Play in Tuluk

[Molten Heart]

Tuluk seems to have had an ongoing identity crisis ever since the Rebellion where no two people can agree on what exactly it is to be Tuluki long enough before one decides something needs fixed/changed. Tuluk tries to be diversified and do everything while desperately avoiding being anything Allanaki, Tuluk ends up being mediocre and complicated. Tuluk takes itself too seriously while Allanak could care less.

If people stopped trying to fix Tuluk, it might stop being broken.

[Reiloth]

I find Tuluk doesn't really try to be 'not Allanak'. It just isn't Allanak.

New York isn't Los Angeles. And everyone living in either city complains about the other place and why it sucks.

[Molten Heart]

Consider that ever since the Allanaki occupation of the Northlands that Tuluk has made an effort to distance and set itself apart from the "Southern brutality" of Allanak, making a continued effort to expound upon and accentuate their differences.  This is apparent from even before the Rebellion just by looking at the City-states imagery.  To me it would seem  to be designed this way. There is The Dragon vs. The Sun King. Allanak's colors green and black. Tuluk uses the opposite colors, red and white. Consider: his shadow/his light, the ivory city or pit/the black city or pit.) While they are both cities with many similarities, it's difficult for me not to see Tuluk and Allanak as diametrically opposed in many ways, not just with their IC images but also philosophies. For example magick.

[Reiloth]

I dunno. It seems organic to me.

Tuluk is conquered by opposing city state. It attempts to distance itself from its occupiers. It maintains a 'difference' in its culture from its occupiers, in an attempt to become its own entity.

Sounds like every conquered 'people' since the beginning of time. To varying success of course, but it makes sense Tuluk wouldn't want anything to (overtly) do with Magick, or anything Allanaki (besides its dumb currency).

[Harmless]

If people stopped trying to fix Tuluk, it might stop being broken.

Disagree. I have been playing tuluk on and off since 2008. I have always seen it called broken or too complex. I have played Tulukis when changes or "fixes" were ongoing. I was there ICly during the Hlum retcon event, played pre and post flood and many renovations. I have played bards and Akai. The constant change is good. Allanak is static and dependable while Tuluk has many changes but most aren't meant to last. The constant evolution is a good thing. I think even more evolution is what's needed. Maybe the war should start to end for a period of twisted cooperation. I dunno it doesn't matter as long as it continues to evolve. I think staff do a decent job of it, obviously, or else I wouldn't have played 10+ PCs there over the years.

[bcw81]

Not even stating the first cataclysm, where Tuluk was destroyed by magicks.

[X-D]

BTW, as to undertuluk, it did not exist so you could twink your criminal skills, Hell, that is easy enough to do anywhere.
It was not so you could have a safe place to wait off a crime flag, that  again is easy enough to do.
It was so the low, nasty, dirty types could have a place to belong, a refuge from the constant snootiness and worse of the higher castes.

And to me, and I think at least a few others, that is a major drawback to Tuluk today.

At least in nak, a rinthi can go home when he gets tired of being picked on, harassed  etc.

Also, though it does not happen a lot, people do move INTO the rinth, and people used to move into undertuluk.

UT should have been fleshed out not taken out. And consider...even if the UT playerbase was small, it, like the rinth still counted as a playerbase for that area. The players that really like that sort of thing were forced to move and they now  play the rinth or maybe even storm to play outcasts, misfits and the like.

[KankWhisperer]

My character fought in the rebellion.  If they would of had inks and accents it would of been a worse experience.  Fighting for an ideal was fun. Once they started arbitrarily adding "culture", I turned against it.

I did give it a try. I played a Tuluki who lived RL years but ended up living in Allanak.

I joined the Legions before and tuluki players made it clear there was no room for people without flawless beauty or people who were warrens rough.

I still am there regularly and all the recent changes seem superficial except those further limiting you sitting in the Sanctuary or renting an apartment.

[Kronibas]

X-D, you don't think the Warrens are in any way a good replacement for UT?  It seems like they were made in an attempt to at least try to be.

Last year was the first time I ever got the steal skill above starting levels, and I did it in Tuluk and not only in the Warrens but pretty much all over the city, and I was able to pretty much get away with lots of crimes codedly without ever even getting arrested and not getting fucked with by PC templars in the slightest, with that character doing absolutely all kinds of stuff to break the law.

The whole thing with night time allowing for greater flexibility is really what made that possible, more than anything.

