The Argument for the Restoration of Tuluk

[Heade]

Originally, this post was in reply to another thread, but after writing it, I felt like it deserved it's own thread:

I think a big part of the reason various roles are lackluster is due to the lack of an external enemy. This game is completely different than it was back when Tuluk was active. When Allanak and Tuluk were engaged in hot/cold wars in the past, that provided the primary narrative of the game world. The two strongest powers in the known were locked in a perpetual struggle of ideologies. It was a story that drew parallels to the US/USSR cold war era, which provided an amazing setting for other stories of love, loss, betrayal, and murder to take place against that backdrop.

It gave people from either area of the world a unifying sense of patriotism against an external enemy. It made sayings like, "Shade", or "His Shadow" more striking and vibrant because it represented a political ideology that had an existing counterpoint in the world. It was Capitalism vs. Communism. You could be saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. Spies, insurgents, and enemy soldiers were a real concern.

And it is against this backdrop that all of your smaller, local plots took place. The betrayals within a clan were so much more impactful and meaningful when there was also an external threat. The Byn were more than just glorified guards. They were neutral soldiers of fortune that fought for whoever filled their purse with sid. Luir's was more than just an outpost in the middle of nowhere. It was a strategic middle point between two fearsome tigers, providing whoever had it with a staging point for invasion. Noble houses weren't ONLY squabbling amongst themselves. They had duties to their patron within that greater struggle. The GMH's existed in a middle ground, providing goods to both sides of the ongoing war, delicately balancing their own survival with their need to maintain neutrality for the sake of their northern/southern holdings.

Without the backdrop of that external enemy, without the political and ideological intrigue, all plots focus on petty internal struggles. The lack of any unifying ideology or external enemy causes people to get bored and continuously drives those plots to be more and more petty, so that we get lots of threads about petty reasons for murder.

Tuluk wasn't just another city state. It represented the ideological counterpoint to Allanak that created the entire premise under which we played this game. The impact of not having that external enemy has created a massive ripple effect that touches nearly every interaction we've had in the game since it has started to fade from the collective memory of the playerbase. Armageddon used to be a massive ocean of depth. Now we play in a puddle.

[Brokkr]

Did you know that "Shade" comes from "Shade and water" which is not really a Nakki saying at all?

Even His Shadow and His Light weren't always around.  Just mentioning because this kind of stuff is relevant in that different folks have different framing of things.

[Lotion]

I think reopening Tuluk is a bad idea because then there would be more PC Templars and I think there should be none.

[th3kaiser]

Thanks Heade. I think you wrote out something I've been feeling lurking in the back of my head but didn't have the words for. Most of the conflict does feel petty these days.

[Heade]

Did you know that "Shade" comes from "Shade and water" which is not really a Nakki saying at all?

Even His Shadow and His Light weren't always around.  Just mentioning because this kind of stuff is relevant in that different folks have different framing of things.

Yes, I know "Shade" is a more politically neutral term than "His Light/His Shadow". And yeah, those terms were created through RP, but that RP was a result of the polarized and counterbalanced nature of the gameworld, of which we now only experience one side. Without the counterbalance, the world feels incomplete and shallow. It's like, before, we were all pieces in a grand war between city-states. Then, when Tuluk closed, we only pretended we were. And now, having a new generation of players who never experienced the game with the inclusion of Tuluk, it has come full circle so that we completely drop the pretense, and people think the game would be no different even if Tuluk were completely wiped off the map. It is tragic that Tuluk has been gone so long that the once-primary narrative of the game has faded so much from the collective memory of the playerbase that they can't easily articulate just how devastating the lack of this large, powerful external enemy has been on the gameplay. People argue incessantly about the minutiae of code and RP ettiquette when, if you look deep enough, many of the ails of modern armageddon can be traced back to the destruction of what was once the core theme of the gameworld. The players lost more than just a place to play. They lost a feeling of belonging in WHEREVER they chose to play. They lost driving motivations for their characters. They lost the depth of their entire gameworld in which they play.

That said, I don't want this observation to be received as if I'm negging on staffers. I'm not. I've said many times that I think we have some of the best staffers that are more responsive to the wants, needs, and desires of the playerbase than we've had in the history of Arm. My opinion on that has not changed. There have been numerous awesome additions to the game over the last couple of years. This isn't meant to detract from any of that. Only to point out that these awesome things are being added to something that has been broken for a long time. It's like putting shiny, $5000.00 rims on a beat up rust bucket. Yeah, the rims are awesome. The rust-bucket is still a rust-bucket. Let's fix the body of this thing before we worry about bells and whistles.

I think reopening Tuluk is a bad idea because then there would be more PC Templars and I think there should be none.

PC Templars aside, the lack of a political counterbalance to the all-powerful sorcerer king is a glaring omission from the gameworld. This could be solved without PC Templars being a thing, so I'd rather not focus on that element of things. If that was the sole reason for keeping Tuluk closed, that reason could be tackled without destroying an entire city-state.

Thanks Heade. I think you wrote out something I've been feeling lurking in the back of my head but didn't have the words for. Most of the conflict does feel petty these days.

You're welcome! And thanks, I felt that way too after I re-read what I wrote. Like I said, I initially wrote that as a response to someone in another thread, and only after putting it into words did I feel like it needed it's own thread. It's how I've been feeling about the game since Tuluk closed, but it took a long time to coalesce into something I could express succinctly.

[gotdamnmiracle]

I agree. I just missed seeing Tuluk in its hayday, and after its closure it's essentially become a 9X9 (I'm guessing the dimensions) mountain that is not climbable or passable in the North. Morins is just the last stop before the end of the Known. Like a gas station before the North Pole. Tuluk doesn't exist for me.

[Shabago]

Legitimate questions, for Heade or anyone:

How many players/vets do you think we lost when Tuluk closed?
How many players/vets do you think we lost from Allanak, without having it's big 'enemy'?

How many players/vets do you think would return if Tuluk would return in some variation?

[Is Friday]

Legitimate questions, for Heade or anyone:

How many players/vets do you think we lost when Tuluk closed?
How many players/vets do you think we lost from Allanak, without having it's big 'enemy'?

How many players/vets do you think would return if Tuluk would return in some variation?

I know a lot of players who take much longer breaks because of the limited choices of play.

I know a lot of players who don't play at all because of limited choices of play.

Opening up Tuluk in a limited capacity (2-3 clans?) with a small plot arc (driven by staff) and seeing where it goes would go a long way. You'd have to have something similar going on in Allanak to counter-act the "let's go see what's going on over there", though.

I would say "player driven only" stories are as much to blame for lower player count, though.

[Pew Pew]

Legitimate questions, for Heade or anyone:

How many players/vets do you think we lost when Tuluk closed?
How many players/vets do you think we lost from Allanak, without having it's big 'enemy'?

How many players/vets do you think would return if Tuluk would return in some variation?

1. 15% ish

2. 5-8%. I would argue this issue is the most detrimental to the game and is what causes the decision to PK, rather than let live and the story develop.

3. I think an optimistic estimate of vets returning to TRY armageddon would be around 50% of the number that have departed. Their chances to stay depend their experience IC and with staff.

[AdamBlue]

Everything feels more petty and superficial and without meaningful and coherent conflict to have a massive enemy that you are completely unable to interact with for code and game reasons.
'Tuluk exists but no one is allowed to interact with it, influence it, ect'
If Tuluk doesn't exist, what stops Allanak from just pushing northwards? If Tuluk doesn't exist, why aren't magickers more prevalent northwards, taking advantage of this massive lapse to form their own community as far away from Allanak as humanly possible? If Tuluk doesn't exist, what's to stop the Kryl? If Tuluk has no impact whatsoever and it is impossible to do anything to them or ask anything from them with no players to drive plots from there because players of Tuluk aren't allowed, then how can character-driven plots be possible in the North?
You have, what... Morins, which has no power, no real status, it's just a small gathering location. And you have Luirs, which, I will admit, has had some decent story as of late, but on any character not actively involved in that plot is is HELL. ABSOLUTE HELL. It is the most boring place in the entire game and it drives people absolutely insane. It -used- to be the middle-ground, the neutral space where mortal enemies could sit at bars and gaze upon eachother with doleful eyes, plotting ambushes and stabbing backs, only barely held in check by the pure power of the capital-fueled merchants selling to both while trying to politick carefully with selling of arms, armor, clothes, jewelry, equipment, ect without stepping on either's toes.
Now, it's just some merchant hangout spot where a bunch of players try and decide something but never really come to a complete conclusion and then nothing changes forever because where's the urgency to do anything we're all player-driven but the staff doesn't seem to care about the North because why would they when Tuluk doesn't really exist and the most we see are combat-driven plots with Kryl and Gith and other spooky beasties that occasionally run a player-wipe on the military characters and anyone unlucky enough to walk outside of the gates for whatever reason.

I may be grouchy, and I am because it's very early when I write this, but Tuluk, even with how 'care-barey' some may claim it was on the surface, was a very driving force for impact within the story, and while the player numbers have gone up with the global condition, overall quality has flickered somewhat with lack of depth and variety, with people getting bored. For people that have longer-lived characters, specifically, it's a bit torturous.

Right now, your options to play are Luirs, Red Storm, Allanak, and Morins.
Luirs- Pros: Middleground, very resource-rich, easy to accrue capital if you know what you're doing.
Cons: Very boring thematically (though some efforts have been made to make it slightly cooler), mediocre player count, low variety of character types (merchants, guards, hunters. that's about it)
Allanak- Pros: Huge variety in coded support. Criminal elements out of the 'rinth, all sorts of tasty flavor, weekly events out the wazoo with Arena games and small events here and there. Massive city means tons of character variety.
Cons: Divide between Nobility and Commoner playerbase means there's lots of events where people can be easily excluded or shunned entirely, high crime, mediocre profitability, 'corruption' presence so overwhelming it is unfortunately more edgy than interesting in many cases.
Morins- Pros: It's near wood.
Cons: It's near lots of deadly animals, too.
Red Storm: Pros: For the raiders or the people wanting to live in a 'small town' full of mystery, Red Storm is for you. If you want to be a secluded outcast with a mystery secret, or someone trying to get away from it all, a town where everyone wears hoods means often you won't find eyes on you. Proximity to the Silt Sea means there's lots of exploration to be done if you know how to do it, and even the least savvy of characters can sift spice for profit.
Cons: You are nobody, if you're in Red Storm. You will not be influencing the world in any way unless you are a raider of some kind. If you draw any attention to yourself, you'll at best be mugged, and at worst be tortured to death, your fingers bitten off one by one by a mangle-mawed cannibal dwarf who giggles as he talks, or disappeared into a mysterious red puddle that wasn't there before.

[triste]

+1 to the Tuluk love as someone who had the chance to play there
+1 to it being a limited open of 2-3 clans.

One point here that stood out in particular to me here is the valid critique of the Allanaki "Divide between Nobility and Commoner playerbase means there's lots of events where people can be easily excluded or shunned entirely," one way in which Tuluk was different in this regard were citizenship inks, which automatically let any newb character plausibly be trustworthy enough to involve in politics. Features like this just made Tuluk feel like a more open and nicer alternative -- which then allowed Allanak to more properly dive into the themes of corruption and betrayal. IDK if I am misremembering, but my memories of Allanak in the age of an open Tuluk were bloody epic. It was wonderful to be able to alternate characters between these regions, in Allanak I always had a short but exciting life which introduced me properly to the theme (harshness), where as in Tuluk I was able to more safely hunt gurth and pick flowers and learn the mechanics of the game.

Even though I knew even back then that Tuluk existed mostly as a foil to Allanak, that did not mean Tuluk lacked depth or a purpose. In some fiction the antagonist is fleshed out as equally as the protagonist and in this case I thought Tuluk was done well enough to make the conflict interesting.

