Raider etiquette

[Eyeball]

I remember being a newbie on the North Road and getting instaganked by a raider because I had instarunned-away from him about ten minutes prior. I deserved that. When you're new, you don't really know Armageddon etiquette.

Apparently, the etiquette is that raiders are allowed to teleport from a "league" away to weapons-at-your-throat distance in one command, but running is considered to be poor role playing.

Realistically, especially in flat terrains, you should be able see them coming long before they reach you. It should be a contest of mounts if you choose to run. Or raiders should need to plan their ambushes better, like being hidden and springing out when your character rides in, like rolling out barricades in a constricted space before and behind, or having people positioned to intercept those who flee in the direction of flight.

Just riding in on someone and saying "ha, I got you" is pretty low effort. It might be more realistic if there was an archery version of the threaten command (can you threaten with a bow?).

EDIT: Admittedly, that implies there needs to be more coded support for raiders to be able to raid realistically.

[nauta]

My view on this is that it isn't poor RP to avoid a raiding scene through the use of coded skills, like flee and run.  However, while you might have 'won' in a coded sense, you definitely 'lost' in a non-coded sense, for you avoided a lot of the fun that might've come out of a scene.  (The same thing applies to a raider who rides up on someone and doesn't do anything but code: they might win that encounter, but they lost out on a fun raiding scene.)  In my view, the goal isn't to win or lose a raiding, but to just have a fun scene that re-enforces the setting of Zalanthas.

As to the code, to be sure a solitary raider should not expect to have the coded advantage -- ArmageddonMUD code favors the victim in straight toe-to-toe combat stuff.  You'll need to think creatively to successfully raid on a coded level: groups, hiding, use of the threaten and chase commands, ranged weapons, attacking mounts, knowledge of escape routes, etc. etc.

[roughneck]

The hunt skill is a raider's best friend.

Some of the must fun I've had playing raiders is the 20 minutes of tracking after the target has fled, or the 20 minutes of stalking six or seven rooms behind while you wait for your target to take a rest or fight a scrab. Or trying to escape on the converse side.

Eyeball has a point that it's not realistic that a raider can right up on you without you noticing, but it's also not realistic that your pc can take an arrow to the chest without any coded impact on movement or mobility.

On either side, it's just really really fun to engage with an intelligent, unpredictable opponent and play out all the ensuing drama. It's, very rightly, not fair. So, be a badass or travel in groups if you don't like it.

In terms of 'etiquette', I don't know if there is any, just varying levels of action and consequence

[chrisdcoulombe]

I wouldn't go so far as to say there is an exact etiquette to it.
If you want to bring code into a situation expect others to do the same.  A good Raiding scene is fun, but running away can be exhilarating as well.  How would your character handle the situation.

You are welcome to RP the situation however you wish.  With or without the use of code or a mix of both.  Its been my experience giving up a bag of coin is a lot better than dying, but maybe they are going to kill you anyway.  Or at least your character thinks that.

If its a one time thing and you don't normally hang in the area, running may be your best option, but if you work in the area you are being raided in, it might work better in your favor to pay your fine.  It also may not.  At some point though if you keep running from the same situation you are gonna take a poison arrow.  You running incites use of code and that is something that can stop you from running and likely will stop you from running ever again, at least as that character.

[Molten Heart]

.

[Krath]

As someone who has played many, many, many raiders over the years, I can tell you three things:

1. Most of the Players of the PCs here will give you, the raider, the benefit of the doubt if you come in RPing, instead of emote rushes in, guns blazing, flaming swords of death at victims throat.
2. I rarely have kill the people I am raiding, but have always gotten what I wanted from them.
3. There will always be those one or two asshole(s). They usually die fast.

[Riev]

In short:

Benefit goes to the Victim in every circumstance
Raiders, to be successful, need to take measures to ensure you don't run away.
Most Raiders will, honestly, just raid and not kill you. Or at the least, they'll offer you a scene.
You, as a victim, are free to flee and run away screaming. After this, the Raider is under no pretense that they have to emote with you or put RP effort the second time. The choice was made that you will run before engaging in conflict, so if the raider wants you dead, they'll take those advanced measures.