[X-D]

No, I do not. The warrens is low caste commoners, and of course the crime level might be higher, but it is still Tuluk proper and where most the citizens live.  Does it not have a tattoo checkpoint or two?
It is not some stink hole that  the Templars and others of high caste try to forget exist or maybe even deny it exists. It has homes, and working class people, not small groups of homeless people living in sewers, or where this horrible mutant lives deep in the dark alone away from judging eyes. No, the warrens is not any kind of substitute for UT/rinth.

As to your second point, I did state that bringing up criminal skills is rather easy in the city proper and does not require a rinth/UT.

[Kronibas]

Yeah, I can definitely see the differences. I think it's probably worth looking at to reopen it, especially if they could tie it into the warrens and maybe even further reaching parts of the city.

I think it would be great if a cavern system existed that spanned the entirety of the known world.  The tunnels in the game currently are great, and I don't think it would be too large of a stretch to link them all together.

As a matter of fact, I remember the story of an old Borsail governor who found a tunnel in Gol Krathu to... Well, it's hilarious but also probably still IC, but it didn't work out for the Lord Governor or his entire entourage, which wasn't insignificant.

But taking those tunnels, Undertuluk, and connecting them with maybe even more tunnels is probably an ambitious project, but it seems like one that might even be pursued ICly.  I mean, crazier things have been accomplished ICly in the last few RL years, just from what I've seen personally in game with my characters' own eyes, which is a very narrow scope that undoubtedly misses troves of other accomplishments.

[HavokBlue]

I feel like a lot of the Tuluk detractors in this thread are applying their ideas of pre-revision Tuluk to the current iteration.

I think, as someone who despised playing in Tuluk prior to these changes, that the only real gripe I have left is the smaller number of PCs currently rolling about. There was a bit of time about two months ago, I think, where it felt like there were a bunch of active PCs with new ones coming in regularly, and it was wonderful.


side note: Someone on the last page mentioned that southern templars have an air of corruption and greed while northern templars come across as faithful and devoted subjects.

I think this is pretty true, on the surface. Look at the history of the Tuluki templarate. How many times have they reached the point of internal conflict that you could almost call it civil war? All those Faithful in silly headdresses are probably scheming and plotting and taking bribes, but they have to present the outward appearance of purity and devotion because unlike Allanak, Muk Utep is very much present. Muk Utep is watching. Muk Utep is listening. And Muk Utep makes a point of showing up and putting people in their place when they fuck up majorly.

[Kronibas]

It seems pretty clear that no one is in a hurry to built "outward" in Arm and expand the boundaries of the game, which is understandable because those sort of additions tend to be very permanent.

But with building "down" and expanding an already kinda big subterranean network seems like it might not be as risky of an undertaking or as hard of a sale as adding a new zone beyond the edges of the Known World.

I really like the recent love the rinth has received.  Instead of building "out," whoever tending that project built "up," which is genius, and I think with that kind of building philosophy, there is even more room for expansion for the rinth and areas like it.

Armageddon, for those who have played it for a long time, can seem really small, so I don't think the answer is closing down and sealing off even more areas. At the tempo that the game is going, which seems really good, opening old areas seems like a great thing to me. I guess the main problem from the staff's point of view would be in diluting the playerbase, so that's probably where any reluctance from reopening areas that act as "bases" will come from, since it seems player aggregation in primary areas is part of a "plan" to keep interaction/plots/conflict going, because ultimately I think that's what draws in new players and helps keep old ones.

[Reiloth]

Kronibas, are you sober, because you're making sense.

[Kronibas]

Not really... I woke up at like 8 pm, mildly hungover, and started drinking these 6.6% craft brews from Bonfire Brewery to chase down my wake up amphetamines, with copious amounts of cannabis and hash oil bowls since then... which hasn't been too long ago.

Which is probably why closing Tuluk and opening kryl for players seemed like a genuinely good idea.

But think about it, kryl pretty much would already have their own classes set up. You have to be stoned for things like that to seem like a good move, but I don't think that's a bad thing... Carl Sagan genuinely believed that cannabis use heightened his ability to appreciate art. He also said he smoked it almost every day. Now, if Armageddon is art, which I think it is, and this incredibly insightful cosmologist claimed that helped him appreciate art, then maybe it's not that big of a stretch to claim that marijuana use would facilitate and enhance playing Armageddon for some people.

[Reiloth]

Keep doing what you do, boyo.

[Reiloth]

OK no wait you are actually stoned.

