Gicker Shame is Lame if it Doesn't Stay In-Game

[Ghaati111]

You don't know people are shaming you OOCly for playing a magicker if you don't talk to people OOCly.

Pretty sure they're referring to threads and posts that have been started and continued right here on the GDB.

[TheWanderer]

Fuck. I love shaming players of all categories: warriors, merchants, assassins, magickers, burglars, pickpockets, psions, sorcerers, nobles, templars, tribals, elves, half-giants, dwarves, muls. 

Lemme confirm this for them without having to converse OOC.

You should feel ashamed for playing a magicker, you repulsive snowflakes. You're using magick to replace a lack of interesting qualities in your writing with the crutch of fantastical qualities to seem slightly less boring than you are. You magickers are the equivalent of people who dye their hair blue in real life! Your ideal storytelling is the reason Game of Thrones lost all nuance and devolved into dragons versus ice zombies. God, I'd beat you with a shame stick every single day if I could.

If we don't come together and shame them as a collective, we'll never stop the disease.

Edit: Whoops. Almost forgot those dumb fucking rangers.

[stoicreader]

It's shameful to play a weird text-based roleplay game. Magicker shame... it's not any better.

[Dar]

Personally. Between an initiative to get staff to return karma reviews and some kind of structured ways of encouraging new playeras and an initiative of changing magick, or anything of that fashion, I would personally dedicate my outrage and peer pressure influence into the karma review stuff.  All these gicker guilds, gicker subguilds and so on, can come later.

[Akaramu]

Personally. Between an initiative to get staff to return karma reviews and some kind of structured ways of encouraging new playeras and an initiative of changing magick, or anything of that fashion, I would personally dedicate my outrage and peer pressure influence into the karma review stuff.  All these gicker guilds, gicker subguilds and so on, can come later.

Karma isn't all that useful without gickers that are worth playing (to me at least).

[lostinspace]

Personally. Between an initiative to get staff to return karma reviews and some kind of structured ways of encouraging new playeras and an initiative of changing magick, or anything of that fashion, I would personally dedicate my outrage and peer pressure influence into the karma review stuff.  All these gicker guilds, gicker subguilds and so on, can come later.

Karma isn't all that useful without gickers that are worth playing (to me at least).

That's really what I want karma for as well, that and the occasional extended subguild, which I feel should be baseline anyhow.

[sleepyhead]

Add 1 more karma level (4 total) and start everyone with 1 karma. You still have to spend it to buy extended subs, but everyone gets access.

[stoicreader]

I'm in favor for magick to be random. Like you log on your character on an account that's algorithmically aged and are offered,

"This character had the misfortune of being cursed by the magical element of Whira, aspect of tempest. You can choose not to manifest these powers in game and just ignore it. But your character knows something is wrong with them."

Do this once every 50 character applications or do a roll 1 out of 50 or 25 or something.

[Riev]

I'm in favor for magick to be random. Like you log on your character on an account that's algorithmically aged and are offered,

"This character had the misfortune of being cursed by the magical element of Whira, aspect of tempest. You can choose not to manifest these powers in game and just ignore it. But your character knows something is wrong with them."

Do this once every 50 character applications or do a roll 1 out of 50 or 25 or something.

Its been discussed before, and shot down a lot. If I don't want to play a magick character, don't make me play one. I don't care if its "random", this is the character I want to play, in a crazy made up world. A system in which sometimes random shit happens to you is some sort of roguelike indie game and I don't want it.

Also, if you shift karma +1, so everyone has 1 karma, why not just shift karma DOWN one and say that people with 0 karma can apply for <x> instead?

Also, Karma is almost exclusively to play an unbalanced class. You're not playing "a cool dude with fireballs but also its balanced against your mundane warrior". Its "You have the staff trust to roleplay a fireball dude APPROPRIATELY, because fireballs are summoning fire where there is no fire and its unbalanced for a 0-karma PC". That's why you get karma. To play the unbalanced roles and flavor their destructive power with the weaknesses of your personality flaws.

Lets not pretend we're getting karma to be staff pets or make them happy. Its so that we can play something OP without having to ask permission first.

