Combat Roles within Armageddon - Limited Choices, or is there?

[Armaddict]

Lend me your thoughts and ideas on this.  How do we keep other combat roles interesting?  Maybe you have a new clan idea?  (Remember, the Player Clan structure could also be used with this to make an MMH at some point.)  What clans/organization could be reopened or made non-virtual?  (Disclaimer:  Don't go into heavy IC detail if possible, stick with documented clans and organizations.)  These ideas don't necessarily have to come from Allanak specifically.

I, of course, say open all of them, but that's with one caveat staff-side: If you open clans (as you should in my opinion, as stated), come in with less of a plot-oriented mentality of making big projects for them to see to, and more of an antagonist-provision base.  With this in mind, House Tor would actually probably be the last clan to open, rather than the first.  Some examples:

Oash Elite
--Oash is typically pragmatic, willing to obstruct the city for personal gain.
--Oashi interests are money, the study and control of magick, and external control of land suitable for agriculture
(edit:)--Oashi Elite are specialized soldiers that focus on investigation, discovery, observation, and quick removal of dangerous ungemmed/unnatural enemies, as well as protecting their nobles from foreign interests (assassins).
--Oashi antagonists are ungemmed mages, groups strong enough or dedicated enough to destroy Oashi holdings, and obstructionists.

Tor Scorpions
--Typically loyalist, as House Tor's success is directly correlated with expansion and success of the city.
--Tor interests are military prestige and involvement, the top of the food chain in strategy, and small expansion of infrastructure in the interest of claiming involvement in defense of the city and its assets.
(edit:)--Tor Scorpions are politically savvy, disciplined soldiers concerned as much with appearance as effectiveness, knowledgeable of geography, how code works in combat, and comfortable with lecture-like instruction and leadership.
--Tor antagonists are anti-allanak groups strong enough to challenge city holdings, more skilled/as skilled of strategists offering training, and obstructionists to Tor goals.

Breaking apart each opened clan into these categories for inspection show a couple characteristics.  They don't need a lot of PC's to carry out their goals, so long as they're specialized.  They don't have a constant role in the game, but have constant interests to watch out for and further, often to the detriment of other houses or in competition against them (particularly if a pair of nobles are feuding).  They hire out other groups in advancement of those goals and can appoint their employees to oversee them.  But most importantly...you don't -need- to create neato plots for any of them to have a true purpose in the game.  Creation of storylines is great, but a lot of work, and they will indeed add a lot to the list of activities for each group, but are high maintenance in comparison to having players naturally conflicting over the ethos of their clan as a whole.

But more importantly than that, if you create a role/incentive/possibility for playing an antagonist, it spontaneously and continuously creates content.  This isn't to say that we need sponsored roles all over the place; incentive is actually the way to go.  Having Allanak crack down on gemmed mages pushes people towards keeping the magecraft a secret and having a vendetta against the city.  This provides players the actual motivation to play a role where the Oashi Elite suddenly have simmering, constant content that spikes whenever a particularly talented leader comes along on the opposing side.  If they're good enough, that even turns into content for House Tor.

I say House Tor should be the last to open despite it being my favorite clan; It's hard to promote antagonism fitting for Tor in our current setup, since antagonizing them is typically larger scale.  Borsail, Oash, the Merchant Houses...all of their military wings are much easier to accomodate as far as having spontaneous, built in conflict purely through characters acting out their own interests. (Borsail is the least easy to accomodate after Tor until we have a real slave trade in game.  With the removal of playable slaves, slaving took a bad turn in terms of being able to compete and step on Borsail's toes).

In regards to a raiding clan:  I agree it would be nice, but please don't make it desert elf-based.  We have enough complaints about stealth already, and really, Blackmoon was altogether more exciting to have as a presence than Red Fangs ever were.  However, it should be noted that I don't think a raiding clan acts as a blanket antagonist because their interests are both small scale and removed from the specific interests of each group, even the Arm of the Dragon.  We've slipped into a state where raiders are 'omg content, kill it!', but that's purely because of the boredom that's come about from more cooperative play.  Historically, people were too at-each-other's-throats already to worry about a raiding group attacking salters or grebbers outside the city.  Raiders in the past used to be given a pass most of the time unless they targeted soldiers specifically; the same way the Arm doesn't go chasing down murderers for attacks made in the alleys, the violence in the sands is of little interest.