[Nyr]

My main issue with 'subtlety' is that, as effected by the people there, what I see is more that people will end up talking about events and goings on even less than they otherwise would. Whenyou combine 'Tuluki value subtlety' and 'the templarate is wstching you be quiet,' what you end up is a large amount of interaction happening behind closed doors rather than in public areas, and 'outsiders' to the game's social climate being completely left in the dark of what is going on by sheer virtue of not knowing the ins and outs of city policy.

So the problems you have with subtlety are exactly the problems we sought to address and eradicate.  What you are describing isn't subtlety, it is elitist roleplay.

Here's the lengthy post.

OK, sure.  I went back through every instance of "subtle" mentioned on the IDB and came up with the original proposals for altering Tuluk, so here's some of that.

A long time ago in a game that was very different, there was Tuluk.  It was occupied by Allanak eventually, and occupied for years.  The resulting ouster of Allanak led to new documentation for Tuluk, reveling in subtlety and the like.

My issue was:  hey, here we are talking about subtlety and an Orwellian Tuluk and we don't have one.  We have people dancing around whatever the issue is and there is never any actual movement on anything.  I figured it would take some time to ease into the way Tuluk should be.  A (now?) obvious alternative is to simply start now.

These were the problems we saw with the subtlety stuff being overdone/interpreted to an extreme.  However, we still saw some value in people wishing to engage in that kind of behavior, provided it was more clear that this had a sinister edge.  Here's one particular discussion after the documentation was implemented--this maybe explains more of what we were seeing and what we wanted to enforce by changes:

If it's not declared, it's crap.  It is more templar and noble-only masturbation about how awesome something is behind the scenes, and more people declaring how things are really happening but not really in the way anyone can notice it unless they are "in the know".  Tuluki subtlety has been overplayed far too much.  That's not to say I am not okay with playing it out in ways where it is appropriate, but it has too long been in the realm of "subtle nudge here" and "subtle nudge there" rather than coming up with legitimately horrible things that have a shiny facade.  If everything is subtle or hard to read, then it makes everything that much less significant.  Right now, the pendulum has swung to as far as it will swing (two noble houses just flat out murdered another house).

Our thoughts on implementation were that it is better to clarify existing documentation and make it have this grey area where people could be more blunt with their subtlety, or just not use that cultural device at all, and leave it up to the player to determine what their PC did with that culture.  In this case we made the decision to change docs while showing what those docs changes meant.  We could have probably done it differently.  The reason for doing it that way was because it seemed like the best idea at the time--change things with IC changes that reinforce the documentation, and players will play their PCs as folks dealing with such a change.

Our biggest problems were with the really lame subtle stuff.  The hoity-toity, not really anything important subtle stuff--two people having a conversation about nothing, and the nothing wasn't even important.  We wanted to show what it could really do, and explain better what was meant by subtlety.  So to underline how "this version" of subtlety was different (and how it tied into an Orwellian / tribal influence), we began throwing more examples out there of how to do it.

In reality, it was more difficult to implement than all that.  My best guess?  It's hard to change from what you're used to, even if you don't like it.

TL;DR, we liked it, but not all of it, so we changed it and went with it

edit:  forgot to finish a sentence in here

[Nyr]

Tulukis are dull. Tuluk is dull. Bards do everything but be entertaining.

Bards are indeed an important part of Tuluk.  They're the grease for a lot of activities there.  It is often a thankless sort of role, almost akin to a sponsored role, because really...you are more than entertainment.  You're a tool for someone, whether you want to be or not.  You are almost expected at RPTs.

However, as you've pointed out (and I'll put it more delicately) -- if bard roles exist, and are active, but at least feel like/seem like they are not as involved as they could be or should be, it has a negative impact.

[Nyr]

Again, the changes to Tuluk are
awesome and were much needed, but why is staff "pushing" players into Tuluk?

Mentioned slightly in the request, but if players want a war and larger conflicts, players need to play on more than just one side.

[Harmless]

As I have posted above, maybe the players are done with the war. it has been a few IC years already and it was always more of a cold war. If Tulukis weren't so forced to stay there I bet you'd see a lot more tulukis playing again, particularly merchants to take advantage of certain trade routes. Of course the peace should be iffy but maybe it's time for IC events to change course. It could be started IC by about a dozen different routes. But if "no, cold war is going to be a railroaded concept" then I don't think this war is as interesting to players who will feel like they can't affect it one way or the other.

