Gith - The Enemy Returns (to open or no?)

[nauta]

To get a clan that for once doesn't just spend all their time mudsexing. (Hopefully)

If I get a gith, I'm totally exploring their sexuality.

[Clearsighted]

I've staffed other games, where there was equal drama surrounding the possible introduction of an antagonist faction. In every situation, actual PvP or PK was fairly minimal. You're more likely to get kill-crazy scenarios from factions that have supposedly co-existed and interacted for centuries, but who turn on each other out of boredom (Sun Runners and Red Fangs). Also, most PKs happen intra-clan. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Factions for whom there is a historical animosity, also tend to treat each other, as weirdly as this sounds, with more respect and caution.

Which is why every time it resulted in a ton more RP for people to roleplay around along with relatively few deaths. Let's be honest. Players don't really care about NPCs, and even staff animated threats aren't much to talk about after the fact. But people will obsessively discuss and plan around other PC threats for hours.

This only works though, if there is a meaningful basis for competition. A 'basis for competition' can be as simple as geographic proximity.

Antagonistic clans like the mantis and halflings did not work because they were extreme iso. It took extreme foolishness for someone to either blunder into where mantis/halflings lived, or vice versa. That adds nothing to the game that staff animations/NPCs can't handle equally well. Tuluk and Allanak antagonism didn't work out because they were too far away to have meaningful competition outside the occasional RPT. They were never a threat to each other.

Gith work because both sides feel threatened. The Red Desert is a great location. This creates hundreds of cumulative hours of intense RP for every few minutes of actual fighting. And I think you would be shocked - SHOCKED - at how often 'antagonistic' or 'raider' PCs give their victims every excuse to escape alive. In fact, you're more likely to be PK'd as a rogue gicker than by a raider. But everyone is fine with rogue gickers.

The reason why raiders kill people, 90% of the time, is owing to people looking at them/contacting them, to get their description. It's deeply unfortunate but the only one to blame is Armageddon's code. If 'contact' didn't give someone's sdesc, and if people could conceal their mdesc, PKs would go *way* down.

I could even see a situation where Gith in the Red Desert manages to revitalize the trade routes through the Tablelands, creating more RP for desert elves as well, since people are going to want to use the Dol Takar to take the long way around to say, Luirs or such.

I don't think basing the Gith PCs in the Tablelands would work well.

[BadSkeelz]

Gith work because both sides feel threatened. The Red Desert is a great location. This creates hundreds of cumulative hours of intense RP for every few minutes of actual fighting. And I think you would be shocked - SHOCKED - at how often 'antagonistic' or 'raider' PCs give their victims every excuse to escape alive. In fact, you're more likely to be PK'd as a rogue gicker than by a raider. But everyone is fine with rogue gickers.

The reason why raiders kill people, 90% of the time, is owing to people looking at them/contacting them, to get their description. It's deeply unfortunate but the only one to blame is Armageddon's code. If 'contact' didn't give someone's sdesc, and if people could conceal their mdesc, PKs would go *way* down.

I would say that "PK as a first resort" is a playerbase problem more than a code problem. As a longtime militia PC, I learned that it's generally just better to kill PCs who cause you trouble because it's less trouble for you down the road. Most PCs don't really appreciate being left alive enough to justify it.

[Clearsighted]

Gith work because both sides feel threatened. The Red Desert is a great location. This creates hundreds of cumulative hours of intense RP for every few minutes of actual fighting. And I think you would be shocked - SHOCKED - at how often 'antagonistic' or 'raider' PCs give their victims every excuse to escape alive. In fact, you're more likely to be PK'd as a rogue gicker than by a raider. But everyone is fine with rogue gickers.

The reason why raiders kill people, 90% of the time, is owing to people looking at them/contacting them, to get their description. It's deeply unfortunate but the only one to blame is Armageddon's code. If 'contact' didn't give someone's sdesc, and if people could conceal their mdesc, PKs would go *way* down.

I would say that "PK as a first resort" is a playerbase problem more than a code problem. As a longtime militia PC, I learned that it's generally just better to kill PCs who cause you trouble because it's less trouble for you down the road. Most PCs don't really appreciate being left alive enough to justify it.

The militia/rinth/allank dynamic is much different from the wastelands.

In the wastelands, you're virtually always dealing with players who have a significant amount of time and effort invested in their PCs, or else they wouldn't be in the wastes.

In Allanak, you're much more often to be dealing with throwaways or cretins. There's also the whole law enforcement aspect. When one side (the militia/templars) have all the power, and are in fact, the only ones allowed to even initiate combat most of the time, and with tons of powerful NPCs as support, combined with how boring a city-bound role usually is...There's less incentive to not just hammer anyone even remotely asking for it.

It can't be compared, really.

[BadSkeelz]

Long-lived cretins in the city are especially worth killing. More troublesome and worth double the points.

Things aren't so stacked in Law Enforcements favor either, if you're smart about how you engage.

[Clearsighted]

Long-lived cretins in the city are especially worth killing. More troublesome and worth double the points.

Things aren't so stacked in Law Enforcements favor either, if you're smart about how you engage.

Both points are true. But I hope you'll agree that the PvP dynamic is very different in Allanak (specifically) as opposed to the rest of the game in general.

[original]

Void of conflict?

I just play a merchant, so I get to see several conversations in the same week from different perspectives. I can see there is quite a bit of conflict now just in Allanak alone.
Also while I am in no way against the gith race, they are a PK race if nothing else right now. If you are looking to create conflict through sole PK, that is not that great of a plot and people will just ignore the areas. If you're looking to create conflict from some group of desert raiders... Well there are several D elf and Human tribes available already that have their own conflicts active at this very moment and they could use more players. Instead of closing an area to consolidate rp, and then opening a new race to separate everyone, use the closing of Tuluk to strengthen the smaller clans in the desert if you want desert conflict rp, or strengthen some of the nobles families in Allanak to strengthen in inter-noble conflict

[Clearsighted]

Problem with Allanaki nobles is that they're so entrenched in their specific niches that it's hard for them to have anything meaningful to compete about, without basically affecting it.

There's too many things in Arm that need to be affected or pretended, instead of having a real driving impetus for practical/pragmatic reasons.

To include a good thing in this post...It's awesome when you desperately need a staffer, and you wish up in a life or death situation (where the code is an obstacle, even if the solution would be ICly simple) and they show up right away to help out, and toss in a few colorful emotes. I don't know who it was, but I loved that.