RP: Learn Charges from Interactions.

[Foulspawn]

The learn command addition is great one and I love it, but I believe that it can be improved upon while pushing the main objective of a roleplaying environment: the roleplaying. A disclaimer is that I love Armageddon's mechanics and that is how I play the game. I've stated before that I could hunt chaltons, skin chaltons and then sell the skins to the first crafter who I see for a few years and be happy. It's because of this that I understand how players are driven towards grinding in one way or another.

You want skills to be high and that drives you to do things which isolate you. Whether this is silently hunting things, dueling without a word, grebbing in a place at a time or, as the somewhat recent post discussed, casting magic alone in a closet over and over again. The issue here is that the carrot that dangles in front of your eyes when grinding skills (higher skills) isn't as palpable when it comes to roleplaying. (getting connections, building relationships, etc).

I have had experience with several systems that reward experience based on different factors and have worked on them directly as well from a code perspective. From a game design point, the carrot is always more enticing than the stick. You need to incentivize players to interact with each other. This might sound forced, but it's a way to push people towards the desired result that is not punishing the opposite of it.

How would this system would work: When interacting with players directly (emoting around players, talking to players, etc) you'd accrue social points (these are not displayer to a person and tick in the backend). When a certain about of social points are achieved, you earn another use of the learn command and get something like:
*You feel like you're ready to meditate on what you've learned from interacting with others.*

You can of course modify this system to account for how many people are around, have diminishing returns within a day / be limited to one per day and so forth.

This topic is to see if others have input on this. The same limitations for learning are still in place, so you can't really become a master swordsman by just drinking alcohol with your buddies, but you'd probably get better at a lot of things and it'd incentivize you to actually practice in a group, talk, interact and all that.

Example: Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition RP servers (depending on the server and setting) provide bonuses for interacting with others such as extra experience every so often to remind players that they are a character in a world and not an RPG pawn.

[Dresan]

Someday I would like to see learn be influenced by wisdom. That said, this idea feels like too much of a MUSH mechanic.

The idea also sounds like it will generate SPAM rather than meaningful RP interaction. Not everyone enjoys idle tavern/fountain RP.

It would also have a hard impact on character with roles/location that happen to be in areas with less people.

There are already a lot of benefits to being social. There are a lot of benefits both ICly and OOCly to creating engaging and interesting characters that others want to be around.

[Foulspawn]

The idea that this would generate SPAM assumes malice on a user's end. People want to do things that reward them. The reason people min-max is because it rewards them. People would participate and improve their sociability ingame if it rewarded them mechanically.

Here wouldn't be an impact on people who have less people / don't interact as much. If you're not interacting, then you're skilling up. If you're just AFK in your office in the GMH, then that's on you, chief. What this does is that it makes actually talking to people no longer feel like you're missing out and rewards actions as a community.

The benefits of being social are, as mentioned, intangible and hard to quantify. Your usefulness to others ultimately is based on your skills because this is *not* a MUSH, exactly. This is a mechanical game, so although your non-mechanical roleplaying is fun and can be useful, things are still driven by mechanics.

[MoonlitCrown]

I agree with this, a couple days I did nothing but RP, then I had to stop Rping as much to go out to start working on my skills, sure people could say "It's RP, RP is it's own reward", but the whole games mechanics and system is designed in a way that I have to go work on my skills to get my character in a position to utilise skills to do the things I want to RP! Like what if I want my character to focus on a specific thing that requires a skill that I need to branch first? Of course I'm going to just hammer that out!

If I can take a break from skilling and RP, walking away with a learn point.. Then I've had fun and I'm progressing to my goal, that would be so nice.

[Dresan]

Sitting around and socializing is not the only form of RP. Emoting is not the only form of RP

Your character going around doing things that makes sense for your character to be doing is its own form of RP.

Again, I do love the feature, but for those that want to learn more, without risk or challenge, perhaps prioritizing wisdom (instead of strength, agility, endurance) could be a future solution.

[Lizzie]

If the bulk of my login time is spent sitting at the bar, then I accept that I'm playing a character who prioritizes socializing to "getting good" at things unrelated to socializing.  For those times, the listen, scan, barrier, watch skills, and if my character is the type - palm and related sleight of hand things to sneakily open my own pack, get something out of it, put it back in, and close the pack back up - those are the types of skills I'll practice while I'm at the bar socializing.

Then, when it's time to do combat skill practice, I'll either find someone to spar with and roleplay the situation, or I'll ride out and smack a few chaltons around.

If I need to greb, then I'll either greb alone with a few emotes tossed out, maybe use sneak and hide, listen, scan, hunt - all those outdoorsy types of things most people would find practical skills to work on if they're grebbing. Or I'll do it with a friend, making use of the same skills.

