The Allanak Problem

[Inks]

The rooftops are available for any duels to the death.

[Void]

Pretty sure we've established there are plenty of spots IG to do this, but it's a lack of culture around this sort of behavior - making it fairly commonplace - which is the issue. Something we can change as players, thankfully.

[Hestia]

Pretty sure we've established there are plenty of spots IG to do this, but it's a lack of culture around this sort of behavior - making it fairly commonplace - which is the issue. Something we can change as players, thankfully.

Yes - honestly, the only reason people don't already spar in places where they know they -can- spar, including outside the gates, or in a certain coded available fighting pit courtesy of the hard work and dedication of a player creating their own clan...

is because players have chosen not to do that.  Yes, sparring outside the gates is dangerous. So is sparring in apartments when you forget to have mercy turned off (or if the other guy intentionally has it turned off).  To me, the main difference is that when you go outside the gates you create the opportunity for plots to happen OTHER than just PK.

[Brytta Léofa]

Wasn't there once a specific norm against sparring in apartments? Like, it was considered more than a little twinky or something and the Nenyukki would start pounding on your door?

[Shabago]

Wasn't there once a specific norm against sparring in apartments? Like, it was considered more than a little twinky or something and the Nenyukki would start pounding on your door?

Yes.

[Dracul]

Yaroch has a fighting pit.

I've never tested it.  Is it non 'crim codeded' in that room allowing weapons and/or does it invovle the brawl code.

[Patuk]

Yaroch has a fighting pit.

I've never tested it.  Is it non 'crim codeded' in that room allowing weapons and/or does it invovle the brawl code.

Yes.

[Inks]

Wasn't there once a specific norm against sparring in apartments? Like, it was considered more than a little twinky or something and the Nenyukki would start pounding on your door?

Has happened to me in the last year or two. You need an apartment described as large in the mdesc and you will be left alone unless you are training giants or something silly, I assume. If your apartment is described as small you will be animated on.

It makes sense most of the time.

[tiny rainbow]

That's weird cos if it's a large apartment wouldn't they still hear and bang on the door from outside? Same if balcony, it'd actually be worse cos of more people from the street and soldiers walking past

[Harmless]

I'm pretty sure my upstairs neighbors do a lot of sparring. There's sure as hell not going to be any landlords coming in to make them stop -- but I live in a fairly sturdy three floor building and some apartments in nak would probably fit within that same size range, if after all they can even FIT half-giants in them.

For my visuals I kind of imagine that a lot of Allanak has to be scaled up, rough-hewn brickwork with lots of redundant support due to a lack of advanced structural technology (all houses in general in Nak are two stories at most, rarely three). If you have that kind of flooring, unless half-giants or doing other ridiculous things, I think a spar wouldn't gather that much attention.

Sparring in a "tiny closet shitcorner" though doesn't really work, as it'd probably break the door. That'd be bad and get attention.

[Inks]

Literally whole families live in one apartment, multiple generations, think of the worst third world countries. The cops aren't going to show up to a noise complaint. Small apartment is unrealistic to spar in, but large is fine.

I understand the issue is that potentially people just hide away constantly, but I haven't noticed much of a problem tbh.

[Tranquil]

I think a good way to address the militia being often boring to play in Allanak, is to disable crimcode in it's entirety.

Have NPC soldiers only react to crime that they can physically see, and then give every non-combat clan leader role an NPC guard that they can use to protect themselves. Have 'wanted' status only able to be applied by PC Templars and PC Militia.

This would make Allanak far more volatile and actually let the Militia do their jobs as law enforcement. Also, will allow for far cooler city plots, impromptu street battles, duels, etc - just for some examples.

It's not exactly a novel new idea, but would be nice if it was atleast experimented with for a period. Maybe the virtual Arm of the Dragon has to fortify their positions outside the city, which leads to lesser 'presence' for that time.

[MeTekillot]

That's a sensational idea, Tranquil.

[triste]

+1, when the Capulets and Montagues fought in the middle of the street AI guards didn't scream HALT and walk in to stop the scene. At least not as quickly as you see on Armageddon.

