Armageddon General Discussion Board

I feel like this deserves its own thread. Can we compile some ideas to accomplish making magick users actually scary (again? I'm not sure if they ever were). This includes roleplay from both perspectives, doc changes, coded additions, whatever really.

I'll start.

In the other thread I mention incentives for magick users to want to take advantage of mundanes, these could include borrowing statistical advantages using some curse or using them in the craft of certain components.

Perhaps also magick could be more fluid. Currently it works similar to something out of WoW where you use up your mana and it refills over time. I think it shouldn't. Not naturally. If you use up your mana it won't refill ever outside of certain conditions. As a result of this all magick users should be given the ability to defile. The gem controls and bonds this making their defiling abilities null and the only way gemmed users can regain mana within the city is in their temples. Elemental defiling is a lot less potent than that of sorcerers and can only be used to pull from the land or others if they are willing. Any attempt to defile someone who doesn't offer to will fail (nosave). Suddenly you have evil dune-witches and culled gemmers. Also this makes the neutering aspect of the gem a lot more pronounced.

If any of this is too IC I will remove it immediately, but this is a suggestion nothing, to my knowledge, related to the game.

What are your ideas?

If you actually play based on the available documentation, magick is plenty scary. The problem isn't with the game.

Quote from: The Lonely Hunter on January 07, 2019, 07:04:08 PM
If you actually play based on the available documentation, magick is plenty scary. The problem isn't with the game.

Please try to be constructive.

If the problem is that the players don't get it then it should be designed in such a way that they do. Perhaps this means making the documentation more available or specific?

If no one could figure out how to use a type of screwdriver properly you wouldn't say that all those people are morons, would you?

Magick is designed to be mysterious.  It is thus hard to discern which board warriors know what they are talking about, and which do not.

I think one thing the other thread pointed out pretty clearly is that for some people, magickers being scary is all about if they can kill your character or not.  Making them spooky won't necessarily make them scary to such people.

Part of what used to make magick spooky, to me, is that I (the player) didn't know much at all about it. Unknown = mysterious = potential for max spook.

Once I knew how it worked, by playing mages, a lot of the mystery was eliminated, and therefore a lot of what made it spooky.

On the other hand, now I KNEW what mages could do, and that added a different aspect of spookiness, because I knew the significance and level of scary "stuff" it could do.

And then the magick aspects were split off and the main guilds eliminated, and that meant "things a, b, and c" that I knew "element #1" could do, they no longer can do all together. No single mage can do all of those things anymore. And that reduced my sense of "spook" even more.

Now, as a player, there's no spookiness at all involved. As a player, I know what these things can do, but more importantly, I know what they can't do. It was the combination of things they could do that made them as spooky as I felt they were, even after I learned what they could do and the mystery was removed.

Quote from: Brokkr on January 07, 2019, 07:23:23 PM
Magick is designed to be mysterious.  It is thus hard to discern which board warriors know what they are talking about, and which do not.

I think one thing the other thread pointed out pretty clearly is that for some people, magickers being scary is all about if they can kill your character or not.  Making them spooky won't necessarily make them scary to such people.

Ah. Okay. So I think I may have a misunderstanding of the fundamental elements you're trying to foster with them. Is the binary scary/not scary okay? Or do we want a general feeling of magick=bad stuff, similar to how a lot of people view radiation in real life?

It feels a lot easier to empathize with the current magick user because they're usually just normal dudes who are misunderstood. I mean, there's a reason the X-men franchise is so beloved. So the disconnect occurs because we're told to do one thing, but know another. (Treat them badly, they often aren't bad). I just want there to be some reasons for the magick user to be a "bad" guy. I know of none specific to them other than those available to everyone such as material wealth and psychopathy, I guess. Not very appealing. Doesn't the corrupting search for power seem appropriate?

I don't foresee my indie elementalist on a search for immense power getting much staff support in the current iteration of the game.

You perceive the X-Men that way because you are the reader, who sees their side.

In Arm, you are not the reader.  You are the common person that votes for politicians to persecute them, because you hate them and don't care to see their side.

It isn't the magicker that needs the reasons (although they exist).  It is the common man, who doesn't really need any reason other than their own ignorance, close mindedness and prejudices.  Which gives rise to a far more complex flavor of scary than simple binary scary/not scary. It is meant to be an unfair, stifling environment, not one where modern sensibilities of fairness come into play.

If you want magickers to be scary you need people in game acting like they are scary. Because it's not just their "power" where fear is derived from. It's their mystery, their foreignness, and most importantly the superstitious parts of the culture that has taught you since childhood that the bad things happen because of magick and magickers.

That's where the majority of the spooky nature of magickers come from and it's really in the players hands to represent that fear and ignorance.

I still think witches are pretty scary. But a few things have changed in the past few years:

It is now a lot more advantageous to be unmanifested for a game year or more in order to train your stealth or combat skills, or make powerful friends as a socialite, than it is to come out of chargen with a gem or as a rogue. This began when mages became subguilds, but is a lot more pronounced with the guild changes, where people with dangerous jobs are a lot more likely to survive to the point where they can be witches.

Because people are playing more unmanifested witches, they are making friends, and from past experience most of my mundane friends still remain my friends after I become a witch. They don't necessarily huggle me in public, but they're there when I need them. When its 'your' witch, its less scary.

Recently there have been a couple or more groups openly utilizing nonmundanes as integral parts of the group. While this could happen anytime, it is a bit unusual and while it is scary when said group is after you, it helps give magick more 'normal' points.

Tuluk is closed--- meaning all those people who are hyper-sensitive to making friends with witches or even doing business with them are gone, leaving the more fluid cultures of Allanak, Luir's and Storm that are all more likely to allow witches to do small business tasks and be awkward friends with.

The 'place to be' is now Allanak--- easily the world's most witch-friendly culture, if for nothing else because the quarter is there, and all that means for the witch population and ease of witch living.

When summoned by the Arm into a combat zone, witches are no longer the defenseless merchants of the group, and are combatively useful much more often. I haven't been in the Arm lately, but this has probably meant more witches being used by the Arm.

People stop acting like magick is scary because they haven't seen magick be scary for such a long time. Players simply aren't exposed to it in any way that leaves an impression. For all the things that were controversial about the design of the old sorcerers and elementalists, they most certainly gave players a reason to care. It's not that trying the classes removes some Lovecraftian fear of the unknown. It's about the fact that magick just isn't a thing that matters anymore. You can ask players to read the documentation until you're blue in the face, but if the game they play never reflects what's written there, they won't adhere to it.

Magick characters have been reduced to a shadow of their former selves. Remember Plainsman? Black Tembo? Lord of Storms? Quick? These are legendary entities that people still talk about to this day, and it's not always because they were exemplary roleplayers. It's because they embodied the very thing that the documentation tells us: magick is a terrifying, world-destroying force of which people live in perpetual fear. Except these days, since magick characters don't fit that bill, people don't have that reaction. It has been turned into something that players don't feel compelled to care about.

People now know that a sorcerer is limited to one path of magick and therefore can't live the defiler life. You can't survive being a world villain without the whole catalogue of spells, it's as simple as that. And elementalists are reduced to a handful of spells grafted to a mundane class, and often the magick part represents nothing but a stat boost or some similar gimmick. This means that these characters have to be played in a way where the magick aspect is a sidenote, a token trait that probably doesn't even justify the social stigma and is therefore kept out of sight and mind. It stops mattering to people because they never see it.

If full elementalists and sorcerers are brought back to the game, fear of magick will follow. Players weren't afraid solely because some piece of supplementary literature said they ought to be. They were afraid because they'd seen the power wielded by those characters and knew what it could do to them. Now they know that this is no longer the case, and while you can suspend your disbelief for some amount of time, eventually you neglect it if the realities of the game don't match the documentation. It would be the same thing if people stopped playing elves: sooner or later, folks would forget to hate them.

This, coupled with declining player numbers and thus density of magickal occurrences, has cost the game one of its key features. Add full elementalists and sorcerers again and I think it would bring a boost both to player numbers and to the way they treat this aspect of Zalanthas. The magick subguilds don't need to be removed, they're fine for what they are. They just shouldn't have replaced the actual mages that carried the torch of magick roleplay.

While I mostly agree with Greve, I don't agree that full elementalists need be returned to the game...certain tweeks to what there already is should do it. Like, Since Drov and Elkros are no longer in game, return the spells that they stole from the other 4 elementalist back to them...and even split up the the rest of the spells where feasible to them. I can think of a certain 2 spells that drov got that whiran used to get that would make the illusion aspect of whira quite a troublemaker.

Next, put some real work into a synergy to each of these subs, I think I see a bit of the work done already to ruk and whirans, and I approve...just a bit more to each of them for utility and survival and should be good.

Lastly, increase mana regen some or the mana pool...The usefulness/utility/scariness of MANY spells is directly related to how often they can be cast.

Heh heh. Board Warriors.

It's one of the more salient disconnects of the game's mechanics. I've seen plenty of emnity and hatred of magickers. Emotions ranging from disgust to disquiet. But fear? Nah. Tough Guy Mcfly gonna break yo' face if you do any spooksy shit.

And I got two reasons for that.

1.The powers that be will pop any magicker that tries to be spooky in their roleplay. Gemmed cantrips in the bar? Expect a templar. Emoting cantrips outside? Expect arrows, or Faceroll the dwarf.

2. The mechanics are generally well understood by the playerbase. Every player knows that you need to be in the same room as you to cast a spell on them. They know you need to be standing. And that if any spellcasting happens the crimcode will go apeshit on you. They know that they could probably kill you just by face rolling before you have a chance to react. They know that killing you solves the problem every time.

I think Greve kind of hit the nail on the head. Remove the ability of witches to be frightening, and the playerbase will follow.

I keep seeing people go back to mechanics and meta information. Remember, this is an RPG. It doesn't matter what they can do code-wise, they are magickers. Any minor display or even suspicion of magickal ability (did you argue with your neighbor before you got sick? 'gicker!") should be RPed according to the docs, not according to how many skillz you know they have.

>Tough Guy Mcfly gonna break yo' face if you do any spooksy shit.

Violence is an appropriate response to fear.

If you want to be creepy, then be creepy. Be something that no one else is allowed to completely understand. If you hang out in the taverns all day, or train away with the Byn, then people will understand your character, in some part. Creepy lives on the edge of perception, not in focus. Creepy is making someone wonder, and come up with wild speculation, leading to dread.

Creepy is not yanking someone over a pit with your ranged spell. That's not creepy. That's lame bullshit. I never felt an ounce of fear in those situations, just eye-rolling cringe, and a desire to rage quit.

There are mundane elves and one particular mundane noble I've RPed with that were 10000% more creepy than any full-class elementalist. That templar that used to talk through his NPC...that's was creepy. Personally, I think I had the most success being creepy with a character that had just one special super power, pathetic PvP potential, and no magical abilities whatsoever.

People would fear mages more if they had some spells that (1) worked at a distance, and (2) caused some kind of non-lethal, but negative, effect. Maybe as simple as receiving a message like "a shocking pain stabs through your head" or "you have a sudden vision of a horribly twisted, screaming face" once in a while.

Creepy does not usually mean scary, and the point that a few people have brought up that sort of plainly hangs in the air is that no matter how well played and to the documentation you could be, or were, if you are a magicker it's not fear people greet you with for the most part. They're usually quite ready to play up the scorn and such. (Because that can give them plenty of reason to commit violence and other things)

But genuine fear? That a magicker might sneeze and then suddenly you lose the ability to have kids? Or they might laugh, and flames crackle, and your flesh gets covered in boils for weeks? That they might make the ground rumble when they're displeased, and you need to go offer food to the land or your home might get swallowed up by the ground? I've played for five years, and I've never seen this fear played out like this to a degree that's reasonable, not from the staffers I've played alongside, not from the players that I've worked under, not from the various other people I've been involved with distantly.

