Grebbers and nobles

[Patuk]

Sometimes I miss the old website, because it had tidbits of information like this and this; they do well to illustrate the world at large, and remind people that Armageddon is not a game where everyone is the heir to a lost kingdom or scion to a bloodline of benevolent dragons. Nine out of ten characters are and should be the kind of person who stems from a long, proud lineage of street peddlers and dusty miners.

.. Except, for some reason, I have this nagging feeling that the game has been progressing away from that more and more the longer I play, and it irks me on some level. I am very biased, but even so I feel as if plots concerning the nobility and their intrigue and things of concern to the game's high society have become much more important than they used to be at some point. And, in my opinion, should be.

Now, I'm a highly fallible person, and I obviously have no information to go off of other than my gut feeling, the things I personally see in-game, and what clans are open and such. It's because of this that I got curious and wanted to ask the playerbase, how do you feel about this? Is the ratio high status to low status characters right? Wrong? Just about good? I'm interested to know what the general sentiment among the people here is, so please feel free to discuss it in this poll.

[Chettaman]

Ya know... all of my characters have been completely ordinary people. Even my witches. I've gained knowledge.

I guess I would consider "bigger" roles to be played through staff invitation and/or through impressive characters.

I, for one, haven't noticed this off ratio, but of course... All of my characters have been completely ordinary.

Well I guess I can say that I do notice a soft lull whenever people speak about their heritage, because I imagine they're considering their character's history and the history of the zalanthas and instead of telling me about their ordinary life that they want to share whatever information that have about the world zalanthas. Which is fine to me too.

Ah. I see. Yeah, I guess I do notice that off ratio of people who are /really/ trying to do "something" important in this world (which is fine. This makes sense to do) compared to the people who are actually hungry everyday. To the people who are making a living off of the smallest things. Who is proud of their father's, father's, mother's trade that was taught to them and would do anything in the world to continue said tradition instead of doing everything because they have to /really/ try to do "something" important in this world.

I change my vote from "just right" to "other"

We could do with a better ratio, but this can be remedied simply by having more people that do have a trade taught to them by their family or from someone else and instead of just having been different and heroic people that exist in the exciting moments near death - to mundane and everyday people who are just trying to make their families proud or survive with whatever talents they grew up with, learned as they became adults. But people do roleplay to live out a fantasy, ya know?
it's not that people are playing incorrectly, they just aren't playing the ordinary roles because they're so ordinary.

[Miradus]

Why would anyone be ordinary in their fantasy world?

I can understand starting ordinary and having the ambition to become extraordinary. But to have the ambition of being a salt forager at 30 days played? I don't think so.

[Yam]

I said there are too many fancy pants, but I actually think the ratio is in a good place right now.

[Malifaxis]

Ratio is good.

I don't play this game to be a Zalanthan burger flipper.

You do you, though.
You do you.

[Norcal]

Ratio is good.

I don't play this game to be a Zalanthan burger flipper.

You do you, though.
You do you.

Malfaxis plays to be the burger flipping nobility.



But seriously......I think the distribution is good, yet there needs to be more interaction between nobles and the rest of the player base. 

[Chettaman]

Why would anyone be ordinary in their fantasy world?

I can understand starting ordinary and having the ambition to become extraordinary. But to have the ambition of being a salt forager at 30 days played? I don't think so.

In a game, right. I understand this, but in the real world there /are/ people who would literally become homeless and die before they gave up on their family's tradition.
I'm not saying people should do this nor am I expecting people to do this, I'm just saying that people who don't know any other way of life do drive themselves into the ground thanks to ignorance and pride. And it is highly apparent that us as players and our characters are all but ignorant in more aspects than we may like to believe. We all seem to have the pride thing down, though.
(if you ask me)

*roleplaying ignorance is very difficult. Driving yourself into the ground doesn't make any sense, because we all have knowledge of another way. We /can/ do something else.
- and this is part of the reason I consider the characters that we end up playing to be the "heroes" in this world compared to the NPCs and VNPCs, because while our characters still have flaws we as the players are /not/ ignorant and this fact is reflected in our game play.

[nauta]

As a sucker for low-class flavor characters (gardeners, bakers, shepherds, and beggars -- although I hate grebbers), I voted that the ratio is pretty good.  One of my favorite death scenes ended with the line, while holding up a rat meat pie to a templar: But I'm just a baker.