Raiders can shoot an arrow from a distance away as a threat, but the victim will not know its a threatening arrow as opposed to an attempted kill.
Raiders can threaten, in the room, to show that they're interested in the RP.
If you're in a place you shouldn't be? Lawless, someone else's territory, etc... there is no "reason" for you being dead besides that, and you aren't owed anything. Sometimes you'll find hardcore PK'ers that only use that reason, but they are truly in the minority.

[Miradus]

I've been a raider in and out of the city. Successful? I had fun. That's what matters.

Some people just run. That's fine. It's frustrating, but the RP scene I am going to give them is a boot in the face and the loss of anything valuable, so I don't blame them for running. Not everyone wants to play out your vicious raider fantasy as a victim.

But the reality is, Arm's world is too small. You're a grebber based in Allanak? You're going to see and be seen by those raiders you ran from again. Unless you want to take up shit shoveling. Nobody gets raided while shoveling shit, I'm pretty sure.

The game sucks without risk of death. Seriously. The RP here is not significantly better than other games, no matter what we tell ourselves or post on TMC. The world is too small. The code is good, but there's other games which have either better crafting or better combat code (though oddly enough, not both at the same time).

What Arm has going for it that keeps me engaged is enough players to guarantee some interaction, and permadeath to add weight to the IC. No consequences, no risk? No story.

So we can bitch about raiders like the Crimson Wind, or we can remember that if it weren't for them, you'd be just mindlessly grebbing up rocks to sell to NPC vendors to get enough money to bribe the templar when they show up to force you to bow.

#SendAmonKudos

[chrisdcoulombe]

#SendAmonKudos

[sleepyhead]

It would be nice if raiders had the luxury of walking into your square and then painstakingly emoting riding up to your position over the course of 30 seconds, but in reality almost everyone would run away, and almost everyone would get away. And if you're already being chased, you'll never have to worry about being caught up with if the other person has to wait to catch up to whatever position in the square you believe you should be considered to occupy.

This game is divided into a grid of "rooms." I mean, it's not really realistic that I'm either totally safe in one room or plummeting into a hole in the next, and that I'm unable to stand over the edge and shoot down into the pit because I'm either in a "fall room" or I'm not, but that's the way it works. I'm not saying that silly gamey coded realities like that justify being a total twink about it, but the truth is that as long as 80% of people run away instantly with zero RP upon encountering raiders, it's fair for the raiders to do what they can to at least try to get a scene in, given the way travel in the game works.

[nauta]

It would be nice if raiders had the luxury of walking into your square and then painstakingly emoting riding up to your position over the course of 30 seconds, but in reality almost everyone would run away, and almost everyone would get away. And if you're already being chased, you'll never have to worry about being caught up with if the other person has to wait to catch up to whatever position in the square you believe you should be considered to occupy.

This game is divided into a grid of "rooms." I mean, it's not really realistic that I'm either totally safe in one room or plummeting into a hole in the next, and that I'm unable to stand over the edge and shoot down into the pit because I'm either in a "fall room" or I'm not, but that's the way it works. I'm not saying that silly gamey coded realities like that justify being a total twink about it, but the truth is that as long as 80% of people run away instantly with zero RP upon encountering raiders, it's fair for the raiders to do what they can to at least try to get a scene in, given the way travel in the game works.

Did you know that the original author of ArmageddonMUD, Jhalavar, was toying with the idea of a 'room'-less MUD?

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.mud.admin/3kBQ3ngYIa0/TXnA1TlzueYJ

(Also, hahah, that porcine black-robed templar in his toy example there.)

Anyway, it's all true about working with what you have.  I do want to quibble with the statistics there though -- 80% seems rather high.  I played a raider a couple years back and did my stats.  Out of 12 raids only 2 people just up and fled.  Most were more than happy to stick around and RP.  And those that didn't just lost out on a fun scene, no harm no foul.  It's realistic to run off too.

