Subsistence level work for courtesans, whores and the like?

[Eyeball]

There are coded means for characters to try to support themselves through crafting, or just plain low-level physical labor.

Can one of you come up with an equivalent in-game mechanism for someone trying to role play a strumpet or whatever a way to fill in the dry spells?

Maybe if one hangs out in a certain place long enough (a public bawdy house), some less than appealing NPC will come up and proposition for a small number of coins? Something like that. The PC could tell that character "yes" to accept. Maybe with a few outcomes (e.g. low chance that the PC will be beaten up or robbed).

The reason I bring this up is that I witnessed what I believe was someone's final disenchantment with the game today. The character was lively and well-played and deserved some attention, but sometimes the other PCs aren't in position to deliver. So the result was discouragement and finally just cutting link. After a final attempt to converse with my character, which actually makes me feel kind of bad. Maybe if that character had a means of low level support, it wouldn't have happened.

[Malken]

Just forage for clay but pretend that every glob of clay is a satisfied client.

[evilcabbage]

people need to be more self-sufficient and take up another craft to keep them going while they work on building the clientele to actually be a whore.

[Narf]

people need to be more self-sufficient and take up another craft to keep them going while they work on building the clientele to actually be a whore.

Currently, yes.

Might not take much to give the other sorts of labors a bit more verisimilitude in game.

[Cind]

I haven't read the jobs helpfile lately, but perhaps if that helpfile were explicit about which jobs have coded support for, and which would need the help of other players, and then which would need the help of players, staff and powerful players.

I say this because this reminds me of a few years back, before gladiator pcs were a thing, when a newbie dwarf was chatting excitedly in the Gaj about hoping to become a gladiator. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to break his heart.

Being that explicit in the helpfile would have helped me, as I have the most unstable playtimes known to man and need income that I don't have to depend on seeing someone regularly for. I suppose one could always roll 'a waittress' with the merchant guild and slowly spend money on cheap food and pretend to work until they're forced to consider real options.

[Nao]

More shitty food options might help - maybe have the grocer and other NPCs sell some spoiled/lightly spoiled food at a large discount.

I have also noticed that some newbies seem to think that food has to be bought from taverns, and run out of money quickly because of that. I think it's in the documentation somewhere that cheaper food is available elsewhere, but I'm not sure where and how easily it is for a newbie to come across that.

[Veselka]

Seen other games have 'profession tokens' you can turn into a quartermaster for a pittance of coin, if PCs don't cover you economically, but you're filling a RP niche of the game.

So you could have:
-A brothel in Allanak, with a few NPCs akin to the Pleasure Den in Luirs. Prostitutes could semi-operate out of here, at least RP wise.
-An NPC Host/Hostess that is your quartermaster (new clan, PCs individually recruited into the clan if they either work for Kurac in Luirs, or at the brothel in Allanak).
-You can ask for pay every month or so, like any other sort of employee in a clan. It pays like 100 coins. Considered to be virtual whoring.

[evilcabbage]

or... get a job with kurac... as a whore.

[chrisdcoulombe]

I think its a legitimate argument.  Give prostitution a place.  I think there should be more in city jobs for new players in general.  It shouldn't be enough, but it should help.

[Veselka]

or... get a job with kurac... as a whore.

More that if you want to RP/play a whore and fill that RP niche, surviving off the PC economy is a dicey proposition at best. Almost every other profession in the game has some sort of NPC involvement/automation, considering selling your crafts to NPCs, grebbing locations, and so on. I imagine it's a tough role to play, not that having a tough role is a bad thing.

[Riev]

Set up a skanky brothel, forage for artifacts. As you forage, you find genitalia tokens. Turn in 100 genitalia tokens for a day's pay.

[nauta]

I personally don't like the automated jobs, but having sat on #help on the discord, it is a common theme from newer players, especially off-peak players: what jobs can I do?  I can see how some people just love that aspect of the game -- it explains why farmville and the like are so popular.

What sort of further jobs could we brainstorm up?  I can't imagine implementing them will be that fun (you'll have to balance things out, etc.), but maybe we can get some ideas rolling.  Here's the list of the current jobs (help jobs: http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Jobs):
Clay Digging   
Cotton Picking (hahah)   
Dung Scraping   
Logging
Mining   
Salt Gathering   
Spice Sifting

We might narrow our brainstorm to automated jobs that a city-based character would engage in.  From the list above, this is just 'dung scraping'.

The only practical suggestion I see from above is prostitution, which I just don't see how automated prostitution could be implemented.

Another thought: If it is just a matter of having enough 'money' to support yourself as a flavor independent city-based PC, I think it might be neat to have a subclass called 'Wealth' which would give you a monthly income -- be it from family or perhaps a small virtual business (e.g., a little cheese stall or something).

