Elves: The Thread

[Reiloth]

I dunno. I don't think City Elves are nearly as 'broken' as people make them out to be. Slap a tribe on them, and they work out just fine.

To modify this, though. (Why didn't I just modify my post? Sticky pickle).

City Elf tribes in the Rinth are a bit of an enigma. As pointed out, they have PC representation, which to all other PCs in the game means they are more 'present' than virtual and NPC components. This is just true, it has to be true, and it is true. Now, i've seen Elf Tribes for the most part 'cow' to the virtual presence of Kanosh and other elements of the Jaxa Pah. But it's a little silly that the Guild runs the Westside, and it can be fully inhabited by players, while the Eastside is run by a virtual non-entity that is the Elven Bogeyman.

I think if the Eastside were made more nebulous again, as it was in the HK days, and the Southside were made more appealing (I think it already is, with the Teahouse and other elements of the rooftops coming to the foreground), a couple of tribes that could be app'd into would be just swell. It wouldn't be automatic as it is with the SLK and SRs. Staff would put out a call, people would app in. There would be 4 at a time. Staff could open and close them as they pleased (so if the tribe were culled by a Templar Raid, 4 more wouldn't just pop up to avenge themz).

Honestly, you need a page of well thought out documentation (one page), to have enough to go on to make a city elf tribe wonderful. I done seen it, with my own two peepers.

[Molten Heart]

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[Reiloth]

The game just needs more coded desert elf tribes, even if that means they only get some background docs and a coded camp with a quit out location and a vendor. And let us stop destroying desert tribals of all races. Though if there is a problem, maybe close them from PC play. Lets also either re-open the blackwing or have another tribe displace them.

The game also needs more city elf tribes. They should start out with a small coded game world footprint (like a hovel somewhere, not even a save room) and possibly evolve from there.

Moving to a place where tribals were less empowered (ALA the Sun Runners) and more of just...Tribals, would be good for the game I think. Less required Staff oversight of them/their shinanigans, more Staff Oversight of an area/areas. Quit safe spot, vendor, akin to the player created tribes...Yes, please. Cap them at 2-4 per tribe.

[Jingo]

I wider selection/rotation of tribes please. I honestly don't like most of the available ones at the moment.

[BadSkeelz]

Maybe we could think of the current Elven tribes more as nations, made up of smaller groups or bands that each have their own quirks and traditions. It might allow for some flexibility of character, so that not "Every SLK is a raider" or "Every Sun Runner is an alcoholic minstrel show act." Some SLK bands might be more open to trade, some SR bands might be more antagonistic. You'd have the core beliefs of the Tribe (veneration, cross-tribe traditions) but that wouldn't need to be the end-all of your character.

Edit: I also don't think these should be rigid categories for your character. Your elf can't stop being a Sun Runner, but over their life they might move to a different band due to shared beliefs, closer ties, or practical survival reasons.

[Jingo]

I dunno. I don't think City Elves are nearly as 'broken' as people make them out to be. Slap a tribe on them, and they work out just fine.

City elves really only work if you think it's kosher to treat 'rinth npc's as sparring buddies.

I'm not coming down on people that do it though.

[BadSkeelz]

I dunno. I don't think City Elves are nearly as 'broken' as people make them out to be. Slap a tribe on them, and they work out just fine.

City elves really only work if you think it's kosher to treat 'rinth npc's as sparring buddies.

I'm not coming down on people that do it though.

Every City Elf Family rolecall should include "the 15 year old with prioritized agility that we ritually try and slap the shit out of every night."

Child abuse is just an evolutionary advantage in Zalanthas.

[Armaddict]

I dunno. I don't think City Elves are nearly as 'broken' as people make them out to be. Slap a tribe on them, and they work out just fine.

City elves really only work if you think it's kosher to treat 'rinth npc's as sparring buddies.

I'm not coming down on people that do it though.

My elves rarely have good weapon skills, but aren't often helpless either.  Elves in their current form require you to be a little more okay with less combat, I think.  Which isn't to say 'this is how it should be', moreso just that if you're okay with less combat dependence, the enjoyability factor does go up.

I too hate the happy hunting ground that some people turn the labyrinth into.