Lastly, Luir's was indeed even more fun when you were much more likely to see a Northerner and a Southerner sitting at the bar. Now that you cannot play a native born Tuluki under the age of 60-70 given the timeline, people are just playing northerners less. If anything I think we are ripe for a reboot because many of the interesting Northern concepts are 'dying off' and now the available northern concepts are the exciting melange of Gol Krathu Bumpkin, Grey Forest Clodhopper, Thornlands Wildling. While I love and have played all of these concepts, all northern concepts are now by definition restricted to the rural. I miss the vast variety we had before: Ex-Winrothol Slave, Jilted Bard Turned Assassin, Bejeweled Elven Crime Lord, etc.

[Dresan]

Allanak's enemy and conflict problems will not be solved by bringing back a battered and beaten Tuluk. Even if the staff were to march a unity gith/mantis army to siege allanak, the overall problem would not be solved due to the obvious power allanak holds. Due to its current position in the world, Allanak's superior power needs to be waning in a very apparent way while all forces around it need to seem to be on the rise, but this is not an easy thing to accomplish without some effort.   

When Tuluk closed we probably lost 5-10 players logging in on average . And another 5 since then by the mere fact that the game did not have a suitable secondary city location to provide alternative play for those who are burnt out from Allanak. People forget that while Tuluk had its own culture, politics and alternative location there were major problem in terms of inner city conflict, lack of true crime and a host of other issues that can not be fully resolved with a lot of time, effort and possibly some ret-con.

At the moment Luirs is in a good position to fill the gap of a lack of a second city location in the game in the very same way Tuluk did with its lack of true crime opportunities . Staff need to continue to push the separation of Luirs and allanak in some shape or form and continue to build that place up to provide city based character a rich place to play as an alternative to allanak with its own distinct politics and concerns that don't just include allanak.   

[mansa]

If I had my way..

I'd combine the Lirathan and Jihaen into a new templar order - the black moon order.  But I would name the black moon something spooky and call it after that.
I'd open Tuluk with 5 noble houses that players could play in.  (Reduce potential choices of noble families from 9 to 5)
I'd introduce an elven noble house in Tuluk.

I'd have a spot for Bards, and a larger commoner's market, with a smaller tribal market at the entrance to the city.
I'd not have a 'black market underground' like Allanak has the 'rinth, but I would have some sort of area for thieves/murderers/magickers to play in.  Maybe the ruins of old old old tuluk?  More mutants there.

I'd make the story say that Muk Utep has abandoned the City and planeshifted to another realm, and a new big bad has taken over, but the commoners don't know that.  They are more happy that they can think clearly.

I'd probably have to hire another 2 staff members to handle the extra load of requests that opening 7+ clans would introduce.

[Is Friday]

I'd probably have to hire another 2 staff members to handle the extra load of requests that opening 7+ clans would introduce.

I would love to run either the bardic circles, Lyksae, military, etc. There's a lot of opportunity for fresh play with new/modified clans.

[Heade]

Legitimate questions, for Heade or anyone:

How many players/vets do you think we lost when Tuluk closed?

It's difficult to say, exactly. I know of a lot of them. I'm sure there are more that I don't.

How many players/vets do you think we lost from Allanak, without having it's big 'enemy'?

This is even more difficult to determine. This problem is one that, for many people, was difficult to articulate, and so the indirect nature of it may have resulted in people who have left and not really known that the lack of Tuluk was the reason they were dissatisfied with their gaming experience. Many players have likely come and gone from Arm, and never experienced an Arm with Tuluk in it. As such, it's very difficult to gauge how many of those might have stayed.

How many players/vets do you think would return if Tuluk would return in some variation?

I think it would be significant, but it wouldn't happen overnight. Some might hear about it and come back immediately. Others might hear about it over time and return. I'm sure others have moved on from MUDing altogether and we'll never get them back. But I think having Tuluk back would be healthy for the game. It would likely help us retain more of our existing and new players for longer by giving them more options for play. It would likely reduce the length of people's "breaks" from the game by giving them an alternate location in the world to play so that they aren't just coming back in and playing with the same characters after a PC death. I know that last issue has been the cause of many of my breaks from the game, and when I take a break from the game, there is a high likelihood of it becoming an "extended" break that might last a year or more simply due to life, and my free time being largely focused on other things. Without playing arm every day, I end up finding other things to commit my time to, and it's not until those commitments start to wane for whatever reason that I find myself coming back here to see how things are going.

All of these issues together, over the years of closure that we've had in Tuluk has likely resulted in far lower average daily logins than we likely could have had. Problems like this tend to compound over time.

I'd probably have to hire another 2 staff members to handle the extra load of requests that opening 7+ clans would introduce.

If staff were interested in pursuing a reopening of Tuluk, I'd be interested in coming on board with staff to help write documentation and room descriptions to facilitate its reopening, and I'd be willing to help staff it once reopened.

[gotdamnmiracle]

I think for Tuluk to attract old players it would need an idealogical shift. From what I hear the premise was interesting, but supremely difficult to implement in a mud. In a fun way at least.

I think that Tuluk returning would be great and probably boost numbers in the short run no matter what it looks like. In the long run, for a majority of those people to stay, however, Tuluk would need to be more streamlined if it's to keep the same "thought police" vibe. But literally anything can be done with them at this point lore-wise. Who knows what's going on behind the walls?

I like the elven noble house idea and ask, what if that was done with all true races (dwarf, elf, human). Like Tuluk is trying to fix the race issue by practicing the racist idea of power through segregation. This has half breeds and races like half-giants left in the lurch somewhat. Products such as muls would be a co-product of the dwarven house and a slave house, etc. Just a thought. I just want to see a different approach than simply human-centric storytelling after so long.

Please keep Jihaean Templars. I selfishly hope to one day play one.

[Heade]

I think for Tuluk to attract old players it would need an idealogical shift. From what I hear the premise was interesting, but supremely difficult to implement in a mud. In a fun way at least.

What you've heard is very likely skewed towards the opinions of people who preferred the Allanaki playstyle because we lost many of the players who preferred the Tuluki playstyle. If the conversations you formulated your opinion off of occurred prior to Tuluk closing, you may have a very different impression of what people thought of Tuluk. Imagine if they shipped all democrats out of the US to other countries, and the only things you heard about democrats came from republicans talking about how things were before the democrats left. That is sort of how things like this tend to unfold over time.

[gotdamnmiracle]

I think for Tuluk to attract old players it would need an idealogical shift. From what I hear the premise was interesting, but supremely difficult to implement in a mud. In a fun way at least.

What you've heard is very likely skewed towards the opinions of people who preferred the Allanaki playstyle because we lost many of the players who preferred the Tuluki playstyle. If the conversations you formulated your opinion off of occurred prior to Tuluk closing, you may have a very different impression of what people thought of Tuluk. Imagine if they shipped all democrats out of the US to other countries, and the only things you heard about democrats came from republicans talking about how things were before the democrats left. That is sort of how things like this tend to unfold over time.

You can still have the Tuluki playstyle without having tried and tested plot-killers. We can reimplement from an angle that is both easier to portray and more fun. In a direct response to your analogy, the criticisms the republicans may come up with, though definitely skewed, can also be true. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. We have the benefit of hindsight in this case.

Why not improve on something rather than return to something that for one reason or another objectively failed?

[SpyGuy]

I think for Tuluk to attract old players it would need an idealogical shift. From what I hear the premise was interesting, but supremely difficult to implement in a mud. In a fun way at least.

I think Lirathans shouldn't come back, at least not as a PC class. I played with a very long lived one as a Jihaen and she was a fantastic character. The problem is a Lirathan who was good at her job was also a plot killer. It meant that before things even started to get interesting they could be nipped in the bud and ICly Lirathans should be doing just that. I believe this led to a lot of anger from people who thought their character concepts were unfairly torn to shreds by a character type that was too well-protected to effectively counter against.

Please keep Jihaean Templars. I selfishly hope to one day play one.

They were pretty rad. I think southern templars are cooler codewise but really enjoyed playing a Jihaen, the philosophy/history were really interesting.

[Heade]

You can still have the Tuluki playstyle without having tried and tested plot-killers.

I agree, but I don't think the Tuluki culture needs to change at all to address this. I think SpyGuy had the right idea when he said this:

I think Lirathans shouldn't come back, at least not as a PC class. I played with a very long lived one as a Jihaen and she was a fantastic character. The problem is a Lirathan who was good at her job was also a plot killer.

That said, if it was necessary to slightly modify Tuluki culture to fill a gap in civil duties that Lirathans previously filled, we could likely do that without any huge edits. Maybe make some sort of position that works for the NPC Lirathans that would represent them, having the social clout and power of a Lirathan without the plot-killing power.

I don't think the plot-killing power that we're referring to alone is the issue. Another class in the game has a similar plot-killing power. The difference is, Lirathans had both that plot-killing power and the political clout to directly squash the plots with half-giant seal team 6.

PS: SpyGuy, you didn't happen to play a Lirathan who was interviewing a merchant named Keltasio, who, during the conversation outwardly appeared cooperative, but then sent a think: "No way I'm giving up my friends. Fuck her." Right before you had him seal team 6'd, did you?

That was one of my favorite deaths. It was many years ago.

[Dresan]

It really sounds like most people's wishes would be granted if Tuluki nobles took over Luirs. Adding any form of mind-bending templar PCs back in the game, no matter how diluted would hurt and potentially ruin yet another location like it originally did Tuluk.

[NinjaFruitSalad]

I'm also of the opinion that the reintroduction of Tuluk could attract more players.  And so, the argument that "the playerbase is spread too thin" wouldn't hold.

[SpyGuy]

It really sounds like most people's wishes would be granted if Tuluki nobles took over Luirs. Adding any form of mind-bending templar PCs back in the game, no matter how diluted would hurt and potentially ruin yet another location like it originally did Tuluk.

This is off topic but my personal feelings are that nobles don't much to the action/adventure part of the game and are only useful to furthering conflict insofar as they can cultivate a good group of minions. I don't really see why GMH family and templars can't fill those roles though why GMH would start serious conflict with Allanak is beyond me.

Luir's would also be a poor substitute for Tuluki roleplay. I'd honestly rather see Tuluki rebels setting up a large camp somewhere in the grasslands or scrub to continue on the traditions of 'old' Tuluk. If it did bring player interest and met its objectives then maybe liberating Tuluk from whatever the hell is controlling it now might be the end game of that plot line. If the powers that be in Tuluk became an NPC threat to the known you could even see those rebels recruiting help from other sources to liberate the city while Allanak may choose to offer assistance or work to subvert a reopened Tuluk.

[RavingTregils]

In Tuluk, everyone was approachable for RP. You would see the lowliest hunter sitting at a table in the Sanctuary talking to a Templar.

In Allanak it's - oops wrong accent - don't like you, oops gemmer - hate you, oops Templar - bow down and get away, etc. The interactions between the socially unequal feel predefined like two NPC's meeting.

You didn't have any of that in Tuluk. Besides, I miss the tea parties.

[Cendell]

I'm one of the people that certainly enjoyed Tuluk more than Allanak. Anecdotally...I only know one person who left Arm because of it's closure and didn't come back, but I know a few people who were definitely dissatisfied on its closure, and as mentioned, take longer breaks between characters because they can't do the North-South shuffle.

My favourite past of the game has always been the GMH, as much as some people dislike them. The lack of a northern play area, or any other play area, means they are a bit diminished. With the Tuluk/Allanak dynamic it gave GMH family and employees an extra layer of playability. Northern and southern materials were gathered in their respective places, caravans were organised to and fro to exchange ideas, materials and have little sit downs, and a (friendly?) rivalry could exist between two branches.

I played an inked Salarri in Tuluk, and it offered an extra level on top of gameplay. He was, somewhat, patriotic...which led to him having a closer relationship with the Templarate than his southern kin probably felt was appropriate, and designs produced were just a bit more northern themed. It also meant sitting around in Allanak with northern inks on, with the full knowledge that someone could decide you needed a bone sword through the chest for your northiness.