Magick practice? Again. Find a friend to practice with (or temple-mate or whatever they do in Allanak these days), or roleplay the concept of a character out alone in the wilderness, collecting the energy from their element to cast it.

Crafting? Well cooking has lots of places you can cook and socialize at the same time. I personally don't like the idea of other kinds of crafting in a taproom of a bar, and definitely not AT the bar itself, because it brings up the image of someone incredibly uncouth, lacking completely in social graces of any kind at all, and lacking any situational awareness. I can find more interesting things for a bar full of people to scold my character for, than sending shards of stone flying into the air while trying to break up a boulder on the top of the bar.

But there are crafting halls, and places you can go to craft with others even if you're not in a clan. You might not have the same bonuses as you would in a crafting hall but hey - if you're skill-grinding, the point is to fail isn't it? So not having those bonuses would be a benefit. And make your grind-session take less time.

[MarshallDFX]

The first thought that came to my mind here is the 5E mechanic of the DM giving you "inspiration points", which may also be an RP encouraging idea.

[Big Red]

I don't think that staff have the capacity to hand these RP points out in a fair and consistent manner. They'd have to be watching and judging RP constantly. Having someone constantly watching and judging your RP seems like the old bad ways to me, too.

[Foulspawn]

Ultimately, my suggestion would assist people into wanting to interact with others and in term hone their social skills further ingame. I believe Dresan put it best when they reminded us that this isn't a MUSH but a MUD, which I agree. Plot, interactions and so forth are based in the mechanical aspect of the game. Sids, your ability to do things, etc, they influence your character in such important ways that it feels like you're gimping yourself by not taking care of those.

Building off the learn system would also mean that this can't really be abused but instead exists as an incentive and a small reward for people actually doing what the world wants them to: interacting with others.

[Agent_137]

Good idea, OP.  It doesn't sound like it would force social interaction to maximize learning, but it certainly helps encourage it and soften the OOC FOMO of a long chat session.

That said, ideally we should be able to live without it if there's less ooc pressure to always be skilling up. Training should be IC and part of your RP. If you're antsy about the daylight burning and missing your hunting routine, is your character feeling the same? If so then maybe they should stop chit chatting. And if you're discussing something that's work/skill related, then someone should use teach. I don't think we're there yet though.

Like what if I want my character to focus on a specific thing that requires a skill that I need to branch first? Of course I'm going to just hammer that out!

Yeah, this is legit.  Branching is so weird ICly. "My family taught me the basics of soap making, but I forgot. I'll remember in time I just need to refamiliarize myself with how fire works by drying dung into kindling." I'd love to see a reduction in branching as I think it's just grind and no RP, but it's too engrained to ever go away I bet.   

[Dresan]

doing what the world wants them to: interacting with others.

I do love to code supporting character behavior and RP especially when it promotes gameplay choices that balances pros and cons.

However, I feel what is being proposed here is a little different. The difference is subtle but there is a difference. Perhaps its the way the idea is worded, but as long as we understand that a raider catching someone in the middle of nowhere and leaving them unconscious and naked is also an equally valid form of interaction then I guess we are fine.

Ultimately though, i would rather see learn be part of the wisdom stat, where players have to sacrifice strength or endurance to learn quicker than be part of something subjective like how our characters are RPed. Karma already attempts to award 'good RP' and its been problematic for years. 

[Foulspawn]

Some valid points were brought up but as mentioned, the function would run off the learn command so it would be subject to the same limitations.

There needs to be some empathy and consideration for the younger audience (Read: people who haven't played this game since Yugoslavia was still a country). Many people are used to the way things are, but newer folk may feel like the system simply doesn't reward their time as much. On this thread currently, the two opinions coming from people who don't have accounts from before I could legally drink are BigRed and MoonlitCrown and they both seem to agree to a degree that this would be a good idea. I'm not trying to discredit older opinions, but fresh perspectives are important when a system wants to grow.

Earning learn points this way could also help people for whom the learn system was designed for: those without much time to spend. If you only have 4 hours per week, instead of spending those 4 hours failing on pottery checks like a doofus, you could spend them trying to interact with others and increase your skills.

[Agent_137]

but newer folk may feel like the system simply doesn't reward their time as much.

It doesn't reward time well, indeed. It's MMO levels of not rewarding time with permadeath attached. But us old folk see how much more it rewards our time now than even 2 years ago and it's wild. 

Regardless, as we draw in tabletop RPers they're going to notice there's a big MMO style system attached and point it out. 

Armageddon has to stay in the middle between MMO and tabletop because that's what's so great about it. But I do advocate for being more on the tabletop side.