Time commitment

[TerraStorm]

Hey everyone,
I've just started playing. It looks like a very interesting MUD, and very realistic too. I have a few questions.

1. Due to time/job/gf restrictions, I can only play one day of the week. It's usually Saturday. I understand this would conflict with the schedules of many clans, so I won't be able to join them. What clans would be ok to join? I've been told IG that the tribal levies and/or houses might be ok. Are there any others? BTW my character started out in (redacted).
2. If I should get this information IG, well how do I role play the concept of "I can only login Saturdays"?
3. If someone connects to you via the way, and psi's you, how do you psi them back? The one time it happened, I guessed it was the person across from me on the table, so I contact'ed them back and psi'd, but without that context I have no idea how I'd have been able to reply back. Is there a psireply command?
4. My character is a (redacted). How would that affect my joining a clan advertising for a specific job?
5. How do you roleplay the fact that you're a new player? A lot of those job apps read like "needs 2+ years experience hunting" or such... I mention I'm new to town, but... How do you roleplay that, for example you have the hunting experience in your background, but not really in terms of your coded skills since you just started playing. "Yes sirrah, I've been helping me family hunt and make a living in the forests all me life, but for some reason still need a lot of practice with the bow..."

[Patuk]

1. The tribal levies is a good idea, as they tend not to demand that high a level of commitment. I wouldn't join a clan if I could play that little, but Tuluki nobles are able to take pekple on as their partisans. Try going for that.

2. Don't make a fuss out of it. "I tend to be busy looking after my uncle Malik most of the time, the old bastard can hardly see straight anymore." There's no real need to overthink it all.

3. 'Help psi' explains this lengthier than I will, so suffice it to say that you'll want to contact them first. It may take a few tries to catch.

4. You picked your guild/subguild combination very well, but again, partisanship may be better.

5. Heh. Again, don't sweat it. For people to be not very good at what they do is common. A long time disease, laziness, other commitments, injury.. Don't sweat it. Any reasonably plausible excuse will do.

[BadSkeelz]

1) You'd want to join a clan that is large enough where your absence wouldn't really affect the clan's ability to perform. The Tribal Levies or the Byn (which are less of an option up north) are good because they have large numbers of people that are essentially cannon-fodder. If you show up, great, there'll probably be something for you to do. There's also a leadership in place that is looking to give all of you things to do who are probably scheduling things on the weekend for convenience anyway.

Now, when you say "Houses" you can mean two types of very different clans: Merchant Houses (Kadius, Salarr, Kurac) or Noble Houses. A Noble House is probably a bad choice, because those clans typically do not have very many people in them; a lord or lady rarely has more than a single servant. This leads to your character having more responsibility and importance by default.

A Merchant House can be a good or poor choice depending on the role you want to play. Being an actual Merchant (someone who sells to other PCs, takes their orders, etc) would be difficult if you do not have high playtimes for your clients to find you (though conversely, if you have a consistent play time, this could work in your favor). Joining as a hunter or (perhaps less so) a crafter would be a better fit because the role is similar to the levies: low individual importance, low responsibility, high turnover and ease of pick-up. You show up and do your thing, and leadership is happy to see you, and everyone hopefully has fun. If you don't, you're a minor cog in the machine anyway, so no biggie.

2) A lot of clans often have an "excuse" duty that their members use to explain away their absences. Someone in the Byn could say they've been assigned to another Unit or were spending time guarding the gate to the compound. Whatever it is, your character is off doing "something else" virtually. The times you actually play are just the times where your character's life is intersecting that of others'.

This usually isn't made a big deal of. Most clans have subforms for OOC coordination of activities and playtimes and folks just roll with it.

3) When you get a message over the Way, you'll see that person's short description ('the tall, muscular mans sends you a message'). You can use that information to contact them back with the command "contact tall.muscular.man" where every word after "contact" is one of that character's keywords. You have to use at least one keyword, but other than that you can use as many or as few as you like. More is generally more precise. You could also contact someone using their name ("contact TerraStorm) but if there are two characters (PC and NPC) in the game with that name, you might not get the one you're looking for.

The command to send a message to someone over the Way is "psi" which works just like say ("psi Hello, this is TerraStorm" sends someone a psionic message that "Hello, this is TerraStorm". This will send the message to whoever you have contacted. If you haven't contacted anyone, it  will not work.

When you are done talking to someone, you use the "Cease" command to sever your connection to them.