I don't believe Luirs is the answer. Giving it to one of the powers? Definitely not. But thematically and physically, Luirs is a small, crowded, dingy, crappy Outpost in the middle of nowhere, and I doubt that is likely to change without some monumental in game effort to essentially build a new wall and expand it significantly (Which I doubt there is staff, or probably player appetite for)

[Malken]

I'd return in a heartbeat if Tuluk was open again.

I still haven't returned to Armageddon because I really dislike Allanak - When Tuluk was open, it was always a struggle for me to go play there once my Tuluki character died. I never liked it.

I thought about returning recently but I absolutely do not understand Luir's anymore and I think I'm too old to just shoot in the dark - create a character and hope for the best. I've got too many stuff to do and games to play to do that.

Tuluk is a totally different matter - I've spent like 90% of my Armageddon years in Tuluk. I love the grasslands, the scrub plains - I always had something to do there. I didn't have to "struggle" too much to get to a point where I could actually start enjoying the role-play (you know that sweet spot you get to once you feel like you won't be starving to death). I knew all the clans, what they stood for. I knew the different types of templars, how to get them not to kill you, etc.

Yeah, Tuluk is probably the only way I'd ever return to Armageddon. Tuluk is a comfortable place for an old Armageddon dude like me.

(I haven't played in like YEARS, but I still read the GDB daily hoping that someone will announce the reopening of Tuluk)

[Dresan]

Sigh~

I do miss getting involved without having to join a clan.  Also due to the culture nobles in tuluk had an easier time mobilizing the population. And public opinion on nobles mattered.

I don't think the numbers would increase as much as people think and some areas would need to suffer for a while. On top of that certain clan would need to begin imposing stricter enrollment caps.

[Erythil]

I say open it, even if it's just the western portion of the city with no clan support, so that people can buy and sell there.

[Bebop]

I've lost interest in the game greatly because of the lack of Tuluk and would consider returning when it does.

[triste]

I like the elven noble house idea and ask, what if that was done with all true races (dwarf, elf, human). Like Tuluk is trying to fix the race issue by practicing the racist idea of power through segregation. This has half breeds and races like half-giants left in the lurch somewhat. Products such as muls would be a co-product of the dwarven house and a slave house, etc. Just a thought. I just want to see a different approach than simply human-centric storytelling after so long.

When I first heard the idea of an Elven noble house I was like no way. Doesn't fit current setting. But now I am more in favor insofar as I think it fits Tuluk somewhat well what with Hlum nobles [albeit retconned I think], citizenship, and so forth. It also strengthens Tuluk's position as an opposing foil for Allanak. It would open up more narratives that this game has been critiqued for not having. It also preserves themes that I enjoy. Fun idea. If you hate the idea think of how much fun you will have antagonizing these new concepts.

[HeeBeeGB]

Hlum Nobles weren't retconned as much as phased out through IC events (so it wasn't an OOC sort of retcon/this never happened), and they were actually phased in after a previous phasing out (~2005). "The Grey Hunt" was an old tradition IIRC derived from the lack of Nobility that survived the cataclysm and occupation, and was a means to bolster the ranks of Nobility. It made organic sense, and it was an exciting way for a Commoner to possibly, some day, become a Noble. Very cool.

I play Armageddon, and I have moments of enjoying it, and PCs I've enjoyed playing (Byn Sergeant, Salarr Family member) that were outside the box for me and fun. But I do miss Tuluk terribly, and would play there in a heartbeat as well. Like, the moment it was announced, any PC I was playing, even if it was a Southern Templar, I would store and apply for some role there or just play an inked commoner.

Part of what bugs me about Allanak is the idea that common people are stupid there. That dick and fart jokes are king, and that any modicum of intelligence or proper grammar in a Commoner is seen as 'You're Being Northie'. The level of conversation is really not stimulating for the most part, unless I'm playing a somewhat middle-class or GMH Family or something along those lines and up. I enjoyed that Tuluk allowed for a 'Smart Person as a Commoner', at least one that could have witty sentences or be clever and not be called a 'Northie' every ten seconds. Sometimes, I enjoy playing the dumb farmer from Yaroch who becomes something, but other times I like to play someone with half a brain and in Allanak, that seems to go against the zeitgeist of the city (at least in terms of PCs and Players, not necessarily documentation).

[HeeBeeGB]

I too like the idea of an Elven Noble House, and it does fit the setting if you know some of the older game lore. It'd be an interesting take if Elves and Dwarves of exceptional bloodline were elevated to a minor Noble status. There would need to be a foil, otherwise every elf and dwarf would want to ditch what they were doing to go work for the Elf / Dwarf Noble.

Tuluk itself would need to be inherently dangerous to outsiders, more than it was in the past, regardless of race or social status, thereby discouraging most from attempting to gain employment there if they are from, say, the Labyrinth. If you made it so that Crim Code did not kick in if you were attacking/killing someone who was a non-citizen...Well...That would be an interesting start. It would make traveling there inherently dangerous, pissing people off there or divulging that you were not from Tuluk or a citizen a risk, and so on.

I'd also love to see Tuluk change its stance on Magick. If they allowed Nilazi/Anathema witch hunters (finally), that would be pretty boss.

[triste]

If you made it so that Crim Code did not kick in if you were attacking/killing someone who was a non-citizen...Well...That would be an interesting start.

No crimcode for non citizens would be amazing, and it would be awesome to see the inverse in 'Nak. While there are some questions of realism and people hiding their origins, it would be awesome for players to exploit any discoveries they make about people's origins. Suddenly adds a lot more incentive to hide accents and inks.

Also would be a steady stream of player created conflict similar to the way people are detained overseas when traveling to hostile regions in reality.

Also would be interesting with regards to the fact that Red Stormers can [for better or worse] easily blend in with Allanakis, and would increase espionage opportunities on that front as well.

[triste]

Just one more note is I would find any increased mechanics around citizenship interesting. People in this community have joked about the "nomadic origin character who learns southern accent and becomes an aide." Might be nice to have more of a mechanic around it so that it is not perceived as being a silly and trivial matter of popping an accent on your skill list.

[HeeBeeGB]

If you made it so that Crim Code did not kick in if you were attacking/killing someone who was a non-citizen...Well...That would be an interesting start.

No crimcode for non citizens would be amazing, and it would be awesome to see the inverse in 'Nak. While there are some questions of realism and people hiding their origins, it would be awesome for players to exploit any discoveries they make about people's origins. Suddenly adds a lot more incentive to hide accents and inks.

Also would be a steady stream of player created conflict similar to the way people are detained overseas when traveling to hostile regions in reality.

Also would be interesting with regards to the fact that Red Stormers can [for better or worse] easily blend in with Allanakis, and would increase espionage opportunities on that front as well.

Yeah, it would be cool if this was true in both Allanak and Tuluk. Allanak doesn't have the history of inkings for citizenship, so perhaps that's more of a risk. You could have it so a Templar/AoD/Legionnaire could codedly verify someone's citizenship status. There might even be room for counterfeit inkings in the North, or some other litmus test in the South.

[triste]

You could have it so a Templar/AoD/Legionnaire could codedly verify someone's citizenship status. There might even be room for counterfeit inkings in the North, or some other litmus test in the South.

In favor of being able to verify citizenship if there is some limit. Example, maybe only allow people to use it in a jail, or only once a day or something. The fun would be ruined if a Templar spammed this command on a public street [similar to a Templar spamming peek on random citizens, makes no sense and just hurts gameplay].

Litmus testing in Nak for citizenship would rock, and give the Atrium and other organizations more to do.

Loving all these ideas people!! Opening up this area more broadly is opening up so many ideas here and I <3 them all.

[triste]

Goodness, sorry to keep babbling but lastly this citizenship idea would bolster the appeal of Red Storm and Luir's as places where you can have a drink without getting arrested over citizenship, thereby addressing worries that opening Tuluk would hurt Luir's and Red Storm. This idea hits 8 birds with one stone.

[gotdamnmiracle]

I like the nilazi/anathema employment idea. It fits perfectly and with the retcon of necromancy they are way more pointed to one specific task. Honestly if Lirathans took a higher role in the order (essentially red robes, they should be NPC imo) and provide guidance to the lower orders. This is followed by Jihaeans who handle regular templar tasks and frequently handle anti-magick kill teams in the North hunting down rogue magick users with Lirathan guidance. The Jihaeans manage these teams and are the handlers of the Black Moon Order, the Nilazis, rare specialists within these teams.

Even if Tuluk didn't open and we just had a group of badasses like this I would be smitten. Also, this would be the perfect niche for the current Nilazis IMO.

[Malken]

Part of what bugs me about Allanak is the idea that common people are stupid there. That dick and fart jokes are king, and that any modicum of intelligence or proper grammar in a Commoner is seen as 'You're Being Northie'. The level of conversation is really not stimulating for the most part, unless I'm playing a somewhat middle-class or GMH Family or something along those lines and up. I enjoyed that Tuluk allowed for a 'Smart Person as a Commoner', at least one that could have witty sentences or be clever and not be called a 'Northie' every ten seconds. Sometimes, I enjoy playing the dumb farmer from Yaroch who becomes something, but other times I like to play someone with half a brain and in Allanak, that seems to go against the zeitgeist of the city (at least in terms of PCs and Players, not necessarily documentation).

That's actually how I feel as well.. There's just so much burping and farting emotes I can take until I realize that I'll probably get better RP on the Moonguard WoW server (and that's pretty bad) ... That has been mostly my experience in Allanak (that and getting murdered for absolutely no reason on a brand new character while idling for 5 minutes in a shop)

(Speaking of which, there's two other WoW players who would also come back in a heartbeat if Tuluk reopened, so that's +3 on my side! )

[7dwarves]

I like most of the suggestions above, except for the elven noble house. And I'm a huge fan of city elves.
Bejeweled Hand had some political clout and a nice facade of being artisans and masons first and foremost. But please no elven nobles. They don't have the right mindset, sooner or later they'd try to fuck over either the city state or another noble house and them bam crash to the ground. I like my elves scummy and inhuman, no matter how much jewelry they wear.

Otherwise, open up Tuluk in any way shape or form. You have my sword.

[Heade]

Honestly if Lirathans took a higher role in the order (essentially red robes, they should be NPC imo) and provide guidance to the lower orders. This is followed by Jihaeans who handle regular templar tasks and frequently handle anti-magick kill teams in the North hunting down rogue magick users with Lirathan guidance.

This is sort of how I feel about Lirathans, too. I always felt like they should have better things to do with their powers than worry about the fact that Stoneworker Amos is providing a dinnerware set to some noble that is Tightbutt Kadius' customer. I mean, they're responsible for furthering the agenda of an entire city-state, and their powers were often used to foil some pretty petty sideplots.

When a player is playing a Lirathan, it only makes sense that they want to involve themselves in plots, because otherwise they'd be bored. So I can't blame any players for doing this. But, behind the scenes, in a way that staff couldn't possibly provide them enough support for, there should be plenty of more important things for them to worry about. So I'm in favor of NPC Red-robing Lirathans with the return of Tuluk.

In favor of being able to verify citizenship if there is some limit.

I'm not in favor of any coded way to verify citizenship. With Tuluki's, there is already an RP way to verify citizenship, and I don't think RPed methods should be exchanged for more code-only engagements with other players. There are already enough complaints regarding encounters with other players not having RP. I don't think something like this, which could make a fine RP scene should instead be relegated to code-only, where someone can quickly confirm another player isn't a citizen, noting that they aren't protected by the crim code, and following that up with practice on their backstab or sapping skill.

As for Allanak, IC ideas on ways to identify citizens was floated at one point, and the IC reason that identifying marks for Allanaki citizens was shot down that I heard was, "No, that's what Northerners do." The Allanaki hatred for Northerners runs so deep that even if something is objectively a good idea, it will be rejected by the south as a "northern" thing if it resembles northern methods or ideology. OOCly, it makes Allanak and Tuluk oppressive in different ways. It's how they are both oppressive, tyrannical cultures, but they're different enough to justify being in a war of ideologies against one another.