[Veselka]

I personally don't like the automated jobs, but having sat on #help on the discord, it is a common theme from newer players, especially off-peak players: what jobs can I do?  I can see how some people just love that aspect of the game -- it explains why farmville and the like are so popular.

What sort of further jobs could we brainstorm up?  I can't imagine implementing them will be that fun (you'll have to balance things out, etc.), but maybe we can get some ideas rolling.  Here's the list of the current jobs (help jobs: http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Jobs):
Clay Digging   
Cotton Picking (hahah)   
Dung Scraping   
Logging
Mining   
Salt Gathering   
Spice Sifting

We might narrow our brainstorm to automated jobs that a city-based character would engage in.  From the list above, this is just 'dung scraping'.

The only practical suggestion I see from above is prostitution, which I just don't see how automated prostitution could be implemented.

Another thought: If it is just a matter of having enough 'money' to support yourself as a flavor independent city-based PC, I think it might be neat to have a subclass called 'Wealth' which would give you a monthly income -- be it from family or perhaps a small virtual business (e.g., a little cheese stall or something).

I like that idea. The subguild could generally cover those flavor jobs (and state so in the helpfile) wherein income is reliant on PC interaction and participation. I've just seen prostitute/whore PCs give up pretty quickly, because no one in their given realm of play is interested in pursuing sexual plots, but they're still fun to have around and bring a side of the game to life that would otherwise be virtual.

[Riev]

Kurac is the best known house for pleasures of the flesh. They have a place in Luir's designed around the RP of it.
Most of the jobs in game are backed by some other house (Jal for salt, etc).

What if there was a single room whore-house in Allanak, like the one in Luir's, where:

You check in, and receive a token (like a tailor ticket)
If you leave the room for any reason, you must give up the token.
If you stay in the room for <x> amount of time (hour based, up to a four hour work day), you can turn in that ticket for 20 coins per hour worked.
If you leave without turning in the ticket, you get nothing.

Technically, you wouldn't have to emote, or do anything to earn the passive income. 80coins a day is a lot, and the numbers could be altered, but it would be a start. Make it a semi-public place so people can see if PC whores are using it, and they can be contacted for favors outside the whorehouse.

[ShaLeah]

First I'm gonna say that courtesans are NOT whores and should not be thought of as them. This requires a rich ass motherfucker/Noble/Templar to pay to take care of this person's needs and wants IN EXCHANGE for being his/her sex toy/arm candy/trophy. We do not NEARLY see this portrayed enough. Come on nobles, get you a concubine!

Re: Whoring?
I've played two bonafide prostitutes in my tenure at Arm. My first ended up having to join Salarr cause she didn't make enough money with her sugar daddy to be kept. The other did quite well.  Cabbage is right, Kurac hires whore (they even have a den!) but the clan does NOT have a whore rank, they have 'hostesses' who might whore and that was told to me by staff. We need a clan to support this. It's one of the things I've wanted to change in the gameworld because until there's a clan for it there doesn't seem to be a player supported mindset.

I think its a legitimate argument.  Give prostitution a place.  I think there should be more in city jobs for new players in general.  It shouldn't be enough, but it should help.

or... get a job with kurac... as a whore.

Please do NOT automate shit. Before you know it you'll have 45 'whores' who do NOTHING. This is Zalanthas where the story matters and part of that story is struggle. 

[Grapes]

I played a whore once, it was sucessful, unsure why, I faded mostly. I don't see how you fail at whoring but, let's not finish that thought.

[satine]

I'm with grapes on this one, having played a prostitute in the past.

One issue may be that at this time no one want's to pay for that, but seriously now... people should certainly hit up the ic prostitutes. Even if you fade, many residents in nak would be doing it.

[James de Monet]

It's not just whores.  Any service-type job requires one to depend on the population for income: caravan guard, server, fortune teller, hairdresser, street sweeper.  A lot of these jobs add cool flavor to the game, but are hard to start, absolutely, and frequently hard to maintain based on PC commerce alone. I can definitely see a niche in the game that could be made more playable by some code love.

I can see a couple ways one could approach this.

