Reverse Guild Sniffing

[Titania]

I think sometimes people complain that when they meet someone they get guild sniffed.

I hate it when they try and force me to smell their guild.

What I hate is when I am in a combat teacher role, and the player comes to me and says well I don't want to do such and such training because I can't bash,kick,rescue,disarm, guard etc.
In my opinion, just do the training like everyone else and you are just bad at it.

I think in most militaristic clans you should first go through the prescribed training for the prescribed time and then if you still suck at it the clan will take your abilities into consideration. From a role play
perspective I think my characters would think "Of course you can't do it you refuse to even try?". But of course we all know OOCly you can't, so I that is the dilemma?

[Barzalene]

OP makes an excellent point.
When I went through bootcamp there were women who had never done pullups. I bet to this day they haven't done one unaided. But they got up on that bar tried. And if they hadn't, if they'd said, Look, I'm going to be a yeoman and it won't matter, someone would have sent their asses home. Play your pc not your guild. If you don't excel at everything, isn't that just like real life?

[lordcooper]

The above posters speak great wisdom.  Retire to your place of solitude and reflect upon their words.

[Bacon]

It doesn't matter if it's a skill you don't have. In character, if it's your job to train at that you should just be doing it anyway.

[BleakOne]

As one who has participated in lots of training for skills my character doesn't have (a past one, not current one, obviously) I think it's fun to roleplay the miserable failures and your PC's reaction to them.

[Sokotra]

While I agree with most of what has been said above, I think it would be fair for such a player to ask if they could focus more on practicing skills that they excel at.   For many players it takes time to find the words to say these things without actually using the names of the skills themselves... or just find a better way to discuss skills in general.

I don't think they should be able to get completely out of "drills" or whatever, but if you are just focusing on training warrior skills I think it might be just as fair for someone to want to focus on Ranger or Assassin skills... or the skills of any guild that may be useful.  I'm pretty sure many of the other "non-warrior" skills would be useful to mercenaries or merchant/noble houses.  Scouting, espionage, etc...  though these things may, perhaps, need to be done in a special setting or in a different group.

[roughneck]

It's all about the language used.  A pc saying, 'I can't kick, can you teach me something else?' is jarring to roleplay.  There are other ways to do it however.

I think it's fine to roleplay your guild as a mindset or approach your pc has to combat.  More along the lines of believing that kicking is a mindless and ineffecient means of winning a fight rather than, 'I can't do it'.  The same way soldiers could disagree over what type of equipment is best or mma fighters argue over which stye/stretegy is most effective.

Overall though the OP has good advice.  It doesn't hurt to suffer through a lesson or two on a skill you don't and may never have.

[Cutthroat]

Saying "I can't do X" is a hard thing to justify. Most people without a severe physical disability can perform the general act of kicking, guarding, bashing, etc. It's just about how good you can do it. Therefore...

Saying "I'm not good at X" is better, and that's why you're training, after all.

As a side note, I also think you would also make a good case for receiving these skills (perhaps at a low level) if you do make a good effort ICly to learn them. I'm not sure what staff policy is on that at the moment, however.

[jstorrie]

If you're in one of the military clans, you're probably just going to have to bear guard drills and being bad at them.

But I can't think of any clan that engages in kick drills, disarm drills, or bash drills. Is this really that big a deal? If Amos won't be the third man for gith-guard-merchant, just tell the Sergeant and he'll get his ass beat for being a slacker.

[X-D]

I don't agree actually.

Sure, try for a little while, but it does not take long for anybody real life or IG to figure out they simply do not have the aptitude for something, they will never get better and there is no point at all to wasting the time and energy to keep beating that LONG dead horse.

Can you get skills added with enough RP, logs etc, yes, and if you want to go that route great. But some don't, and I see no problem at all with the PC saying, after trying a hundred times and having had to suffer through 20 drills and lessons, Screw this, I'm not gonna try any more. And to be honest you other players should let them be on the matter.

Because VERY quickly it all gets old. More quickly for people that have played longer.

It is a game, it is supposed to be fun to play, And though many of you who, who probly have not played more then a few years might still get enjoyment out of RPing the fails on skills you do not have...Post again in 5 more years when that number is literally in the THOUSANDS and see if you still think it is.

[Riev]

I think it -does- have to do with a matter of time. If you are a 0-day Assassin, and you join a military clan, you're going to suck at running a Guarding drill. Also, you're an assassin, or a combat master, or a shadow artist, whatever you are it is NOT a guard.

That doesn't, however, mean you can just sit there and do nothing during drills, and it sucks for the one in charge of the clan to have to sit there, basically being told "I am an assassin and I don't do guarding drills" because now the onus is on the leader to make it more fun for you.

[Synthesis]

That doesn't, however, mean you can just sit there and do nothing during drills, and it sucks for the one in charge of the clan to have to sit there, basically being told "I am an assassin and I don't do guarding drills" because now the onus is on the leader to make it more fun for you.

Usually I just pretend to be AFK if I don't OOCly feel like fucking around with doing whatever it is my PC is supposed to be doing ICly.  Most people seem to be okay with this.

[jstorrie]

Besides, how's your team supposed to guard and rescue you in combat while you're trying to throw and backstab shit if you never filled out the group for guard drills?

[Jingo]

It's easy to take part. Just insist that you'd rather do it your way.

[Lizzie]

I agree with the dissenters. It gets old, when you don't have a coded skill, to be forced into drills every RL day for 10 minutes of your play time knowing full well that you will not improve, because your character isn't codedly capable of improving. You picked your skillset because you wanted certain coded skills, and other coded skills were not a priority. Code DOES matter in Armageddon.