However, I wonder if you are asking two things with the question.

1. Is the ratio among the playerbase between low and high in terms of numbers of characters good right now?

2. Is the ratio among the plots/staff attention given to low-class characters and their plots and high-class characters and their plots good right now?

Like I said, I think (1) is pretty good right now from experience with a lot of low-class characters over the last couple months in the southlands.  I'm not really qualified to answer (2), but a few observations:

a) Who is my staff?  As an independent, your staff doesn't come out and post a 'Hey, I'm your staff, let's make this clan awesome!' post.  You instead have to come up and introduce yourself.  Moreover, plots will be more likely driven by you bottom up rather than delivered top down from above (from the clan superiors, say, or from interaction with other clans plotting to screw you over or from the documentation of clan life tensions).

b) What is a low-class plot?  The neat thing about low-class plots is that they often don't require staff involvement (e.g., rat hunts, gathering cockroaches in jail), but I can also see how one might not really view these as plots in any substantive narrative sense -- in the way that high-class plots could be considered plots with intrigue and dramatic foils and stuff.

Dunno.  I guess I think things are pretty ok...

[whitt]

Voted for more scum of the earth.  It's a really hard role to keep at.  The ability to succeed for a PC is staggering.  The PCs that find a way to piss that away and stay gritty always win my attention.

[Patuk]

Why would anyone be ordinary in their fantasy world?

I can understand starting ordinary and having the ambition to become extraordinary. But to have the ambition of being a salt forager at 30 days played? I don't think so.

I'm sorry you're the one I'm singling out with this post; it seems to rather well capture the general sentiment of a few posts in this thread so far. Even so, I might have explained myself in a wrong manner.

When I say high status, I don't mean to capture everyone who isn't starving in that label. A sergeant of the T'zai Byn or a ringleader in the Guild are both very exceptional people, but they're also not very welcome in Zalanthan high society. Similarly, a hunter who can take down kryl on his own and a lone, travelling merchant are exceptional, but they're again not in the highest class of people.  What I'm getting at is that I feel we have a very, very large amount of top-heaviness, so to speak, a disproportionate amount of people doing their thing in the upper crust of Armageddon's society, with comparatively less focus on the game's other parts.

People may disagree, and I may well have it all very wrong, but I'm hardly advocating that the game becomes about scraping coin together for food and only ever being horribly poor all the time. I simply think the fancy side of the game is too prevalent at this point, and that it probably shouldn't be.

[Miradus]

Oh, you're talking about all those fancy people who sit around in their silks and come slumming to the Gaj to look down their noses at the grebbers.

No idea what the attraction is to that. Plots? Constant mudsex?

[Beethoven]

It's just something different to shake things up. And ideally you're enforcing the setting by playing the privileged and being part of the oppressive system.

[Pale Horse]

I think this perception was bound to come up, sooner or later.

With the closing of one city to player-play and consolidation of Staff towards the clans in and around Allanak, there's going to be extra support for Noble clans that was not possible without the number of staff and characters that are there, now.  With this added support, there's going to be more attention drawn as more "thing" happen, altering our perceptions of "what is going on," especially in regards to "noble" plots.  It may not be "realistic" that there seem to be so many high society people in such close proximity to the low society scum, but that's the reality of the game.  Compared to the vNPC population, the characters we have the capability to interact with (I'm not going to enter in the debate of solo-rping with vNPCs) have a very large impact on what is going on with the rest of the world and the characters in it.

[path]

I like small supporting roles. That said, they can be really boring or...weird? if higher end roles don't get well filled or enough staff support.

I DON'T think there needs to be an OOC push to balance things, because ideally people will be drawn toward playing what's most fun for them and as that occurs the fun will grow exponentially. I'm an idealist. If you're having a blast with your character, and I really hope you all are, then there's nothing to worry about.

[Beethoven]

The real solution, I think, is to get more players.

[Majikal]

The real solution, I think, is to get more players.

Can someone now plz plug one of those vote links? plz.

[RogueGunslinger]

I don't even know what nobles do for the game when they're not involved with commoners.

Never played a noble or in a noble house long enough to figure out what all their time is spent doing. The types of nobility that interact regularly with commoners have all been my favorites. Sadly I can only name off a few of those.

