Thrain Ironsword

[valeria]

My point was to point out that you were confusing impossible with difficult. Maybe you were just using sloppy language, but if there are new players reading this, they should know that it IS possible to find out about historical events ICly and there ARE libraries in Allanak.

We now seem to agree it's difficult but not impossible. Can we move on?

[Lizzie]

Valeria, in order for a random commoner or maybe even dwarven PC (who might actually find the information useful/interesting/rewarding) to learn this information, the following things need to be true:

1) the PC in question needs to know that Thrain Ironsword existed, so that he can know to ask about him.
2) the PC in question needs to know who to ask.
3) the PC being asked needs to know that such information about Thrain Ironsword exists.
4) the PC being asked needs to know where to find such information.
5) the PC being asked needs to have enough of an interest in Thrain Ironsword (or the PC asking for information about him) to take time out of his busy year to investigate.
6) the PC asking about TI needs to live long enough for the information being asked to be presented to him.

If you were to check with Gimfilasette, I'm guessing she would do the math and come up with a 1-2% possibility of success. Highly unlikely to ever happen, ridiculously improbable, most assuredly not gonna happen. Impossible? I guess not. It's also not impossible that I can be approved for a full-guild psi-sorc Senior Winrothol noble to play with my own personal army of Jade Sabers led by a Black Robe to keep me safe. Not gonna even think about bothering to try for that role though because I know my chances are at best 1-2%.

[LauraMars]

The dissemination of historical information in game and its ease of acquisition might make a decent topic for a new thread.

[Armaddict]

...If the Find out IC mantra wants to increase in pitch and fervor because I, Armaddict, learned about things that I knew happened but knew nothing about because it comes from before I -started- in 1998, then the mantra can flip out and increase.

But this was utterly harmless.  Even if I suddenly decided to talk about it IC, it would still be almost utterly harmless aside from the weird thought of 'where's this guy know this from?!', but I don't think anyone had plans for this when they asked for storytime aside from hearing the story.  And it was a good story.

Calm yo-selves.

[seidhr]

Stories about stuff that old are hard to come by, whether you're on staff or not.  As someone already pointed out, there were no biographies back then (Arm was just one step above a hack and slash mud, and even that is sorta arguable) nor was there a request tool, nor were detailed records about that sort of thing really kept.

Even in the modern day, stuff will get lost unless someone bothers to write it down - which is an excellent plug for using the biography tool, especially if your PC gets involved in some neat stuff!

[Iiyola]

Stories about stuff that old are hard to come by, whether you're on staff or not.  As someone already pointed out, there were no biographies back then (Arm was just one step above a hack and slash mud, and even that is sorta arguable) nor was there a request tool, nor were detailed records about that sort of thing really kept.

Even in the modern day, stuff will get lost unless someone bothers to write it down - which is an excellent plug for using the biography tool, especially if your PC gets involved in some neat stuff!

Ever considered making a wiki? If Staff doesn't have time for it, I'm sure players/helpers would be more than happy to contribute.

[BrokenRomance]

Stories about stuff that old are hard to come by, whether you're on staff or not.  As someone already pointed out, there were no biographies back then (Arm was just one step above a hack and slash mud, and even that is sorta arguable) nor was there a request tool, nor were detailed records about that sort of thing really kept.

Even in the modern day, stuff will get lost unless someone bothers to write it down - which is an excellent plug for using the biography tool, especially if your PC gets involved in some neat stuff!

Ever considered making a wiki? If Staff doesn't have time for it, I'm sure players/helpers would be more than happy to contribute.

There are already places players can contribute stuff on the site. From what I see, until recently it'd been a year or more since someone posted a log. Logs are cool, and after a year I think they're okay. Heck, there's a biography tool!

[valeria]

Valeria, (stuff)

You (and some others) seem to be confusing my correction of a misstatement with a "find out IC" philosophy. I don't have a horse in that race. I just don't want some noob wandering in here and scrapping a historian/historian bard/some other concept on the basis of the misconception that historical events CANNOT be learned about in the game.