[HeeBeeGB]

1. Tuluk was too bloated, both geographically and through documentation re-writes. It's clear that action was being taken prior to it being closed, geographically and documentation wise, but parts of it still felt clunky. I think this is an obvious result from many different Staff taking stabs at solving the Tuluk issue. I think it was honestly moving in the right direction prior to it closing.

We have to remember that Tuluk went through at least three major shifts, if not more -- The 'Dragons Crater' version of Tuluk that was quite small, the Cataclysm/Occupation of a larger Tuluk, and the bloated Modern Tuluk that was going through size cuts/documentation shifts. In the last version of Tuluk, we did see very problematic institutions go through rapid change, examples being:

-Lirathans and Jihanes being merged into one order, where gender didn't play a role into which order you were a part of.
-Though interesting in concept, the overly complex governorships (Straisiri/other name I forget) were eliminated.
-The geography/map of Tuluk was likewise shrunken, and could have likely gone through 1/3 more room cuts.
-Documentation for things like Shadow Artists were clarified and made less obtuse, though arguably, could have been made even less obtuse.
-Some Bardic Circles were closed to play, allowing for only a few options instead of like, 8.

2. Playerbase vs Staff vs Spreading Thin Argument. The idea is that it took twice the amount of Staff, and twice the amount of players, to keep Tuluk operational. The hope was by closing Tuluk, it would consolidate the player base into Allanak, Luirs, Independents, and Red Storm (roughly). Instead of having two or three Noble Houses open in Allanak, you could have multiple PCs in these Noble Houses or provide the opportunity to open Houses like Jal or Rennik or Valika (in theory).

While I think this was a logical postulation, I'm not sure that it played out exactly that way. As mentioned before by other people, Tuluk was the foil to Allanak, and vice versa. If you played a long lived PC in Tuluk, you could make your next PC in Allanak or the Labyrinth or Red Storm and meet an entirely different cast of people, and start fresh. Vice versa for tribals, or stormers, or Nakki. The options of sponsored roles were also more varied, not the same four or five on rotation. Playing a Northern GMH versus a Southern GMH was a very different experience, and came with built in drama and plots depending on how politically motivated the PC was. A Northern Templar was vastly different from a Southern Templar, both in approach and play style. The same goes for Northern Noble Houses vs Southern Noble Houses, who also automatically had built in intrigue and plot devices against one another and something to work towards (or against). I think by removing Tuluk (and therefore, some of the built in conflict of the game world), the world has become smaller and less inherently interesting.

In essence, with Tuluk out of the picture, the game has gone from macro to micro. Instead of world-spanning plots, the world-plots are now isolated to Allanak as the center of civilization, with outliers in Luirs and surrounding villages/the wastes. It isn't unfair to say that by removing one of the two city-states in the game, the world has indeed become smaller. This was in part by design -- The whole consolidation theory. But Luirs can't be, and shouldn't be, a replacement for Tuluk as a civilization center. It is incongruous, and does Luirs a disservice as being simply an Outpost run by the GMH. Think of how much more intriguing and conflict-driven Luirs would be if both Tuluk and Allanak were still vying for control over it. With Tuluk out of the picture, it almost seems like Allanak has a 'why bother' mentality about Luirs.

3. Some of the best sources of conflict and 'WOW FACTOR' for the game came about through direct conflict between Tuluk and Allanak. Without Tuluk, there would not have been the Copper Wars, which is still touted as being one of the better moments the game has had in its 20+ year history, where you had Templars from both City-States running death squads against each other, mass turn over of long lived combat PCs, assassinations, and more. Without Tuluk, we wouldn't have had terrorism bombings in Allanak, we wouldn't have had Allanaki Spies infiltrate and destroy a tree of Life in Tuluk. We wouldn't have plots of spreading plagues in Allanak as a war tactic, which took months to prepare for and ultimately failed. We wouldn't have had a reason for the volcano, or a reason for it to be magically dropped on Tuluk's head. In a Batman v Joker analogy, neither character is interesting without their natural foil. If Batman had no one to fight, what defines Batman? If Joker didn't have Batman to cajole and torment, what defines the Joker? Without the foil, Allanak is difficult to place and define, and by association, people that play within it.

4. Some people didn't like Tuluk. Like, at all. And maybe that's kind of the point? The people that did like Tuluk, liked it a lot. The people that didn't like Tuluk, hated it a lot, and made PCs that also hated Tuluk and would stop at nothing to destroy it. I sort of hate Allanak, but that's it as far as centers of civilization go now.

5. Disservice to those that spent years of their life playing in Tuluk, and the history of that part of the game is now not even well documented or remembered. For those who love Allanak and the PCs they have had there over the last 20 years -- Imagine Staff decided to close Allanak tomorrow to re-open Tuluk. Imagine what that would feel like, that all the time you invested into that part of the world over the years, is basically erased. It sucks.

6. In essence, the game of chess has become one side playing against itself. It's sometimes confusing, sometimes fun, and otherwise a distraction, but it isn't an actual game of chess. No one can finish the game. It is an endless stalemate. I do not think that 'winning the game' is at all important, but there have to be stakes, rainbows with treasure at the end of them, enemies to work against or allies to assist, or backstab. To me, when Tuluk was removed, the purpose behind the game was sort of arbitrarily removed as well. Without overarching railroad plots, without a DM guiding the game session and telling us 'this is what happens in your next adventure', Tuluk v Allanak was naturally something to fall back to. And without it, it feels the game is a masochistic time-sink.

--

If Tuluk were to return, I would see it being consolidated, xenophobic, and dangerous. Open three clans -- Templarate, and Two Opposing Noble Houses. For the sake of ease, make it Tenneshi and Winrothol, or Tenneshi and Lyksae. For a more difficult experiment, design two entirely new Houses that absorbed several old Houses and their responsibilities. One Noble House oversees infrastructure/city development, the other is expansionist/war-minded. Experiment with having limited or no crime code in Tuluk.

The first hurdle for this new Tuluk to tackle is reconstruction. Dissolve slavery in Tuluk, relying instead on a mixture of indentured servitude with a sentence (A punishment for theft is to assist re-building a wall for two weeks) and patriotic duties . Set it apart from Allanak in as many ways as possible.

Make magic illegal, but turn it into a Salem-era trial system. Anyone can be accused of being a witch. Trials become a regular occurrence. Instead of a Gem, allow northern templars to have an ability to remove someone's ability to cast magic (Perhaps removing their reaches from the skill sheet). Make punishments revolve around penance, rather than execution exclusively. As a further twist, allow for Nilazi to app in as sponsored roles for Templarate death squads, that eliminate, monitor, and track magic use in the city, and outside of it.

Make service in the military mandatory for becoming a citizen. Instead of being born with inks slapped on you, when people come of a certain age, they must serve in the military, in a Noble House, or in the Levies for two years. At the end of that two years, they can be recommended or vouched for, and become an inked citizen. Provide benefits to being an inked citizen. Tuluk could even be a twisted "Democratic Republic" with the illusion of voting power. You may think this doesn't fit the setting, but Balic (one of my favorite city states from Dark Sun) pulls this off extraordinarily well.

Anyways. Those are just some thoughts and ramblings.

[triste]

I'm not in favor of any coded way to verify citizenship. With Tuluki's, there is already an RP way to verify citizenship, and I don't think RPed methods should be exchanged for more code-only engagements with other players. There are already enough complaints regarding encounters with other players not having RP. I don't think something like this, which could make a fine RP scene should instead be relegated to code-only, where someone can quickly confirm another player isn't a citizen, noting that they aren't protected by the crim code, and following that up with practice on their backstab or sapping skill.

As for Allanak, IC ideas on ways to identify citizens was floated at one point, and the IC reason that identifying marks for Allanaki citizens was shot down that I heard was, "No, that's what Northerners do." The Allanaki hatred for Northerners runs so deep that even if something is objectively a good idea, it will be rejected by the south as a "northern" thing if it resembles northern methods or ideology. OOCly, it makes Allanak and Tuluk oppressive in different ways. It's how they are both oppressive, tyrannical cultures, but they're different enough to justify being in a war of ideologies against one another.

Yeah well argued and thank you for letting me know about that previous discussion on 'naki citizenship, but I hope staff put some time evaluating mechanics. I always hated that this was often the extent of espionage roleplay:

wear collar
wear gloves
change accent __other side__
east;east;east;east
A templar says: "HALT! Remove thine gloves."

[Blink]

A lot of stuff that was spot on.  A lot of stuff that is really thought provoking.  Some was a bit off the wall but intriguing nevertheless.  Intriguing and exciting.

Wow.  Thank you for the very insightful analysis. 

Though I was not a huge fangirl of Tuluk, I liked it well enough and enjoyed playing there every 2 or 3 PCs.  I loved the Bards of Poet Circle culture, the appreciation of the arts in general, and, above all, the fact that it wasn't Allanak. I do miss Tuluk.

That said, I'd never have fought to get it back because I don't believe we have the player base to support it.  HeeBeeGB's post has got me thinking more about how much more we've lost than simply another city state by having it closed. We have lost a source of tension and conflict.  And I do start to wonder though if it might be possible. 

[Is Friday]

*application for staff*

Beep boop beep.

"Your application has been accepted, citizen. Please submit a join an imm forum request."

[Barsook]

A lot of stuff that was spot on.  A lot of stuff that is really thought provoking.  Some was a bit off the wall but intriguing nevertheless.  Intriguing and exciting.

Wow.  Thank you for the very insightful analysis. 

Though I was not a huge fangirl of Tuluk, I liked it well enough and enjoyed playing there every 2 or 3 PCs.  I loved the Bards of Poet Circle culture, the appreciation of the arts in general, and, above all, the fact that it wasn't Allanak. I do miss Tuluk.

That said, I'd never have fought to get it back because I don't believe we have the player base to support it.  HeeBeeGB's post has got me thinking more about how much more we've lost than simply another city state by having it closed. We have lost a source of tension and conflict.  And I do start to wonder though if it might be possible. 

Like Blink, I had a few characters in Tuluk but never really was a fan of the city-state. Only with Durik I started to get it and now when I think about it, I think I never did get into it.

I do agree with what everyone is saying but I fear that Blink might be right. Maybe it would be worth it to focus on what we have and try to make changes on those items.

#LuirsStrong2020

[Dresan]

I just don't think all the problems facing the game will disappear if Tuluk is opened.

The only thing Tuluk can provide is an alternative city based location to play which i agree could possibly help with game burn out. However, this will turn very boring very quickly unless staff puts massive effort into making the area fun. There is nothing wrong with Redstorm as an alternative to play except for the fact that staff don't provide it as much support as Allanak right? If staff really want to see how much interest there is in Tuluk culture all they need to do is  put an apartment building in Morins putting it almost at the level of Redstorm, where people could even play thieves that go steal and rob at Luirs. Unfortunately, without massive staff effort, clan based entertainment, Tuluk will just turn into a bigger Morins but with apartments. 

For Tuluk to be the enemy Allanak even notices or be a fun place to play without that effort from staff, players would need to step way up. Especially if its not in the form of outright murder something which was discouraged when the war was going on. Unfortunately the game rarely supports this type of player anymore in my opinion. It is much easier for the game to have that player putting effort just die, and then roll a character that joins the rollercoster theme park ride that is known as the byn, then continue to push the game to provide more time, effort and resources to accomplish their goals. Additionally look at all the effort going into allanak and we have not yet seen that investment return in terms of plot and story my opinion.

The things people remember fondly were huge staff sponsored events the likes we haven't seen since the last great volcano tossing war.  You don't remember how empty and boring Luirs and Redstorm were because everyone concentrated one one or the other location. You don't remember that most players in either location rarely had any plots or interactions that involved someone from the other city. You don't remember that one of the issues we were having was that people were refusing to alternated with each character death and play in another supported city location, causing players to demand more from their favorite location or just feel burnt out none the less.