I don't think it's top-heavy so much as one part seems almost entirely segregated from the other, unless there's some RPTs going on.

[Miradus]

I would not want to see anything mandatory at all on an OOC level.

If you did an actual survey, I think you'd see non-nobility vastly outnumbered the nobility, but nobility just doesn't die while Joe Grebber goes through 6 characters in Noble Bob's lifetime.

Solution: More assassinations

[Armaddict]

I don't think it's top-heavy so much as one part seems almost entirely segregated from the other, unless there's some RPTs going on.

I think that's more it than anything.  But we were also asking for this when we talked about having upper class establishments exclusive again.  I think it even got brought up in those discussions that this is what it would lead to and people said 'nawwww!'

This could be very much based on character perspective, mind you.  My last two or three years in this game have not been spent with characters who had reason to brush shoulders with the nobles or their servants.  But they are definitely less public than I've been used to.

[Majikal]

I think it's important to remember that the commoner pc's we portray in 99 percent of the cases are NOT your usual commoners. That 150 sid coinpouch you made for working with clan X for X amount of time should be considered great pay, it's enough to feed your family for weeks. Very rarely do our commoners represent your average commoner in Zalanthas and the same could likely be said for the nobles.

I like to think of the players as actors in a show, we're all sort of our own main characters and we're all (I hope) more intriguing in comparison to the rest of the world. The vnpc's are the extras that make us stand out. While I've tried out the role of playing a beggar, I don't enjoy it, someone else is more than welcome to play the burger flipper in Zalanthas. The distribution of social status will never be represented by the player base simply because it's a game people play to enjoy, just like elves will never FEEL like the second biggest population in Zalanthas. Though understanding that our pc's are not the normal and rather the exception is important to maintaining the theme of the game.

[Doublepalli]

If 150 is enough to feed a family for weeks, prices of food/water should be reconsidered.

[valeria]

I think the number of nobles right now is pretty good.  I've played both when there was only one noble per house, and when there are multiple nobles per house, and having more nobles gives other nobles a lot more nobly things to do.  I also think the number of lower-class players is pretty good.  I think we could use more players in general, but when couldn't we  

So I vote about right.

[Miradus]

If 150 is enough to feed a family for weeks, prices of food/water should be reconsidered.

I've almost always played wilderness characters so until recently I never knew that the TRUE survival game was inside the walls of Allanak. Trying to eat something better than a crunchy cockroach is pretty tough. In the north I have to dump meat out of my packs to save on weight. In the south I dream about the time I stepped over a gortok slab and didn't pick it up.

[Chettaman]

150 coins is enough for a family to survive on if you enjoy eating jerky every day, actually being hungry, and drinking only when you have to. ...and not when "you're a little thirsty".

[lostinspace]

I honestly don't care how many nobles there are, I do dislike how often I saw them in game when playing a dirt poor man doing odd jobs to pay for his drinking water who can't even afford shoes. I really dislike seeing them walking around in the open streets with a single bodyguard. These streets are supposed to be full of thousands of smelly commoners, pickpockets, and probably mutants as well, and I really can't imagine somebody in silks strolling through those crowds.

[Miradus]

I honestly don't care how many nobles there are, I do dislike how often I saw them in game when playing a dirt poor man doing odd jobs to pay for his drinking water who can't even afford shoes. I really dislike seeing them walking around in the open streets with a single bodyguard. These streets are supposed to be full of thousands of smelly commoners, pickpockets, and probably mutants as well, and I really can't imagine somebody in silks strolling through those crowds.

I would LOVE seeing them walking the open streets at night with a single bodyguard if it were not for magical, teleporting half-giant soldiers with insta-subdue.

In many ways the game code is really good at delivering immediate consequences, but where nobility and sponsored roles are concerned it seems like they go way out of their way to protect those guys from their own actions.

[lostinspace]

I would LOVE seeing them walking the open streets at night with a single bodyguard if it were not for magical, teleporting half-giant soldiers with insta-subdue.

In many ways the game code is really good at delivering immediate consequences, but where nobility and sponsored roles are concerned it seems like they go way out of their way to protect those guys from their own actions.