[nauta]

I dunno. I don't think City Elves are nearly as 'broken' as people make them out to be. Slap a tribe on them, and they work out just fine.

City elves really only work if you think it's kosher to treat 'rinth npc's as sparring buddies.

I'm not coming down on people that do it though.

It wasn't on my elf, but a human westsider: I used to disarm one of the rinth kids, give them a sparring club, and actually spar with them a bit, then disarm them again, take the sparring club, and head home for the day.

I don't think there's anything wrong with fighting NPCs in the rinth.  I'd rather rinthers stick around inside the rinth, rather than join the Byn and never return.

[Armaddict]

I don't think there's anything wrong with fighting NPCs in the rinth.

I had some account notes placed on me, and some character deaths from staff 'correction' that tell me it was, at least at some point, very frowned upon.

I get more bothered by the sometimes blatant OOC motive for murder in game than the act itself.  I'm pretty sure if I started attacking random PC's with no motive other than I wanted to fight and skill up, people would be all over it, but as long as it happens to the NPC's there, people seem to just give it a pass.

To tie this in to the topic...I see no problems with elves being alleyrats but having a lot of their business outside of the labyrinth.  It really kind of makes sense.  If they never come back?  Well...that's cool, maybe their character wanted to get out and they found the means, or they found a scene where they weren't suspicious of people wanting to kill them as much, or something.  But I don't think the sparring deal is something unique to elves.

But it's a little silly that the Guild runs the Westside, and it can be fully inhabited by players, while the Eastside is run by a virtual non-entity that is the Elven Bogeyman.

While I can agree in the spirit of the thing, I do want to point out that the major difference between the two locations aside from race is that the west is unified and the east is not.  This is the problem that the Jaxa Pah creation had...no one really 'runs' the elven tribal community, but they are loosely affiliated and manipulating and dealing with each other.  So it's hard to build a main clan there without it starting to dominate and remove that elven mentality from the place.

[BadSkeelz]

It's not "blatant OOC motive for murder" if you leave your sparring partners victims alive and relieved of their packs and valuables. I can think of a few choice streets southside where soldiers are sparse and PCs common to "interact" with. It's a thin line between sparring and mugging.

Edit: really you should be getting shit for attacking NPCs too, but NPCs don't have friends who will take interest and hunt you down.

[path]

I dunno. I don't think City Elves are nearly as 'broken' as people make them out to be. Slap a tribe on them, and they work out just fine.

City elves really only work if you think it's kosher to treat 'rinth npc's as sparring buddies.

I'm not coming down on people that do it though.

It wasn't on my elf, but a human westsider: I used to disarm one of the rinth kids, give them a sparring club, and actually spar with them a bit, then disarm them again, take the sparring club, and head home for the day.

I don't think there's anything wrong with fighting NPCs in the rinth.  I'd rather rinthers stick around inside the rinth, rather than join the Byn and never return.

This was the coolest. Do they just grab the next weapon in their inventory by default? I couldn't understand how you were making that work.

[Patuk]

Let me get my snark out of the way first:

















Okay so.

I have this nagging feeling that both celf tribes and tribeless delves aren't around, simply because of the trouble they can cause. A celf tribe can actually rob folks, people! A tribeless delf can leave the tablelands and raid others holy shit think of the children.

It's highly cynical, but it hasn't been mentioned, so I took that on me; in large part I just have this cynical feeling that the playerbase, for all its fawning over raiders and whatever, really doesn't deal with combat very well. I know I'll catch flak for this, but the tolerance for any kind of criminal activity beyond asking token amounts of money for 'protection' just isn't there; not once have I preemptively bribed important sorts and watched it be useful, and sometimes the entire bloody labyrinth gets locked off because someone did something shady.

I'm sloooowly starting to adopt RGS' point of view, where celves are just unsalvageable at a certain point. Two years ago I was making these same arguments, at which point staff told me off and said 'we're working on it'. The delay is a well-known phenomenon, but at this point I'm holding my breath no more. In a game of people treasuring their priceless, special crystalline knives, walling themselves off in expensive places, anything to disturb that sorts of peace is going to be met with immense amounts of retaliation. Until that changes, any celf tribe is going to be treated as if it were Satan incarnate by those who can't deal with losing a number of coins.