One thing that REALLY helps though is to use a command emote on the direction command to set the stage:

Code Select Expand


west (kicking up sand, weapons drawn)

There's this awkward moment when someone arrives on your square, where you have to negotiate that unsaid tension between code and RP: should you go to code, or should you stick it out and establish a scene?  Will the other person just go to code if I work on this emote?  And so on.  The smallest things will signal to the other player that you are, indeed, not in it to win it, but in it to tell a fun story.

In general, though, you'll be a lot less frustrated as a raider if you give folks the benefit of the doubt.  (This is true of pretty much any criminal class.)

[Miradus]

In general, though, you'll be a lot less frustrated as a raider if you give folks the benefit of the doubt.  (This is true of pretty much any criminal class.)

What I found is that most don't run, but a few run EVERY TIME. And it takes usually a week or two before you get them. But you do eventually get them. Or a spider does. I had one guy run from me and go straight over the edge of the cliff wall.

Most of the time the people you're raiding in the south are going to be about 7 rooms to safety. So the expectation is that they're going to get away more than they don't. It's rare you come across the guy who has exhausted his beetle or is on foot or in a room you can block the exits.

My goal was not really to kill people, whether I was doing it as a Guild thug or a sand raider, but to bring the THREAT of death to people who otherwise wouldn't be facing it. Sapping people on Caravan Road at night, or riding down on them fast outside the east gate .. all the same. A failed raid or a failed sap isn't a failure. The other players know there is someone out there willing to cause mayhem and it enhances the game.

That's a win.

[Eyeball]

Just a note: I didn't post this as any sort of castigation of raiders, past or present. Just what I perceived as the notion that running from a raider scene is considered bad etiquette. Also that I'd like to see the code enhanced so that raiding isn't so binary.

[Miradus]

Just a note: I didn't post this as any sort of castigation of raiders, past or present. Just what I perceived as the notion that running from a raider scene is considered bad etiquette. Also that I'd like to see the code enhanced so that raiding isn't so binary.

No, of course. I didn't see you or actually anyone else in this thread as that. I'm actually just speaking to an older argument that's played out before.

To specifically address your etiquette point though ... There's some roleplay I don't want and I will avoid. Having all my shit stolen and forced to lick someone's boot? Yeah. I'll avoid that if I can, whether it's going to happen in the sands or the Allanaki jail.

It's not BAD etiquette to run from a raider at all. Even if you do it with no RP. I give you the benefit of the doubt that if you run from me with no RP you're going to go back to the Gaj and RP your heart out about your narrow escape. And me and my raider pals are going to RP our hearts out about how angry we are you got away. Our actions have resulted in a net increase in RP. Probably more so than leaving yet another body in the sand.

Run if you want to, but remember that ... in order to have "sand cred", raiders do have to kill SOMEONE occasionally. And the most likely person they're going to kill is the guy who has ran from them every time.

[sleepyhead]

Sorry, my response seemed rather bitchy. I wasn't complaining at anyone here, just remembering how it so often goes when you're a raider, unfortunately.

[Veselka]

Threaten should help with this, no?

[Namino]

Threaten should help with this, no?

Not strictly speaking no. Threaten is less effective in every way than just typing kill from the raider's perspective. What threaten does is tell your victim that you WANT to RP if they do. If your victim was always planning to sprint off the second danger occurs regardless of if you wanted to RP or not, then threaten is actually worse in every respect than kill. Threaten is more of a boon to victims than to the raiders using it.

I think this whole debate could be put to rest with some code tweaks that makes flat out spam walking away from people less of a hard counter against raiding and PvP in general. I don't know what implementation I'd like to see, but if as of right now, if a raider rides into your room and you just type run,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e you're going to make it to safety long before they clear their delay long enough to put an offensive move into you. They might be able to pull up and take a single bow shot at you before you're out of range, but unless  they get extremely lucky with one of the nastier poisons (and arrows already have a low delivery rate) then they'll only injure you, never kill you.