Antagonists aren't villains.  They're just PCs where their interests collide with another group in play.  Through removal of different groups, we ran out of interesting ways for PCs to clash against each other with their goals.  You really have to go out of your way to find a way to piss off a group in our current state, which is why we all mill around waiting for staff to provide things to do instead of us naturally providing conflict to each other.

[Feco]

Automation sounds like a lot more work, but I like the direction -- I don't really like the quest-reward part of it.  It feels too gamey and not enough story-telly.

You could do the silt horror thing with minimal work, though.  Just load up a few silt horrors now and then, drop a hint from an NPC to Kurac that these silt horrors are a problem, and voila.

You can even do the same thing with gith and mantis.  Load a few up, like, on the road or something, or near a common hunting ground, and drop a hint from an NPC, or on a message board.  Someone might get slaughtered by surprise here and there, but adding danger to the world isn't a bad thing.  It'll motivate people.

I really, really don't like the idea of MMORPG type quests.

[Riev]

Automation sounds like a lot more work, but I like the direction -- I don't really like the quest-reward part of it.  It feels too gamey and not enough story-telly.

You could do the silt horror thing with minimal work, though.  Just load up a few silt horrors now and then, drop a hint from an NPC to Kurac that these silt horrors are a problem, and voila.

Or a rantarri on the loose in the north.

I think the biggest 'problem' to work out would be to supply realistic motivations.  Take the gith war, for instance, or the gryzzak bugs.  There wasn't any motivation for others to come into the tablelands hunting the gith.  Or with the gryzzak, there wasn't much motivation to go out and kill them (that I saw) -- other than the motivation to kill something.

That said, I much prefer intelligent opponents.  Second, would be NPCs with cool scripts: the gith and the kryl come to mind.  Hunting in the Grey or travelling through the gith territories is always an exciting experience.  But, again, there's little motivation to do so.

It seems like you don't like the quest rewards because its too gamey, but then recognize that there's "no reason" to fight gith or the bugs. Whats the middle ground?

[Delirium]

I love the idea of throwing random animal/NPCs at PCs for random plausible reasons. Not everything has to be an intricate plot. Sometimes shit happens and you can react to it, or not.

While we love telling amazing stories, a large portion of us also love chopping motherfuckers up with bone swords.

[Armaddict]

Also, I forgot to note in my large post (ton of replies while I was typing it)...I do feel incredibly limited in combat roles in the game, both before joining and after.  The most fun I've had since the closing of military clans has been trying desperately to play groups against each other and finding out that they had little reason to do so.  Nobles are doing a great job trying to keep conflict alive, but are essentially completely dependent on outside groups.  That would be a good thing, except there are so few of them.  Playing the independent providing those services exposes me to just how much is still going on, but also just how crippled the political intrigue game is right now.

I'd like to return to my previous role, which was almost always clanned, loyalist, and constantly looking for opportunities to further the clan's agenda and presence regardless of whether it actually affected anything on a large scale or not.

[Ath]

I don't want Kill Quests where you bring shit back to turn in for reward.  The idea for my concept is to have a turn in to track effort, no direct reward there.  The idea is that RP can be built from this effort show.  With current code and tools we have, it wouldn't be hard to do any of this actually.  We could have plot wrapped around the "Kill/Turn In" aspects.  We'd still expect players to RP why they are killing the creatures, there would be plot reasoning behind it of course.

I miss Tor also, it was one of my best and most favorite characters I played prior to coming onto Staff for the first time.  I do understand that they are one of the hardest to reopen within the combat side of it.

[nauta]

The idea for my concept is to have a turn in to track effort, no direct reward there. 

Can you explain this a bit more?

I remember during the gith war, staff was asking us to track how many gith we killed in character reports.  Is it something like that?

[wizturbo]

Fake combat... like the Arena, but no one wants to risk their character in the arena.