We now seem to agree it's difficult but not impossible. Can we move on?

[Lizzie]

Valeria, (stuff)

You (and some others) seem to be confusing my correction of a misstatement with a "find out IC" philosophy. I don't have a horse in that race. I just don't want some noob wandering in here and scrapping a historian/historian bard/some other concept on the basis of the misconception that historical events CANNOT be learned about in the game.

We now seem to agree it's difficult but not impossible. Can we move on?

A new player to Armageddon will never have heard of Thrain Ironsword, and will not know that there's anything of interest to learn about him. He will therefore not know that there's any reason to find out IC or learn about Thrain Ironsword - whether in or out of game, at all. Or about ANY other lore that isn't readily available on the armageddon.org website (and not here in the fora, since many new players don't even know to read the fora til after they've already started playing). For people who have never heard of these characters, or events, yes - it is impossible for them to find out IC.

It's like saying "it is absolutely possible to find out that cell phones contain gold" if you've never met anyone with a cell phone, and live in a remote village in a third world country where there exists no cell service, therefore no reason for anyone to enquire about cell phones.

[BrokenRomance]

Valeria, (stuff)

You (and some others) seem to be confusing my correction of a misstatement with a "find out IC" philosophy. I don't have a horse in that race. I just don't want some noob wandering in here and scrapping a historian/historian bard/some other concept on the basis of the misconception that historical events CANNOT be learned about in the game.

We now seem to agree it's difficult but not impossible. Can we move on?

A new player to Armageddon will never have heard of Thrain Ironsword, and will not know that there's anything of interest to learn about him. He will therefore not know that there's any reason to find out IC or learn about Thrain Ironsword - whether in or out of game, at all. Or about ANY other lore that isn't readily available on the armageddon.org website (and not here in the fora, since many new players don't even know to read the fora til after they've already started playing). For people who have never heard of these characters, or events, yes - it is impossible for them to find out IC.

It's like saying "it is absolutely possible to find out that cell phones contain gold" if you've never met anyone with a cell phone, and live in a remote village in a third world country where there exists no cell service, therefore no reason for anyone to enquire about cell phones.

Eh... I've only been playing about seven or eight months, only recently made a fora account, and I knew the name Thrain Ironsword. Trouble is I can't remember how the hell I did...

[Incognito]

For all practical purposes, this thread has reached its logical end.

For all realistic purposes, IMO, the only way to "find out IC" about the history of specific past PCs, would be to track down and make an appointment with the player or old/Ex Staff members, go over to their house with a case of primo alcohol, sit em down, and pick their brains.

Even if you had a PC with R/W in all languages, access to ALL virtual and IC libraries and documents in the Known World, and your PC dedicated his/her life to researching past PCs, you'd still have very little luck finding out much - simply because no records exist from back then.

On a different and more positive note - please use Biographies to document everything your PC achieves (or bungles up) - someone 10 years down the line might want to find out about your PC

And, on a slight derail here - what might be really cool some day - would be to have access to the Biography database of all the PCs, so one could actually cross-reference them by name/event/clan - and figure out what actually happened!

[Iiyola]

Stories about stuff that old are hard to come by, whether you're on staff or not.  As someone already pointed out, there were no biographies back then (Arm was just one step above a hack and slash mud, and even that is sorta arguable) nor was there a request tool, nor were detailed records about that sort of thing really kept.

Even in the modern day, stuff will get lost unless someone bothers to write it down - which is an excellent plug for using the biography tool, especially if your PC gets involved in some neat stuff!

Ever considered making a wiki? If Staff doesn't have time for it, I'm sure players/helpers would be more than happy to contribute.

There are already places players can contribute stuff on the site. From what I see, until recently it'd been a year or more since someone posted a log. Logs are cool, and after a year I think they're okay. Heck, there's a biography tool!