If running away wasn't so assured as a hard counter, having a raider walk into the room with you would actually be an event that requires some weighing of consequences.

[Miradus]

Meh. It's not a PK mud, despite the number of PK's committed. I'm not in favor of making it too much easier to pk people.

I get far richer walking past dead newbies between the Span and Luir's north gate than I ever did raiding. But it's less fun.

[Feco]

Meh.  It's usually more fun to have some drawn out play with raiding, but sometimes things get codey and bloody.  Especially if the raider or the victim are under some sort of threat or stress.

The bummer is that both parties aren't always privy to what's going on with each other prior to or during the "raid," so sometimes it might look like an insta-gank.  I think real, random insta-ganks are rare.

[Cind]

I don't think I've ever been killed by a raider after that initial encounter, simply because A) I wasn't trespassing and B) I've played it cool, such as sheathing my weapon and handing over my pack.

However... there was one time...

Code Select Expand

>You're in the Flats.
Yes, 'flats.' Not 'salt flats.' Just 'flats.' You're a southerner and all that.

>A hooded figure arrives from the north.

The hooded figure shouts, in northern-accented sirihish,
"Die, Southie!"

The hooded figure instantly runs at you, only having paused to type these two lines, screaming bloody murder.

>run;w;w;w;w;w;w

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't expect to live without putting effort into it just because the majority of people do, and maybe if they act in this sort of way you should totally try to run.

[roughneck]

The bummer is that both parties aren't always privy to what's going on with each other prior to or during the "raid," so sometimes it might look like an insta-gank.  I think real, random insta-ganks are rare.

When possible, it's nice to be able to go on a villainous rant, explaining to your victim exactly why you are doing what you're doing, but totally immobilizing an opponent is even harder than killing them.

Fortunately, Staff watch PvP situations very closely in my experience, and follow up on even the appearance of twinkishness or gratuitous pk.

[Feco]

Yeah, I'm just saying give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

[Wday]

From time I have return to game I have seen raiders barely emote and talk. But thats fine and dandy just don't fuss when the victim doesn't RP and run like hell. And noticed raiding means kill the targets which is rough cause mostly seen it be new characters.

[Armaddict]

Apparently, the etiquette is that raiders are allowed to teleport from a "league" away to weapons-at-your-throat distance in one command, but running is considered to be poor role playing.

The only relevant part of the thread, really.  No, it's not poor etiquette to run, just like it's not poor etiquette to run in and try to kill someone for their boots.

The rest of the critical 'strive to meet my standards roleplaying scrub' is hobknobbery at best.  Do what your character would do, nothing more, nothing less.  Emote if you, the player, want to.  If your character would look for ways to avoid violence, cool, a scene can build.  If they want nothing more than a corpse left in the sands so they can pick it clean, attack away.

On the receiving end, if your character would rather plead than make a mad dash in an unfamiliar area without a mount, plead.  If they think they can hide, run and hide.  If they just start handing over things to appease them, hand things over and then go back and talk about the fucking terrible battle that ensued that this cheap motherfuckin' raider got the upper hand in by kicking dirt in your face.  Who cares.

Again, expansion of scenes can be nice, but it's in no way 'fundamental' to roleplay.  Roleplay is playing the role; do as character does.  Forget the rest of this for both sides.

[Feco]

From time I have return to game I have seen raiders barely emote and talk. But thats fine and dandy just don't fuss when the victim doesn't RP and run like hell. And noticed raiding means kill the targets which is rough cause mostly seen it be new characters.

This isn't my experience.  Generally.

[Miradus]

I've had it happen, but rarely, and it wasn't raiders who were part of an organized outfit, but just random opportunists who saw and recognized a newbie.

As a good rule of thumb, if you can't ride without falling off, try and stay away from other people out in the sand.

[Fernandezj]

I barely see people emote outside of taverns, so Im not sure why raiding would be any different.

