Tea Culture of the Known

[BadSkeelz]

I think the point RGS was trying to make, Laura, is that once you codify something in the docs you're implicitly saying that everyone who does it otherwise is (at best) an outlier or (at worse) just plain doing it wrong. If you happen to play characters that don't fit the suddenly codified dictate of Zalanthan behavior, you can easily become annoyed. Keeping with your example: if you're playing a bard who doesn't happen to like tea, and the docs are changed to say bards motherfuckin' love their tea, now you're playing a snowflake. If you want top-down implementation ("the Known is now like this"), I would argue that vaguer is better.

For a Cultural Document like this, the closest functional analogue  I can think of is fighting styles and their documentation. Those docs are awesome, I'm glad we have them, and they've been important resources for my roleplay. The docs don't say "Southerns always fight with two weapons" or "Northerners always use a shield," but they do say why such and such a style is more common in a given area. And I think all of us who have played a combatant have at some point had the discussion with another PC along the lines of "Why are you using X style? That's for Y-City chumps!" Those are fun conversations to have, especially when you wind up beating them with your Chump City style...

But I can only imagine what it was like when those docs were put in. Were they just codifying flavors of roleplay that had arisen organically across the Known? Or did some one sit down, think rationally (or not) about how certain people fight and why, and then lay it down as a guideline? My preference is for the former, as it'd be less painful to implement and just feel more "real." If it was the latter, I suspect there were players of shield-using southerns and dual-wielding northerns who thought "Great, now my PC is different from the vast majority, all because of an OOC document."

So, roleplay the shit out of tea culture. Get people involved in that aspect of the game. Make it so that it's something that becomes a self-sustaining beast. Then, may be, we can have documents for it. Even better would be for new characters to learn about it, in character, in game.

[Jherlen]

In my opinion, as long as more documentation doesn't start spawning accusations of people roleplaying poorly because their northern bard doesn't like tea, or something, it is almost always a good thing.

Also, in my opinion, not every document that we generate needs to be something that was started in game by a PC. Many things are totally infeasible for PCs to start in any case. Why would any one character, even a noble or templar, be able to start a tea culture in Allanak or Tuluk? I suppose Eunoli Winrothol could have spent a lot of time devising a tea ceremony in Tuluk and called a huge RPT where she conveyed it to the masses, but is that really a good use of anyone's in game time? I'd prefer to let the world building be done out of game, so that characters can live in the world and thrive in a richly detailed setting.

We have documentation on fashion, music, fighting styles, and seasonings. I'm going to bet none of these were started in game, by PCs... they were submitted by an enthusiastic staff member or player, refined, and incorporated into the general lore of our world. That's part of what makes Zalanthas such a cool place; it's part of what sets Armageddon as an RPI MUD apart -- we have players who care about little details like that.

What types of tea are more common in Allanak than Tuluk? How is it brewed? What's the tribal take on tea - silly waste of good water or cherished drink for special occasions? Are there old wives' tales or superstitions about different sorts of tea - mint tea wards off magicker curses, clove tea helps fertility, so on? I'd love a document that answers questions like that. The best part is, for most of that information, whether you use it in roleplay or not has almost no consequence, but it's there if you want it, or if you want to make a tea merchant someday or something.

TL;DR "Be the change you want to see" does not mean "all new documentation must originate from events inside the game".

[Suhuy]

TL;DR "Be the change you want to see" does not mean "all new documentation must originate from events inside the game".

While true in some cases, why would you specifically want to create a bunch of tea-drinking traditions overnight that never existed before when it's so much more fun to let it evolve naturally in game? I'm not saying shame on you or being sarcastic here, I am genuinely asking the question. There are many things which have evolved through player persistence to the point that it became an in-game norm. Jihaen and Lirathan Tuluki templars referring to each other as brother/sister would be one example - and this is something which, from what I can recall, the staff initially did not exactly support. But because the players pushed the idea, it practically became an IC standard. The -da and -di suffix for Kuracis was also promoted IC by the efforts of a player. Though I think the story behind it may now state "dates back to ancient times", when it began to appear in game it was done in a very natural manner, rather than slapping some document on the forum and saying "from now on you've gotta start calling them Mr. Kurac-da and Mrs. Kurac-di".

So, again, not to deliberately contradict you here or anything, Jherlen, but in the case of pursuing a tea culture, I'd definitely say "Be the change" is the more favorable approach. For me it's about roleplay vs. instant gratification. I'd rather see things roleplayed into existence.