While I as much as any other think it's a shame that story can be ignored for code often, that's been a thing of trouble for ages and the only time people (at large) can be found to reasonably react with fear to something is if it poses a threat to them or their wants/plans on an IC basis. In the other thread, I spoke of deadliness to a PC being relative to danger, and a great example was drovians. Drovians were stupidly deadly -- not because they were capable of coming out of nowhere with one or two drov-buddies and killing you. It's because they were untouchable for the most part. They could learn everything that made you tick, while remaining safe. The danger of a magicker is relative to how easy they are to kill, because anyone in this game, anywhere, has a way to be killed, but when you start removing all of the basic options, and making it difficult to kill them in a forward confrontation, while they're also stupidly strong in general confrontations, they start becoming these immovable, dangerous obstacles that are capable of messing up your plans or actually killing whoever back if it comes to it.

If you're getting dragged into a hole by a magicker, and your only response is, 'That's lame.' then yea, I can understand why you feel that way. But you're never going to be afraid to begin with, so I think you should probably be removed from the metric for measurement involved. Creepy can inspire fear...but creepy inspires it OR unease relative to how much danger is perceived, which is similar but a little different. Fear (as it is defined) is about perceived danger and threat to you invoking a response. If you don't have the response, then you don't have it. That's fine. If you don't have the response and your PC doesn't react like their life is in danger, then you're doing something wrong.

This is all really just a food for thought kind of thing, while we're debating it, but I don't think magickers should feed off of the land or other people. That goes against everything we know about the documentation and the lore. As it is, if I kept to the documentation entirely though, and played a magicker out in the open, there'd be no allies anywhere, no friends, no real interaction past a certain point, except through others, and for various reasons, this is a hard thing to string together. Roleplay is only fun when you're interacting with people. While you don't necessarily need many, you need a handful of consistent people part of a story (or a handful of changing people that are replacing others dying) to keep things interesting or actually happening. Otherwise, Armageddon becomes a solo-RP experience in between hack-and-slash animal murder, or shopkeeping.

I don't think staff are too judgmental when it comes to people interacting with magickers, but what do I know. That's the job of other characters in the game world, to varying degrees. Important to remember that everyone develops organically (I hope) with things that drive them to do the things they do.

Edit: Giving more distance based spells to everyone would up the terror factor, for sure. And I don't mean 'one room over'. If a Krathi could send a little homing missile that would look for someone within X room distance (even if it dealt very little damage), everyone would shit their pants I think. We get into trouble there with all sorts of balance issues though. I don't think echoing 'a sudden vision of blah blah blah' is a good idea, due to that being a nice trick of the ye olde Jedis that we don't want to take away.

A Viv working magick around you might dehydrate you and suck the water from your waterskins.
A Krathi working magick around you might scorch your clothes, or catch them on fire.
A Rukkian working magick around you might cause you to sneeze dirt or be blinded by dust.
A Whiran working magick around you might knock you off your feet because of sudden gusts of wind, or blow something you're holding off in a direction.

I've always liked the idea of being around magick potentially being a coded detriment for mundanes. It's not something the magickers would try to do - it's something that would just happen around them when they cast spells that they couldn't help. Perhaps they could protect a few companions from these effects, but for the most part, just being around a casting mage would be scary code-wise for mundanes.

A Viv might curse you to always be thirsty for x IG hours.
A Krathi might curse you with a weak bloodburn.
A Rukkian might curse you to move slow for x IG hours.
A Whiran might curse you to be unable to listen for x IG hours.

I've always loved the idea of curses being a real thing, with overlapping curses between classes that made figuring out what sort of mage had cursed you hard or impossible. There wouldn't be a message telling you who had cursed you. You would just start experiencing these detrimental effects, and you would have to beg a magicker to uncurse you before the timer ran out. You wouldn't want these curses to be unplayable effects, just hindrances that just made the idea of being around a magicker unpopular.

The following reply was from another thread, but I think it's applicable to this one:

Quote from: Heade on January 08, 2019, 08:36:03 PM

Quote from: Kol on January 08, 2019, 07:37:10 PM
Let me give you a better example.

You're a Person. It's real life. You've done a little hunting before, and are out in the plains, hunting with your small calibre rifle on your motorbike it's a sunny day, and everything seems fine, even if the woods are a -little- quieter than usual. Suddenly, you hear a growl and turn, and there before you is a fully grown, snarling Lion,  standing on two feet, with a pair of fucking plasma firing AK-47's in his hands with opposable thumbs and itchy trigger fingers. Your buddy you've been hunting with guns his motorbike away firing a round at the obviously magical lion you've discovered yelling at you to run.

You gonna stand your ground and try and take it down with your .22 rifle, or get the fuck out of the way of the plasma firing AK wielding Lion? Because, I know what I'm doing, I'm running as far away from the motherfucker with the AK's, because if the lion can appear like that in the open, holding AK's like Rambo that shoot fucking lasers, I don't want to be anywhere near it.

Because that essentially what you should be picturing whenever your scenario occurs.



Apologies if I rambled, Its late, I had a long day, and I'm trying to cut chocolate and some other shit from my diet.

I don't think this is a valid comparison. IRL, we "know" magic to be mythical, so seeing something like that, that challenged our idea of reality is a completely different thing than seeing a magicker in Zalanthas.

In Zalanthas, magick exists, and everyone knows it. Sure, it's supposed to be rare and mysterious, but it really isn't all that rare. And if you're playing a character that is in a position where they're forced to amiably deal with magickers on a regular basis(such as certain Militia positions), there is only so far you can go with the whole "magick is scary" thing before you can't ICly justify it as really being that scary any more.

The lack of rarity is making magick mainstream in Armageddon. Mainstream things aren't that scary, unless it can actually hurt you.

I understand that having a completely dynamic magick system isn't something that's possible with our current system. So, we currently have a static system that is meant to represent a dynamic "reality" IC.

Maybe we could let magick subguilds "custom craft" a spell effect or two within their given element over the lifetime of a magicker. This would allow them to better represent the fact that magick, in the gameworld, is a dynamic thing, and not static. It'd be supported by the code, and would work to ensure that each individual magicker holds some wonder and mystery, where people don't necessarily know the full extent of their capabilities.

I'd also like to discuss ways to make magickers more rare in general. It's really tiring playing a mundane in a position where you learn who many of the secret magickers are, and it ends up being just about EVERYONE of any note.

Add magick spells that permanently debilitate instead of just giving you temporary debuffs. Nothing really scratches someone's fear like the possibility of permanent disability. Seeing something you used to be able to permanently affected for the worse? That's true fear.

On the same token, let people become permanently more formidable as a result of magick, with magick being the only counter to remove said strength.

I definitely wouldn't recommend random effects on people surrounding them at this point. Most of the effects you pointed out are actually already covered in the more dangerous and involved things that some magickers do. Whether or not they hit allies is super dependent on the thing in question, let me tell you what, heh.

That aside, my point (and the point of this thread) isn't to give people more reason to kill magickers. It's to give them a reason to fear them, and I think little curses might have some merit if they affect people from a distance, but do I want random curses and effects just slung around? No. I don't really think that's accurate to how hard it is to utilize magick to an effective degree in the game world and the effects of mana.

Contrary to what everyone is saying, I haven't seen some massive wealth of magickers everywhere, constantly involved in everything. As someone who has wandered around and known a lot of people, while there was the occasional magicker cropping up, I didn't see literally 'all' or even half the most powerful well known people turn out to be magickers. I'd be curious to see how statistics would back that up, or deny it, but I think addressing these issues is a derailment of the thread.

In a world where you're constantly dealing with magickers on many levels (of power) and they're supposed to be something scary for a variety of reasons, you need a reason for that. Not that they might accidentally do something to you. That they might intentionally do something to you. If it's only ever that random, no-name commoners with no power or influence or skill that are scared of magickers, then of course we've got this problem. By this logic, every bynner doesn't need to fear them with a little training.

The only way to still inflict the fear in these types to the degree recommended (where violence isn't a go to, or even ready made back up option) is to make them codedly incapable of committing that in a way that is easy.

Permanent disabilities due to being hit with certain spells or effects could be an interesting way of dealing with this, to some degree though, dependingly. Or something similar. Having a way to grow stronger due to magick as well that could be permanent might be good.

+1 to everybody upping their roleplay and thinking beyond the code.
+1 to everybody who plays a spooky character, wiggly or not.
+1 to giving mages additional avenues for harming with you on the sly.
+1 to giving mages ways to cause lasting harm without killing you.

Y'know,
+1 to giving mundanes ways to cause lasting harm without killing you, too.

I've tried to RP fear of mages, or rather, fear of magicks (and by extension, people who can wield them). I've tried leading by example in public places. I was met with the overall attitude that my fears were unfounded because no one they know, has ever told them about anyone THEY know, who was ACTUALLY cursed in any way shape or form by any mages - and therefore - it's just a myth and my character is an idiot for believing it.

It makes me pretty sad, and annoyed, and frustrated, because I'm TRYING to roleplay according to the docs and get counterpointed by the actuality of the present IC game environment, and there's really no defense against that.

Quote from: Brytta Léofa on January 08, 2019, 10:06:56 PM
+1 to everybody upping their roleplay and thinking beyond the code.
+1 to everybody who plays a spooky character, wiggly or not.
+1 to giving mages additional avenues for harming with you on the sly.
+1 to giving mages ways to cause lasting harm without killing you.

Y'know,
+1 to giving mundanes ways to cause lasting harm without killing you, too.

Hell yeah.

Quote from: Lizzie on January 08, 2019, 10:10:30 PM
I've tried to RP fear of mages, or rather, fear of magicks (and by extension, people who can wield them). I've tried leading by example in public places. I was met with the overall attitude that my fears were unfounded because no one they know, has ever told them about anyone THEY know, who was ACTUALLY cursed in any way shape or form by any mages - and therefore - it's just a myth and my character is an idiot for believing it.

It makes me pretty sad, and annoyed, and frustrated, because I'm TRYING to roleplay according to the docs and get counterpointed by the actuality of the present IC game environment, and there's really no defense against that.

I've seen this kind of thing happen.
It hurts my heart.

I think yelling at people to RP better is a non solution to the problem.

Real problem #1 is a widespread bitterness that entire groups of content, all the mainguild magickers, were taken away.

Bitterness ends up being RPed as a protest against the fear of magickers. The lack of coded power of multiple magicker types gives the bitter player the fuel they need to suddenly rp not giving a fuck about magickers (there are still scary magicks, just not most magickers. The scariest are 3 karma now).

Now, I don't think I am in this category because I did enjoy some of the subguilds I played, but I didn't enjoy most of them. I am tapping out of playing magickers now for the most part having seen what I have seen.

I gave specific feedback when a certain magick subguild wad just so bad that I felt it needed repairs in a report to staff.

Real problem #2 is that players are not just being told to fear magickers or else. They are being told to enjoy the new subguild magickers or else. However the thematic difference is huge between being so involved in magick that it is a part of what you are (mainguild) and being a secretive part time magick user (subguild) that I basically agree; the docs no longer match the reality of how magickers are ROLEPLAYED. Magickers are described as being sources of fear and hate, but in ye olde days a magicker trying to accomplish anything needed to invoke weird magickal talents to get stuff done and it was unsettling. Now a magicker functions more like a stealth mage and would rather as few people know about their abilities as possible, since they can be countered as soon as their few tricks are revealed.

