and criticize each other's attempts.

Further, I think the real 'fun' of RPing training would go well beyond training just training backstabbing.  With a partner, you could devise a lot of other "games" based around teaching assassination and information gathering.

It only has to be solo RP if you make it that way.

[Yang]

I like Rindan's line of thinking, and there are also fairly acceptable coded assassin games that one can come up with. A lot of the later work will require a partner, which is in act one reason why a master assassin WOULD take on a younger, less experienced assassin, so long as the relationship was one that could be trusted. I think the main reason I've rejected this kind of arrangement in the past was generally because I didn't believe the other character would last long. A lot of rogues die fast doing silly things (just as warriors and rangers do, I suppose).

[Rhapsody of Zalanthas]

Just a note that backstabbing doesn't necessarily mean a stab in the back in terms of a human. Any critical point to a being is considered a backstab, as per say the docs. So, backstabbing animals -is- a viable option, you would just need to rp applying your backstabs to animals to backstabbing human counterparts.

[Rindan]

Just a note that backstabbing doesn't necessarily mean a stab in the back in terms of a human. Any critical point to a being is considered a backstab, as per say the docs. So, backstabbing animals -is- a viable option, you would just need to rp applying your backstabs to animals to backstabbing human counterparts.

Personally, I think that back stabbing animals as a training method is silly.  You might as well paint some targets on a dummy and stab at those.  I think that backstabbing animals is a crutch used to get around the fact that backstab is close to impossible to train in a realistic way - especially if you can't codedly backstab inanimate targets and aren't allowed to backstab other humans in training.

I am not the RP police so take my beliefs with a grain of salt, but my personal belief is that if you are going for a traditional back stabbing for money assassin, the way to go is to RP train.  Even in RPed training (especially with a partner) you can improve all of your skills except backstab without the help of any staff intervention.  Further, I think that focusing on the RP of learning to stalk and kill other humans will help to enforce an assassin mentality instead of a "build up the skills by killing NPCs" mentality.

I understand the desire to build up the skills to be an assassin.  Why be an assassin if you never actually get to assassinate someone?  Despite this, I think that a lot of people that go down this road try and race to the end without enjoying the in-between.  For me personally, the characters that I have enjoyed the best were not ones that were necessarily the most powerful when they died, but the ones that enjoyed the journey they went on from day one.  Especially in an assassins journey, the chances of dying are high enough where you are going to be sourly disappointed if you only find happiness when you are a killing machine.  For that reason, I would advocate taking the RPed approach that doesn't resort to hunting down animals or joining a group to go backstab Gith.

[Yang]

... in an assassins journey, the chances of dying are high enough where you are going to be sourly disappointed if you only find happiness when you are a killing machine.  For that reason, I would advocate taking the RPed approach that doesn't resort to hunting down animals or joining a group to go backstab Gith.

Or you could be a dwarf assassin whose best friend was killed by a tablelands gith, and whose focus becomes to learn enough to infiltrate the gith base and assassinate their leader, in the meantime having an overwhelming and morbid interest in the exact anatomy of gith, and capturing them to learn their secrets and weaknesses.

The point is just that you should respect the game enough to fully justify your coded actions in character, but that using the code to advance coded skills is far from criminal. I believe both the RP and the code can be fun, which is exactly why I play armageddon rather than a MUSH: because it combines these two things nearly seamlessly, and certainly better than most MUDs or mmmmmmMMOLRPGs's I've found. There are other reasons (obviously) I play armageddon, but I think that is a fairly weighty one for me, having started on H&S muds when I was very young.

On the other hand, of course, removing yourself from the skills and going purely RP is commendable, but I don't think that the attitude of looking down on those who play the other way, with more involvement in the code is justified. The only thing we should be wary of is coded actions taken outside of the context of the role being played, and we have names for that: powergamer, twink, newb, code abuser and the staff almost always had a fairly enlightened approach to dealing with these.

[daedroug]

The only thing we should be wary of is coded actions taken outside of the context of the role being played, and we have names for that: powergamer, twink, newb, code abuser and the staff

Wow didn't realize people had that opinion of the staff :twisted:

Besides, misquoting people for the most part I would go with the advice that there is a time and place to practice backstab, and for the most part it's called the Rinth. Walk in there and you'll find plenty of NPCs that will do the same to you if you don't do it first.

[Yang]

The only thing we should be wary of is coded actions taken outside of the context of the role being played, and we have names for that: powergamer, twink, newb, code abuser and the staff

Wow didn't realize people had that opinion of the staff :twisted:

Besides, misquoting people for the most part I would go with the advice that there is a time and place to practice backstab, and for the most part it's called the Rinth. Walk in there and you'll find plenty of NPCs that will do the same to you if you don't do it first.

Yeah, I mean, if this was the Idle OOC Chat this might be funny but I don't appreciate the misquote.

[Dalmeth]

What I think the all of you are getting hooked on is that those who choose the assassin guild are not necessarily assassins.  Backstab is not wholly the domain of professional murderers.  Rejoice!