Those soldiers aren't really noble specific, but I know what you mean. I just can't imagine a noble traveling unmolested with a single body guard. You think that fucker dying of dehydration gives a flying fuck who you are? They just know that ring is a year worth of water at the pawn shop, and that shop doesn't ask questions. If nobles want to leave their quarters, they should really be getting an escort, either from the Arm, in house soldiers/slaves, or hired help, instead of flitting around nearly alone in crowds of thousands at all hours.

[BadSkeelz]

Remove crim code, give PC bodyguards more livelihood.

[Yam]

Maybe not remove crim code, definitely decrease the number of soldiers in Allanak. There are probably more NPC half-giant soldiers roaming around than there are merchant NPCs in the bar. Shit's cray.

[Miradus]

Absolutely. Tons of content just waiting to be had.

What I particularly dislike is when I see some flowery pogue in the Gaj getting lippy with the one-eyed, scar-faced desert badass. The room echoes are throwing out stuff like people getting their teeth punched out in the corner or knives being pulled. But yet this badass has to sit there and take that pogue's lip because there are teleporting half-giants waiting just outside. And both of them know it, and the pogue is never, ever going to leave the safety of the city walls or stick his head out into the street at night.

[Yam]

I've played people who beat up/murdered people who pissed them off by getting lippy. It usually takes more production than it ought to though.

Let's found a new city in the Salt Flats without crimcode. We can call it Thunderdome. I'm not joking.

[Miradus]

Be the change, Yam.

Create a "salter's camp" out there around a new water source and become the salty overlord of the flats. We can call you "King Crusty".

[Malken]

Be the change, Yam.

Create a "salter's camp" out there around a new water source and become the salty overlord of the flats. We can call you "King Crusty".

King Crusty the Flaked.

[Patuk]

I honestly don't care how many nobles there are, I do dislike how often I saw them in game when playing a dirt poor man doing odd jobs to pay for his drinking water who can't even afford shoes. I really dislike seeing them walking around in the open streets with a single bodyguard. These streets are supposed to be full of thousands of smelly commoners, pickpockets, and probably mutants as well, and I really can't imagine somebody in silks strolling through those crowds.

I would LOVE seeing them walking the open streets at night with a single bodyguard if it were not for magical, teleporting half-giant soldiers with insta-subdue.

In many ways the game code is really good at delivering immediate consequences, but where nobility and sponsored roles are concerned it seems like they go way out of their way to protect those guys from their own actions.

I mean, that nobles and such get crimcode protection is one thing, but when everyone just has a cadre of freaking soldiers to ensure their safety around.. Meh.

[Jihelu]

There was a recent* ic event that should have made people less willing to walk the streets at night.
People still fucking do it.

I'm not saying you have to kill every noble in the game to make your point that they shouldn't travel at night but...it helps.


* A while ago.

[Raptor_Dan]

I've played people who beat up/murdered people who pissed them off by getting lippy. It usually takes more production than it ought to though.

Let's found a new city in the Salt Flats without crimcode. We can call it Thunderdome. I'm not joking.

Since Elkrosians were removed, we should probably call it the Firedome or Stonedome, maybe. But I'm all for this. Once this char dies, I'll PM you so we can coordinate family roles. You'll be the wide-eyed dreamer, and I'll play your wife who eventually sells you out to the Templarate for a small bag of coins and a pat on the head.

[Clavis]

always should be more grebbers then nobles. nobles are few, compared to the masses it takes to keep them pampered, fed, and watered. Grebbers and potential grebbers are being popped out by thousands of people.

Think there should be more brawl rooms to, so those that like to lip off will suddenly realize yeah probably shouldn't be doing this to someone that looks like mr. one-eyed scarred menace there.
harsh, brutal - not so much in the cities, more like, ninety percent of populace are well protected cause of uber soldiers patroling, and waiting to insta-subdue, kill you with all thier buddies. yet vnpc pop, smashing chairs, pulling out knives, smashing teeth out, no problem. mean byn'er pulling a knife and sticking it in mr/mrs fops lippy stomach, arena or crimson smear on all the guards weapons.

[Raptor_Dan]

I think all streets in 'Nak should have crimcode adjusted so that as long as you're not using a weapon, or magick, you can wail on anyone, except nobles, templars, and soldiers, of course.


You start beating the shit out any punk you want to, and assure the soldiers rushing up to you that 'no, no, it's cool. Just a breed and I didn't kill it, so you don't have to clean anything up!'