Either fix the docs with new lore or have more IC events that might affect lore or add more opportunities to RP with magick (vague suggestion I know) or just modify the subguilds based on what the players want. I don't care how it is done. I think there is merit to realizing that we now have a mismatch between code, docs, and what is RPed. I don't think criticizing the situation makes anyone a bad RPer.

Quote from: Harmless on January 09, 2019, 09:26:25 AM
I think yelling at people to RP better is a non solution to the problem.

This needs to be emphasized.

Be the change. Think differently. Do better. Try harder. You don't get it. Its all gatekeeping by any other phrase, which Armageddon is notorious for. "You don't belong if you don't agree, and we have no care to help until you prove you're worth helping."

I agree with Harmless that with main guild magick, you had to basically find broken ass old skulls and artifacts of the Old World to summon enough power to do something mildly spooky. A lot of component spells were really strange and weird, and the idea of how to find and create components is also quite foreign. A person randomly coveting some angular stone should be VERY weird and a trigger to think they're off their rocker.

We were told the change was OOC. We were told it wasn't. We were told that NPCs and the virtual world still has magicks that we don't have access to anymore. We were told this this is better. We were told this is what people wanted. We are still told to "just enjoy what we've done for you" despite not asking for it.

SHOW US HOW TO DO IT. Post a story. Run a plot. Engage with the community about what you want and how you want it, so it has ideas about your expectations. It is a tough pill to swallow when one is told it is their own fault, without knowing why or how it should have been.

Quote from: Harmless on January 09, 2019, 09:26:25 AM

Real problem #1 is a widespread bitterness that entire groups of content, all the mainguild magickers, were taken away.

Bitterness ends up being RPed as a protest against the fear of magickers. The lack of coded power of multiple magicker types gives the bitter player the fuel they need to suddenly rp not giving a fuck about magickers (there are still scary magicks, just not most magickers. The scariest are 3 karma now).

It's ironic that you post this 2 posts after mine. I'm one of the saltiest, bitterest people who still actually plays Armageddon, with regards to the split of the magick main guilds.  I've even been teased about it on the GDB by staff in the past.

But as I said in my previous post - just two posts behind yours: I have tried to lead by example in roleplaying a fear of magick. I've tried it. Often in fact. Before the split and after. I've been met with "yeah everyone knows they can't do that so stop being stupid." In some cases, I was met with a veiled, but clear message of "they're allowed by Tek, so you should just make friends with them." I've been met with a carefully worded "I've kanked one and my junk didn't fall off."

Everyone is out to prove my character wrong. But my character is being played by one of the saltiest, bitterest pro-old-style-magick players still playing the game.

So no, I don't feel that being salty and bitter is a widespread cause of lack of RPed fear. I feel that there are mages [edited to add] and characters who interact with mages being played by newer players who don't know better, and not enough actual code to back up a reason to have a RPed fear.

Bring main guild magickers back. Make them 2 or 3 karma. Make it so that if someone special apps a main guild witch but has not played one or two subguild witches, staff would deny their request, and state that in the karma docs.

It kind of reminds me of how things were when subguild witches began. People didn't know enough about the subguilds to stop fearing them, and main guilds were still around, with no way to tell the difference. Peoples' fear levels were -exactly the same as before.- Let's bring that back.

Here's a hot take, but I think that magic should actually have some different things, seeing as that different places use magic differently. This also applies culturally.

I think magick subclasses should be more varied just like regular classes are now, split between 'Offense, Defense, General' and 'Criminal, Wilderness, General', and done for each element.

After all, a Krathi in the wild may have an amazing time just killing the shit with crazy fire magic, but a criminal krathi may enjoy the more 'guile' that Krathi can give, while a 'generalist/city' fellow wants a little bit of both. While one can argue that the current 'paths' there are  may indicate that 'there is something like this', I think the idea can be refined further so a character can specifically get an idea of what the hell he's getting himself into and what his character's specifics lean towards. 'I want to play a criminal character, so I want magic that is subtle.' 'I want to play a city-based fighting character that only uses magic when absolutely necessary' 'I want to play a wilderness character that can literally nuke a mekillot'.
Make it way harder for mages to know who other mages are.
Magic is scary, and a powerful character (socially, economically, physically) is scary by themselves, but if you combine both into something specifically tailored towards the character, it becomes something that drives plots.
Yes, crime lord IS actually watching you talk behind their back. Constantly.
Yes, the undefeatable warrior of the wastes can actually pick up and throw a mekillot.
It seems that really old warrior's health just keeps on kickin'! He barely has any scars, for some of the wounds I've seen him take!

Make it harder to distinguish what is fiction, and what is reality. Mix up what 'oh yeah, he's a magicker' with 'oh my god this guy is a fucking monster.'
Make touched characters under the effects of magickal buffs without actually using magic during times of problems.

Imagine a Rukkian who, when he is panicking, suddenly finds that his foes simply cannot hurt him?
The Whiran who nearly falls from the shield wall but finds herself gracefully gliding to the bottom.
The Krathi who accidently greets a Templar in fucking Tatlum.
Make it more unpredictable.
Honestly, I have a lot of really fun ideas that could make Touched a lot more appealing to play in general, and actually make them on-par with other elementalists without making them entirely broken. Hit me up if you want some ideas.

You know, I love a lot of these ideas, at their base. And I'd love code to enforce some of the things that we feel about magickers being scary and whatnot.

But really, a lot of you are suggesting that the onus is on code to dictate your roleplay. And that's just not the case.

Roleplay.

We know that we are supposed to be afraid of magickers. So be afraid of magickers. Do what's right, of your own accord. Being afraid of all magickers is no different than treating elves like shit, or thinking half-breeds are nasty because racism. It's acting out part of a role. Do your job and treat magickers the way the documents say you're supposed to.

Now all of that said, I absolutely want coded reinforcement of some of the fears we're supposed to have. That, or I want docs and the roles a magicker can legally have in clans changed to suggest a more integrated acceptance of them on some level. But until these things change, don't ignore the world you live in or the way your character has been brought up. Don't ignore your character's reality.

Roleplay.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on January 11, 2019, 05:39:37 AM
You know, I love a lot of these ideas, at their base. And I'd love code to enforce some of the things that we feel about magickers being scary and whatnot.

But really, a lot of you are suggesting that the onus is on code to dictate your roleplay. And that's just not the case.

Roleplay.

We know that we are supposed to be afraid of magickers. So be afraid of magickers. Do what's right, of your own accord. Being afraid of all magickers is no different than treating elves like shit, or thinking half-breeds are nasty because racism. It's acting out part of a role. Do your job and treat magickers the way the documents say you're supposed to.

Now all of that said, I absolutely want coded reinforcement of some of the fears we're supposed to have. That, or I want docs and the roles a magicker can legally have in clans changed to suggest a more integrated acceptance of them on some level. But until these things change, don't ignore the world you live in or the way your character has been brought up. Don't ignore your character's reality.

Roleplay.

Let's look at the docs that you're saying are getting ignored.

Quote
Magick is a mysterious and very rare power on Zalanthas, about which the general public knows very little, and generally fears and hates a great deal. While magickers are tolerated in some places, they are generally feared and distrusted by the vast majority of the population of Zalanthas. In many places, magickers are killed upon discovery, and even the rumor that one is a magicker can lead to one's death.

1.) Knows very little: I'd say that this is roleplayed just fine; to my knowledge, most players aren't spouting details about magick unless they are playing a magicker or one of the rare cases that work with gemmed or templars, all of which are not the "general public."

2.) Fears and hates: Note: there are two words used with the conjunction "and." Hate, is more common now than fear. However, one can roleplay a hatred of magickers which is predominantly expressed with the "killed upon discovery" part. You kill and destroy that which you don't understand...the exact amount of fear needed to be expressed is up to the roleplayer.

3.) Feared and distrusted: Again, two words with the conjunction "and." Distrust is something that also stems from fear or lack of understanding; I'm HOPING that people aren't bonding more and building trust more with magickers. In my experience, people would rarely if ever trust me, even though I was a codedly weaker magicker than I used to play, so I'd also say people are doing this.


--- In summary, there is no requirement that fear be the predominant expression of the same exact IC concepts, because in the docs that currently exist for magick, the concepts of hate and fear, distrust and fear, and destroying and avoiding are all linked to the same idea.

So, I really don't see why folks in this thread seem to think that yelling at the playerbase that they "aren't doing their job" is a solution.


again: if you brought back mainguild magickers, and added back the variety in spells that are used that we used to have, then you would introduce more uncertainty. This is a form of fear. It'd also bring back more coded power, yes, but overall I just predict that the fear half of the emotional reaction would be enhanced.

And if you don't bring back mainguild magickers, there are lots of other things one can do: we can come up with more incentives to spread fear and hate (A bounty on mages..such things existed in Tuluk before it closed). There are lots of ways to do it, but right now the culture around mages is stagnating..due to the step-by-step trimming away of content that has reduced the uncertainty and fear factor over time.


I like Lizzie's idea right above, also. It also helps to add that element of uncertainty, which is key to building fear.

Moderated a post. Please do not discuss the specifics or existence of spells beyond that which is mentioned in the helpfiles.

Pretty sure I tipped over the line there, sorry about that. But yeah I think the idea that was moderated has merit.

Bring back the cheesy instakill spells and unbalanced buff spells. Bring back Drovians with the same req as psionicists. Actually punish specific abuses instead of fucking everyone for the actions of a few.

Bring back all the super buff magick shit that's been whittled away for years and years. I don't mean just spells.

@Harmless: I don't think I was yelling, as you say. I think I was encouraging. I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I am as guilty of struggling to roleplay fear and hate as anyone that I am encouraging to do so might be. I hate very few people in real life.

I have no OOC reason to hate every breed that crosses my path, but I try when it fits my character to do so because I'm supposed to. OOCly I'd love to have a magick friend, but ICly that's supposed to be an abhorrent thought. If I find a magick bauble that makes my character strong, I should flee and fear, not fit and flex. And I struggle sometimes to remember that.

So my exhortation to remember your reality concerning how dangerous magick is supposed to be when you decide to try to kill a magicker, or how likely you are to be cursed if you buddy up to a magicker, shouldn't be construed as yelling. It should be considered encouragement to always remember the difference between you and your character - to remember the difference between your reality and their's.

If you feel as though it's yelling, I guess I'm sorry.

I think you're focusing on the wrong thing. Harmless is saying we've already heard the suggestion RP better. It's unhelpful. It must sound deafening when it's the go to for everyone who sees something they don't immediately agree with or a problem they don't immediately know how to fix.

At a glance it's pretty mastubatory. Saying learn to RP better implies you aren't part of the issue and are a better RPer. I see your admission of guilt however and am not leveling that claim at you, 7dead.

I guess that's fair.

It's not just masturbatory at a glance. It's 90% masturbatory. Maybe it will help for those people it didnt occur to, but most of the problem is power people in game having in depth OOC and IC knowledge ("fRoM mY bAcKgRoUnD") of how gimped magick is currently.

To be honest, claiming it's 'masturbatory' at all is masturbatory, since you have no idea why that other person thinks they had to say what they have to say. For the statement to be masturbatory, there has to be intent to show off in some way. Since that's not the intent of my statement at all, it was in no way masturbatory, even if it could be read like that. And I think it's important not to read intent into a statement posted on a forum unless that intent is explicit, like, it says, "fuck you, you suck," or some such. We lack the ability to accurately present tone and expression in such an arena.