+1 also to the notion that landlords complaining about noise is silly, have any of you ever lived in a cheap apartment today or studied the history of apartments generally.

If you don't believe a city could be so lawless try moving to SF or Seattle in the year 2021, or any working to lower class part of a city at any point in history going back to ancient Babylon. Just like real life, only wealthy districts should have anything close to instant crim code.

last time this idea surfaced, someone noted that crim code would most realistically be triggered based on your individual social class, but that improvement to the idea left the core idea dead in the water.

[Patuk]

Much as though I approve of a crimcode-less Allanak, I don't think changing things that way will in any way see people play or interact there more.

[triste]

Much as though I approve of a crimcode-less Allanak, I don't think changing things that way will in any way see people play or interact there more.

IDK when a dude raped me last year in Seattle I rage quit Seattle because of the hypocrisy and bullshit of a crimcode system that works for some but not others.

When I was almost killed in Vegas less than a year ago, I sort of accepted it because the entire point of that city is lawlessness. It's fun even if you almost die! Still go there all the time. Closest thing to Zalanthas in America.

It would suck for soft uwu merchant types who don't know how to fight, but that sort of person in Zalanthas has never been realistic (unless you have a pimp or some other form of protection).

Sorry I keep bringing up real life but this game strives for realism with permadeath, etc.

[Jihelu]

Much as though I approve of a crimcode-less Allanak, I don't think changing things that way will in any way see people play or interact there more.

The weak should fear the strong.

I promise you on my honor the minute we move to a crimcode-less Allanak is the minute I mug a noble in the middle of the god damned street.

When I was thinking of the whole 'crimecodeless streets' thing I had a realization: It probably won't happen. Staff thinks, or correctly interprets, that the players are so scared of crime we've got anti-thief soldiers and shit in places.

I can't imagine how people would react if I could put a club to their head because they decided to walk down a road with no soldiers on it and alone.

I'm feeling spicy today.
Perma crime code is stupid and shouldn't exist except in the most crazy of cases. Of those cases including: I'm 10 feet tall and blue and sparkle where I walk around.

[triste]

Nevermind I am on team Patuk after reading Jihelu's post, because I am about realism not twinky PvP stupidity (or maybe it is some truly immense intellect I can't understand). Go on and proceed.

[Jihelu]

Nevermind I am on team Patuk after reading Jihelu's post, because I am about realism not twinky PvP stupidity (or maybe it is some truly immense intellect I can't understand). Go on and proceed.

Triste is getting mugged in the street day 1

Also none of what I said contradicts anything the other page and a half I wrote about the topic and the 'realism' of it.

[triste]

Nevermind I am on team Patuk after reading Jihelu's post, because I am about realism not twinky PvP stupidity (or maybe it is some truly immense intellect I can't understand). Go on and proceed.

Triste is getting mugged in the street day 1

Also none of what I said contradicts anything the other page and a half I wrote about the topic and the 'realism' of it.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh do you know what this game is about, or the rules of it?

Also you can try, but I am not here to shit talk.

Also correct that you regurgitated many of the previous points, including mine. But you did it in a way that made me realize it was a very, very bad idea.

I don't want to see Lord Borsail taken out by Clubbrainz the Dwarf, whose focus is to max skillz and sap em all.

[Jihelu]

I was referring mostly to my posts on the topic, not other peoples.

The Dwarf should be able to do that without getting magical soldiers spawned in (Though I can see concessions for certain places having the magic half giant death squads that come from the roof tops, but I honestly would prefer something that if you look in the room you can tell 'there is a soldier presence here'), but in this situation
1: The noble is on a 'safe' road (AKA: The road between the noble quarters to red's, and not somewhere stupid). The Dwarf beating him over the head with a club is going to get his ass beat by his guard + the soldier that comes running over (Only the soldier isn't accompanied by 30 other soldiers, those will slowly trinkle in as the fight goes on, but was one that was actively patrolling the road to keep it safe)
2: The noble is in a dumb fucking area with no soldiers. His guard either protects him or he gets clubbed.