Frankly the effort require to make Tuluk fun by staff which by looks of allanak is most likely going to be the case  could be put into just about any other location to get the same results.

Approaches that could have bigger impact on the game and evolve less effort then tuluk re-opening:

• World encompassing story that has mundane basis, e.g the fire gith nation invading[with some HRPTs]
• Move away from just clan based plot support instead towards bigger holistic plots that everyone can get involved in their own way
• Make those bigger plots generate interest in location that people don't visit or play in regularly to attract get people to shift location once in a while
• Build up Morins as Luir's 'Redstorm' [add apartments], making it haven for mundane criminals that cause Luirs headaches
• Usher in a mundane era of love and accomplishments like the magick classes experienced during end of the world

[LauraMars]

At the end of the day everyone working on the game is a volunteer. Nobody is required to be there. If only one or two people on staff want to re-open Tuluk, it will never happen, because once those people get bored and quit, everyone remaining will be left with a big-ass city nobody is interested in running and then the game will suffer, because staff will be assigned there, hate it, and burn out sooner, which trickles down to player stories that are left hanging and clans that aren't properly overseen.

I do think it would be cool if it returned, for many reasons that people have already listed - but there has to be enough interest and momentum among the volunteers who run the game to keep that project going.

Tuluk is a shitload of work.

[RavingTregils]

Optimize for the playerbase.
The city was too big. Hell, living in the Circle was an annoying, long walk to get out the western gate..or southern. Remove the elven market (move/keep the archery store!), the barren lands enclosed to the east, half the warrens, red sun commons could be smaller (4 rooms?), etc. No need to add anything, removing stuff would make it more playable.

Cut down to 2 noble houses and one templar group (still have salarr/kurac/kadians/bynners in the city).
Don't bother with PC professional soldiers, have a volunteer militia and let the templarate or a noble house run it.
Let the nobles control the poet groups. 

And, I really like the nilazi idea. Don't bother with a special clan, just have a requirement to notify a templar and be "on call" for special duties.

[Dresan]

It is my opinion that there is not enough attention and support in location such as Rinth, Redstorm, Morins and to a lesser extend Luirs to make people feel like they can play there and not feel like their missing out something by not having access to Allanak location/people/clans.

This is by design because when staff create plots they usually target the most amount of people which are not often in those area. Luirs is better off, but the folks playing in Morins or Redstorm are just out of luck. Which creates this vicious cycle of making these places feel isolated, dead and just worth investing the time to play from at all.  So when you get burnt out from Allanak all the other location feel lackluster, which sadly the are.

Again I don't believe we've seen a return in the investment in terms of plot and story for the the support and love allanak has been given, not sure cutting their support in half now and attempting to fuel plots in another city state will make the game better especially for people still playing in allanak and all the surrounding locations.

[gotdamnmiracle]

It is my opinion that there is not enough attention and support in location such as Rinth, Redstorm, Morins and to a lesser extend Luirs to make people feel like they can play there and not feel like their missing out something by not having access to Allanak location/people/clans.

Perhaps the reason we view that as bad is a perception that focus should be spread evenly? It's only occurring to me now, but perhaps those places exist for more solo type players and the clans within them get less (in my experience as well) support because that's the design. If this is the case the reopening of tuluk won't cause any issues in regards to staff oversight, I guess.

[Lotion]

Perhaps the reason we view that as bad is a perception that focus should be spread evenly? It's only occurring to me now, but perhaps those places exist for more solo type players and the clans within them get less (in my experience as well) support because that's the design. If this is the case the reopening of tuluk won't cause any issues in regards to staff oversight, I guess.

Luirs has a lot of staff supported clans.
* Garrison
* Kurac
* Salarr
* Kadius

The tablelands also has many clans that have roles that players are required to apply for via the request tool instead of through a telnet client:
* Arabet
* Al'Sek (especially their elementalists)
* Sun Runner elementalists

I hope if Tuluk ever does open it will be after Cenyr is more completed. Compare the dancer or the eat echos for the food from that one vendor to the rest of Cenyr and you'll realize how incomplete it is. Something the Gower brothers said was an important lesson they learned from developing RuneScape was (major paraphrasing) "it was most important for them to ensure that the things already in the game should be completed before new stuff got added on".

[th3kaiser]

Tuluk isn't new however. It's built and the documentation is written. Cenyr is probably NEVER getting fleshed out, as an FYI.

[Dresan]

Location such as Rinth and Redstorm have increased dependencies on Allanak to help with be a satisfying place to play from. Its to the point where once a character is cut off from southside allanak for whatever reason, these places just become unbearable to play as interactions are limited.  Like most places this comes and goes though.

While i am not suggestion the support should come in the form of more clans and sponsored rolls to these places, I am saying that plots should be broader in scope, at least generate some interest in having people visit these places once in a while to see what is going on.

Re-opening Tuluk will not help with this situation, and in fact the water down support and players in Allanak may further making a bad situation even worse. Tuluk without massive support would be no different then redstorm or morins, this support will need to be taken from other places and would need to be ongoing. Additionally outside an HRPT even these location will not generate any fun for each other.

I just don't see the state of Allanak right now and think and think, yep, this is what we need is more of...

[Heade]

The only thing Tuluk can provide is an alternative city based location to play which i agree could possibly help with game burn out.

It seems like you're completely discounting almost the entire point made in the original post that was reiterated by HeeBeeGB, that it isn't "just an alternative city location".

There are multiple ways in which not having Tuluk impacts the game on a daily basis. It isn't the same game world without it. Many of those points were made in the OP and HeeBeeGB's post, so there is little point to reiterate them here.


It's also important to note that we WILL get an influx of old players if Tuluk opens. The question isn't if we will. It's just how many we will get. I personally know of about 10 people that will return almost instantly if Tuluk reopens, and I'm far from a social butterfly OOC, so I'm sure there are plenty of others that I don't know about.

[th3kaiser]

I feel like Dresan is just arguing the opposite of the initial reasoning to close Tuluk. It didn't make Allanak busier and more vibrant. There's quite a few of us who just don't much want to play there these days and Tuluk gives both another option and in built conflict based on nationalism that just isn't present in the game today. We lost more than we gained when it closed. Basically, I disagree.

[Dresan]

Outside of HRPT event it is just another city location. Yes different culture, people and flavor.

But I don't agree with the belief that this will be the enemy allanak needs, and improve the game's current situation.  I used to play there for years and a random gemmer roaming the plains was the most trouble we got from Allanak most days.

[Heade]

Outside of HRPT event it is just another city location. Yes different culture, people and flavor.

But I don't agree with the belief that this will be the enemy allanak needs, and improve the game's current situation.  I used to play there for years and a random gemmer roaming the plains was the most trouble we got from Allanak most days.

The thing is, it isn't about whether or not you, or any other individual player liked playing in Tuluk. No one is asking you to play there. There will be plenty of other people who will go play there in your stead. If you're thinking it will potentially take players away from you to go play there, yes, it may take some away. But you've already lost a lot of them by having it closed to begin with. There will be more players playing in the game. Not just in Tuluk, but in Allanak, too. Many of Tuluk's players that left DID alternate between characters played in Allanak and Tuluk, so while some players might play less in Allanak than they do now, other players that you don't currently get to play with at all will potentially mitigate those losses.

Part of the reason you didn't see a whole lot of southerners up around Tuluk is because...TULUK! It was populated, and thus dangerous for southerners and gemmers to be there. More recently, since Tuluk has been closed to players, you see things which I consider to be unthematic to the game happening up around Tuluk. You see southern hunters all the time, you see groups of gemmed walking along the fucking north road, right next to a Tuluki fort. Seriously. They don't even act nervous to be there. They're stopping to sniff flowers and stuff. lol

People don't understand the game world they're living in any more. And you can't expect them to. There was more reason to deal with neutral parties from the wastes, like the Tan Muark, or other exotic traders because they were more capable of getting goods from the northlands than your run of the mill southern hunter. Now, without any clear and present danger, that isn't the case. Everyone, regardless of accent can travel to every corner of the known without any real(read: PC) threat.

Tuluk not being there has diminished the RP of the entire game. I could spend all day writing up a list of how the ripples of Tuluk's closing harmed RP opportunities and the overall flavor of the gameworld, but that document would be so long that no one would read it.

[Dresan]

I just don't agree with all the arguments made for opening Tuluk.

If people want to re-open tuluk so they can play tuluki bards and hunters, yeah its great for that, so is morins/luirs I would argue with some better apartments added. However, I do understand clan support/plots is much more important now then it used to be.

However, if people want to re-open tuluk so they can experience the copper war or think that it will make Allanak or any of the other locations better in any way, that is not likely. The level of efforts that made Tuluk/Allanak great are event we haven't seen since the volcano tossing war.

Tuluk will just be another city location with its own flavor and culture.

[Heade]

Tuluk will just be another city location with its own flavor and culture.

No, it won't. The area around Tuluk will also be dangerous for southerners, unlike now. There are numerous changes to the game with an active Tuluk. There are tons of implications that you're refusing to acknowledge.

If you don't think those changes in attitude and culture that would reverberate across the gameworld are worth what you perceive as Tuluk taking people away from other areas of the gameworld that you enjoy, that is a valid argument(albeit one mitigated by gaining new players). But to say that it has no effect on the rest of the gameworld is a disingenuous claim at best if you played for long before the closing of Tuluk.

[Lotion]

Cenyr is probably NEVER getting fleshed out, as an FYI.

I really hope it does. If the rest of that little spot had as much love put into it as the dancer NPC I can only imagine how interesting it would be. Her mdesc is miles ahead of anything else I saw in there.

[Dresan]

Sorry Heade, just going to agree to disagree. 

Basically I would rather just see a gith fire nation attack making every location more interesting to play in rather than see another city location (abeit a very interesting one) open up to provide yet more taverns for us to sit in and talk about nothing. 

I also find it funny that people seem to forget that the staff didn't just roll over and close Tuluk rather there was also a concentrated effort by a number of players that refused to play in Tuluk after the changes that occurred during the war. The numbers in Tuluk never increased despite the staff putting so much effort in making the place interesting.  I don't know the number of people Tuluk had when it closed but it hadn't been in good shape for a long time. 

[Heade]

Sorry Heade, just going to agree to disagree. 

Basically I would rather just see a gith fire nation attack making every location more interesting to play in rather than see another city location (abeit a very interesting one) open up to provide yet more taverns for us to sit in and talk about nothing. 

I also find it funny that people seem to forget that the staff didn't just roll over and close Tuluk rather there was also a concentrated effort by a number of players that refused to play in Tuluk after the changes that occurred during the war. The numbers in Tuluk never increased despite the staff putting so much effort in making the place interesting.  I don't know the number of people Tuluk had when it closed but it hadn't been in good shape for a long time.

Tuluk was well-populated for a long time(many years). If the numbers dropped in the last year it was opened, we should ask ourselves what about Tuluk changed in that last year or two.

[HeeBeeGB]

I can see both Dresan and Heade's point of view.

I agree that simply opening up Tuluk unchanged, or changed only on the surface level, will land us in exactly the same position we were in when Tuluk closed in the first place.

It will take both proactive Staff, and proactive players, to ignite the area. It will take a seismic shift in the geography of the location, as well as the documentation for it to be surgically effective.

LauraMars pointed out something important -- Tuluk isn't an easy undertaking. It is, or at least was, massive, both in scope and in management.

Numbers should be broken down thusly:
1-2 Active Templars
2-3 Active Nobles

Right there, you have 4-5 active leadership roles. This isn't an easy feat, even for Allanak to manage, and for our current player base to manage. However, lurking in the depths of the current player base, and circling around the outskirts of the player base, are people who would willingly jump for a leadership based role in Tuluk but would not apply for one in Allanak. Anecdotal, of course, I do not have hard numbers here. Just as anecdotal are 'the players who left the game and would return if Tuluk re-opened'. Would they? Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they would for 1 PC, and not forevermore. Maybe these players are still currently playing, just not as often, with breaks in-between PCs, or maybe they wouldn't return at all, even if Tuluk re-opened.