Still, because I added less than I wished to the topic, I'm sorry it felt like some sort of indictment of any percentage of the playerbase.

But that's enough of this. I really shouldn't even be defending myself. This is devolving into a topic removed from the original topic. Let's get back to discussing that, yeah?

Mek, are you suggesting that most of the problem is people making characters who ICly know how magick works, even when they are mundanes, because they know OOCly? I'm not sure I completely understood what you meant there.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on January 12, 2019, 12:04:45 AM
We lack the ability to accurately present tone and expression in such an arena.

I disagree on this point. Almost all my posts are meant to be somewhat condescending or bombastic and I think that's accurately communicated. The structure and diction of one's posts, as well as rhetorical questioning and how short or how long and winnowing a post is can all lend tone to it. The presence of profanity, etc. But that's neither here nor there.

My claim of it being masturbatory is that the advice to "roleplay better" implies that the person delivering such advice roleplays properly and thinks that if everyone were just a little more like them, then the game would be better in whatever direction their advice of roleplaying better would take it. I disagree. Expecting people to act like you do has in almost all avenues of my life lead me to disappointment. You need to lead people into doing what you want either by example, by force, or by implication The second of these is extremely effective only in singular occasional cases, the first of them is unreliable without an absolutely overwhelming amount of charisma and ability to project oneself into situations without interruption. The third, which is to say, by implication, is much better

If magick IS ACTUALLY something you should fear and hate, people will fear and hate magickers, whether or not they have greasy shadowboard gained code knowledge of how magick works. And I think the current cadre of staff can be trusted enough to not go screaming to the shadowboards with a reddened ass if any of them decide to step down. At least, I hope so. Presuming that anyone who would step down would be privy to any changes made to magick.

Quote
Mek, are you suggesting that most of the problem is people making characters who ICly know how magick works, even when they are mundanes, because they know OOCly? I'm not sure I completely understood what you meant there.

Many people think that because they are playing a leader that they don't need to play to the docs, or people who don't play to the docs become leaders. Leaders are usually exceptional, usually through ability or simply because whoever promoted them decided they wanted to give this person a shot or they wanted to meet a certain level of diversity so nobody would cry favoritism. In Arm's case, in MY opinion, anyway. The extreme phobia of appearing to project favoritism is another problem I want to address but that's beside the current point.

Basically, leaders are powergamers or excellent social manipulators who have powergamers under their thumb. Many times, they are both. But the problem is, either type has the same level of notoriety and public facing influence. So whenever Magicky McBackground Badass decides they wanna drink from the pool of water the Vivaduan just decided to squirt out instead of recoiling in fear from it, their five little lemming and their five little friends have that much more reason to not be encouraged to roleplay fear of magick. What's more, that Vivaduan just created water, so you just narrowed him down to two subguilds, of which knowledge has percolated out to many people, so they have no reason to roleplay actual fear of him besides social nicety. And you can only expect politeness to be so effective. The threat of the hammer is often as effective if not more than the hammer. Magickers need to be able to drop the anvil, not just the hammer.

Bring back all the magick shit that's been taken out. Make it less accessible if you like, but bring it back. OUTSIDE OF staff animation. Nobody wants to watch an animated NPC jerk themselves off with wicked cool magick shit. Or at least, I don't.

I'm going to refrain from commenting any more about the other stuff.

To your second train of thought, that's probably a real issue, in at least some cases. Having not been back long enough to evaluate that many leaders, I'm not certain it is a wide-ranging issue, but I'll take your word on it. I know it has been in the past, at the very least. I was, of course, trying to pinpoint this very issue when I mentioned your reality versus your character's reality.

I certainly also agree concerning giving magickers the anvil. While I personally love the ideas behind splitting up the magick guilds into these new facets, I wasn't a fan of doing away with the coded power that the old guilds possessed. I loved that they had been turned into sub-guilds versus main guilds, because I thought that was the sort of thing that would allow them to be real people beyond their magick.

I think we can agree on magick needing to be terrifying for a magicker's foe again for coded reasons.

Random magic thoughts:

I think we largely agree that the disconnect occurs when the IC reality of magic is that it is powerful and scary and the coded reality of magic is that it is sometimes powerful and always predictable. I've seen staff animations in the past few years of magic scenarios (ie. during the Gith War) that were terrifying and intense, that really drove home why people fear magick.

I've been thinking of how to make the coded power match the virtual power of magick and while it's probably not feasible from a manpower/code work perspective...

My ideal magick system would see all mage classes redone to have spells significantly more powerful than they are now. Not every spell needs to be godly, but the general toolkit of mages should instill not just IC fear but OOC fear as well. To that end, to balance and compliment the boost in power, spells would have a miscast chance. As you skill up, the miscast chance decreases relative to your overall power. More powerful levels of each spell are still more difficult to cast successfully. Miscasts have a range of effects, from the spell simply fizzling out, to hitting the wrong target, to a completely unintended effect. Did you cast 'mon un summon familiar'? Bad news, newbie gemmer. You've made a terrible miscalculation and summoned a horror from the void. Trying to fuck up that sewer horror with a fireball? You could cast at mon and incinerate it, knowing that there's a chance you miscast and explode for 80 damage to everyone in the room.

Just some thoughts.

So the argument is that magickers are not powerful enough or unpredictable enough to be scary?

That's my read of it, I think?

Like yeah, code is not a solution to bad roleplay, but Armageddon is a MUD, not a MUSH. Mechanics exist to enhance roleplay and this is a situation where a change to mechanics can reinforce the setting's treatment of magick both ICly and OOCly.

I don't think it would hurt at all to make magickers more powerful and erratic. However, the unpredictable nature of the magick shouldn't be so stifling that it's just a general pain in the ass to play as or be around. There's a balance that need to be maintained.

I personally would prefer ideas that somehow stayed within this trinity of fun, powerful, and erratic. But I'm coming up mostly blank on good ideas at the moment.

I think people have clearly worked their way back around to the idea that I was trying to suggest. The only part that disappoints me in this thread is that I can't even remember if I'm the one that was moderated. That's how many times I considered writing up a response and just shook my head and stepped back, hah!

That said, every single one of them needs to be made more powerful. The ones who might not (a particular cool whiran) could still be given a lot of utilities that would make their lives pretty cool and better again. I'm not lopsided in hoping for this kind of thing.

Quote from: ABoredLion on January 12, 2019, 08:09:19 AM
-snip-

Edit that part about the sub guild. I'm not getting another thread locked on a whim.

I don't think "more powerful" but just as limited as they currently are, is a solution to anything. I think "more variety" without any "more" power would do the trick. If people could pick an element - and select from a menu of options within that element, we would have the mystery mage everyone wants. Yes, he's a vivaduan. But what KIND of vivaduan? Answer: there is no "kind" of vivaduan. They're all custom, so you won't ever truly know what he can do, until you see him do it. His player knows. His character might or might not know, depending on how he's chosen to play his character.

Perhaps even start the out-of-chargen spells out at a higher level than the current starting level (this stuff IS in the docs but I'll refrain from naming the levels). One step higher, 10 points higher, whatever. Have them come out of chargen with a working and somewhat efficient ability to a) use a few spells and b) practice a few spells. Maybe even make that next-level startup be a freebie option for 3-karma players. "Yes, we acknowledge that you know your way around the magick system, which is why you have 3 karma. And so, for all your magick characters, you MAY if you wish - start your character's first spells at power Y instead of power X. Do you wish to do so? Y yes N no C custom.>" and if they only want one or two of them to start out higher and want to roleplay the struggle for the lower (or just aren't interested in the lower) they may do that as well.

I don't think we should throw caution to the wind, but I do think extreme conservative cautious temperance when it comes to giving players more coded power is stifling to the game. The game would be more exciting and dynamic if the same philosophy were applied to giving players power that is followed when it comes to taking it away.

I would like to point out that fear of magick is not always obvious and can be pretty subtle.

I have heard IG that someone was terrified of a certain  magicker, but did not date show it out if fear that he would be killed if he showed any negative reaction. Which... seemed totally valid in that situation. My own character did show fear, initially  ran, and had enough discomfort for several magicker PCs to pick up on that discomfort. Apparently, it was not obvious enough for staff to pick it up, though, and they did ask some questions.

I have also had someone admit they were terrified of my magicker, and did not pick up on any of that myself.

I once had a PC that was both terrified and infatuated with a magicker. They had wild sex all the time. I'm pretty sure there were at least a handful of folks that knew about it, but those people seemed (at least on the surface) to understand. Since this is a magicker spook thread, I'm curious what you all think about sex with gickers, and how that plays into the whole scare factor thing.

helps bend and erode documentation, and hopefully people black-sheeped you for it to offset that. though due to prior experiences in this game, it's a dubious proposition at best.

but no worries, bruh. who doesn't want slip and slide fun with a viv? horny nerds unite. let's fight for our mudsex fantasies

Quote from: MeTekillot on January 12, 2019, 10:06:56 AM
I don't think we should throw caution to the wind, but I do think extreme conservative cautious temperance when it comes to giving players more coded power is stifling to the game. The game would be more exciting and dynamic if the same philosophy were applied to giving players power that is followed when it comes to taking it away.

Are you suggesting that the loss of fear against magick is an indirect result of the ever present glass ceiling effect?

There does seem to be a pattern of secret trysts with mages. As has been said before, this playerbase is horny. Some characters exude wit, charm, and artful descriptions of themselves or their actions, which equate to attractiveness and desirability for interaction, and those characters are often played by high karma players, and magick is one of the most commonly bought karma rewards. Players into the bonding roleplay story arc (which is a lot of our playerbase lately) will try to get their PC romantically involved with mages even if there is risk involved. Over time a proliferation of IC excuses are invented among different players..either in backgrounds or not, to allow their character to be "soft" on "that one" mage that their PC is sweet on...which I agree, does erode the fear factor over time.

In my opinion, the greatest balance of the above is the shame from higher levels of power on such feelings and actions. It might come from other commoners, but this is usually not that dangerous to the romance plot and it keeps going. Reluctance to intervene may be due to the knowledge that witches tend to be connected. (this is true for publicly known witches, usually). Any witch that isn't well connected is generally in hiding anyway.

Templars, however, can, and SHOULD, be oppressing the gemmed...brutally if needed. I've never had a gemmed that had a romance with an ungemmed, but if I did (though I doubt I'd want to get into this kind of plot for the foreseeable future), I would do it hoping for a "tragic" outcome that reinforces the theme.

In other words, turn trends of players roleplaying "errantly" according to the docs into opportunities (for murder, corruption, betrayal), and have the players "be the change" by responding in an IC way that helps to establish the culture.

Yep. It's just a matter of having players make life hell for players who do taboo shit. But if it's not a unified effort, it'll fall flat.

Also, just food for thought, if you're a noble/templar, maybe elevate yourself and don't fuck or engage with everything that has half a pulse. As mentioned by Harmless, you can set the examples for that sort of behavior.

Storytime:

I played a whiran in Tuluk who got killed by a templar. Understandable, my bad for getting caught.
I then played an ungemmed mage outside of Tuluk, who went to Tuluk to visit, and got killed by the same templar. Woops.
I then played a mundane, who had MET a whiran, and I ended up getting killed by the SAME templar. Just for knowing a whiran.
I THEN played a mundane, who avoided going to Tuluk because *I* the player was tired of having my characters killed by that templar. My character was assassinated - under orders of that templar, who suspected my character of harboring a whiran fugitive (the same one my previous character got killed for knowing).