• As someone already pointed out, you could create a new category of forage for jobs.  Like forage (customers).  This could give you either small amounts of coin or food/water items.  The problem with forage is its spammy, the echoes won't really line up with the IC reality, and it's hard to regulate for realism.  It would also pull these players away from social interaction with PCs, which is really the end goal.
• You could borrow from the crafting code.  If all laborers were required to have a license (like a merchant's token), you could make that item craftable, but so that it would never be destroyed in the crafting process.  Then, they could simply 'craft token into poor.customer' and, if successful, they would receive rewards, as above.  The problem again here, is that it's spammy.  I think this one could be made to work really well if someone wanted to go to the trouble of making it so A) there was never a begin craft message, only a message like "~me leaves with a poor-looking customer for a while before returning." on success and B) I'd like to see it make the ldesc message said "~me is here [working] as a server" instead, as it would clarify things, and possibly invite more interaction and commerce with other PCs.
• Possibly the easiest way to do this would be to have a clan that paid laborers, like if the city managed all such persons, and paid them a portion of their earnings.  So, they would be OOCly required to stand around RPing in a place appropriate for their job, but could then pick up a weekly stipend for the coin they earned virtually while logged out for their city pimp/overseer/etc.  You would have to limit it to people not in other clans, and it would be truly awesome if their pay varied a little, like say 50–150 coins per RL week, to simulate the feast or famine nature of freelance service work.

[Refugee]

I agree that something is needed.  I like JDM's last idea a lot.

[Lizzie]

Yes, how do we take something that typically involves the MOST roleplay (mudsex for game-coins), and completely eliminate all roleplay from it?

No thanks.

By eliminate all RP from it I mean eliminate even the possibility of fading. With y'know - other people. No robberies, no assassinations, you don't even know who your virtual partner is - what he looks like, whether she's an elf or a rinthi human, if you fail, do you lose all your belongings to a virtual thief? Or if you critically fail do they kill you?

[Kialae]

"You haven't fucked enough men, friend."

[Grapes]

I mean, I do see things and go, "What? Why not?" JDM's post is spot on about potentlial  solutions, but codedly, there really aren't any, and the logistics of the job kind of make it nigh impossible given the environment.

Questions whores must ask themselves... how much should I charge? Is that enough to cover my IC time? What about nutrition spent during the act itself? Shoot, what about water? Considering each time you get paid in coins for services, how long might it be between customers?

And if you really study that, you'll see IC solutions are few and far between, beyond being an absolutely fantastic whore, you're not going to be able to codedly fead yourself no matter how much you charge. Some players will pay for a fade just because it makes sense for their characters, and others may want some ERP in exchange for their coins, this costs time, sometimes hours, and over time, days.

The thing with RPing a whore, I realized, much less anyone else trading a service, is to realize that the payout isn't a sort of if/then machine process. You engage in activities, you collect your coin, but hard as characters like to talk, you dig out a little space in their hearts and find a place to rest there. You got, eh, thirty sid? For how much effort? But like anyone bartering services, you know it's not about the payout, or the end result. If you are hungry, someone will be sure to feed you. If you need shelter, someone will give you that. Any need you can imagine can fulfilled with that arrangement, provided you don't look to hard at the results, because how much you charge is really just a courtesy, it's not, if I do X I get Y, it's if I do X I get Y and I get slid into some plotlines, I get free things because I impressed someone, I get to turn around and blackmail someone because of particular circumstances. Whores get a considerable windfall due to these exchanges of services in that they stimulate the release of oxytocin in another character.

If you're rping a whore and not seeing that, then something is off in the exchange. It's not a very easy IC job because a lot of people, if they're paying coin, don't want a faded scene, which means you'll have to RP out every detail, and get paid, something that won't cover the food you lost in the process, but again, it's about more than the initial exchange, and if you do a good job of it, expect to reap far more than your initial asking price. I hear the new guild system is making merchants more playable, as it originally was, Merchants without crafting subguilds didn't really start with enough skills that actually codedly made coin, so you had to get creative, and/or join a house, or die. What little I'm seeing of the new guilds being tested, from the outside, is they actually START with skills they can make money on.

[evilcabbage]

why should that transfer to a whore, though? you want money, there are tons of jobs you can do like foraging, joining a clan (KURAC, HELLO), things like that that will pay money until you can get yourself established enough where high-paying clientele will come in.

and like someone else said - play your cards right and things like food, water, and shelter won't even be a problem. somebody will be a rich sugar momma/papa for you.

but you want to be able to sit somewhere and "craft" pleasure? "forage" john's and jane's for money? no thank you. erp it, fade it, do whatever, but we have enough forage jobs already without adding more.

if you don't feel we have enough forage jobs, you aren't doing any of them.

[James de Monet]

Imagine if PC soldiers only got paid when they made an arrest, or if PC weaponcrafters only got paid when they sold to a PC.  This is the problem the service jobs face.  I don't want to virtualize their whole job, just enough of it so they can continue to play that role despite a low PC customer population.

Another way to look at it is to say, would you rather have a PC housecleaner out foraging salt to make ends meet, or would you rather have them able to sit in the tavern (where they might actually find non-virtual work), because they got paid enough to eat for some work they did virtually the night before?

[evilcabbage]

pc soldiers work for an organization that pays them a stipend. if you want to be a whore, there's an organization open to you that probably pays you a stipend.