Moving on, you have:
1 aide/aide-type per Noble
2-5 Soldier-Types (Perhaps ameliorated by a volunteer militia / Levy as suggested earlier, aligning the numbers)
3-5 Independents / Citizens / Bards / Those with Stake in Tuluk, but are not sponsored roles

Exempt:
All PCs that would float in and out of Tuluk, but aren't 'The Hardcore of Tuluk'. Certainly not the whole player base, there are of course 'The Hardcore of Allanak' that do not ever or rarely leave it (Nobles, Templars, Aides, and so on).

So in total, we're looking at 9-15+ players for an 'active Tuluk'. When you look at numbers like that, it doesn't seem terribly daunting (at least to me). If that meant the closure of some tribal aspects of the game, I would happily see that happen in order to reintroduce Tuluk as a foil to Allanak.

The problem is -- It's a matter of priorities. If we prioritize new tribes of independents (Two Moons, Tan Muark, as examples), new criminal organizations (Dust Runners, Crimson Wind), we push chunks of players into these roles. Spread among the groups just mentioned, I am sure, are around 10 players. If we were to prioritize Tuluk, and reprioritize other aspects of the world, we could certainly free up the player-space to manage.

However, this does not address Staff oversight and management. Though LauraMars points to Staff being LARGE, it is smaller than it has been in the past. With the current amount of Staff, adding Tuluk and up to 3 new clans to manage isn't a 'poof, magic' kind of moment. It is a lot to ask of Staff. It would require likely bringing on new (or old) Staff, shifting priorities and responsibilities, and possibly a new (or old) Administrator as well. That is neither easily done, or easily considered, even.

Nothing worth achieving was easy. Do I think Tuluk is necessary? Clearly, it has been closed, and considered unnecessary, but I think it is integral to driving conflict in the game world of ArmageddonMUD.I would say the game world as a total has suffered for Tuluk's closure. Allanak has suffered for it, by not having a foil to compare itself to, and by driving insular plots among the powerful against one another, having nowhere to direct outwards. The conflict levels of the world have suffered for it, not having the age old conflict of North vs South to rely on and use to plot advantage among sponsored roles. Luirs has suffered for it, by no longer being a driving wedge between North and South and all of the political schemings involved there. The mystery of the world has suffered for it, as those in Allanak need no longer live in question of what the Northerners are up to, if they are plotting war or revenge or assassination. The forward motion of the world has suffered for it, where plots and characters now run in tighter and tighter circles, repeating motions and concepts, and having little distinction between literal years of gameplay. Player agency has suffered for it -- Why try to build an empire if it might just be taken away tomorrow in an announcement by Staff? It certainly has made me more trepidatious about longer-term goal oriented PCs, and I am sure others will agree there.

I would implore those who think Tuluk is 'just another city state to have a starting location' to consider past events in your time playing the game (if you played, when Tuluk was around and active). How many plots revolved around Tuluk, either as enemy or ally or concept that injected into your PCs life? It is likely Tuluk touched many plots in the game, to a certain extent, either directly or indirectly. There are postulations that not enough is happening in Allanak, even with Tuluk being closed, and focus should be put on existing areas of play. Redesigning the Bishop or the Knight for Team Allanak has little bearing on where all of Team Tuluk's pieces have gone, and where these redesigned Team Allanak pieces are supposed to go or do. It is no wonder that these sentiments are apparent for some people -- In a chess game with one team playing against itself, there is no actual conflict, only fabricated conflict. Fabricated conflict can only entertain for so long, particularly after realizing it is fabricated and being sold to you as real.

[HeeBeeGB]

Sorry Heade, just going to agree to disagree. 

Basically I would rather just see a gith fire nation attack making every location more interesting to play in rather than see another city location (abeit a very interesting one) open up to provide yet more taverns for us to sit in and talk about nothing. 

I also find it funny that people seem to forget that the staff didn't just roll over and close Tuluk rather there was also a concentrated effort by a number of players that refused to play in Tuluk after the changes that occurred during the war. The numbers in Tuluk never increased despite the staff putting so much effort in making the place interesting.  I don't know the number of people Tuluk had when it closed but it hadn't been in good shape for a long time.

Unfortunately, this is false. Tuluk was experiencing a bit of a boom in the weeks leading up to its closure, and that was admitted even by Northern Staff at the time (Team Evershine) who were just as blindsided by the Producer's decision to close Tuluk. There were several active plots, a war ongoing that involved every strata of the city, bats and secrets involving them plaguing the city. I think if you polled the active players in Tuluk a month before it closed, they would say it is the best it had been in recent memory. It was in a good place and getting better, and the rug was pulled out from under it.

I should mention it is a fallacy that Tuluk was closed because of a 'concentrated effort by a number of players that refused to play in Tuluk'. There was no revolution or picket signs. Sure, many people didn't like to play in Tuluk and preferred Allanak. It had been that way for literal years. Just as many people liked to play in Tuluk occasionally, and many players enjoyed playing in Tuluk almost exclusively. Staff made the decision based on their own metrics, their own time constraints, and it was done in a prophylactic fashion. The concept was to consolidate the current PC population and Staff Teams rather than dilute it between two city states. Instead of having two branches of GMH in both cities, there would just be one. Instead of two branches of Noble Houses in North and South, there would just be the Southern Nobles to worry about. I think it had very little to do with PC population at the time. Part of the reason it was made an OOC change rather than an IC change was that Staff could walk back the decision if they wanted to, over time. Unfortunately, this also lead to the elephant in the room for RL years of 'what happened to Tuluk'. It was considered an experiment, and I do not think it had all of the intended results.

I would direct you to Rathustra's post on the closure of Tuluk as a measure of both Northern Staff's surprise and reticence at the move to close Tuluk, and the acknowledgement that it was moving in a good direction.
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49199.msg878176.html#msg878176

As well, a quote from the announcement itself:

Staff turnover and staff shortfalls have made the task of maintaining a staffing team with forward momentum difficult for more than short periods.  While we remain at full strength temporarily, we inevitably lose staffers (just as we lose players in sponsored roles) to real-life circumstances.  We believe that consolidating our staffing resources and altering the staffing structure will allow us to staff the game more efficiently and more productively, even with the shortfalls we experience.

There is nothing in the announcement about 'due to a concerted effort by players who hate Tuluk and refuse to play there, we have closed Tuluk.' It is much more grey than that, and I would postulate this assertion is basically hearsay.

[Heade]

Thanks for digging up the relevant posts, HeeBeeGB. I postulated the same as you, but had neither the time nor the motivation to dig up supporting evidence. I'm glad you did.

[Asanadas]

Let's not mince words here. Nyr put Tuluk in a bad spot with his shadow artist drama, threw himself out of the responsibility when he couldn't fix it, and then unilaterally shut Tuluk down out of spite when others started making it better. I got that factoid out of Nergal myself. And let's not delude ourselves: we know in hindsight that much of the animosity in the community towards Tuluk was a proxy snipe at Nyr himself. Guy wasn't popular.

The difficulty herein relies on the documentation of Tuluk demanding subtlety. It demands finesse. It demands noble roles that don't have sex with commoners. Tuluk is a harder venue to write for than Allanak and a harder setting to keep people entertained in than Allanak due to these things. I understand the reluctance: opening Tuluk would be difficult (for you). But Tuluk should have been opened two months ago with the coronavirus player bump. Maybe all those people that came and went from lockdown boredom might come and stay for a properly done Tuluk.

That's the argument. It's not like anything else of that level of significance has happened in recent memory.

[HeeBeeGB]

Let's not mince words here. Nyr put Tuluk in a bad spot with his shadow artist drama, threw himself out of the responsibility when he couldn't fix it, and then unilaterally shut Tuluk down out of spite when others started making it better. I got that factoid out of Nergal myself. And let's not delude ourselves: we know in hindsight that much of the animosity in the community towards Tuluk was a proxy snipe at Nyr himself. Guy wasn't popular.

The difficulty herein relies on the documentation of Tuluk demanding subtlety. It demands finesse. It demands noble roles that don't have sex with commoners. Tuluk is a harder venue to write for than Allanak and a harder setting to keep people entertained in than Allanak due to these things. I understand the reluctance: opening Tuluk would be difficult (for you). But Tuluk should have been opened two months ago with the coronavirus player bump. Maybe all those people that came and went from lockdown boredom might come and stay for a properly done Tuluk.

That's the argument. It's not like anything else of that level of significance has happened in recent memory.

Nyr -- Like any Staff member -- Didn't operate in a vacuum. It was a decision made by all three Producers at the time (Adhira, Nyr, and Nessalin). It was voted on, and the decision was delivered down to Administrators.

Tuluk shouldn't have been opened two months ago just because a global pandemic was hitting. If anything, that would have been the worst time to open it simply because people had more free time. It would do a disservice to Tuluk to reopen it simply because there were anecdotally more players around. If anything, I think right now would be a good time to consider talking about re-opening Tuluk, but there is quite a bit of work that would need to be done beforehand. You couldn't simply do nothing and re-open it. First off, there were actual IC events that transpired after the announcement of it closing, and a more recent announcement of what happened to Tuluk in the interim. Those would need to be reconciled, a new vision of what Tuluk has become would need to be hashed out amongst Staff, and a future vision of what Tuluk might become/be playable within would need to be hashed out and realized.

We're talking about months of work, not 'hey there's a global pandemic killing people, let's re-open Tuluk and capitalize on everyone's free time. It's in poor taste to say it was the perfect time to do it.

[HeeBeeGB]

Dissecting Tuluk into bite-sized chunks, starting from the top:

Tuluki Templarate:

This already moved in the right direction. The orders were merged, Lirathans/Jihaens were combined into simply 'Templar'. Gender-exclusive paths within the Templarate were done away with, finally removing a glaring obstacle in ArmageddonMUD's concept of the gender you were born with having correlation with your life path. Psionic Powers were distributed more evenly, also requiring sacrificing one path for another, and were less focused on overt Lirathan methods that were pretty stifling for plots. Everything that was done here I approve of, and if anything, it can simply be dusted off and reapplied with some updates for IC events.

The only addition I would make that is the Foil to Allanak's power is a developed ability to remove someone's connection to the elements, either semi-permanently or permanently. This would include Southern Templars' connection to Tektolnes.

The Pyramid could likely be unchanged. If anything, shrunken slightly and updated, while making 'The Heart' more open to the public, with the Pyramid itself being off limits.

Tuluki Nobility:
As mentioned previously, there are two options here. Have the only surviving Houses be one or two (Tenneshi and Lyksae as examples). Alternatively, have several of the Houses band together under two distinct ideological banners -- One that argues for isolationism, Tuluki 'Pride', and rooting out unsavory elements of the Gol Krathu, carrying a more 'Modern Tuluk' banner while focusing inwards on restructuring, rebuilding, and reimagining. The other House clings to traditionalist ways, the Poet's Circle, carrying the Tuluki Message throughout the world (expansionism) and has war-like tendencies. Make these Houses diametrically opposed to one another, as Tenneshi and Winrothol were supposed to. Have members of these clans have limited exclusion from Crime Code when attacking one another in Tuluk.

Soldiers/Militia/Black-Ops:

The Sun King's Legions can be reformed under a new banner of the new Templarate, the Black Moon Order. These soldiers keep the peace through brutal discipline of those that speak against, disappearances in the night, and trials without jury or onlooker in alleyways. Cross the law, and you likely will not cross the road again. They should almost be more oppressive and brutal than their Southern Counterparts, which honestly have more of a bent towards making the Templar the judge/jury/exeecutioner. Make this different. Make the soldiers of Tuluk even worse, more seemingly corrupt, brutal, and Gestapo-like than Allanak. Set them apart.