A little bitter, sure. Mostly bitter because I never learned how to "interact with mages in any way, shape, or form, without THAT templar killing my character or arranging their assassination." Not because my characters got killed.

I wish there was more of this in Allanak. Not to that extreme, certainly. But we're at the opposite extreme where someone can actually come to the GDB and even ask peoples' opinions about a mundane PC knowingly mudsexing a mage, in Allanak. The fact that someone would even ask that on the GDB shows how far to the other extreme we've gone. I feel we need to start pulling the other way.

Man, this thread just went off the rails hard in a couple of posts. To put it lightly, having sex with someone does not make them less dangerous. It's not the standard by which you should measure someone's danger or lack thereof, because let me tell you, sex has been used as a manipulating force to keeping dangerous people on your side for who knows how long.

As to the templars, that seems more like a backhanded insult toward some templar or series of them, when the game world doesn't really reflect much for it being wrong for them to get their jollies. There's a fine line and all, but let's not derail the point of the thread.

Trysts between gemmed and nongemmed should always be a source of what will ultimately be thought to be a dangerous and fruitless endeavor where the gemmed is either suicidal or just trying to eke out one little bit of happiness before they inevitably get caught and killed for it. The ungemmed is probably taking a huge risk, and in general, I think you'll find these relationships are going to end tragically (usually with the death of one of them). That's my opinion. On the point of this thread? This does not make magickers more or less feared.

As to other people shacking up with magickers, I think it depends heavily on a variety of things. In general it is taboo. There are some areas where it is more taboo, and some areas where it is going to impact you more to be doing something taboo. Further, you've got to bear in mind that any number of things can be driving them to doing whatever, and as I mentioned far above, sex does not make someone more or less scary. I've played mundanes and magickers both who scared the living hell out of their partners. Having a mundane partner is not responsible for magickers not being scary.

The truth of it is that danger as it is most represented from 'magicker' to 'other', is in their ability to harm(through information, long distance attacks, or physically) them in some way without suffering themselves for it, or especially, risking themselves for it overly much. For dealing with a magicker, if they have to be right in your face to do anything to you, and you're never worried about 'right in your face' engagements because you and your 5 friends spar every morning in your clan hall, then you're not worried, just as an example.

That's the unfortunate nature of a MUD relying on code for certain things. I feel like I'm going over already gone over points though. I just wanted to bring this to heel before this went over the top again.

@Lizzie, none of that was on the point of the thread. No going off the rails here! :D

The point is that lack of fear and mystery, or reinforcement of the lack of coded support of the fear and mystery, is a problem.

You shouldn't be having sex with mages because - their very existence is a mistake of nature. It'd be like wanting to have sex with a plugged in lamp with a broken lightbulb on top. Or wanting to have sex underwater, with no snorkel mask or oxygen tank. Or wanting to have sex in a lit firepit. Or wanting to have sex with a rock, that will turn your insides to stone if it gets too excited.

There should be - I emphasis: there SHOULD be - fear of the potential for any of these things happening. Or worse, or more depraved, or more scary, or more nauseating and sickening.

ICly - your character should think that these things might actually be possible. Your mage character should also be thinking these things might some day actually happen. That they're not coded actualities shouldn't matter.

Sadly, people tend to dismiss these IC possibilities, precisely because there's no coded consequences. And because they dismiss them, you have people making excuses to play the exception to the rule so frequently that the rule ceases to exist.

And that is a very good example (though certainly not the only example) of why there's no magickal spook factor.

Heh...you wanna make all mages scary very easily?

Give them a choice of one of the extra reaches in char creation.

;)

I'm sorry. What the heck? You guys fuck magickers? You don't hate them all? I am completely perplexed that anyone would ever accept a magicker who isn't a magicker themselves. And hell, they aren't even supposed to like all the others.

Nobles and templars fucking magickers? That is abhorrent. They have access to the best, cleanest companions in pleasure slaves, or they can pick better than average looking commoners on the streets. I'm completely... surprised. Wow.

People always trying really hard to justify their sexy times.

If a templar is banging a magicker, that's bad. End of the story. That's life ending if it gets out. That's one of those things that they'd never do as far as I can tell, knowingly. As to whether templars ever have sex with commoners, that's something thrown around in Allanak often enough. It isn't Tuluk. And last I checked, no templars are given personal pleasure slaves at generation.

But again, we're way off subject. I keep trying to point toward a direction that gets cohesive possibilities and ideas that maybe staff can see. Everyone wants to draw back to this whole 'be better roleplayers' thing and I guess I gotta give up. Hopefully someone upstairs got something from this, heh.

I think added utility and increased deadliness is the way to go, from a coded perspective.

I don't think that giving subguild magickers more things is going to make people perceive them as more deadly. These issues have always been issues. People choose to interpret the documentation with their own spin.

If people aren't afraid of magickers because they OOCly know they are neutered power wise, well, they should be reported to staff because that isn't adhering correctly.

I do think some subguilds need to be boosted, but if we are going to make magickers super powerful, we need to cap them. Everyone rolling in with a Krathi or Whiran who could snuff you in a couple of hits would be silly.

The IC fear and hatred of magickers should be so great that a normal commoner under most circumstances is not going to continuously expose their most delicate parts to them in a sexual fashion once a day every day for the rest of their lives, where the fear of finding out means death, including the death of the witch you obviously have such a major crush on you couldn't help going up to them and asking, "Your place or mine?"

I'm just saying, if people did this a little less, maybe it would feel more believable, and less like we are all living in a democratic, free-loving society of equals merely playing warrior and merchant in a DnD-style game.

Perhaps a simple change in the documentarion regarding magick users manifesting could be beneficial? Such as something saying that nearly all magick users are aware of their abilities after puberty. This way you would have far less surprise magick users just joining the byn (or the Arm or the garrison) for the sweet experience ahead of time. And a lot fewer magickers in general. I think the relative return to rarity would make it much easier to RP fear, loathing, and disgust accurately.

Quote from: Cind on January 13, 2019, 03:54:07 AM
The IC fear and hatred of magickers should be so great that a normal commoner under most circumstances is not going to continuously expose their most delicate parts to them in a sexual fashion once a day every day for the rest of their lives, where the fear of finding out means death, including the death of the witch you obviously have such a major crush on you couldn't help going up to them and asking, "Your place or mine?"

I'm just saying, if people did this a little less, maybe it would feel more believable, and less like we are all living in a democratic, free-loving society of equals merely playing warrior and merchant in a DnD-style game.

"fear of finding out" is missing the point entirely.

The point is "fear of those intimate parts falling off, turning to stone, burning you to a cinder from the inside out, dehydrating you until you're just powder, being made permanently frigid/unable to get it up, permanent infertility, or your kids guaranteed to be mutants." THESE are things that should be your character's primary concerns when presented with the opportunity to have sex with a mage. The result of those concerns, for anyone sane, would be "hell no."

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 13, 2019, 11:22:20 AM
Perhaps a simple change in the documentarion regarding magick users manifesting could be beneficial? Such as something saying that nearly all magick users are aware of their abilities after puberty. This way you would have far less surprise magick users just joining the byn (or the Arm or the garrison) for the sweet experience ahead of time. And a lot fewer magickers in general. I think the relative return to rarity would make it much easier to RP fear, loathing, and disgust accurately.

There was a great magick guide on the old website.
Stuff like

• What's the culture like? (https://web.archive.org/web/20080511235101/http://www.armageddon.org/rp/magick/magickculture.html)
• Sample Backgrounds (https://web.archive.org/web/20081224173619/http://www.armageddon.org:80/rp/magick/magicksample.html)
• Examples of cantrips (https://web.archive.org/web/20080827230044/http://www.armageddon.org/rp/magick/magickcantrip.html)
• Things to consider when creating a magick character (https://web.archive.org/web/20080828125913/http://www.armageddon.org/rp/magick/magickchar.html)
• All around General Magick FAQ (https://web.archive.org/web/20080511235307/http://www.armageddon.org/rp/magick/magickfaq.html)

The new one has some good things too:
http://armageddon.org/help/view/Magick%20Roleplay

...Actually, it's pretty much the same from the old to the new, with the exception of the sample backgrounds link.


Maybe we all should re-read the documentation and see if it's supposed to align with how we're thinking about Magickers.
If something is documented one way, but doesn't actually play out in game - we should point out the inconsistencies and give solid examples of how to change.

Well the documentation says magick is a world-shaking force of power, and it doesn't really play out that way in game with most of the magick available to players.

Quote from: Lizzie on January 13, 2019, 11:36:19 AM

Quote from: Cind on January 13, 2019, 03:54:07 AM
The IC fear and hatred of magickers should be so great that a normal commoner under most circumstances is not going to continuously expose their most delicate parts to them in a sexual fashion once a day every day for the rest of their lives, where the fear of finding out means death, including the death of the witch you obviously have such a major crush on you couldn't help going up to them and asking, "Your place or mine?"

I'm just saying, if people did this a little less, maybe it would feel more believable, and less like we are all living in a democratic, free-loving society of equals merely playing warrior and merchant in a DnD-style game.

"fear of finding out" is missing the point entirely.

The point is "fear of those intimate parts falling off, turning to stone, burning you to a cinder from the inside out, dehydrating you until you're just powder, being made permanently frigid/unable to get it up, permanent infertility, or your kids guaranteed to be mutants." THESE are things that should be your character's primary concerns when presented with the opportunity to have sex with a mage. The result of those concerns, for anyone sane, would be "hell no."

You're missing my point. I don't care about mage fucking. I think it's stupid and should be super frowned upon, but I think mudsex is appalling as a rule anyway.

No, my point is that if we return the relative rarity to most mages perhaps it'll be easier to rp at them properly. As in, when you don't have suspicions that the three other Runners in your squad are witches because they would already have been outed and not allowed in the byn by this point.

Quote from: MeTekillot on January 13, 2019, 02:00:28 PM
Well the documentation says magick is a world-shaking force of power, and it doesn't really play out that way in game with most of the magick available to players.

It's the glass ceiling. That power definitely exists, in the sorcerer kings and their lackeys. Remember how powerful a Red Robe is supposed to be? It's just that no character will ever likely be able to harness it and if they saw that kind of power it's likely they'd be on the business end of it (to be read instakilled).

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 13, 2019, 04:13:12 PM

You're missing my point. I don't care about mage fucking. I think it's stupid and should be super frowned upon, but I think mudsex is appalling as a rule anyway.

Someone upthread posted an inquiry about opinions on this. The fact that they posted - is what got me started. The fact that people would actually ask about it - is a concern. It shouldn't be a thing, at all. But apparently it is. And I think that's a problem, that speaks very clearly to the overall issue of "lack of mage spookitude."

Quote from: Lizzie on January 13, 2019, 04:35:08 PM

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 13, 2019, 04:13:12 PM

You're missing my point. I don't care about mage fucking. I think it's stupid and should be super frowned upon, but I think mudsex is appalling as a rule anyway.

Someone upthread posted an inquiry about opinions on this. The fact that they posted - is what got me started. The fact that people would actually ask about it - is a concern. It shouldn't be a thing, at all. But apparently it is. And I think that's a problem, that speaks very clearly to the overall issue of "lack of mage spookitude."

I can agree with that, I suppose.

I read your post as a critique of my own.

A good love story always ends in tragedy.

Everything does.

One time a mundane character of mine and an acquaintance were talking together at a table in the Gaj by themselves about how mages were disgusting, disturbing, etc. and it ended up so that we were forced by a mage who had overhead us to apologize to them for saying those things, having our hands forced by a templar. I'll tell you one thing--- that mage was always washed and clean.