Yes but wikis are so much easier to keep track of.

Logs, while super interesting to read, can get messy and don't really get to the point, where wikis do.

[seidhr]

I can't speak for staff as a whole but I personally don't want to watch a wiki like a hawk and make sure only appropriate things get posted, since it'd be public.

[Narf]

I can't speak for staff as a whole but I personally don't want to watch a wiki like a hawk and make sure only appropriate things get posted, since it'd be public.

I'm no wiki-guru, but I suspect you could set it so that only approved content gets posted.

Someone would still have to read everything to approve it, but it would be on their own schedule. No "watching like a hawk" necessary.

[Malifaxis]

There is so much in this thread that makes me burn rage-hot that I do not know where to even direct my vitriol.

So I will fall back on the line I now use to flame, and point towards everyone who has ignored an in character bar story, a bard's tale, or some other bit of fucking ancient knowledge that I (and I can not be alone here) have honestly tried to pass on IC to new players in a justifiable manner.  So please, next time someone tries to tell a tale IC, you can feel better about spamcraftingly ignoring them, or finding another dwarf to bar brawl, or running off to spar.

And to all of those I say, "I appreciate your optimism."

If you want IC tales to be told IC, fucking act like it.

[boog]

There is so much in this thread that makes me burn rage-hot that I do not know where to even direct my vitriol.

So I will fall back on the line I now use to flame, and point towards everyone who has ignored an in character bar story, a bard's tale, or some other bit of fucking ancient knowledge that I (and I can not be alone here) have honestly tried to pass on IC to new players in a justifiable manner.  So please, next time someone tries to tell a tale IC, you can feel better about spamcraftingly ignoring them, or finding another dwarf to bar brawl, or running off to spar.

And to all of those I say, "I appreciate your optimism."

If you want IC tales to be told IC, fucking act like it.

A-fucking-men.

[SuchDragonWow]

Thrain was a master of karate and friendship for everyone

I'm pretty sure this is correct.  The rest of this nonsense is wrong.  I bet Thrain didn't care about no IC lore crap, wtf who got time for that

[Armaddict]

Ridiculousness.

We'd better all get inflamed and enraged over someone asking about 25 year old events.  Because we have that whole 1 year rule for a reason.  We'd better rage out over people asking here instead of searching through the characters in game who are played by players who might know the story.  Unless the player knew the story but the character was not allowed.

We'd better get snarky as a staff member because someone made an inaccurate post.  I'm sure it caused you great pain and was a great detriment and just -needed- to be set straight.  You'd have been better off with a simple 'Actually...' that turned into impressing on r/w characters that their books and records were actually of much more value than they seemed.  -I- sure would have liked to know, with my r/w characters.

This thread -is- over.  The original question posed as now long since been answered.  Now everyone is getting pissed off at each other for literally no reason aside from 'Now you know something I would have liked to have you know some other way even though that has no bearing on anything.'

Edited to add everything besides 'Ridiculousness' which was my original post.

[boog]

Well, it's an issue... or obviously is! How do we solve this?

Because people are having to choose between a killing up and learning about in game events. They feel compelled to ignore the lore that is available, though technically it might not be about Thrain, and would rather have coded gains so as to not be left behind? Either that, or they just think the RP involving learning about history is boring, which I could understand, but that doesn't mean they should then be privy to events if they aren't also willing to pursue it in game, does it?

But these thoughts are, probably, best for another thread. I hope no one thought I was being inflammatory, it is just something I see happen a lot -- I mean, ignoring the rp that might enlighten them.

[Desertman]

[Iiyola]

I can't speak for staff as a whole but I personally don't want to watch a wiki like a hawk and make sure only appropriate things get posted, since it'd be public.

I've played several games with all their own wiki, some with about 35 players and it all worked out. Nothing was abused and if there was an occasional griefer, they would be banned from their wiki.

