Room echos about corruption

[MeTekillot]

Room echoes in appropriate places that highlight how pretty much every official with any power is a corrupt dick, as per one of the tenets of "general knowledge" on the website:



A figure in a militia dustcloak hefts a sword and hassles a linen-clad man for long enough to wring a pouch of coins from him, before continuing on.

A squad of militia, a half-giant in their midst, make only a token half-block effort to chase down a tall, thin figure tearing down the road at a dead sprint.

A figure in a militia dustcloak comes wandering out of the dormitories with something jingling in their hand, while two cloaked figures follow a drunken man staggering in.

A beggar on the corner loses a few teeth in the negotiation as she tries to bargain with a figure in a militia dustcloak.

A blue-robed templar smirks cruelly, gesturing for soldiers toward a half-elf who begins to shriek as she is grabbed.

A templar stops by the shop only long enough to collect a tax that looks to be the shopkeeper's weekly profit, as well as a random item from a nearby display.

A listless, emaciated man only begins to reacts as he is suddenly trampled by a squad of mounted militia-cloaked figures, led by a blue-robed templar.

[Veselka]

The problem with some of these is that they might reinforce that the crime code is more nuanced than it is -- If your PC steals or is otherwise accused of a crime, they'll be hunted to the ends of the earth (or where they're wanted) with brutal force (unless you have no-save arrest on). So while I like most of these in theory, I don't know how accurately they actually portray Allanak.

[Dar]

accurately enough.


Gaj has scenes of Bynners clearing house of rifraff on occasion. Something that's impossible due to crime code.
I love all of these echoes. Definitely should go for them.

[Cind]

While these are good lines, and should be in the game, the psychology of people makes it so that once people find out I have the steal skill, they will passive-aggressively examine their weapons at me in way of greeting (each person. Every single one, I'm not kidding.) Even though I haven't used the steal skill in about seven years.

People are just too damned interested in your little nobody scrout thief to let you go, or be bribed for less than you can afford to live on, if you aren't in the know about where to do your stealing. Man, I could really admire that kind of bipolar behavior on a sunny day.

[Cind]

A good solution, I think, is giving the Arm more to do. I think they are really just bored in that compound, training or pretending to train, depending on the day the schedule is on.

That idea with the player npc animation was a good one, but I'm certain it would take more.

[PriestlySiren]

Be the change. Play a corrupt AOD member. You've got to be smart about it as a player, but it can lead to fun scenes.

[tapas]

The reality of the gameworld is that despite being one of the core themes of the game, corruption doesn't really work.

It's hard to do, you have to go out of you way to do it. And you won't make as much coins as if you just grebbed in your free time.

It's also a good way to wind up with a target on your back. I've even have staff tell me I should have expected to die for playing a corrupt character. For something as simple as trying to sell some spice on the downlow.

[Heade]

The reality of the gameworld is that despite being one of the core themes of the game, corruption doesn't really work.

It's hard to do, you have to go out of you way to do it. And you won't make as much coins as if you just grebbed in your free time.

It's also a good way to wind up with a target on your back. I've even have staff tell me I should have expected to die for playing a corrupt character. For something as simple as trying to sell some spice on the downlow.

Corruption and doing things that are illegal aren't one and the same. Have you bribed many Templars? Had many Templars "refuse" gifts or "miscounts" of extra sids? In my experience, EVERYONE accepts bribes in the game. Sometimes those bribes aren't enough to get you what you ultimately want, but they all take them, anyhow. It's all in how you frame the bribe. If you tell a Templar, "Yo, bro, I'ma give you 500 sid ta look tha other way while I do X thing, k?" They may very well haul your ass off to jail. On the other hand, if you've simply bribed that same templar several times, without an explicit asking of anything in return, leading up to your desire to do X thing, they may well look the other way without you explicitly having to outline to them that you'd like them to do so.

Because, at that point, you're not a thief. You're their thief.

[Inky]

Dude I've played the game for almost 20 years. Of course I've bribed templars, but it's always just been a flavor sink for my coins. If my character ever caused any trouble, I knew I'd be executed regardless.

I can count the number of times I've been bribed on one hand and I've been outright killed by templars as I attempted to bribe them.

[Dar]

Unfortunate fact of life that bribe tend to escalate and pale when compared to appearance of efficacy.

Templars take bribes eagerly when they are new and without connections. Lacking a stipend, they need operating budget. But when a templar is just a tiny bit succesful and there is 50k+ on their accounts. Getting 100-500 sid does not outweigh the prestige/message/risk of ridicule of a public execution.

Suddenly bribes need to be information/service. Which is fine, but that only serves to make templars even more effecient, instead of decadent and corrupt.

[Cind]

Even with the necessary and gamey ways for commoners to make money in the game, like armorcrafting and clothworking, what a commoner can make and then bribe a Templar with absolutely pales in comparison to what they would need to be bribed with, I think, unless that's the Templar's first week on the job. Basically, your grebber doesn't make enough to really, actually protect him.

You know how Lieutenant Copper gets animated every now and then, in order to do leader stuff in the Byn? Maybe there should be a regularly-animated red robe, and there's a staffer whose only job is basically to animate this red robe and be in the know, and they receive orders from higher up (emails from other staff indicating what's going on, what's allowable and what is not) and what I am saying is, maybe this red robe gives every Templar in Allanak incentive to be corrupt. When there's literally no one above you to impress or be afraid of 99% of the time, with the game the way it is, people are going to continue to be straight and narrow unless a few things change.

Perhaps every time this red robe gets killed, a new one is rolled up by either the same or a different staffer who then takes this sort of weird niche staff job.

Gemmed are kind of hobbled by the fact that so much as looking at somebody wrong can get them killed, although I hear tell that pcs used to go to the vivaduan temple for healing long ago. If we changed the way gemmed are perceived, which now is kind of extreme, perhaps we could give them an ability to at least dip their toes into corruption, the way that even the most straight-laced elves can. Elves, however, are encouraged to be corrupt at least part of the time.

Gemmed do have a unique position in life but it keeps them from being corrupt at all. I've met maybe two troublemaking gemmed and one of them was obviously a newbie. Well--- nevermind, I know of one way they can be pretty dang corrupt. If you've played enough time as a normie and gave a few gemmed the time of day, you'll know what I'm talking about. I guess I mean more the pickpocketing, spice smoking and murder kind of thing.

As an example of commoners not having enough money to bribe, I remember a story of a trader character who tried to give a Templar a thousand coins and then asked him to look the other way when he had a friend of his in jail. I think you could hear our laughter outside of the Gaj.