Mages Vs Mundanes.

[Synthesis]

Get rid of Whirans and 99% of the "goddamn mages" complaints will...disappear.

[MeTekillot]

cast 'mon un whira get rekt' synthesis

[Gaare]

I whine a lot about magickers. Not because they are powerful or something like that. To me Templars are real OP in cities, DE OP in Tablelands and that's great.  Also I don't know the current ratio or general atmosphere of things, so please take what I say as some words from distant past. In Zalanthas, as I understand (from documents and cultural atmosphere) at most %0.01 of people are real magick users (you know people who can really control and cast spells). When there are like (of course exaggerating) %40 of PCs you met turn out to be supernatural, it kinda sucks. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not saying people should not play magickers, or people who runs supernatural PC are not good enough players,etc. You guys are usually awesome and you know it. Also who am I to jugde anyways. What I say is; it becomes really hard to rp realisticly. You know probably your ordinary Zalanthian is freaked out from magick itself, but if you know a lot of magickers then you have hard time to rp great suprise or fear out of it. It's same for magickers. You are really a cool rper, and playing a magicker fit in setting.. S/he is pretty strong as it should be, put people around you behave to you like you are just another guy. I think that must be frasturating.

I think there is one other perspective of the matter. A group of warriors can get meks for dinner. Hell, they can call a mek for a dinner. A group of good trained mundanes can do many things, but a group of magickers... that's something else. I did not play a decent magicker, probably had one or two magickers in maybe 24 hours so game play. I just saw what a group of them can do. Not that I don't trust you, my fellow ARM friends, but I fear that type of groups inevitably stop or prevent many plots. If nothing else, they would kill many plot leading or leader PCs in a blink of eye, not because they are bad rps who PK for fun, just because that's realistic thing to do in harsh world of Zalanthas. As a magicker group, You and your crew are very tough fellas after all why would you have to turn a blind eye to DE tribe treating you, or to a templar killed a member of your magicker group, or to a merchant house who refuse to pay your magicker band 10000 coins worth of equipment to stop you from attacking their wagon. Now, that type of power is something that can be considered OP. Not really gamebreaking in a hack&slash way, but game-breaking in RPI way.

[Qzzrbl]

I whine a lot about magickers. Not because they are powerful or something like that. To me Templars are real OP in cities, DE OP in Tablelands and that's great.  Also I don't know the current ratio or general atmosphere of things, so please take what I say as some words from distant past. In Zalanthas, as I understand (from documents and cultural atmosphere) at most %0.01 of people are real magick users (you know people who can really control and cast spells). When there are like (of course exaggerating) %40 of PCs you met turn out to be supernatural, it kinda sucks. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not saying people should not play magickers, or people who runs supernatural PC are not good enough players,etc. You guys are usually awesome and you know it. Also who am I to jugde anyways. What I say is; it becomes really hard to rp realisticly. You know probably your ordinary Zalanthian is freaked out from magick itself, but if you know a lot of magickers then you have hard time to rp great suprise or fear out of it. It's same for magickers. You are really a cool rper, and playing a magicker fit in setting.. S/he is pretty strong as it should be, put people around you behave to you like you are just another guy. I think that must be frasturating.

I think there is one other perspective of the matter. A group of warriors can get meks for dinner. Hell, they can call a mek for a dinner. A group of good trained mundanes can do many things, but a group of magickers... that's something else. I did not play a decent magicker, probably had one or two magickers in maybe 24 hours so game play. I just saw what a group of them can do. Not that I don't trust you, my fellow ARM friends, but I fear that type of groups inevitably stop or prevent many plots. If nothing else, they would kill many plot leading or leader PCs in a blink of eye, not because they are bad rps who PK for fun, just because that's realistic thing to do in harsh world of Zalanthas. As a magicker group, You and your crew are very tough fellas after all why would you have to turn a blind eye to DE tribe treating you, or to a templar killed a member of your magicker group, or to a merchant house who refuse to pay your magicker band 10000 coins worth of equipment to stop you from attacking their wagon. Now, that type of power is something that can be considered OP. Not really gamebreaking in a hack&slash way, but game-breaking in RPI way.

Basically this.

It's really hard to get any sense of "magick is rare and scary" when you have to force yourself on an OOC level to treat magick as rare and scary . Mostly because magickers are people, and they can be amiable and hard to hate, which sucks when there are often so many of them running around. Like when those riots were going on in Allanak a while back, we'd get neat echoes and NPCs openly being angry about those darn 'gickers in the streets-- I don't know about you, but I just wasn't feeling it when it came to actually dealing with other PCs, mundane or otherwise.