I was actually trying to say how people who do these things and then attempt to be discovered, I give them brownie points. But, for the sake of the gameworld, especially since it is a small gameworld, it may not be the best idea to play the exception -every single time,-, or most of the time, or even half of the time.

Amos and Talia were best friends and bedtime buddies, and then Talia manifests and gets gemmed, and they don't sleep together anymore but Amos hangs around outside her temple pretending to be a street sweeper. I get it. You knew them before the gem, and you're acting appropriately to the gameworld, because I consider obsession appropriate.

You've had five characters, all mundane---- and each of them had secretly slept with a gemmer, in a game with strict rp enforcement where secrets never stay secret for long. Wait...

Quote from: Cind on January 14, 2019, 12:39:45 PM
One time a mundane character of mine and an acquaintance were talking together at a table in the Gaj by themselves about how mages were disgusting, disturbing, etc. and it ended up so that we were forced by a mage who had overhead us to apologize to them for saying those things, having our hands forced by a templar. I'll tell you one thing--- that mage was always washed and clean.

lol... I think one of the hardest parts of playing a magick character is to concede to losing these exchanges.  I mean, you never know what factors were at play.  But the onus is on the magickers to let the mundanes rule the mundane parts of the game and to make themselves seem "rare".  Just like a mul could, but shouldn't, walk into the Gaj, order a drink, and slaughter every NPC soldier on her way back to the labyrinth.

Quote from: Cind on January 14, 2019, 12:39:45 PM
I was actually trying to say how people who do these things and then attempt to be discovered, I give them brownie points. But, for the sake of the gameworld, especially since it is a small gameworld, it may not be the best idea to play the exception -every single time,-, or most of the time, or even half of the time.

I feel like there is a list of conducts that experienced players should take note of.  I'll rattle off a few from the top of my head (maybe I am wrong about some of these?).  All else being equal in some place like Allanak:

• It is better to have pointed ears than a gem
• It is better to be a known pickpocket than to have pointed ears
• It is better to have a funny accent than to be a known pickpocket
• It is better to be a known pickpocket than to be known to fraternize with magickers
• It is better to wear silk in the Gaj than to sit with someone with a gem in the Gaj
• It is better for an elf to be seen riding than to be outed as a magicker

You were doing alright till the last one.

The mixture of pride, nomadic tendencies, and the natural ability to run makes all elves ridicule the riding of mounts. To rely upon another beast to carry one around is considered an extreme sign of weakness among elves (even more than the inability to steal!). Even at the point of exhaustion, and when it comes to life and death situations, an elf would never admit to riding a mount. Even in the rare case of old age and in sickness, elves would refuse to ride about on a mount.

It would be easier for an elf to explain being a mage then riding a mount. At least to other elves...which is all that matters anyway....nobody cares about the lesser races.

It would be easier for an elf coming to terms with losing those pointed ears than riding a mount. That's a real quick way to get force stored. Quicker than dwarven foci breaking, IMO.

I'll state what I did on my last elf character (Which is like, 2 characters ago), that when I typed 'mount' it flat out wouldn't let me on a mount.

But I digress.

In Dark Sun Elves /could/ ride, they just didn't unless they were dying. Even then if one of their clanmates were there, they'd prob die.

In Arm, this is different. Elves won't ride.

And I know this is off topic...but many years ago, I had PC in the Byn and I think Sujaal was the sarge. We had an elf with us and wagon escort, we needed to leave...do not remember why, but likely some kind of danger or something, The elf totally refused to get on the wagon, would prefer be executed for desertion. He was knocked out, tied up, stuffed in a bag and tossed on the wagon...he never forgave any of us.

Good scene though.

Quote from: X-D on January 14, 2019, 05:14:17 PM
And I know this is off topic...but many years ago, I had PC in the Byn and I think Sujaal was the sarge. We had an elf with us and wagon escort, we needed to leave...do not remember why, but likely some kind of danger or something, The elf totally refused to get on the wagon, would prefer be executed for desertion. He was knocked out, tied up, stuffed in a bag and tossed on the wagon...he never forgave any of us.

Good scene though.

Kudos that elf, he's a true knife ear.


I can't say for sure and only staff knows, and if at that probably vaguely unless they stalk the same player (This could probably be easy to spot though as a staffer if you just regularly check up on players. You check on X-D, see him kanking a mage. He dies. Three characters later you see him fucking another one.) but I think consistent 'setting breaking' is kinda bad. Every now and then? Yeah, sure.

I always try to have a quirk to my characters that goes against the grain /somehow/. I try to have multiple that go against the player grain
(Not necessarily the setting but, if every player in the world is being nice to 'x' people for some reason, I'll make a character that hates them. Even if setting wise it is neutral on whether or not 'x' is acceptable. Kinda like dwarves.)

So are there tons of players fucking mages? Only staff can say for sure or people who just watch these players IG and OOC know who they are. My opinion? Probably.

I have to admit I was kind of trawling with that one. :)

Do you think a spell that has canned "power" emotes would help? I think having something similar for each magicker type would allow them a tool to give mundanes something to find unnerving without necessarily changing the power rankings.

The only issue I foresee is that mundanes will take off or attack when they see a magicker "begins to chant a spell" and their element reacting because they aren't sure what it'll be. This could be negated by  making it cast nearly instantly as opposed to the others. The rest time shouldn't be messed with though so you can't machinegun emote spells, not that I know why you would.

Viv: mists, droplets of blood, etc.
Whirans: buffeting winds, dust devils, floating for a short second, etc.
Krathis: fire, sparkles, embers, etc.
Rukkians: tremors, stone molding at their feet, rocks nearby trembling, the sounds of earth churning, etc.
Nilaz: weird stuff.

Literally just...elementals do this with cantrips though? If a player decides "I'M NOT GOING TO REACT TO THIS MAGE BECAUSE HE ONLY EMOTED AND NOT SPELL" thats basically metagaming/powergaming and should be reported. Just because a mage can cast 'mon un whira cantrip' and hover for a few seconds doesn't mean he can't just fucking, emote the same thing.

I /WOULD/ like to see a default attack ability that isn't technically casting spells. Such as: Being able to manipulate already existing elements to do damage. Rocks shift and cause you to fall and hurt you, lava in the room smacks you, vines attack, etc.

Make it easier/harder in certain rooms, make it border line impossible for vivadu outside of vegetation. Hell, maybe make it hard to tell who's doing it without a scan roll.

Quote from: Jihelu on January 17, 2019, 03:02:44 PM
Literally just...elementals do this with cantrips though? If a player decides "I'M NOT GOING TO REACT TO THIS MAGE BECAUSE HE ONLY EMOTED AND NOT SPELL" thats basically metagaming/powergaming and should be reported. Just because a mage can cast 'mon un whira cantrip' and hover for a few seconds doesn't mean he can't just fucking, emote the same thing.

I /WOULD/ like to see a default attack ability that isn't technically casting spells. Such as: Being able to manipulate already existing elements to do damage. Rocks shift and cause you to fall and hurt you, lava in the room smacks you, vines attack, etc.

Make it easier/harder in certain rooms, make it border line impossible for vivadu outside of vegetation. Hell, maybe make it hard to tell who's doing it without a scan roll.

This goes for anytime anyone emotes anything. Just because it was only emote, does not mean it did not happen and it can be ignored.

I think you misunderstand. I'm trying to find an appropriate boundary to power emote. I think we could all agree that a magicker has things that would be appropriate for them to emote, but it would be too over the top or not fair to other players. Like a whiran emoting he summons a wind that's powerful enough to knock you to your feet or something. Canned emotes are written by staff and shouldn't butt up against what's not okay. Honestly, I think it'd be a fine tool to influence dynamic play. It's a show of power without coded consequences necessarily.

One: There are spells that kinda do this already in place, kinda. Find out ic? Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

Two: There exists documentation on what is and what is not okay for cantrips, which basically winds up being 'if it would do something you codedly can't do without -x- skill'.

Lighting a torch? Cool. Starting a fire to a tent? Actually, plausible as anyone with a torch can. Doing damage to someone? No.

I do wish it was a bit fleshed out. And I imagine part of being a karma having magic user is staff trusts you to know what is and what isn't okay in a cantrip emote.

Quote from: Jihelu on January 17, 2019, 08:04:37 PM
One: There are spells that kinda do this already in place, kinda. Find out ic? Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

Two: There exists documentation on what is and what is not okay for cantrips, which basically winds up being 'if it would do something you codedly can't do without -x- skill'.

Lighting a torch? Cool. Starting a fire to a tent? Actually, plausible as anyone with a torch can. Doing damage to someone? No.

I do wish it was a bit fleshed out. And I imagine part of being a karma having magic user is staff trusts you to know what is and what isn't okay in a cantrip emote.

Yes. I know what you mean, but I am vying for an equivalent for each element type. And I agree with this, but I am also afraid to do too much because of how vague the boundary is. Maybe I'm the only one.

The only thing that makes magick scary is magick-users doing scary things.

Be aggressive, mofos.

Quote from: Armaddict on January 18, 2019, 01:10:58 AM
The only thing that makes magick scary is magick-users doing scary things.

Be aggressive, mofos.

I'm generally of the belief that if people aren't doing something, it's because it isn't compelling in some way, not because they haven't been told to do so on the forums. If magickers across the bord fail to be scary, it's due to a lack of reasons and opportunities to be scary. After all, people playing magickers are not uninformed newbies.

Quote from: Greve on January 18, 2019, 02:34:41 AM

Quote from: Armaddict on January 18, 2019, 01:10:58 AM
The only thing that makes magick scary is magick-users doing scary things.

Be aggressive, mofos.

I'm generally of the belief that if people aren't doing something, it's because it isn't compelling in some way, not because they haven't been told to do so on the forums. If magickers across the bord fail to be scary, it's due to a lack of reasons and opportunities to be scary. After all, people playing magickers are not uninformed newbies.

I dunno, I think if it's more compelling to fuck them or get confused about whether you should be able to fuck them than it is to view them as scary, there aren't exactly a lot of them that make you antsy about whether or not it will truly hurt your character which leads to all sorts of more compelling RP reasons to not be afraid than be afraid.

It's not an attack, it's just a reminder; the more you foster the stories of overcoming prejudice or not being the evil mage, the less you foster the scariness that gets asked for.  It is also not to say that I wouldn't like to have other things to help.  But in the end, aggressive, mean, evil mages make whatever rendition of magick you do have...scarier.

So.  Make some aggressive magick stuff happen!

Quote from: Armaddict on January 18, 2019, 01:10:58 AM
The only thing that makes magick scary is magick-users doing scary things.

Be aggressive, mofos.

100% disagree. There are two things that make magick scary:
1. The ability to do scary things, codedly.
2. The understanding and emphasis on (by the characters played by players who also understand and accept) that magickers can do scary things, codedly.

When either of these things fail to be true, magicks cease to be scary.


Also - "being scary" (in an active, assertive coded way) comes with risks. A rogue mage could take more risks, because he had more ability to be scary, as mages. Now, he is mostly just a mundane person, who is no more scary than any other mundane person, except he has a few toys in his toybox than others have. The risk vs. reward has been changed. So it's less likely that the rogue mage will take risks to reinforce his scariness to the rest of the playerbase. Risk being gemmed, or be hunted down, just because you can [do one of the few things in the touched by vivadu helpfile]? Risk being gemmed, or hunted down, just because you can [do a couple or three things from the touched by krath subguild]? If they won't take the risk, then no one will get to observe them being scary.