What you could do is for players to send in their articles and then have a staffer update the wiki for instance. So players would still have access but they couldn't modify the contents.

[Jherlen]

This thread is kind of annoying me too, but for the opposite reasons Malifaxis mentions. Sorry Mal, but I'm just gonna lay this out here:

Raise your hand if any of your RP has involved Thrain Ironsword in the past five years. Anyone?

Let's make it ten. Any takers now?

It's been well over a decade since I started playing Armageddon, and even THEN Thrain Ironsword had been ancient history for ten years. I can confidently say, having played characters and played around characters in positions to know, his name did not come up in IC conversation even once. No bards, no storytellers, no templars, nothing.

I know that this being the GDB, I'm sure some contrarian will come along saying that they actually did have a discussion about Thrain IG and that's all well and good - that's great, even. But my point is that this sort of story has been ancient Armageddon legend for longer than the majority of us have even been here. It has certainly been legend for longer than any living character has been alive, and longer than any living character they could have known could have been alive, and on, about five times over.

We're outside "1 year rule" territory here by a huge margin. Let's have a "10-year rule". After 10 RL years, which is over an Age in game, discussing events that happened should be fair and allowed, no question. Or if you're uncomfortable with 10 years, we could even make it 20. What was going on in 1996?

There seems to be a concern that learning this stuff on the forum means characters would stop pursing it in game. I'm not sure I understand that. Like LauraMars said earlier, most veterans already end up playing characters who are vastly more ignorant about the world than they are. If someone wants to roleplay a bard or historian or loremaster, then I am sure they would already love the chance to interact in game and learn new things. And even if there was a 10-year rule in place, that leaves tons and tons and tons of stuff for their character to have to learn about.

Armageddon is an awesome, amazing vehicle to tell stories, and the best roleplay is done when we can keep those stories and associated plots pure and untainted by OOC information that could poison or ruin them. We all understand that, it's why we're playing here. I'm certainly not advocating that loosen that policy when it could possibly affect anything that happened recently in the game. But at the same time, I feel there should be a point where we as a community can feel free to discuss and reminisce and relate our stories with one another. It might inspire newbies, it's fun to hear the backstory of things, it helps old players reconnect, and it can just be a good read -- all of which we've seen in this very thread.

If this thread were about the Copper War, or Tyn Dashra or wanting the biographic information of a PC who lived in even the 21st Age, maybe I would take a different tune. But again, guys, this is a post asking for information about a character named Thrain Ironsword who's contemporaries were named things like Nathaniel and Caligula. It's from a totally bygone era of the game that many people are interested in knowing more about. I wish we'd be able to have these sorts of threads without arguing over if they should exist or not.

[Malifaxis]

If it was going to be this one fucking thing, I would have less of a problem.

But it won't be this one fucking thing.  This thread right here will be cited in future knowledge requests, thanks to the way it panned out.

Also, I may be a contrarian in your eyes, but here I am raising my damn hand about Thrain.  Last 5 years.  It DOES happen.  Commonly?  No.  But it does.

If people would actively put down their pwndwarves and foreverkurac to actually listen to a tale IC, I would probably have to squeegee my screen, but after my last 4 storyteller style PCs went completely ignored for everyone running out for coded gain, I will be saving my squeegee money for after the fact.

[SuchDragonWow]

Thrain Ironsword is a kick back to Arm's dirty past.  The fucking word iron is in it.

I saw a lovely post by Withered Ocotillo that should seem to satisfy the OP.  Who knows what the rest of this hulla bulla is about, but I'm assuming everyone knows Zalanthas has an oral tradition (one might say many such things), and there will always be folk heroes, both from the past and in the present.

[LauraMars]

This thread exists for a single purpose: To discuss Thrain Ironsword.

If you don't want to discuss Thrain Ironsword, do not post here. Post elsewhere.

I will moderate any more off topic posts.