Maybe I need to bring my trash to Tuluk to help dirty it up next time I play, but man.... That's a big jump from the love affair I've had with 'Rinth and 'Nak.

[Lizzie]

It's really hard to get any sense of "magick is rare and scary" when you have to force yourself on an OOC level to treat magick as rare and scary . Mostly because magickers are people, and they can be amiable and hard to hate, which sucks when there are often so many of them running around. Like when those riots were going on in Allanak a while back, we'd get neat echoes and NPCs openly being angry about those darn 'gickers in the streets-- I don't know about you, but I just wasn't feeling it when it came to actually dealing with other PCs, mundane or otherwise.

Maybe I need to bring my trash to Tuluk to help dirty it up next time I play, but man.... That's a big jump from the love affair I've had with 'Rinth and 'Nak.

I don't think that it's "mostly because magickers are people," in the case of yourself, and pretty much anyone whose played for a couple of years. I think it's more a matter of "we've been playing long enough to have been exposed to magicks and what they can do, and maybe even played one or two ourselves at one point, and it is no longer an OOC mystery."

Once you know what it's about on an OOC level, you DO have to force yourself to make your character treat it as a mystery on an IC level. For some people, this is fun. For others, it isn't. It's the same with solving ANY puzzle or mystery in a game. Once you, the player, know the solution, you can't un-know it. Like knowing the best route from Allanak to Tuluk. Or the safest resting spot in the tablelands. Or the hidden cave in the mountains, or that Lady FrouFrou is a secret mindbender. Or that Amos the Wise is actually an NPC that gets animated once a year for HRPTs and your chances of finding his mind to discuss a trade for silks are slim to none on any random Tuesday.

[Fujikoma]

Much more concerning to me than a mages coded powers is the ability of mundanes to join clan X and get a massive status boost right out of the box, and the potential for abuse that can bring. Yeah yeah, we get it, you're special because you're part of this group over here, but in the end you're just another dirty commoner, so stop waddling around in your silks and demanding the rest of us kiss your ass. I'd much rather see a mage zap some uppity commoner in the streets than the other way around.

[Is Friday]

Much more concerning to me than a mages coded powers is the ability of mundanes to join clan X and get a massive status boost right out of the box, and the potential for abuse that can bring. Yeah yeah, we get it, you're special because you're part of this group over here, but in the end you're just another dirty commoner, so stop waddling around in your silks and demanding the rest of us kiss your ass. I'd much rather see a mage zap some uppity commoner in the streets than the other way around.

If Allanaki commoners are wearing silk that's usually interpreted as illegal by Templars and nobility.

Also, if you want PCs to stop acting as though they're above you, stop playing unaffiliated commoners.

[Desertman]

Didn't read the thread. Replying to the title. /disclaimer

Mages are supposed to be extremely dangerous and extremely hated because they are extremely dangerous, among other things.

If they weren't extremely OP'ly-dangerous, it just wouldn't be the same.

I've always wanted to see them a bit more dangerous and a bit less commonly accepted in Allanak actually. (I don't mean insta-gank from across the world with zero percent chance of failure and an immediate unavoidable mantis head...just...more dangerous in a face to face sort of way.)

They have gotten to the point they are so commonly accepted in Allanak by so many people and so heavily backed and supported by the templarate and House Oash that offending them in a lot of cases means most likely offending Allanak and House Oash.

If you give them too much crap for being a horrible nightmare creature....which is how they should be treated/avoided/shunned/ran from screaming....you basically are insulting the templarate and House Oash and you can expect a visit from them.

This results in most people being too afraid of House Oash and the templarate to treat them like the monsters they are and they end up getting treated like normal people, more or less, by a lot of people.

Sure, I would say I see some people who treat them "correctly", but for every one of those I see 10 people who "Aint got nothing against gemmers." or "They never hurt me any." or "I'm actually very curious about you.".

I don't blame them. When the system is setup so that you offending a gemmer is basically you offending a noble House or a Templar, you just learn to play the game because nobody wants to die.

*shrug*

My thoughts on it.

Make magickers more dangerous, less accepted, and more in line with the documentation as I perceive it (which may not be accurate, but, it is how I perceive it).

[Miko]

All the talk of how common magickers are is making me wonder if I am playing the same game as you guys! i don't think there are any problems at all with magickers. Not in their power or in how common they are. Last time I saw a group of magickers it was either an RPT or it was one time many months ago. Feels like people are complaining a lot about something that actually is as rare as it should be.

[Miko]

As to the constant struggle between accepting magickers and hating them. Playing it out IC is best. Magicker PCs work hard to get a little clout. Desertman I think is really exagerrating the support they have. Oash will not do shit for any non Oashi mage. Most Templars also simply do not give a shit. So I have to disagree.