[BadSkeelz]

I dunno. Cynical as I am, these threads always make me want to store my current character, roll up a necker (or maybe a mul), prioritize strength, and mug the shit out of some roundears.

Use the roofs. Attack in numbers. Bash/sap/bludgeon relentlessly. Strike at the sponsored rolls, ambush the mudsexers, arrange the corpses of long-lived PCs. Remind the tall musculars and tressy tresses of Allanak why they fear the night.

[yousuff]

I dunno. Cynical as I am, these threads always make me want to store my current character, roll up a necker (or maybe a mul), prioritize strength, and mug the shit out of some roundears.

Use the roofs. Attack in numbers. Bash/sap/bludgeon relentlessly. Strike at the sponsored rolls, ambush the mudsexers, arrange the corpses of long-lived PCs. Remind the tall musculars and tressy tresses of Allanak why they fear the night.

I am literally doing this right now and people don't seem to care.
The real problem is either the apathy you receive from others due to your actions, or the insane response you get where half the world tries is suddenly directing every resource they have into destroying you.

[BadSkeelz]

Kill them all and don't worry about reactions. You won't have killed enough until I see another "FUCK THIS GAME" thread from a player of a formerly-long-lived character.

[Majikal]

I dunno. I don't think City Elves are nearly as 'broken' as people make them out to be. Slap a tribe on them, and they work out just fine.

No to solo d-elves.

Yes to c-elf tribes. There's already some good groundwork for a couple c-elf tribes in Allanak that I've found and also re-opening some old ones with something of a doc overhaul would be nice.

[Dar]

My recent experience with a very tiny, but true and totally awesome Celf Tribe lead me to think that Celven tribes should be completely and totally outlawed.  Make that shit impossible to play by PCs. The reason is simple. Celven tribes are fucking powerful. They're more powerful then Guild. They're more powerful then merchant houses. They're powerful due to their sheer loyalty and impossibility for betrayal. Which sadly often makes annihilation the only certain way of influence on these tribes. You cant flip them, you cant get them to rat on each other, you cant infiltrate them. Any kind of influence on them either involves placating them, having someone hostage, which oh so often turns into a blood bath anyway.


What has to be figured out is some kind of a medium. Some kind of an organization, that would accept loose elves from a multitude of virtual tribes join and still have some kind of an infrastructure that allows them to work together. If we can come up with a way to make that happen, that would be gold. But I do not believe this organization should be a tribe. Tribes are just so unbelievably powerful and so tempting to annihilate.

[Patuk]

Tribes are just so unbelievably powerful and so tempting to annihilate.

Well, I don't disagree.

[Jingo]

Sometimes the issue is that a group of four characters can completely dominate the game if they are also masters of code.

Other times the issue is establishment player characters are obsessively fixated on new clans/families that come into the game. Which usually results in those clans either being assimilated into the establishment structure or they're killed.

[Kankfly]

It wasn't on my elf, but a human westsider: I used to disarm one of the rinth kids, give them a sparring club, and actually spar with them a bit, then disarm them again, take the sparring club, and head home for the day.

I hope you're kidding.

[BadSkeelz]

I hope NPCs use spice in their inventory. Cause I know I would have loaded that kid up if I knew someone was doing that.

[The Lonely Hunter]

It wasn't on my elf, but a human westsider: I used to disarm one of the rinth kids, give them a sparring club, and actually spar with them a bit, then disarm them again, take the sparring club, and head home for the day.

I'm sorry but are you being serious?

[manipura]

It wasn't on my elf, but a human westsider: I used to disarm one of the rinth kids, give them a sparring club, and actually spar with them a bit, then disarm them again, take the sparring club, and head home for the day.

I'm sorry but are you being serious?

I assumed this wasn't serious...because arming an NPC for training purposes....
...but now I'm not sure...  

Edit: Umm...sticky pickle. (Because Reiloth is trying to make that a thing.  I'll support the endeavor.)

[Jingo]

I'm not terribly bothered. It isn't any worse than just mugging npc's to take their stuff and skill up.

And extra points if it's roleplayed.