Black Ops could just be the same as soldier, dependent on the person's ability. Those who have a connection to the Void can register with the State and serve as Witch Hunters. They would be considered in a similar light to 'Witchers' in Geralt's universe. Necessary evils that are spit on, reviled, but also sought after for their ability to hunt down and kill Magickers.

Citizenship:

Why be a citizen of Tuluk? What do those tattoos get you? Can anyone become a citizen? Can anyone be made a citizen?

While part of my likes the idea of people being branded from birth with Gol Krathu tattoos, why not make it actually mean something. Are their two castes of people in the city? The haves and the have nots? This makes for a more interesting strata of society.

Perhaps Templars can make someone a citizen on the spot, based on their service or 'Good Deeds'. Perhaps Nobles could do the same. There were a few examples of Southerner ex-pats who became Northerners, Inked and everything, and I always found this concept fascinating. What makes someone a Northerner? Can someone become Tuluki? Interesting things to postulate on and dissect.

Shadow Artists:

Always clunky. I would leave it at 'Assassination, theft, and other acts that would be considered petty crime, if performed artfully and without evidence of wrongdoing, is legal in Tuluk's Walls'. Do away with the tattoos or registering with the State. Let it be built on reputation alone.

Poet's Circle:

Most of the Poet's Circle doesn't survive the most recent upheaval in Tuluk. Open up 3 of the Circles -- Irofel, Driamusek, and (Gosh, it's been a while...) Rusarla? The one that accepts Elves/Half-Giants/Dwarves more readily. Have it mirror the Atrium in a respect, that Circle-trained are more often accepted as Noble aides, and can operate rather freely during their time of tutelage. Have the Templarate directly oversee the Poet's Circle, thereby controlling rumors, information mongering, and propaganda.

Levies:

Continue with the Levies concept. It was great having any Tuluki capable of both contributing to war-efforts, training, and responses to threats in the city or outside of it. Perhaps rolling with the citizenship idea, have service in the Levies guarantee citizenship.

Independents:

Always a bonus of Tuluk, the capability of Independents to grow and grow big. Similar to the GMH Adoption path, have the Grey Hunt become a regular thing again. Set Tuluk apart from Allanak -- Even a Commoner can become a Hlum Noble, and maybe be adopted into a Noble House, if they stick to it, and grease the right palms. Make it more like America -- You can pull yourself up by your bootstraps in Tuluk! Except...Not really, if you piss off the wrong people.

Akai S'jirr:

I loved this clan, despite its nepotism. They should be scummier, rule the Warrens, and not nearly as chummy with the Templarate as they once were. They survive by the skin of their teeth, by their craft, and by eliminating those that would snub them or stamp them out. Simply make them have less standing or clout in general.

UnderTuluk/Elven Marketplace/Freil's Rest/Old Tuluk Ruins/Tembo's Tooth/All Other Bloat:

Get rid of it, for good. Gotta cut down the geography.

Red Sun Commons/Poet's Circle/Warrens/Vestric Tavern/Sanctuary/Noble Quarter/The Heart:

Keep all of this. It was shrunken. Shrink it a little more. Noble Quarter, combine it with the Heart. Make the Pyramid the center, and each Noble House off in a cardinal direction (E/W) from the center, while the Pyramid proper is to the North. Keep the Bahamet's Maw for hoidy-toidy get togethers and Templar/Noble meet ups. Move the Poet's Circle to just south of the Heart, where the Noble Quarter was. Make it 1/3rd the size. Get rid of the tavern.

Warrens:

Make it have no crime code, rather than limited crime code. It should be relatively small -- 10-15 rooms. It should lead to places like the Akai Sjirr, some dingy apartments, and some sellers with beefy NPC guards.

Crime Code:
Make all citizens of Tuluk able to attack all citizens of Allanak without repercussion, particularly at night or in lawless areas any time of day (Unpopulated).

Make all members of Noble Houses able to attack all members of other Noble Houses without crime code repercussion.

Have Templars decide if they want to put a pox on both their Houses, invite them over for tea, or get involved.

Byn/GMH Branches:
Have small compounds in the North. Nothing like before. 3-5 rooms, 1 save room, 1 training room, 1 bunk room, 1 cook. Rotate between City States more frequently.

[Dresan]

Stuff that isn't helping with the argument that opening up Tuluk is a good idea

lol, blindsided eh?

In all honestly the more you bring up past posts and events around the closure, the more I cringe and remember that the Tuluk that closed was not the same Tuluk that I played in since Luirs was in ruins. 

Shadow artist. That is a word I never wanted to remember again.

After reading your posts and remembering the past more clearly, instead of opening Tuluk, I feel we burn the place down down completely and turn it into ruins.

[HeeBeeGB]

Stuff that isn't helping with the argument that opening up Tuluk is a good idea

lol, blindsided eh?

In all honestly the more you bring up past posts and events around the closure, the more I cringe and remember that the Tuluk that closed was not the same Tuluk that I played in since Luirs was in ruins. 

Shadow artist. That is a word I never wanted to remember again.

After reading your posts and remembering the past more clearly, instead of opening Tuluk, I feel we burn the place down down completely and turn it into ruins.

Blindsided, yes. If Allanak closed tomorrow without warning and only a Staff Announcement deciding it was the right thing to do, wouldn't you be blindsided? I suppose you have prescient qualities, and can look back to that time and say 'I predicted Tuluk was going to close'. I would say you were/are full of shit, but hey. Opinions, am I right?

I too agree Shadow Artist is a word I don't want to see again. Instead of making the system complex/tattoos/registering, just making well done crime not investigated would suffice.

I think you are remembering 'your past' more clearly. It isn't everyone's past, or everyone's experience. My experience is clearly different, as is Heade's and others.

You yourself claim that Allanak is stagnant and not receiving enough attention. In my opinion, re-opening Tuluk would provide stimulus and conflict in that direction, providing the other team on that chess board. Did you have any solutions to your own proposed problem besides whinging?

[Dresan]

Did you have any solutions to your own proposed problem besides whinging?

I did. 

You believe the massive effort required in opening and keeping tuluk is fun is the way to go, while I feel we the effort needs to be put into larger worldwide plots and events will make the current locations we have more fun to play in, such as the gith fire nation invading. Or PC closed off Tuluk launching a massive attack and Allanak finally burning it to the ground at great cost to itself. (and then the gith fire nation invades)

I just don't agree with your ideas and do not believe that the effort involved in opening Tuluk and making it fun will have the big payoff people think it will. But I agree it adds another city location to the game, which will attract some people and help a bit with burn out. 

I can see you are passionate about your idea though. But its okay that we disagree. Chill a bit.

[RavingTregils]

If you want a game. Give us Tuluk and let the best city win.
If you want just another plot with a predetermined outcome so you can ride along. Welcome gith raid 9000.

[7dwarves]

I agree with this. I'd just open Tuluk again and let Jesus take the reins.

[Dresan]

[RavingTregils]

Sorry for the double. But here - make the stakes high. For instance:
If Tuluk loses - Pillage it, raze it to the ground, Muky baby dies and there are no more inked in the game. Ever. No weaseling out by hiding in a pyramid.

If Tuluk wins - Tekboy dies and takes all his gemmed/templars with him. The rinthis have complete freedom of the city until a new ruler is found and order restored.

Why not? One recurring complaint on this board is how players can't make a difference. It would be the biggest/most meaningful RPT ever. If 100's of former Tuluk players don't come back to defend the city (ok, probably get 3) - maybe it's time for it to die. It's a much more interesting story than whatever the Tuluk is now.

[Pale Horse]

How would You reopen Tuluk?  Pale Horse ideas:


Currently:

Tuluk is sealed away except for specific, inked citizens of the city (VNPCs).  A minor soldier presence is currently stationed in Morin's, made up of those that were outside of the city when the lockdown went into place and those that managed to trickle out since, if any.  Some citizens also fled and have taken up residence in Morin's and the surroundings.

Re-Opening Plot, Phase 1:

Open a "new" Clan: The Sun Legion!
3 special roles.  1 Sergeant, 2 Legionnaires, reporting to one of the few Captains in Morin's.  Your job/expectations: Patrol the north, report findings, keep the citizenry safe, see to the interests of His Gloriousness the Sun King, as directed by your superiors.

Plot: The Legion outside the city has begun to flex its muscles.  Northern-born have been inducted into the ranks as full 'citizens' of a city many may not have even set foot inside of, and have been granted citizenship for when it inevitably does (keep the Faith, Citizen).  The highest-ranking Legion leaders are sending out units as a show of force and have the intention of putting more effort into shoring up the Fortress.  Why now after so many years?  Word has come from inside the city: They are to prepare themselves, several of His Faithful are going to be assigned to the village.

The special app'd Legionnaires will get to help prepare for the Faithfuls' arrival.  They will patrol, report, spy on the neighbors (you can go to Luir's, sure, on special assignment), report, recruit loyal northern citizens into the legion as auxiliaries (not actually part of the Legion or clan but in an auxiliary role), etc.

Leave this as is for a month or two of RL time, then introduce the next part:

Phase 2: His Faithful Incoming.

Role-call for the Sun Legion: 2 Tuluki Templars.

Plot: A group of four or five templars have been assigned to oversee the Legion outside of His City.  They are to establish themselves in Morin's, build up their forces, supplies, etc, and when the time is right, transfer their operations to the Fortress.  SubPlot: The Templars are part of a faction within the civil war of the city.  Their job is to build up support from outside and funnel in needed supplies, troops, etc.  The PC templars are to support his plot but can be from either faction.  Maybe one is secretly working for the other side of the civil war.  Maybe it is a joint venture from both sides and there is inner tension because they have to work with 'traitors.'  Backstabbing, yay!

The PC templars are low in the totem pole and will be directed by their superiors (Staff).  They might be assigned to patrol, might be assigned to look for supplies, information, make nice/alliances with the Merchant Houses in Luir's, etc.  This gives the Legion "Something To Do" and allow their players to still interact on a regular basis with another section of the player base and run into rivalries and conflict with any Southerners or their influence in Luir's.  During this time, we start seeing camps set up around the northlands that are/are not actual camps you can enter, but represent a growing consolidation of dispersed Tuluki citizens/Northerners gathering together.  Tent cities or a single tent city outside the fortress or near/in Morin's.  Trade increases, more NPCs can be written to reflect a growing population, etc.

Keep this going for a year or two of RL time, then introduce Phase 3:

New Role-call for the Sun Legion: 2 representatives from the noble houses in Tuluk.  Which ones, up to Staff.  Nobles, noble bastards, trusted representatives, whatever.

Plot: Supplies have been good/bad.  Troops have come in and bolstered the ranks/sown discord in the city for one, either or both sides.  The end result is the same: The Civil War intensifies and the situation for the common/noble lot is getting worse than ever before.  Whatever side of the war they fall on, the Noble Houses decide that they must ensure their survival so they send out representatives to work with the Legion outside to prepare the way for an influx of Nobles, their servants, House goods, etc.

Legion and Noble PCs now work at building up actual compounds/manner houses.  At the Fortress?  In Morin's?  Maybe something like Country Manors starting up in a couple of places along the northern road.  Until these are built, the all northern "Tuluki" PCs will have to shack up together in some fashion or another.

During this time, of course Allanak is going to come sniffing.  Spies, night raids, whatever.  Conflict, yay!

Phase 4 is now in place:

The day comes, plans have been set in motion, nobles and their servants gather their things to make a break for the gates where the Guards have been bribed.  But of course, it is not that easy.  Factions in the Civil War find out their enemy is plotting to escape, desperate citizens have heard whispers of freedom and all meet up in a head that sees the gates thrown open and a host of people flood from the city.  Escaping a bloodbath that happened at the gates when the 'loyalists' fight one another or try to prevent escape, fleeing ahead of such a group or what have you, the end result is that hundreds or thousands manage to get out before the gates are again closed...this time, perhaps permanently.  The city goes on 'extra' lock-down, pogroms increase and all communication is suddenly cut off.  The city is silent and likely to remain so for a long, long, long time.  Maybe it will eventually end with everyone inside dead or deranged with only the mindless wandering the streets in packs like a zombie apocalypse.