[Fujikoma]

As to the constant struggle between accepting magickers and hating them. Playing it out IC is best. Magicker PCs work hard to get a little clout. Desertman I think is really exagerrating the support they have. Oash will not do shit for any non Oashi mage. Most Templars also simply do not give a shit. So I have to disagree.

Having had the wrath come down on me before for something that shall remain unmentioned, I might have to disagree.

[Desertman]

As to the constant struggle between accepting magickers and hating them. Playing it out IC is best. Magicker PCs work hard to get a little clout. Desertman I think is really exagerrating the support they have. Oash will not do shit for any non Oashi mage. Most Templars also simply do not give a shit. So I have to disagree.

I will agree to disagree with you based on my own experiences, which is really all we have.

I've also experienced the wrath more than once. More than a handful of times actually. I've also seen other PC's go the way of the Dodo due to this. *shrug*

[Quell]

Most Templars also simply do not give a shit. So I have to disagree.

It doesn't really take more than one Templar to care about you before you become pretty dangerous.

Same for a noble.

[CodeMaster]

Posted this in another thread, but it seems relevant here now too...

...so you just chased off that city elf, and then a mage sits down at the bar with you.  Your bad day just got a lot worse.  A realistic reaction [to this hated and feared individual] would probably be to stand up from the bar and give him/her some space, possibly leave the room, and maybe complain to Vennant later about who he lets sit at the bar.  I.e., completely shut down player interaction.  The problem is, players don't want to do this to each other!

I can't honestly comment on what's going on right now, so I hope nobody takes this as a personal affront (it's not!):

But I think it should be the mages' responsibility to make themselves scarce (i.e., "very rare"), by not casting in the middle of populated areas (or near gates), and by not sitting front-and-center in the main tavern.

[Marauder Moe]

Yeah.  Dwarves too.  They should only play iso roles because the dwarf population is about on par with the mage population, realistically.

And half-elves.

[Delirium]

I tried to suggest that mages shouldn't sit at the bar and should either keep out of taverns or sit at the tables instead and nearly got my face kicked in by the GDB. The war between realism and interaction is real, due to the way the documentation is set up, but personally, I had a shit ton of fun with my very long-lived gemmed and I rarely ever set foot in a tavern. It's all about whether you're lucky enough to have a decent population in the gemmed quarter (or militia or oash) to interact with. I also think people have trouble finding those fine lines between interacting, and interacting positively/negatively, and not interacting at all. You can interact with someone in that semi-hostile grey area without insulting their mother and calling them an abomination of creation. It's not an either/or binary situation.

</atworkstreamofthought>

[CodeMaster]

Yeah.  Dwarves too.  They should only play iso roles because the dwarf population is about on par with the mage population, realistically.

And half-elves.

This comes off as a bit sarcastic, but here are some key differences.  Dwarves (and half-elves) are not universally hated and feared.  They aren't straining the virtual world by chumming it up with the other mundanes.  Moreover, these are not considered challenging, karma-required roles.

[wizturbo]

As to the constant struggle between accepting magickers and hating them. Playing it out IC is best. Magicker PCs work hard to get a little clout. Desertman I think is really exagerrating the support they have. Oash will not do shit for any non Oashi mage. Most Templars also simply do not give a shit. So I have to disagree.

I will agree to disagree with you based on my own experiences, which is really all we have.

I've also experienced the wrath more than once. More than a handful of times actually. I've also seen other PC's go the way of the Dodo due to this. *shrug*

Two points to make on this:

1)  Much of what we see as players is incomplete information.  I've played a fair amount of gemmed mages in my years, and I can say with absolute certainty of experience that it is difficult to make friends amongst the commoners.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is either mistaken, or perhaps had experiences from a different time.  Sure...the occasional person out there doesn't mind magick as part of their chosen personality (be that a good roleplayer or not is a separate debate) but they are by far the minority.  

With that said, making friends with common people is not impossible, and some of those friendships you might see from the outside looking in might contradict what I just said at first glance...  But you often times don't know the whole story.  Many of the ungemmed friends my PCs have made over the course of their lives were forged over IC years of time.  Sometimes they involved my magicker literally saving this person from certain death.  Sometimes they involved them saving entire groups of people's lives from certain death, at great personal risk.  It doesn't matter what kind of monster society paints magick as...if that monster saves your life, it's not bad roleplay for some to treat them as friends afterwards.