Every major RPT often results in a PC death, but people flock to those in droves.  The issue isn't that people don't want to risk their character, the issue is what are they risking it for?

In an RPT, they risk their character to be part of something big and epic.  They risk it to protect their character's friends, or for the excitement.  The problem with the Arena as it's been in the past is there's nothing surrounding the actual arena event to make it worth the effort.  There's no drama around it, there's no great prestige or tantalizing rewards.  It isn't a career you can actually pursue like you could if you joined a clan.  Being the #1 Gladiator means very little right now.  Change that, and you change the entire dynamic.

Also, as many others have said,  the Arena doesn't have to be a fight to the death every single time kind of thing.  It should be more like being a professional athlete, with a risk of death or serious injury but maybe you'll get out of the game before that ever happens to you. 

I have some very specific ideas on this, but probably best for the request tool.

[Armaddict]

The idea for my concept is to have a turn in to track effort, no direct reward there.

I think the idea is good for providing purpose to combat, but I'd caution to be sure to put conflicting tracking in place.  There needs to be a sense of different 'factions' that players choose, otherwise this turns too far into the direction of cooperative MUDding rather than the roleplaying of Zalanthas.  We don't want Looking For Group type things, and we don't want to make too many things too easily banded together against so that it becomes even harder to play an antagonist to any given group/cause.

It could get very interesting the moment that you have turn in to track events that are directly opposing.  It could also get very interesting if you promote there being third parties who are interested in the outcome, but not in engaging in the event directly.  If it's well done, it can help promote conflict, but if it's thrown together, it will, in my opinion, shift things further towards people engaged in monotony and wanting something real to do.

Over time, it's just my experience that storylines are great and fun, but there needs to be a true enemy/antagonist to make things actually interesting.  It's very rare that the meaningful antagonist is staff-provided or NPC-automated; other players working against you, with you, and making you uncertain and feeling endangered at any given point are what make the game, and accomplishments within it, meaningful.

[Jingo]

I don't want Kill Quests where you bring shit back to turn in for reward.  The idea for my concept is to have a turn in to track effort, no direct reward there.  The idea is that RP can be built from this effort show.  With current code and tools we have, it wouldn't be hard to do any of this actually.  We could have plot wrapped around the "Kill/Turn In" aspects.  We'd still expect players to RP why they are killing the creatures, there would be plot reasoning behind it of course.

I miss Tor also, it was one of my best and most favorite characters I played prior to coming onto Staff for the first time.  I do understand that they are one of the hardest to reopen within the combat side of it.

It doesn't just need to be kill quests. There can be scout quests that can be randomly generated and given to clans. Range them to relatively easy (ride to Redstorm and back, give a report of goings-on) to hard (scout the far reaches of the mantis valley) to impossible (scale the mountains of madness and brave the horrors within). Obviously scale reward to difficulty.

All staff would need to do here is give the quest, come up with a semi-plausable ic reason for the quest and then fork out the reward once it's complete. This isn't too far off from what the byn do already afik.

[Ath]

I don't want Kill Quests where you bring shit back to turn in for reward.  The idea for my concept is to have a turn in to track effort, no direct reward there.  The idea is that RP can be built from this effort show.  With current code and tools we have, it wouldn't be hard to do any of this actually.  We could have plot wrapped around the "Kill/Turn In" aspects.  We'd still expect players to RP why they are killing the creatures, there would be plot reasoning behind it of course.

I miss Tor also, it was one of my best and most favorite characters I played prior to coming onto Staff for the first time.  I do understand that they are one of the hardest to reopen within the combat side of it.

It doesn't just need to be kill quests. There can be scout quests that can be randomly generated and given to clans. Range them to relatively easy (ride to Redstorm and back, give a report of goings-on) to hard (scout the far reaches of the mantis valley) to impossible (scale the mountains of madness and brave the horrors within). Obviously scale reward to difficulty.

All staff would need to do here is give the quest, come up with a semi-plausable ic reason for the quest and then fork out the reward once it's complete. This isn't too far off from what the byn do already afik.

That wouldn't be too difficult to do as I think on it.