Plot: "The Flood" happens and the north now have a VNPC influx of thousands of Tuluki citizens.  Soldiers and Templars from both sides of the War also made it out and call for 'loyalists' to continue the fight outside of the walls; their eventual triumph will lead to them retaking the city.  The actions of the PCs up to this point will now shine: Which faction is ascendant?  Who's vision will be put forward as the "New Tuluk Outside the Walls?"  Maybe none and they will have to make an uneasy accommodation with one another, living in a distributed series of small enclaves.  Maybe it was just one faction that was ascendant and they now have to go about doing whatever they plan on doing, knowing that they have saboteurs in their ranks from the 'traitorous' other side.  'Witch hunts' amongst the populace!  A new wave of fanaticism has taken hold of the survivors of the bloody war where minds were stolen and destroyed!  This could be where the idea of the sub-order within the Templarate, the Nilazi Witch Hunters, comes in.  And, why not, let's call it for what it is: The Inquisition!  New sponsored roll!  Inquisitor.

Now, where does it go from here?  Who knows!  PCs and factions from all parts of the Known would want to get in on this action and the events that play out or lead into the actions taken during this long-ass plot could shape it in totally different ways.  Maybe one of the plots is to head off the inevitable meddling and the Sun Legion recruits spies to foment dissent, sabotage enemies and just make messes in the rest of the Known to keep everyone occupied at home and away from the North while it rebuilds.  Damned Northies!  We hadn't done anything to them (yet) and they sent in their people to cause all this trouble (before we could), I just know it!

In The End, we have a re-skinned Tuluk (of whatever flavor) with a few clans (Sun Legion, Templarate, Nobles), a chance for commoner Tuluki to come back (you fled the horrors of the city/were born from those who fled, etc), the feud between North and South is again on-like-Donkey-Kong and there is an alternate place for play for when a PC inevitably dies.  The Great Merchant Houses have another place to search for conflict/opportunity and Northern branches are opened/created once again.  Resources only found in the north are again under the radiant fist of His Legions and Tuluk, causing disruption in the status queue of the past..100..70 IG years?  Long enough for a generation or two to have grown accustomed to how things were, and now they are not. 

Murder, Corruption, Betrayal...and 'growth' for everyone!

[Lizzie]

I love the idea of Tuluk. I hate playing in it. I much prefer playing AGAINST it. I prefer that so much, that I really miss it. I miss having a global adversary.

What I would do:

Restore Jihaens and Lirathans HOWEVER - make Lirathans less powerful. They'd still be what they were, just a bit more limited AND more RP-restricted. In other words - just because you -can- do something doesn't mean you should. This is true for Templars in Allanak who CAN kill any PC they want to - but know that they probably shouldn't go on a killing spree just because they can, and it's fun.
It's true for Militia, it's true for nobles within the confines of their own estates. It's true for rinthis. It should also be true for Lirathans. In addition, certain things that might have happened automatically with them previously, should be turned into a player-directed on-off toggle, similar to the listen command. It eventually wears off on its own, but you can turn it on any time, and turn it off any time. This last bit might have already been implemented in the last couple of years of Tuluk's playable existence. I only know about how it was many years ago.

There needs to be less emphasis on the whole "subtlety" game. Yes it's an important aspect of Tuluk. But people took it out of context and turned it into "if you're not in the "in-crowd" you will never know that anything happened to anyone or anything, ever, either IC or OOC, and we won't ever post anything of note on the tavern board because we don't want anyone to know that something big happened in the middle of town yesterday that there's NO WAY anyone could have missed." There was way too much of that. It was beyond exclusive. No one was allowed to ask questions, and no one was allowed to share information. So it became a game of how long can you live in a stagnant city before running out to be carru'ed to death?

That whole attitude needs to be toned down significantly while still retaining the flavor.

[rinthrat]

Can we prop up the Sand Lord a bit instead of reopening Tuluk?

Why?
It's physically close, so that conflict wouldn't be so 'distant'.
It wouldn't fracture the playerbase as much since Red Storm is already populated.
There are no tree-hugging bards in Red Storm - it doesn't have any of the things people didn't like about Tuluk.

But how does this make any sense?
I'm sure we can come up with something. Maybe Muk Utep got fed up with the listless drama, killed the Sand Lord and took over to teach Tek a lesson. Maybe the Sand Lord has been secretly preparing for ages and teamed up with a certain figure that has been asleep for centuries. I don't know what makes sense, I don't have the deep knowledge of the game's lore, but I'm sure staff can come up with some story that does make sense.

[th3kaiser]

Personally I feel that it's TOO close. We're talking less than thirty rooms from the gates (at a guess). And given the power of Allanak there isn't any conceivable way that they can actually stand up to the enormous Citystate. That's why Tuluk is a more reasonable choice of foil. Realistically, Nak could just march out and be at Red Storm tomorrow with a small army of gemmed to breach walls and march a large army right inside.

And as far as people hating the Tuluki bards an everything well....that's half the point. We -NEED- something different after playing a half dozen PCs in the same culture and area. Our options now for main areas of play are Allanak, Allanak for Criminals, or Luirs (which just isn't as useful now that it's not the midpoint between two actual powers) And as for fracturing the playerbase, I think the consolidation of the playerbase thing was a mistake. It's clearly not worked particularly well in practice given everything I've heard from how easy it isn't to find interaction in Allanak these days.

[Lizzie]

Personally I feel that it's TOO close. We're talking less than thirty rooms from the gates (at a guess). And given the power of Allanak there isn't any conceivable way that they can actually stand up to the enormous Citystate. That's why Tuluk is a more reasonable choice of foil. Realistically, Nak could just march out and be at Red Storm tomorrow with a small army of gemmed to breach walls and march a large army right inside.

And as far as people hating the Tuluki bards an everything well....that's half the point. We -NEED- something different after playing a half dozen PCs in the same culture and area. Our options now for main areas of play are Allanak, Allanak for Criminals, or Luirs (which just isn't as useful now that it's not the midpoint between two actual powers) And as for fracturing the playerbase, I think the consolidation of the playerbase thing was a mistake. It's clearly not worked particularly well in practice given everything I've heard from how easy it isn't to find interaction in Allanak these days.

I agree. Our playerbase was never *consistently* actively large in the first place. Averages of 30-40 playing during peak time was common even when Tuluk was a giant mess of plotlines, the Red Fangs were active, desert elves didn't have to be in a coded d-elf clan, and the UnderTuluk was active. During HRPTs and RPTs sure the activity went up, but that's true now.  What had to be done, then, was cap clans. It was a bit awkward, but it tended to work. It usually kept the same players from rerolling into the same clanmates over and over again, and forced them to either play in a different clan, or be unclanned for awhile.

At the time, there was plenty of variety to choose from so being "forced" to do something different wasn't nearly as restrictive or unfun as it was then.

[rinthrat]

Personally I feel that it's TOO close. We're talking less than thirty rooms from the gates (at a guess). And given the power of Allanak there isn't any conceivable way that they can actually stand up to the enormous Citystate.

That's why Tuluk is a more reasonable choice of foil. Realistically, Nak could just march out and be at Red Storm tomorrow with a small army of gemmed to breach walls and march a large army right inside.

No conceivable way? Come on. How many sorcerers does it take to take out a few hundred gemmed? Not the PC sort of sorcerer, the sort that has been living for centuries. And who knows what the sandlord has been hiding in that sea of silt? Across the sea of silt?

And as far as people hating the Tuluki bards an everything well....that's half the point. We -NEED- something different after playing a half dozen PCs in the same culture and area. Our options now for main areas of play are Allanak, Allanak for Criminals, or Luirs (which just isn't as useful now that it's not the midpoint between two actual powers) And as for fracturing the playerbase, I think the consolidation of the playerbase thing was a mistake. It's clearly not worked particularly well in practice given everything I've heard from how easy it isn't to find interaction in Allanak these days.

I think you're seeing the past through rose-colored glasses. We tried to fix Tuluk. Multiple times. It didn't work. Tuluk rarely worked well in practice, despite being open for decades and multiple attempts to fix it.

[th3kaiser]

Oh no, I hated Tuluk. No rose colored anything here. I just feel the game is missing something key and I'm hoping it's Tuluk. Because things just haven't been great lately.

[Greve]

Tuluk wouldn't be #1 on my list of things I'd do to revitalize this game, but if it was the only option, I'd take it. Something has to happen. The game is so stagnant that it's depressing to look at. The crippling boredom that has been part of almost every day I've spent on this game for the last few years is enough to make me embrace anything that might make things interesting again. Something just died when Tuluk was closed, and the game has been a shadow of its former self ever since. I barely even played in Tuluk, but the existence of two city-states was critical for the game. Without that, or something to replace it, Arm is frankly falling apart.

I don't think Tuluk is the perfect solution to that, but it's the one that already exists and doesn't take a year of development. It's easy and familiar. The increased focus on Allanaki roleplay that was supposed to come from the closure of Tuluk never actually materialized, so why not just bring it back? It's not like Allanak isn't already a ghost town.

[Dresan]

Wow. That is heartrendingly blunt but I cannot agree more. Sadly, if I honestly felt Tuluk was the issue I wouldn't have posted so much on it.

However, Tuluk's major problem was the theme prevented players from forming their own plots due to mindbending templars. Most of the plots they dealt with were staff generated or sponsored.

Sure we can get rid of them and open the city up but that won't fix the main issue  which is that when Tuluk closed, we stopped having major events like copper wars, and volcano creating and tossing HRPTs completely.

The gith events going on in the Pah were much more subdued and Allanak was not allowed to get involved.

The lack of these large scale events won't just suddenly come back because Tuluk is opened. Maybe we'll have a good reason why they can happen, but its not like Tuluk ever went away ICly or that we lacked the imagination for why something big involving everyone could have happened ICly.

Just to add, if opening up Tuluk would bring another HRPT war event between the two city states, I would immediately jump on the open tuluk wagon. But I feel that Allanak going to war with a PC closed  tuluk is much easier to pull off, yet we haven't seen it happen or anything along that scale.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Related to above: I really am curious why staff has never utilized Tuluk in any meaningful way post closure. It's like we're supposed to simply forget it exists and any vestigial parts of it still in the game are just a fuzzy grey area to be accepted or ignored as appropriate.

[Rathustra]

Related to above: I really am curious why staff has never utilized Tuluk in any meaningful way post closure. It's like we're supposed to simply forget it exists and any vestigial parts of it still in the game are just a fuzzy grey area to be accepted or ignored as appropriate.

We're really disorganized.

[gotdamnmiracle]

Related to above: I really am curious why staff has never utilized Tuluk in any meaningful way post closure. It's like we're supposed to simply forget it exists and any vestigial parts of it still in the game are just a fuzzy grey area to be accepted or ignored as appropriate.

We're really disorganized.

I'm not trying to be a jerk. It just seemed like the plan going forward was to keep it as some sort of villian or rival and it never manifested that way. Unless that's not sarcasm and just the answer in which case: Oh. That's a bit of a bummer.

[Malken]

The new "secret role" posted by Brokkr earlier is Muk Utep who came back to retake Tuluk. Yeeeeees.

[Heade]

The new "secret role" posted by Brokkr earlier is Muk Utep who came back to retake Tuluk. Yeeeeees.

Dibs.

[Saiseiki]

The new "secret role" posted by Brokkr earlier is Muk Utep who came back to retake Tuluk. Yeeeeees.

Dibs.

As someone who has no idea what Tuluk was like or how the game was before it closed - that sounds AMAZING.

[Seeker]

I saw someone play Muk Utep once.

They did okay.

[ShaiHulud]

I saw someone play Muk Utep once.

They did okay.

Yeah that was me. You thought I did "okay" because that's what I wanted you to think.