2)  It's no secret that gemmed mages are weapons of Allanak.  Templars might not care about them as individual people, but if you go break a Templar's favorite catapult they aren't going to be very pleased with you if you're just some worthless commoner.  So while this might mean gemmed are loosely "protected" by the Templarate, it by no means makes them loved right out of the gates.  Also worth noting, many gemmed work for the Templarate.  While they may seem unaffiliated to you looking in from the outside, they might've served Templar Muckedymuck for 10 IC years.  Don't be surprised if this Templar protects his servants.

[Marauder Moe]

Yeah.  Dwarves too.  They should only play iso roles because the dwarf population is about on par with the mage population, realistically.

And half-elves.

This comes off as a bit sarcastic, but here are some key differences.  Dwarves (and half-elves) are not universally hated and feared.  They aren't straining the virtual world by chumming it up with the other mundanes.  Moreover, these are not considered challenging, karma-required roles.

It was meant to be incredibly sarcastic.  It seems ludicrous, to me, that players should be responsible for enforcing their own characters' rarity or other characters/players' perception of their rarity.  Same for hatred/fear.

[CodeMaster]

Yeah.  Dwarves too.  They should only play iso roles because the dwarf population is about on par with the mage population, realistically.

And half-elves.

This comes off as a bit sarcastic, but here are some key differences.  Dwarves (and half-elves) are not universally hated and feared.  They aren't straining the virtual world by chumming it up with the other mundanes.  Moreover, these are not considered challenging, karma-required roles.

It was meant to be incredibly sarcastic.  It seems ludicrous, to me, that players should be responsible for enforcing their own characters' rarity or other characters/players' perception of their rarity.  Same for hatred/fear.

All players are required to put some effort into making the PC-world reflect the documented world.  If this weren't the case, Armageddon's rich set of documentation would mean nothing.  The elf that rides should be incredibly rare.  The dwarf with an undefined focus should be incredibly rare.  The capable half-giant liar should be rare.

If you were running a tavern and someone who was universally feared and hated (and wore the mark of it) came and sat down at the bar, would you just continue to serve drinks with a smile on your face?

But which of these do you have a problem with again?

not casting in the middle of populated areas (or near gates), and by not sitting front-and-center in the main tavern.

[Marauder Moe]

This part:

But I think it should be the mages' responsibility to make themselves scarce (i.e., "very rare")

[CodeMaster]

This part:

But I think it should be the mages' responsibility to make themselves scarce (i.e., "very rare")

Okay, I can see your point of view.

But I'm sure you can agree with my sentiment that we, as players, need to take into account how the NPC/VNPC world would really react to our characters, and play carefully around that.  Even if it means isolating ourselves just a little bit?

[wizturbo]

So much of this thread is predicated on the "help magick" saying magick is very rare.  I think we should put "very rare" in perspective in this context...

There is an entire quarter dedicated to housing the gemmed of Allanak. I'm interpreting that help doc to say that magick is "very rare" in the context that you aren't likely to see a guy flying around on a magic carpet, or see an enchanted sword in the bazaar.  I would not take it to mean that the population of those capable of wielding magick in some small way is extremely tiny.

Sure, you might see a gemmed sitting at a tavern.  That doesn't mean that gemmed is using magick in that tavern.  Or doing anything even remotely magick-like...

[CodeMaster]

So much of this thread is predicated on the "help magick" saying magick is very rare.  I think we should put "very rare" in perspective in this context...

There is an entire quarter dedicated to housing the gemmed of Allanak. I'm interpreting that help doc to say that magick is "very rare" in the context that you aren't likely to see a guy flying around on a magic carpet, or see an enchanted sword in the bazaar.  I would not take it to mean that the population of those capable of wielding magick in some small way is extremely tiny.

Sure, you might see a gemmed sitting at a tavern.  That doesn't mean that gemmed is using magick in that tavern.  Or doing anything even remotely magick-like...

You know, I was so focused on the first sentence of the help file I didn't stop to think about Allanak's reality.  You're right, there is an entire quarter devoted to the arcane.  And the "peacekeepers" are known to use magick as well (it's even there in the help file).

The second sentence of 'help magick' also says, "magickers are tolerated in some places", so maybe I've been doing it all wrong and should be tolerant of magick?

Obviously I need help.  Is there a modern equivalent to this document?
http://old.armageddon.org/rp/magick/magickfaq.html

[Desertman]

I agree with MM that it shouldn't be the mage's responsibility to make themselves hated or rare.

There should be direct constructs, both coded and social (documentation) that make mages more hated and rare.

There should be less constructs, both coded and social that allow them to be less hated and less rare.

I don't want it to be the mage's responsibility to make themselves less hated and less rare. I want it to not even be an option for them unless it is in extreme cases of exception-to-the-rule due to IC reasons pertaining to that specific PC.