The Argument for the Restoration of Tuluk

[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.