[Lizzie]

I've seen some things pick up with regards to the war over the past couple of months. I also don't care whether or not there's a deux ex machina involved or not, or whether I'm part of a staff-plot or not. I just want to be able to RP in something interesting. If the staff can make it interesting, then I'm right on board with it. If someone else can make it interesting, I'm on board with that too. I can try to make things interesting for others, but my "plot-driving skills" for the "big things" aren't nearly as good as some other players. So when it comes to situations like war, I'm one of the people who have to rely on someone else to come up with the major plan - and I'll happily follow along and participate no matter who that someone is.

I'm hearing a lot of changes have been made to Tuluk, and I'm hearing a lot of people expecting the new changes to be used with the old politics. I'm not seeing a lot of people saying "hey - new changes - new politics, maybe we can turn Tuluk into something..NEW." It sounds like that's what the staff is trying to do. I hope it'll garner the attention that it "sounds" like it deserves. I'm definitely tempted to take a shot at a Tuluk-based character again, and I've made a concerted effort to avoid it for a couple of years now.

[KankWhisperer]

For example:
Mid level GMH non-citizen employee: Amos
Unaffiliated citizen grebber: Malik

Malik did something to Amos and he wants to hire Shadow Artist to get Malik. Oops Malik is a citizen, you have to get a citizen sponsor to even talk to the Templar about taking out Malik? This is what I mean about over complicating things. So now I need to get citizen to go along with it, completely ruining it if I had wanted to keep things quiet. In the reverse situation in Allanak if Amos was northern he might have to pay more but it wouldn't be an issue in my opinion and definitely not more complicated.

I don't know for sure this is how it works but this is how IC events have made it seem in my personal experience. The system seems to excludes non-citizen GMH from participating, so why should they choose to hang out in Tuluk over elsewhere when its such a hassle to even participate in Tuluk's system. Everything in Tuluk seems to be to focused on Tuluki only, pretty much making visitors unable to participate.

[Nyr]

Uneasy armistice/truce, war, cold war, whatever you want to call it or whatever it actually is, we've had varying states of both in the past.  Regardless of whatever declared state of whatever, there has always been conflict between both city states.  Nobles planting spies, merchants passing on information, occasional skirmishes, occasional deniable actions, etc.  We want to promote conflict and interaction, and (based at least on what players have said in the past), war is a desire that many players have had.  We want to facilitate that.  We've said a few times though that it is unsustainable for both players and staff to have constant over-the-top conflict.  (At best, one can expect or desire or aim for smaller actions, player-generated, that occasionally will lead to larger ones.)

As for the poll, it does provide three metrics:  People that want to play there and would, as-is, then people that would only play there if conditions were met, and then people that just don't want to play there at all.  We can discount the last group entirely.

The conditions offered are as follows: 

Add something that was removed years ago (because the staffer that was going to modify it ultimately didn't do it, so we removed it).  We don't have a project to re-add UT.  Rathustra has mentioned here that there are other ideas in mind for modifying Tuluk to have something closer to this.  This takes time and effort, but we do want to do this.

Tone down the automated defenses in Tuluk. When these things were added we mentioned that it would be tweaked over time, especially as we add better code to it and make it smarter.  It has only been active for a few months.  We do have some metrics from it and (again) improving it is intended.  This also takes time and effort, but we do want to do this.

Change other stuff about Tuluk and I'll play there.  This is the most disparate category because it may be different things, but there may be areas here where staff and players can discuss, guide, correct, etc.

[Nyr]

For example:
Mid level GMH non-citizen employee: Amos
Unaffiliated citizen grebber: Malik

Malik did something to Amos and he wants to hire Shadow Artist to get Malik. Oops Malik is a citizen, you have to get a citizen sponsor to even talk to the Templar about taking out Malik? This is what I mean about over complicating things. So now I need to get citizen to go along with it, completely ruining it if I had wanted to keep things quiet. In the reverse situation in Allanak if Amos was northern he might have to pay more but it wouldn't be an issue in my opinion and definitely not more complicated.

I don't know for sure this is how it works but this is how IC events have made it seem in my personal experience. The system seems to excludes non-citizen GMH from participating, so why should they choose to hang out in Tuluk over elsewhere when its such a hassle to even participate in Tuluk's system. Everything in Tuluk seems to be to focused on Tuluki only, pretty much making visitors unable to participate.

You're right, but I think you are the one over-complicating things here.

Amos (this GMH guy) wants to kill Malik?  Talk to a templar and pay a contract out, some shadow artist will handle it.  Done.