[LucildaHunta]

I always liked you Riev.

[valeria]

I think it's silly to shame people for what they like to play. I personally can't keep a gicker alive and interesting to save my life, but I've played around some very stellar ones.

I do wish full magic guilds were brought back for those who want to play them. The only things I don't miss are drovian super spies. There is a lot more seedy underbelly able to go on these days, or at least so it feels from my experience.

[sleepyhead]

Also, if you shift karma +1, so everyone has 1 karma, why not just shift karma DOWN one and say that people with 0 karma can apply for <x> instead?

Because it will still have to regenerate, so if the idea is to have a mix of extended and non-extended subs, it'd still be achieved. Touched would become 2 karma.

[MarshallDFX]

Confusion about class balance and game balance abounds... If you don't want game.balance you really are treating it like your playground

[Armaddict]

I wouldn't say that.

I've been okay with mages being far more powerful than mundanes for a long time.  I'm still okay with it.  The idea of 'class balance' moves things away from RPG and into other avenues, and that's odd for me to be one to say since I'm more deeply invested in PvP as INTEGRAL to the game of armageddon.  Not just helpful.  Completely necessary.

The only part where I've gotten irritated is when the game itself begins pushing into magickal superiority, i.e. Public revulsion doesn't matter, templars ignore it because mages are powerful and useful, or nobles all have the secret wish to find out more about magick, or mages are pushing all the time to be made more involved in all clans, and so on and so forth.

The balance for them has always been the social balance.  Whenever I see people trying to 'nerf' that portion of the balance without some significant tradeoff, I do indeed shame them for wanting to play a mage without wanting to play a mage -in the game of armageddon-.

[number13]

In an inherently social game, it's perhaps a mistake to make a popular archetype into a social pariah.

I like playing social pariahs. Being the gruesome thing that lurks in the sewers is right up my alley, or the crazed hermit that lives in a cave. But playing a horror-balls sewer freak isn't as much fun if there isn't a vibrant society above ground to spread rumors/turn their nose up/run away in fear. And even in the best of times, there was never enough players to sequester off a sub-society and say, "You shall not commune with the rest of the game, except in these very, very, very limited ways."

Arm 2.0 was going to fix it, sort of.

For the people who like playing prancing magicians, it would nice if the *-touched classes got some actual spells (if they don't already. I don't know), but not as much social stigma as ordinary elementalists. Treat them like half-elves. Like, you can be *-touched, wear a (differently shaped) gem, but still join the Byn or a merchant house.

[Armaddict]

In an inherently social game, it's perhaps a mistake to make a popular archetype into a social pariah.

It's actually not inherently social, it's inherently interactive.  Yes, there is a difference, though I'm uncertain if that's exactly what you were going for (social, as a word, has developed a certain meaning for me in discussion of Arm, because of the 'social' type player archetype vs explorer vs achiever, etc.)

Anyway.  The point was that there was plenty of things for mages to accomplish and do, it just didn't involve a bunch of random people motivating them or corralling (sp?) them up for joining their plots.  Largely self-motivated, they uncovered their own ways to impact the game, either in side settings that most main clans or mundane groups didn't really know much about or have the ability to impact, or in interfering in other people's plots in random ways that, of course, made those people hate mages (ta-da! social pariahs!).

There was a big mixup in an era when people thought Arm 2 was coming, where that line got utterly fucked with by magickal plots affecting the mundane but having the mundane be worthless against it, and an increased gemmed mage presence that made the typical -rogue- mage of the previous era less viable/desirable.

Anyway.  That's kind of a derail, sorry.  Biggest thing in this thread is...please, if people are doing the mage-hate thing, realize it has a lot less to do with you as a player and more to do with different people's interpretations and visions for the game.  You really should play mages mostly guilt free if it's your thing...just try to play the mage instead of the normal person with a gem (which is ironically what I think they did away with the main guild classes for.  Weeeeeird.  We should probably have mages back.)

[number13]

You know what would be fun? A omni-elementalist main class that can use magic from all of the elements, but their magic is super subtle. You could stir in either a mundane or magickal sub-class for extra oomph. You could call it a 'mystic'.