The idea for my concept is to have a turn in to track effort, no direct reward there. 

Can you explain this a bit more?

I remember during the gith war, staff was asking us to track how many gith we killed in character reports.  Is it something like that?

Yes, but we wouldn't need you to report the numbers, I'd have it track.  For example we could have had an Elf NPC that was collecting Gith Heads, there is IC reasoning behind the collection, and at the same point staff could use this NPC to track who turned in skulls. We could then use the tracked numbers to go "So and So's warband turned in 50 skulls" and maybe their warband will get a IC reward of some sort via RP.  It would allow us to track effort into it, that is all.

[The Lonely Hunter]

To add to the talk about raiding clans, I think it'd be fun to create a clan of more expendable sorts of characters that people could dip into for a couple days/weeks/months until they inevitably died by creating a clan that works mechanically with a high mortality rate.

People that could dip in and play an antagonistic gith for a month might really spice up travel between the north and the south, but it'd only be fun if they started from a dangerous level of skills (possibly with the trade-off that they'd have lower caps on their combat skills). This would create a class of high-risk taking PCs to make the world more dangerous both for themselves and for others in an intelligent way.

If you wanted to make gladiatorial combat more dangerous, you could also run things the same way for gladiators.

I really like this. Perhaps more "temp" roles where the player knows in advance that it isn't intended to last long. Escaped slaves, kidnappings, gladiators that actually fight to the death, gith, maybe a small mantis clutch got ill and wandered into X area and needs to be exterminated...it can go on. All sorts of things are in line here.

I think that we could use more combat roles in general and the best way to give those roles a purpose is conflict - warring factions. Maybe once and awhile a detachment of Tuluki patriots sets up camp to harass Allanak. Sometimes people just like to play guard-PCs for noble houses. I've had tons of fun doing it before but to make it exciting maybe the above idea can also get mixed in. For example, some temp-PCs are made for the sole purpose of physically harassing a particular clan. The PC guards need to eliminate that threat or protect against it.

[650Booger]

I have a bold idea, what if we created new karma required combat main guilds that were even more badass than warriors?  say they could start with an advanced weapon type, as this seems to be quite difficult/impossible to achieve currently.

not sure how or if this relates to the topic at hand.

[Armaddict]

I don't see why any of those need to be acknowledged as 'temporary' roles.

Build characters.  Engage in conflict.  Lose or win.

The fear of losing time investment is inherent in the game and to be embraced, not avoided and skirted around.  Making those 'temporary' seems to infer that they are meant to be killed off rather than try to actually accomplish their goal.

[Refugee]

Slowing down combat in the Arena would probably help the spectators but take away from the fun of the combatants.  The crazy wtf pulse-thumping chaos of combat is a lot of the draw for me.  But I think death-matches won't succeed unless you find some way to take away the grind of getting ready.  If people could take on throwaway PCs that already had skills for the sole purpose of being gladiators for awhile, they probably would.

People have liked the live-weapon battles at LuirsFest and in the Nak arena that we've had, with the risk of death but mercy on. 

Games that use 9 rooms of the Arena have that annoying double echo thing going on for the spectators, which makes it hard to follow when more than toe to toe battle is happening.  I wonder if something could be done about that.

[Riev]

I don't see why any of those need to be acknowledged as 'temporary' roles.

Build characters.  Engage in conflict.  Lose or win.

The fear of losing time investment is inherent in the game and to be embraced, not avoided and skirted around.  Making those 'temporary' seems to infer that they are meant to be killed off rather than try to actually accomplish their goal.

If we were to create a raider, one of two scenarios has happened (in general):

They've always been a raider.
or
They've fallen to raiding as a means to survive.

In either of these cases, they probably have a few more skills than chargen and a couple skill bumps might provide.

[Armaddict]

...I don't follow.

How are they more likely to have skill bumps than any other warrior-background concept?

[WanderingOoze]

Games that use 9 rooms of the Arena have that annoying double echo thing going on for the spectators, which makes it hard to follow when more than toe to toe battle is happening.  I wonder if something could be done about that.