Quote from: Armaddict on January 18, 2019, 06:45:45 AM

Quote from: Greve on January 18, 2019, 02:34:41 AM

Quote from: Armaddict on January 18, 2019, 01:10:58 AM
The only thing that makes magick scary is magick-users doing scary things.

Be aggressive, mofos.

I'm generally of the belief that if people aren't doing something, it's because it isn't compelling in some way, not because they haven't been told to do so on the forums. If magickers across the bord fail to be scary, it's due to a lack of reasons and opportunities to be scary. After all, people playing magickers are not uninformed newbies.

I dunno, I think if it's more compelling to fuck them or get confused about whether you should be able to fuck them than it is to view them as scary, there aren't exactly a lot of them that make you antsy about whether or not it will truly hurt your character which leads to all sorts of more compelling RP reasons to not be afraid than be afraid.

It's not an attack, it's just a reminder; the more you foster the stories of overcoming prejudice or not being the evil mage, the less you foster the scariness that gets asked for.  It is also not to say that I wouldn't like to have other things to help.  But in the end, aggressive, mean, evil mages make whatever rendition of magick you do have...scarier.

So.  Make some aggressive magick stuff happen!

The point I meant to make was that "aggressive magick stuff" is borderline impossible to do at this point. For the most part, magick characters are just mundane classes with a few spells, most of which don't assist in doing anything aggressive. There are certainly combinations of class and magick subclass that are powerful, but not so powerful that you can get away with making yourself the global enemy of the month. Point in case: there haven't really been any since the big change to elementalists and sorcerers. It's simply absent.

You can sit there all day and tell people to be aggressive, but without the abilities to really do so, people won't. At least not in any way that differs significantly from what mundanes can do. Maxed backstab is inherently scary, and slightly moreso if you can buff your strength, but it's not really something that fits the bill of "scary magick." Same goes for most of the other things that magick can do for you. Elementalists are mundanes with one token magick gimmick, few of which are legitimately dangerous.

I can't name a notorious magicker since the magick system changed. Not one. I've known of magickers but they weren't notorious. Gemmed aside, each and every one had magick as a secret thing that never really saw the light of day. None lived by it. I've even known one or two who were widely feared and were magickers but almost nobody knew it, they were feared for other reasons and the magick played no part whatsoever. Gone are the days where magick itself meant something. Players, and their characters, no longer experience reasons to fear magick.

The mage archetype of the past worked because the classes got enough spells to live by them. We can't go into detail here, but I'm sure most of us know why it was prudent to be scared of any given classification of elementalist. Now we know that that's no longer the case. Any given type of elementalist now consists of like four spells, of which perhaps one is even usable in an aggressive manner, and rarely counts for more in practice than a capped combat skill. If we're being honest, isn't maxed sap scarier than whatever most elementalists can do? Are you not more afraid of a dwarf with a club?

And for that reason, people drifted away from the fear of magick. It's not a big mystery why it happened. I think the elementalist and sorcerer subguilds were a great addition to the game, if they had been merely an addition. They make a poor replacement, though. There's a gaping void where the old mages used to be. I wouldn't spend any time wondering why magick isn't met with fear anymore, because it's so easy to see why. It's just an aspect of the game that has been missing since these changes, and no amount of forum posts will get players to react to something that's no longer a reality that they experience.

QuoteIt is also not to say that I wouldn't like to have other things to help.  But in the end, aggressive, mean, evil mages make whatever rendition of magick you do have...scarier.

The rendition of magick you have now, people want scarier.  So play scarier things.

To state it more clearly, I very highly seriously truly doubt that another thread telling staff they made a mistake on mages is going to make them agree with that, and probably less likely to have them reverse it, because it's just not something staff does anymore.

This is the magick you got, you aren't likely to see changes.  If you do, hurray for the dozens of threads it took.

Quote from: Greve on January 18, 2019, 09:06:45 AM
I can't name a notorious magicker since the magick system changed. Not one. I've known of magickers but they weren't notorious. Gemmed aside, each and every one had magick as a secret thing that never really saw the light of day. None lived by it.

*Ahem*

The lack of notoriety is probably due to characters in positions of power actively squashing rumors of magick. Mage characters can do their part, but they are dependent on other characters spreading the stories of them doing their part.

Quote from: Lizzie on January 18, 2019, 07:50:03 AM
100% disagree. There are two things that make magick scary:
1. The ability to do scary things, codedly.
2. The understanding and emphasis on (by the characters played by players who also understand and accept) that magickers can do scary things, codedly.


Also - "being scary" (in an active, assertive coded way) comes with risks. A rogue mage could take more risks, because he had more ability to be scary, as mages. Now, he is mostly just a mundane person, who is no more scary than any other mundane person, except he has a few toys in his toybox than others have. The risk vs. reward has been changed. So it's less likely that the rogue mage will take risks to reinforce his scariness to the rest of the playerbase. Risk being gemmed, or be hunted down, just because you can [do one of the few things in the touched by vivadu helpfile]? Risk being gemmed, or hunted down, just because you can [do a couple or three things from the touched by krath subguild]? If they won't take the risk, then no one will get to observe them being scary.

With the karma changes these risks could very well mean a 75 day wait before you get to try again. I'm not going to roll into the Gaj on a 2 day krathi and emote having all the candles flare up, not when the risk is 73 days waiting before I have karma again.

I'm sure there's a sweet spot, but as of now, risk, and especially death, is more punishing than it has been since I joined in 2013.

When I joined mages were in part scary because of how fast they became dangerous. Now they take longer, especially if the start is 3 ig years in a sparring clan before they even start casting those spells.

Perhaps we should get more roles for troublemakers? Like once a week or so there's a rolecall you can apply for, you don't choose anything about your PC and your given the task of "attempt to kill templar Sajix", or "empty the pockets of a byn sergeant". These could be magickers too. That way you wouldn't need to worry about your karma getting squished when the PC dies because they're essentially born to fail and it reinforces the aspects of the game we want.

Lastly it puts the onus on the player, rather than the staffer to animate a thing and make it evil.

As an aside, please don't become confused. This isn't a thread about yearning for the old elementalists back. We're fixing what we've got.

The part about magickers getting "like four spells" is just factually wrong. Branch!

I have played a class that got zero spells that were useable in combat, but this was probably the worst possible class, and staff has hinted that the last spells that character would have branched were applicable in combat. He just died before he could branch them.

Now, another character? Got a number of aggressive spells. I would take those over another weapon or combat skill and without thinking twice about it. I am also sure people would have been more scared if they realized what he could do, but simply had no clue.

My IG experience with other magickers is similar. Most (touched exempt, I haven't seen enough of those) seem to get an edge that extends beyond any single skill, and some of them, with the right combination of skills, are just stupidly powerful.

Quote from: Nao on January 18, 2019, 01:38:42 PM
The part about magickers getting "like four spells" is just factually wrong. Branch!

I have played a class that got zero spells that were useable in combat, but this was probably the worst possible class, and staff has hinted that the last spells that character would have branched were applicable in combat. He just died before he could branch them.

Now, another character? Got a number of aggressive spells. I would take those over another weapon or combat skill and without thinking twice about it. I am also sure people would have been more scared if they realized what he could do, but simply had no clue.

My IG experience with other magickers is similar. Most (touched exempt, I haven't seen enough of those) seem to get an edge that extends beyond any single skill, and some of them, with the right combination of skills, are just stupidly powerful.

They're only "stupidly powerful" if they are rogue ungemmed. Once they use their magicks on another PC, they are - by definition "outted" and immediately ineligible for being clanned by anyone other than Oash - who might or might not have use for them (if it's anything other than a human, forget about it.) and they would immediately be subject to being gemmed, OR hunted down if they reject the gem.

Which is fine, really. All those risks are reasonable risks. For a full-fledged mage. For a warrior with a few magick spells? Nope. Not worth the risk. The point of splitting the magick elements up, was to remove the whole idea of someone being a "mage first, character second." The second you realize the risk, you cease to be a person and immediately become a mage first, everything else second. You are not identified as "that guy who can swing a sword like nobody's business and oh yeah he also knows some magick." You are no longer "the half-elf who's been breaking into all the apartments in the merchant apartment building" and immediately become "that gick breed with a lockpick."

People are STILL identifying magickers as - magickers. Except the point of changing the system was to eliminate that. It didn't work. so now we have a split most people didn't want, with the same risk if they get caught, but less power *within that sphere of identifying as a mage* to justify the risk. There's zero risk to being a miscreant, or human, or tradesman, or master crafter. There is the SAME risk to being codedly capable of succeeding with the "cast" command, as there always was. And less to justify that risk.

Give magickers a reach that, when earned somehow or at some cost, conceals the casting.

Allow magickers to pick a second subset of their element when they have fully branched the first. So a corruption Vivaduan can get healing magick. And so on.

It's hard to read this thread some times and not want to spoil the shit out of in game events.

There are weirder things happening than many probably realize. Maybe the fact that people don't know about the weirdness is the problem? Personally, I think it's more fun to discover strange stuff happening IC, and be surprised.

This thread is about a view along a long timeline. Longer than current events. Just because your current circumstances are cool and weird doesn't necessarily say much about the state of the problem.

Honestly, when staff is directly involved magick looks strange and terrifying. Lovecraftian even, at times. But that's equally problematic isn't it? If players lack all agency to reinforce game concepts then that's bad. I think we can all agree not to expect staff to constantly be trying to make a certain thing scary/abhorred/whatever. That's wasted time when we could do it on our own.

Hence why saying mundanes need to rp being afraid is moot. Even if that worked you've fixed half the problem, congratulations.

Like I said, give the player a choice of an extra reach in chargen or directly after...Oh sure, I know that would mean 90% would choose a certain one, but who cares. (I wouldn't choose the most well known one) And increase mana regen or mana pool. A mage with limited and/or weak spells is far more scary if he can cast them ALOT. Combined with an unknown reach putting a bit of random into the class means uncertainty, which gives some spook.

Oh, he is just a healy mage, sure he can heal for 100 points but only do it 3 times before out of mana...we can take him.

After change.

Oh he is a healy mage that can heal for 100 points and can do it 8 times...we can take him...But wait, what if he has the mirror spell (made up)reach(though it should be put in) and can harm for 100 points 8 times..........

I mean, it would not be hard to make em spooky/scary with just a bit of tweeking, specially if that tweeking adds a bit of randomness.

Quote from: X-D on January 18, 2019, 05:06:45 PM
Like I said, give the player a choice of an extra reach in chargen or directly after...Oh sure, I know that would mean 90% would choose a certain one, but who cares. (I wouldn't choose the most well known one) And increase mana regen or mana pool. A mage with limited and/or weak spells is far more scary if he can cast them ALOT. Combined with an unknown reach putting a bit of random into the class means uncertainty, which gives some spook.

Oh, he is just a healy mage, sure he can heal for 100 points but only do it 3 times before out of mana...we can take him.

After change.

Oh he is a healy mage that can heal for 100 points and can do it 8 times...we can take him...But wait, what if he has the mirror spell (made up)reach(though it should be put in) and can harm for 100 points 8 times..........

I mean, it would not be hard to make em spooky/scary with just a bit of tweeking, specially if that tweeking adds a bit of randomness.

I kinda like this idea. I don't know anything about the reaches other than the ones that currently come with the magick subs. And one other from the "before times" back in the early 2000s. But the idea that a healing spell could either backfire, or cause a negative ricochet effect, seems kinda neato. And maybe a combat spell could also have an opposite backfire and positive ricochet effect.