When I say subtle, I mean stuff like, you enchant someone so that they are slightly better at swinging a sword, or heal up a little bit faster, or gain some temporary hit-points. No sparkles, no explosions, no magic words.

The subtle mystic could be, in absence of an elementalist sub-guild, unable to wear a black gem. They get like grey gems or something.

[BadSkeelz]

Other than furiously beating his magick wand over the rest of us, what would something like that actually accomplish storywise?

[number13]

A magical main class that could operate alongside mundanes without overshadowing them or splashing everything with glitter.

[Eyeball]

A magical main class that could operate alongside mundanes without overshadowing them or splashing everything with glitter.

So Vivaduans?

[BadSkeelz]

To me, a class that provides "minor" buffs like that you describe is exactly "splashing everything with glitter." Mages shouldn't dominate plots, but they shouldn't infuse everything either. Magick should be rare, dangerous, and weird, and such a class wouldn't accomplish any of that. It's as much a trivialization of magick as a group of X-Men Gemmed solving all problems are.

To answer the Original Post, the players of magickers get flak because so many of them are (or were) rather blatantly after the coded power that the (sub)Guilds provided. Magick is just codified twinkage. Maybe if it had more coded drawbacks it wouldn't get the same amount of hate, similar to how people rarely disparage mul players compared to dwarf players. Muls have good documentation and strong code limitations, while dwarves only have documentation and no coded disadvantages to enforce it.

[CodeMaster]

I think it's interesting food for thought number13.  You got me thinking more about subtle effects -- and actually about unintentional subtle effects.

What if Suk-krath characters caused the zone they were in to heat up a little, especially during the day?  What if Whiran characters caused the winds to pick up, and Ruk characters caused dust storms and - very rarely - occasional tremors?  What if Vivaduans caused plants in the area to replenish more quickly?  Stuff that already happens by itself, but seeing it would make you suspicious.

[Cind]

I'm in favor for magick to be random. Like you log on your character on an account that's algorithmically aged and are offered,

"This character had the misfortune of being cursed by the magical element of Whira, aspect of tempest. You can choose not to manifest these powers in game and just ignore it. But your character knows something is wrong with them."

Do this once every 50 character applications or do a roll 1 out of 50 or 25 or something.

Staff's policy on keeping people from revealing you as a witch is "You really aren't in control of that." Although the rest of the playerbase is, usually, willing to go along with you. One time, I was perfectly happy playing an unmanifested crazy viv, but got tricked into manifesting. The player was not punished, and I didn't get mad because I enjoyed the play that came after. But I think the witch jewelry in the quarter shop got changed to not reveal people because of it.

Basically, if that ever happened to me, I'd immediately store and get a real merchant or ranger.

[Riev]

I think it's interesting food for thought number13.  You got me thinking more about subtle effects -- and actually about unintentional subtle effects.

What if Suk-krath characters caused the zone they were in to heat up a little, especially during the day?  What if Whiran characters caused the winds to pick up, and Ruk characters caused dust storms and - very rarely - occasional tremors?  What if Vivaduans caused plants in the area to replenish more quickly?  Stuff that already happens by itself, but seeing it would make you suspicious.

We used to have "cantrips" that could kind of accomplish this, but they were still "casting" so nobody did them in public.

I don't know if adding a script to magickers to "occasionally" send out room echoes or hemotes related to their element, but maybe some sort of a push in the documentation for it TO happen. Like an aliased emote that occasionally some Viv's skin moistens and dries out quickly.

[The Lonely Hunter]

Add 1 more karma level (4 total) and start everyone with 1 karma. You still have to spend it to buy extended subs, but everyone gets access.

This assumes people are entitled to karma for some reason. Karma is (among other things) a reward for proving that you are responsible enough to play a sensitive role. Armageddon is great today because of the foundation laid in the past - high standards. The constant cries of "it isn't fair!" or "we all deserve X" is absolutely ridiculous.

Some guilds are not balanced. So what? If a newbie gicker can toast your 30 day warrior...good. Maybe that is part of the reason karma exists - to regulate the more powerful guilds. Maybe that gives a good incentive to actually RP fear of gickers; you know, like the docs say.