This also doesn't stop or change the fact that you can get away with most of this at night.

[Armaddict]

I actually talked a lot about this particular thing last year or the year before.  Crimcode was always a bit stifling, but we made it moreso because, frankly, it's -very frustrating- to have crime committed on you in the city.  Losing things you put a lot of investment into, or getting attacked in place where you felt safe, is always going to feel that way.  For some reason, we made the solution to try and prevent the feeling of loss from ever happening, instead of working on removing the feeling of safety.

-No- crimcode is not a good idea.  But get rid of instant spawning soldiers.  Get rid of instant reactions.  Get rid of NPC soldiers being the automated part of Allanak.  This does not make crime rampant.  What it -does- do is make criminals more capable of literally fighting their way out of bad situations, because sometimes that's the answer in a good story; fight your way out of this shitty scenario, then run your ass off to evade the reaction.  Sure, now you're in a bad spot, but immediacy demanded it, and now you get to try and work your way out of it.

Simultaneously, this makes PC militia 'the smart ones'.  The diligent ones.  They go on patrols, they are actually curious about what's going on over here that has this group hanging out.  Why?  Because they are the ones who can actually catch things happening in the act.  If they aren't proactively seeking out crime, sure, they'll still be bored.  But at least proactively seeking out crime has results in that state.  In the current state, proactively seeking out crime, criminals, and disorder is fruitless; the npc's do it BETTER than you can as a thinking player.

ETA:  And to pre-emptively address the 'The soldiers were improved to deal with people ignoring the virtual world' argument that ALWAYS arises and probably was the sole reason for creation of those bits of code, consider 2 things:
1:  We only ever enforce 'the virtual world' in a way that promotes order.  We never promote the disorder in the virtual world.  This also promotes monotony and falling-into-line, instead of randomness and the opportunity to be swept up in things that are entirely unpredictable as far as conflict, action, and explosion.  If you're going to use the same old argument that actually really doesn't hold water in any arena other than 'people feel cheated and complain about this', then at least address this.  This is boring.
2:  This is a game world.  A game world that we play in.  Enforcement of the virtual world in this way may indeed reflect on the virtual world, but it's at the cost of the game-world -sucking-.  Promote the game-world over all, it needs to be a place that people can actually do things.  Some of those things may be undesirable.  Address those cases where it's abusive.  But a dude starting a fight in the streets is not abuse.  It's playing in the world that actually interacts with them, instead of being utterly swamped down by the world that doesn't.

[Lotion]

Crimcode is uninteresting because if it's on a timer you basically just need to escape and then find an afk spot to accept the hunger clock penalty until it wears off and if it's permacrimcode then chances are you were already planning on never going there anyway.

[Narf]

1:  We only ever enforce 'the virtual world' in a way that promotes order.  We never promote the disorder in the virtual world.  This also promotes monotony and falling-into-line, instead of randomness and the opportunity to be swept up in things that are entirely unpredictable as far as conflict, action, and explosion.  If you're going to use the same old argument that actually really doesn't hold water in any arena other than 'people feel cheated and complain about this', then at least address this.  This is boring.

This is a good point I wanted to second. Allanak is a large city which PCs should be able to easily blend into. I'm all for using the virtual world in small areas to enforce some order, but the virtual world in large cities (particularly ones not enmeshed in an information age) should actually produce more chaos. I've come to accept that PCs that see other PCs can recognize them later even with the faintest (or no) interaction. What I don't think is necessary is that VNPCs have this ability.

If someone pickpockets for the first time in the bazaar (i.e., they're not a regular face there) and escapes the area, it's not particularly realistic that NPC soldiers would be hunting them down in the commons across the city. What might be more fun is if PCs with their special "I recognize faces of important people" ability were the only ones that actually hunted criminals across large swaths of the city. You could probably code it so that people could be wanted for crimes in smaller areas, giving each subsection of the city their own wanted flags for instance. If you did this, NPCs would be far less likely to step on PC guard toes and do their job for them.

[Jihelu]

This is part of the reason I think perma-crime code should outright be removed.