Yeah, this. Even with brief combat, Bloodball is next to impossible for me to keep track of -and- still interact with fellow
spectators. This may partly be because I'm terrible at tracking the fast-paced screen-rolling action in general, even to this day.
But, there's gotta be a way to make it a bit more managable.

[Jingo]

I don't want Kill Quests where you bring shit back to turn in for reward.  The idea for my concept is to have a turn in to track effort, no direct reward there.  The idea is that RP can be built from this effort show.  With current code and tools we have, it wouldn't be hard to do any of this actually.  We could have plot wrapped around the "Kill/Turn In" aspects.  We'd still expect players to RP why they are killing the creatures, there would be plot reasoning behind it of course.

I miss Tor also, it was one of my best and most favorite characters I played prior to coming onto Staff for the first time.  I do understand that they are one of the hardest to reopen within the combat side of it.

It doesn't just need to be kill quests. There can be scout quests that can be randomly generated and given to clans. Range them to relatively easy (ride to Redstorm and back, give a report of goings-on) to hard (scout the far reaches of the mantis valley) to impossible (scale the mountains of madness and brave the horrors within). Obviously scale reward to difficulty.

All staff would need to do here is give the quest, come up with a semi-plausable ic reason for the quest and then fork out the reward once it's complete. This isn't too far off from what the byn do already afik.

That wouldn't be too difficult to do as I think on it.

Use it as a variable model for other types of quests.

Bounty hunts:
Travel to a location to kill a band of raiders. Bonus if the leader is captured alive.

All staff need to do is populate the bandit camp.

Treasure hunts:
Search one of several locations for a hidden stash. Secrecy is extra important for this one. You don't want any competitors finding it before your do. And if by chance a random grebber finds it first, they can turn it in for their own reward or keep it.

Staff will need to be a bit more active for this. Giving clues about the location in return for bribes or favors.

Prospecting:
Seeking rare materials. Self explanatory.

[Marauder Moe]

Dislcaimer: I've only skimmed this thread because it exploded quickly.

Re: Tor - Maybe house Tor should almot never hire aides, and every Scorpion helps fulfill that function in addition to combat duties.

For everything else, I think Tuluk was on to some good ideas in the year or so before getting closed.
*Public or semi-public sparring areas.  Let clans and maybe independents have a good place to get together and trade lessons (or settle grudges) without the risk or silliness of going out to the desert.  Maybe non-clanned people can get in for a periodic fee.  Will there be some players that abuse it?  Probably, but I think dealing with them on a case by case basis is worth it for the benefit of keeping combat characters occupied and employable.
*True militia.  Non-professional soldiers that get some training (and maybe pay or gear) in exchange for service to the city in times of need.
*True mercenaries.  Clans going out the gates should drop by the Gaj and to try and pick up a few willing bodies to pad their numbers.  Even the Byn could sub-contract independent fighters to fill out their numbers on a mission.

[Jingo]

Dislcaimer: I've only skimmed this thread because it exploded quickly.

Re: Tor - Maybe house Tor should almot never hire aides, and every Scorpion helps fulfill that function in addition to combat duties.

For everything else, I think Tuluk was on to some good ideas in the year or so before getting closed.
*Public or semi-public sparring areas.  Let clans and maybe independents have a good place to get together and trade lessons (or settle grudges) without the risk or silliness of going out to the desert.  Maybe non-clanned people can get in for a periodic fee.  Will there be some players that abuse it?  Probably, but I think dealing with them on a case by case basis is worth it for the benefit of keeping combat characters occupied and employable.
*True militia.  Non-professional soldiers that get some training (and maybe pay or gear) in exchange for service to the city in times of need.
*True mercenaries.  Clans going out the gates should drop by the Gaj and to try and pick up a few willing bodies to pad their numbers.  Even the Byn could sub-contract independent fighters to fill out their numbers on a mission.

Something something Tuluki Arena *grumble*

The only way I would support Tor coming back into the game is they were functionally the same as every other mercenary group. A noble-sanctioned mercenary group (that does not call itself a mercenary group, because noble) that operates on political favor more so than cash collections.