The following help files have more detailed information:

http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/contact
http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/psi
http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/cease

4) It should be fine. A warrior won't have as many tricks and skills for surviving in the wilderness as a full ranger, but you'll be (marginally) better at combat "out of the box," and get better over time. So you might do better beating animals to death, but you may have more trouble skinning them for their hides.

By and large the guilds and subguilds are Out-of-Character concepts for obtaining skills, and shouldn't preclude you from playing the role you want to play. A warrior/thug could become a fashionable aide to a Noble House, if that character's player really wants them to be.

Important Note: It is against the rules to reveal the name, location, and guilds of your character on the forums. Even on the private clan forums, you should only be using your name, not revealing your guild or subguild. But this being your first character, I doubt any trouble will come of it

5) My advice for your first character is to play them as kind of an idiot, or at least naive. My first character, for example, had a backstory where he never went outside the walls of his citystate until he joined his clan (which routinely did). This gave him an excuse to ask questions. If your character survives, they can become less of an idiot, because they (and you) now know more about Zalanthas!

How do you roleplay that you have the hunting experience in your background, but not really in terms of your coded skills since you just started playing. "Yes siirah, I've been helping me family hunt and make a living in the forests all me life, but for some reason still need a lot of practice with the bow..."

This is a common problem for all new characters, and everyone has their own way of dealing with it. You could have been a hunter in your background, but just not a great one. Now though you're trying really hard at being a good hunter, which will explain your increasing skill. Really though, for a new character starting at the bottom rung of their clan, it's not going to be a big deal.

[Harmless]

First of all, welcome to the game, even if you can only play one day a week. You already have some good ideas for what to do in that situation; really, all of the options you suggested are fine. I'll answer your questions in turn though, and redact info that I think you should probably edit out of your post so that people don't single you out if they know which PC you're playing. but, from where I am playing lately, I can safely tell you I have no idea which character you're playing as, so I'll offer my help.


1. Due to time restrictions, I can only play one day of the week. I understand this would conflict with the schedules of many clans, so I won't be able to join them. What clans would be ok to join?

   Common problem. You can definitely still join clans with that kind of schedule, and even more easily if that "one day of the week" can change. if it's ALWAYS the same day of the week, you may miss out on "Recommended Playing Time" or RPT events, where for example in a guild that hunts, you may miss out on organized hunting. However, your playtimes in itself will not stop you from joining that (or any) clan.

STEPS: 1.) Pick any of the guilds you suggested or hear about in game, and contact the recruiting person for it. Join it.
          2.) Submit a "Join a clan forum request" on the Armageddon website after logging in with your account name.
          3.) When you join the clan forum, post your playtimes on a thread in that board titled "Roll call" for the month usually.


2. If I should get this information IG, well how do I role play the concept of "I can only login Saturdays"?

       There are many ways you can RP this concept. Most people just say that their character does the same things in their logged-off time as they do when they're logged in. Some people like the excuse of "clan duties" and there are any number of these you can select for your PC. Others will create the concept of a virtual NPC family for their character that they visit when the player isn't logged in. But because everybody understands that people have limited playtimes, in truth most people don't focus on roleplaying this that much, they prefer to roleplay the active plots their clans or characters are involved in.


3. If someone connects to you via the way, and psi's you, how do you psi them back? The one time it happened, I guessed it was the person across from me on the table, so I contact'ed them back and psi'd, but without that context I have no idea how I'd have been able to reply back. Is there a psireply command?

      The syntax for contact is to type contact [keyword] [keyword+] ... , where you seperately list every keyword the person you're trying to contact out, or you just use one, or their name.  (see HELP CONTACT)

Someone contacts you over the way.

The tall, muscular man sends you a telepathic message:
    "Hey, it's Amos. You ready to do the job?"

  You can type "contact amos", or "contact tall muscular man" to contact him back, in this case.


4. My character is (redacted). Will a clan prefer this, or that guild and subguild?

Whether or not you get recruited is not solely dependent on your class choices. I will tell you that yes, you could definitely be recruited based on that alone, but that being recruited is about a lot more than just that. But yeah, that's fine.


5. How do you roleplay the fact that you're a new player?

Again, people do this a lot of different ways. One possible approach is to just say your character is really out of practice after some long hiatus. Another is that you've been wounded recently and are recovering. Another is that you have amnesia maybe due to a head injury. Maybe you have a drug or alcohol addiction. Maybe you just got lazy. Maybe you were a hunter or a merchant or a crafter in name, but you actually never paid any attention to work or lived by other means. Maybe your subguild is something you did, and your guild is something you aspire to be. Etc.