[ShaLeah]

Three pages for tea. Some tree hugger make the docs and submit them for approval already. Sheesh!

[Suhuy]

Three pages for tea. Some tree hugger make the docs and submit them for approval already. Sheesh!

Three pages is nothing. If I make a post titled Tea Sex it's going to be at least 17 pages long and you know it!

[Jherlen]

TL;DR "Be the change you want to see" does not mean "all new documentation must originate from events inside the game".

While true in some cases, why would you specifically want to create a bunch of tea-drinking traditions overnight that never existed before when it's so much more fun to let it evolve naturally in game? I'm not saying shame on you or being sarcastic here, I am genuinely asking the question.

It's a fair question. I have a few reasons for supporting something like this:

• I think they're relatively harmless additions that add a richness of flavor and depth to the world of Zalanthas. Documentation on tea culture (or more broadly, food/drinks and associated customs) does not have to be taken as absolute, a la "Elves never ride kanks." It can be something a character subscribes to, or not, just as I'm sure some Chicagoans prefer New York style pizza, or indeed, some citizens of Tokyo probably don't care about tea ceremonies. But just having it there makes our world more interesting, and allows for two characters who have never met each other but both like tea to have a deeper conversation without both just trying to make everything up.
• I think trying to introduce all new documentation, traditions, and customs via in game events is impractical. This isn't to say we should never do it, just that it shouldn't be the only way. Some things, definitely, can and should be more PC driven... a great example of these are nicknames for clan ranks or family members, like what you described. Traditions inside a clan can usually start off with a small group of players; if Kuraci start introducing themselves as -da or -di because of a family custom no one had previously heard of, few PCs are in a position to argue anyway. But it's much harder to do that for PCs to accomplish that on a level where it's affecting the entire culture of a city state. Again, maybe a templar PC could spend a lot of time working on convincing others about cultural significance of tea, but the effort may not be worth the payoff.
• Taken together, the above two reasons mean plenty of interesting flavor and lore documentation would never make it in game if we wait for PCs to introduce it. Whether every player finds such documentation valuable is up for debate, but at least some do - and again, much of the documentation we have today came about because enthusiastic players and staff wanted to take the time to enrich the world. I'd love to see more and deeper documentation on food/drink, holidays, festivals, sayings, legends, and so on, but I don't necessarily want to devote the next few years of my in-game time just to bringing it all about. World building can be done outside the game too, much more easily and with the same end result.

To be clear, again, I'm not saying I want a bunch of traditions to just pop up overnight and expect all PCs to act as if they were sacred to their culture all along. If anything, I'd see a tea ceremony, if one was documented, regarded in the same sort of vein as we often treat a game like izdari. Plenty of PCs will mention playing izdari, or having been taught, but it isn't as if everyone even among the high classes plays virtually, and almost nobody ever actually roleplays out playing izdari in game, because it'd be fairly laborious and uninteresting. Still, though, the game is better off for having izdari in the documentation and having a defined set of rules. If we introduced a tea ceremony (or other sorts of ceremonies/rituals) I expect we could treat them in the same vein. They're there, they've always been around, and they just haven't been worth mentioning "on screen" until now.

So while I don't disagree that it can be more fun to start such things in game, I just wanted to make the point we shouldn't make that a rule. Even with the topic of IC rituals and such aside, I'd still love to see more documentation on some of the more objective questions about tea I asked in my last post, and that definitely I think does not need to be introduced in game. It was the "why does this matter?" and the "everything new should show up in game first" opinions that drove me to write my original post.

[IntuitiveApathy]

So while I don't disagree that it can be more fun to start such things in game, I just wanted to make the point we shouldn't make that a rule. Even with the topic of IC rituals and such aside, I'd still love to see more documentation on some of the more objective questions about tea I asked in my last post, and that definitely I think does not need to be introduced in game. It was the "why does this matter?" and the "everything new should show up in game first" opinions that drove me to write my original post.

I agree with Jherlen - I don't see why this has to be black or white, and why something like this can't organically evolve with a combination of some starting points with documentation and/or in-game play into something greater.

Why should we care?  Not everyone cares about everything in the game.  Some people care about tea enough to make something of it - I think that's great and to discourage that (or any other interest) discourages growth of the game overall.