[Jingo]

Here is a question. If we get a robust mercenary economy that can handle all the combat roles outside the city, where does that put the AoD?

As far as I can tell. City militia have four functions outside HRPT's.

1) Patrol around the city.
2) Assist templars with law enforcement.
3) Bodyguard templars.
4) Screen characters who are crime-code eligible through the phases of their career. (I.E. Only Sergeants and above are able to order NPC soldiers around. Privates are crime-code immune.)

If 1 can be outsourced to mercenary contracts. Why can't Templars just deputize commoners for roles 2-4 and make the city's military force virtual?

[Ath]

Dislcaimer: I've only skimmed this thread because it exploded quickly.

Re: Tor - Maybe house Tor should almot never hire aides, and every Scorpion helps fulfill that function in addition to combat duties.

For everything else, I think Tuluk was on to some good ideas in the year or so before getting closed.
*Public or semi-public sparring areas.  Let clans and maybe independents have a good place to get together and trade lessons (or settle grudges) without the risk or silliness of going out to the desert.  Maybe non-clanned people can get in for a periodic fee.  Will there be some players that abuse it?  Probably, but I think dealing with them on a case by case basis is worth it for the benefit of keeping combat characters occupied and employable.
*True militia.  Non-professional soldiers that get some training (and maybe pay or gear) in exchange for service to the city in times of need.
*True mercenaries.  Clans going out the gates should drop by the Gaj and to try and pick up a few willing bodies to pad their numbers.  Even the Byn could sub-contract independent fighters to fill out their numbers on a mission.

The Tor idea is a good one, a good Scorpion could be an Aide for Tor... that is very true.  A Tor family member would probably have a well disciplined scorpion at their side.  This is actually what typically happened with Senior Silver Scorpions, they would move onto being Aides for some of the higher ranking Family members.

I like the Merc idea... I honestly don't see why they cannot do that already.  There isn't anything against it in the docs.  Hey, we need some cannon-fodder to help with a mission.  I'll give you "blah".

Public/Semi-public sparring areas - *sigh*  I like the idea... but difficult to control.  They quickly turned into (I'm being blunt) twink sparring grounds.  Basically all you see using it is people sparring for days at a time.  Now, I mean... if you wanted something like this and we had OOC guidelines where if you abuse it, you will get smacked...  it's plausible, but most would figure you all would think we're being heavy handed.

[Riev]

can public sparring grounds be crime-coded during certain hours? For example, if you're still in the building after dusk, they'll lock the gates. If someone comes by and you're still in there (someone being city soldiers) then they can arrest you? Or if you're sparring in there late at night, you're automatically coded and arrested as soon as a morning patrol comes by?

[John]

Here's a crazy idea, but hear me out: Open up gith as a karma required race that anyone can play. Don't put out an open role call. Treat it exactly the same as the desert elves. Put enough info to create a basic gith background and let players roll up gith (potentially limiting magicker roles as per elves and tribal humans).

At the moment people seem genuinely afraid and wary of the Tablelands due to a desert elf tribe(s) currently operating out of there. Introduce the gith and you suddenly have 3-4 groups at play in the Tablelands: Gith, a particular Desert Elf Tribe, Outsiders (and Kurac). Immediately the gith would present an antagonistic force against the desert elf tribe, but one they could potentially overcome buy themselves. It could cause the desert elves to start brokering deals with outsiders and/or Kurac. However if the gith were given enough leeway to also broker deals, then outsiders could be used as mercenaries in a stand off between the two groups. Furthermore if Kurac has any smarts, they'll realise that either party wiping out the other would be bad for Kurac so that may put them at odds with both desert elves and gith.

This solves the problem of the PCs of an antagonist group getting wiped out (desert elves and gith are born, not hired, so there can always be more). Players from Allanak seem to regularly travel to the Tablelands which will involve them in the conflict. It's PC driven and self-maintains. Finally if one group gets a significant upper hand, the conflict can come to a satisfying conclusion. Imagine playing a tribe of desert elves (or gith) driven from their homeland. What changes would that bring to their culture? How would they adapt? Or would they simply die out?