[solera]

As someone who has played many, many, many raiders over the years, I can tell you three things:

You're back???!!!! 

[perfecto]

As someone who has played many, many, many raiders over the years, I can tell you three things:

You're back???!!!! 

Ohhh Krath!   

[Large Hero]

I barely see people emote outside of taverns, so Im not sure why raiding would be any different.

This isn't my experience at all. Many people emote often and well. Some players emote less than others do. In my experience, players sometimes tend to emote more when they're around frequent emoters. Maybe be cooler and people will be cool around you.

[Miradus]

Most of my emotes are on aliases.

Flair1 (em skillfully probes the inside of his nose with a dirty finger)
Flair2 (em scratches his crotch)
etc.

An important part of each character is that first few hours where I'm rebuilding those lists and making the character come alive.

I have a set for fighting, a set for flair, a set for post-combat, etc.

[Grapes]

Most of my emotes are on aliases.

Flair1 (em skillfully probes the inside of his nose with a dirty finger)
Flair2 (em scratches his crotch)
etc.

An important part of each character is that first few hours where I'm rebuilding those lists and making the character come alive.

I have a set for fighting, a set for flair, a set for post-combat, etc.

Hey, that's a pretty cool idea, I'll have to try that sometime.

[gotdamnmiracle]

I'd argue that a good raider is patient and a great raider needn't be. Honestly, some of the most brutal raiding experiences were the ones I walked up on because I was trusting someone unduly in a desert where in addition to raiders there's rogue witches, mind worms, slavers, gith, and anakore (which at a distance could look like a person, apparently). I think etiquette only becomes very thin  when you ride up, wordlessly, and try to murder the victim for doing something innocent like grebbing or hunting as opposed to using magick, etc.

[RogueGunslinger]

Best raider experience I've had recently was getting knocked off my mount by a thrown weapon out of nowhere. The raid then proceeded with me sitting on my ass absolutely unable to run before they could finish me off.

I think raiders need more coded options to keep you from easily being able to flee like this than any sort of etiquette. This was before threaten was even a thing.

I say this because before that occurrence I had perfect success avoiding raiders by simply walking away.

[Inks]

I have had great success using chase and then rping to avoid victims just spamming towards the gates without danger.

You have every right to attempt to use code to escape, as does the raider to outright attempt to kill you if you do.

Threaten is awesome and conducive to rp as well.

[Feco]

Yeah, threaten and chase are amazing additions.  Threaten in particular.

[Miradus]

I like threaten but I think there's still a lot of confusion as to what actions will trigger it and what won't.

I threaten a guy, he complies, but stands up to open his pack ... BAM. I attack him.

For that reason alone I started not using it. As a raider, it wasn't important to me to actually rob someone. It was only important to have them know they COULD end up being robbed. If they got away then they got away. Particularly when I didn't want to fill out another PK report. I am almost 1 for 1 on kudos from people I killed, yet regularly get negative feedback from staff regarding those same kills. (There's a disconnect in what staff wants in a game, and wants from players. But that's not raider related.)

[chrisdcoulombe]

Its been my experience that killing is welcomed, just they like to know about it.  Preferably before if its possible.

[Grapes]

Yeah, nobody likes a simple *ding*, it's the thrill of the chase, not the conclusion, sometimes, to facilitate that you sacrifice the element of surprise, sometimes, you draw it out, sometimes, REALLY far.

[Rogerthat]

I think If you've ran once from a raider if they come in the next time and pop you and that's it, I agree. Don't run from raiders, they will RP (most of the time).

[Grapes]

I've never run from raiders, that doesn't mean they won't leave you crawling after they fuck you up, if you're lucky...

[valeria]

One person's opinion:

Run or don't run, whatever your character would do. Trust the raider's character to respond however they would respond, as a character. If you submit and are killed anyway? Trust that the raider had some reason!

This game is a lot more fun when you just play your character and assume that other people are playing theirs.