It's frustrating when the instructor uses the "teach" command, and you don't get anything out of it.

Yes, the RP leading up to it is (hopefully) fun. But it stops being fun when it becomes a routine thing. Especially when that drill instructor emphasizes certain skills that you just plain don't have on your list. Or skills that you have absolutely no practical use for. Like, an assassin being forced to drill with shields every RL day. Players only -get- a certain amount of time to play Arm. If a chunk of that time is spent doing things that doesn't make sense for the character, that the player gets no coded "oh neato" from, then the player will soon burn out on that character and eventually store or suicide the PC, or do something stupid that gets them kicked out of the clan.

And then, all that effort trying to teach that character skills they don't have codedly, are wasted, and the instructor PC think they wasted all that time, and the instructor's player thinks he wasted all his time.. even though the player of the assassin being forced to learn shieldwork, has known that it was a waste of time from the get-go and was just hoping the instructor would notice that after a week and mix things up a bit.

Everyone gets frustrated when being forced to RP out coded skill drills that someone doesn't codedly possess, is routine.

[Kalai]

Heh... the times I've had the teach command used on me ineffectively ... there are one or two. Mostly it's just amused me so far. Times I've burned out have had nothing to do with it...

If reverse-guild-sniffed well enough (especially if someone is actually entirely incapable of doing something, and ... demonstrates this) and I'm in a position to I do try to mix things up a bit training, so I guess that's something mildly on that side. It should really be done in a show-not-tell fashion the first time though. Ten minutes of a character's life showing you fail spectacularly at something is not too much to ask, is it? 

[Riev]

If reverse-guild-sniffed well enough (especially if someone is actually entirely incapable of doing something, and ... demonstrates this) and I'm in a position to I do try to mix things up a bit training, so I guess that's something mildly on that side. It should really be done in a show-not-tell fashion the first time though. Ten minutes of a character's life showing you fail spectacularly at something is not too much to ask, is it? 

In light of this, I have changed my opinion. If you are the leader of a military clan, and you're noticing more than a couple PCs don't have or suck spectacularly at certain drills, change the drills around, or find a way to make it interesting.

[Barzalene]

Riev:
Quote from: Kalai on Today at 08:14:48 AM

If reverse-guild-sniffed well enough (especially if someone is actually entirely incapable of doing something, and ... demonstrates this) and I'm in a position to I do try to mix things up a bit training, so I guess that's something mildly on that side. It should really be done in a show-not-tell fashion the first time though. Ten minutes of a character's life showing you fail spectacularly at something is not too much to ask, is it? 


In light of this, I have changed my opinion. If you are the leader of a military clan, and you're noticing more than a couple PCs don't have or suck spectacularly at certain drills, change the drills around, or find a way to make it interesting.

Both things can be true simultaneously.

[IAmJacksOpinion]

Or, if you have enough people on to make it feasible, throw out options.

Say: "Everyone who wants instruction with a blade, c'mon over here!"

Say: "Guard drills, north hall. Sparring, south hall. Slackers - LATRINE DUTY!"

I understand that it would be realistic to force everyone in your unit to practice a certain skill until they're passable at it, but for fun and playability you may have to settle on your leadership style being just a little less rigid.

think Well, at least Amos is doin' -something-.

[jstorrie]

Amos is still getting practice in his weapon skills and off/def during guard drills. I fail to see why it's such a big problem that he's not getting his rescue up.

[lordcooper]

Amos is still getting practice in his weapon skills and off/def during guard drills. I fail to see why it's such a big problem that he's not getting his rescue up.

And if he doesn't practice, he might get even worse!

[Barzalene]

Amos is still getting practice in his weapon skills and off/def during guard drills. I fail to see why it's such a big problem that he's not getting his rescue up.

And if he doesn't practice, he might get even worse!

It's one thing to expect Amos to be part of the group and to bond over the sort of training exercises combatants bond over. It's another to give him a hard time for not improving.

If I ran training for a military unit, and I the player suspected that Amos didn't have guard, and my pc suspected that Amos might have other talents I would try to arrange alternate training for Amos. When that was not possible I would expect Amos to suck it up and participate because I told him to and if Amos would rather whine than do what I tell him to, fuck Amos.

Once Amos has graduated to trooper, private, guard, rockstar I expect Amos to be trusted to be productive during these drills in some way. Either by taking the new recruits who would benefit from some other type of training and providing it, supervising behavior if needed, doing some sort of maintenance, or participating as best he can.

[jstorrie]

If he doesn't have guard/rescue he probably needs any taste of sparring he can get. Guard drills included.

What alternative is there really? Should the Arm start giving backstab lessons?

If you sign up for a job that you know your PC doesn't have the proper skillset for, you should either tough it out or solve the problem yourself. You can always ask your Sarge for archery training or mounted training or whatever. The guard/rescue skills are extremely valuable for a group to have and help keep everyone safe on outings. When I play leader PCs, I still mandate them, even if it's obvious that we've got a burglar or assassin in the mix. His buddy's practice will save HIS life at some point.

As for giving Amos a hard time... is that what we're really arguing about here? Yes, it would be lame to treat him like shit for OOC reasons. Asking him to participate in gith-guard-merchant once in a while is not the same as harassing him for not having guard or rescue. He has to clean the latrine, too-does he get skill points out of that?

[musashi]

I dunno guys ... if you join the Byn but don't want to play warrior something seems wrong.
Same if you want to join the Salarri hunters but don't want to hunt.
Or the AoD but don't want to patrol.

[jstorrie]

By all means, though, let your crews get shitty and lazy because one guy doesn't want to do a drill he can't efficiently twink with. All the more easy for my guys to come take your boots.