Example:

cast mon heal amos
Amos looks healthier.
Malik, however, does not.

cast mon heal amost
Amos looks healthier.
You feel like shit.

cast mon fireball amos
Amos gets burnt
Malik, Amos's best pal, gets buffed for +2 strength.

cast mon fireball amos
Amos gets burnt
You get 2 hps restored.

These kinds of results would have two criteria: the quality of success of the cast, and a random dice roll. So - if the cast was flawless, there'd be a 5% chance of a side effect of the spell. If the cast was an almost-miss, it'd be a 30% chance of a side effect.

What kind of fear are we actually talking about here? I mean, there are gemmed mages walking all around Allanak. I'm not going to relocate every time one walks into the room. Is just talking to a mage going to get me ousted from a group of friends? If I'm a badass warrior who hunts and murders mages, how much fear is appropriate? Enough to be cautious, but not so much that I won't stab one in the eye? Since a mage is wearing a gem, can't I believe that the Highlord has that cursed gick under his control, and won't let anything happen to me? I think that Templars, with their position of power along with their magick, are pretty scary. Hatred is a little easier to RP than fear, I think. Fear can be controlled, so it is not always obvious to an outside observer. I don't really know what my point was with this post. :)

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on January 18, 2019, 03:50:17 PM
Give magickers a reach that, when earned somehow or at some cost, conceals the casting.

Allow magickers to pick a second subset of their element when they have fully branched the first. So a corruption Vivaduan can get healing magick. And so on.

I really like the conceal cast idea. Fixes a couple of issues I feel.

And lets steer away from this particular topic of reaches, before someone feels compelled to let something slip.

Quote from: JohnMichaelHenry on January 18, 2019, 06:17:10 PM
What kind of fear are we actually talking about here? I mean, there are gemmed mages walking all around Allanak. I'm not going to relocate every time one walks into the room. Is just talking to a mage going to get me ousted from a group of friends? If I'm a badass warrior who hunts and murders mages, how much fear is appropriate? Enough to be cautious, but not so much that I won't stab one in the eye? Since a mage is wearing a gem, can't I believe that the Highlord has that cursed gick under his control, and won't let anything happen to me? I think that Templars, with their position of power along with their magick, are pretty scary. Hatred is a little easier to RP than fear, I think. Fear can be controlled, so it is not always obvious to an outside observer. I don't really know what my point was with this post. :)

They are cursed, theoretically, according to legend and lore. So it's not necessarily a fear of what a mage will do intentionally to you if you get too close. It's also a fear of the curse upon them. If they get angry, it might manifest, unnaturally but also unintentionally, as a curse upon you in turn. If you get them sexually excited, the curse within their loins might unintentionally, and unnaturally, cause your own organs to shrivel up, or your first born child to be born a horribly disfigured mutant. Or your best friend to die within the next month. Or whatever else.

These are the potential results of hanging out with someone who bears a curse within every fiber of their being. It's not something they can get rid of. That aspect of their curse isn't something they can control. Either it'll happen or it won't, but you won't know til it's too late.

That is the theoretic fear with regards to hanging out with, talking to, sexing up, doing business with, or being in physically close proximity to mages. The mage is controlled by the gem. The element itself - perhaps not. You don't know, your character doesn't know enough about magicks, or mages, or gems, or the templarate to judge.

That's a good way to describe it Lizzie. And after rereading the magick docs, this section totally supports it.

Gemmed
(Magick)
Allanak's Elementalist Quarter is home to the gemmed: elementalists who bear a dull black gem fastened around their throats. These elementalists are said to be bound to the Highlord's will through these devices and by extension the Templars of His city. This binding is proclaimed to render them "safe" or tolerable and by the letter of the Highlord's law they are permitted to live and operate in the city like any other free citizen.

The gemmed are granted space in one of several "Temples" (an ancient word which possesses little modern meaning) which they are expected to restrict their practicing of their abilities to. Most of the Elementalist's Quarter's inhabitants live in these spaces, often finding accommodation in the wider city unwilling to take them as tenants.

While the gemmed are tolerated due to their association with the Templarate, they are widely hated, distrusted and feared. All sorts of misfortune and disaster are attributed to the Quarter's inhabitants and Allanak has seen many riots that have focused on the Temples. This widespread exclusion often simmers beneath the surface, kept in check by the city militia - though they are often more than willing to turn a blind eye.

Outside of public scrutiny though, some of Allanak's citizens are willing, when times are desperate enough, to seek out the gemmed for their services - real or imagined. Such liaisons, if discovered, are devastating for the transgressor's social standing and likely their health - with the "taint" of magick being thought to stain them and follow them wherever they go.

Quote from: Nao on January 18, 2019, 01:38:42 PM
The part about magickers getting "like four spells" is just factually wrong. Branch!

I was trying to avoid being too precise because that gets a post edited, so I didn't mean literally four. However, it's not so much more than four. In the context of magick being scary, that's about as many spells as most of the elementalist subclasses get. The rest is flavor and doesn't aid in doing any of what this thread is about. The point is that the arsenal of today's elementalist is too limited to let them be what mages used to be, and for many of the magick subclasses, the spells are largely overshadowed by your mundane skills. Yet, as Lizzie noted, you still are a 'gick and you still face the same disadvantages; but without the ability to really live by the spell instead of the sword, magick tends to become a sidenote. This has caused magick to become something people don't have much of a reason to care about.

Quote from: Greve on January 19, 2019, 04:28:45 AM

Quote from: Nao on January 18, 2019, 01:38:42 PM
The part about magickers getting "like four spells" is just factually wrong. Branch!

I was trying to avoid being too precise because that gets a post edited, so I didn't mean literally four. However, it's not so much more than four.

Maybe this is a spoiler, but the subguilds end up with more than four spells. Significantly much, much more.

Quote from: number13 on January 19, 2019, 10:01:33 AM

Quote from: Greve on January 19, 2019, 04:28:45 AM

Quote from: Nao on January 18, 2019, 01:38:42 PM
The part about magickers getting "like four spells" is just factually wrong. Branch!

I was trying to avoid being too precise because that gets a post edited, so I didn't mean literally four. However, it's not so much more than four.

Maybe this is a spoiler, but the subguilds end up with more than four spells. Significantly much, much more.

Seeing the forest through the trees:

Quoteyou still are a 'gick and you still face the same disadvantages; but without the ability to really live by the spell instead of the sword, magick tends to become a sidenote. This has caused magick to become something people don't have much of a reason to care about.

Quote from: Lizzie on January 19, 2019, 10:46:26 AM

Quoteyou still are a 'gick and you still face the same disadvantages; but without the ability to really live by the spell instead of the sword, magick tends to become a sidenote. This has caused magick to become something people don't have much of a reason to care about.

I disagree. Certain subguild + guild combinations are more powerful than most of the old main guild elementalists.

The big exception to this is the Whirans and the sorcs, because of two (maybe three) spells in particular. Those spells should have been severely nerfed a long time ago.

Quote from: number13 on January 19, 2019, 11:32:48 AM
I disagree. Certain subguild + guild combinations are more powerful than most of the old main guild elementalists.

The big exception to this is the Whirans and the sorcs, because of two (maybe three) spells in particular. Those spells should have been severely nerfed a long time ago.

You're not listening. This isn't about power, we all know that certain minmaxed combinations can become extremely powerful if they spend enough time hunting or sparring. But it's no longer possible to ONLY pursue magic. You need to develop your mundane skillset or else you're severely gimped. This isn't optional. It's not a choice. The mundane skillset is now forced down a mage's throat.

When I was playing a merchant / Whiran, it felt like I was playing a mundane merchant with all the disadvantages of the gem. Next time I'll just pick a 100% mundane role, it's almost the same thing with less disadvantages and far more social and RPT options.

And before anyone goes 'why would you play a merchant magicker and not a warrior / ranger / assassin' - because I roleplay instead of minmaxing? Because I had hope that there would be options not open to mundane merchants as compensation, such as magickal mastercrafts? Nope, not really. Also, I don't like Armageddon MUD's combat system and would prefer never having to deal with it ever outside of sparring in the Byn, which is kinda fun sometimes.

But now if I wanted to be a powerful mage I'd have to deal with the mundane combat system...  :(

Basic attack cantrips would be kewl.

Basic effect cantrips, in any case. I concur.

I know some people are saying "Try to remember how to roleplay appropriately to magick" but that didn't seem to work in the case of assuming city elves have tribes, some of which can wreck you. If I'd said that in the game, people would shrug it off at best, explain to me that no city-elf 'so-called tribe' can do that at the worst. Dwarves on the other hand, are considered forces to be reckoned with, because they have just enough social status, physical strength and trainability to be feared, while honestly you should be fearing a c-elf you don't know more, if you are an unprotected person. Until you know what that c-elf's tribe is capable of or connected with, its some risk messing with them enough to cause reasonable backlash. But there's no actual force behind a c-elf's threats, as their tribe does not provide Oash noble and aide -players- with spice--- just members of the House who aren't affecting your gameplay, and who can't affect the gameplay of player members of Oash. Dwarves, though? I still get a little frightened seeing a dwarf in Storm I don't know.

I also don't think tweaking mage subguilds' mundane abilities are the answer. If that happens and it works, great, but there's still a lot less magick than there was a couple years ago backing up that mage's threats. It makes me feel like my enemy is a warrior with magick spells, rather than a mage, and maybe its just me thinking that, but I can't get that analogy out of my head with regards to how I define current mages.

Quote from: Akaramu on January 19, 2019, 03:09:45 PM

When I was playing a merchant / Whiran,

You took a decidedly non-aggressive main class, and big surprise, had little aggressive potential. If you don't want to use the combat code, you could take one of the survival orientated classes, rarely touch the combat code, but still feel powerful. Try playing in a realm where you don't need a gem, skin your mundane skills as cantrips, and it can feel awesomely, absurdly powerful.

I do not miss the bad old days of main class Whirans. It's was a cheesy, grossly overpowered class. I'm not saying this of Vividians, Rukkians, or even Krathi. Whirans were a problem, and if that's what people want to get back to, I have zero sympathy.

It wasn't spooky. It's wasn't scary. It was lame.

The point is, if you want to RP a very spooky, magic-wielding character that inspires fear in other PCs, you can do that in today's Armageddon. You don't have to use weapons to do it.

If you want to kill other characters while sitting in near perfect safety, roll a Templar.

Quote from: number13 on January 20, 2019, 12:10:00 PM

Quote from: Akaramu on January 19, 2019, 03:09:45 PM

When I was playing a merchant / Whiran,

You took a decidedly non-aggressive main class, and big surprise, had little aggressive potential.

I had some VERY aggressive spells. That I didn't use. Because I wasn't playing an aggressive character, and because I wasn't playing an aggressive character (never do) the merchant choice was just fine, thank you very much. I loved the old Whirans because of their complete skillset (spell set?) that allowed for travel and exploration without combat and with no need to have a direction sense. It also allowed for some noncombat spookiness.

Mindbenders have lots of options for spookiness that don't involve coded combat. Why don't all of the new mages? Curses have been mentioned... I'd love to see curses that can be cast across great distances (meaning, from an elementalist temple...) and lower the maximum mana pool while they're maintained. To have max mana again you'd have to dispel your maintained curse(s).

Quote from: number13 on January 20, 2019, 12:10:00 PM
I do not miss the bad old days of main class Whirans. It's was a cheesy, grossly overpowered class. I'm not saying this of Vividians, Rukkians, or even Krathi. Whirans were a problem, and if that's what people want to get back to, I have zero sympathy.

So what? Armageddon MUD wasn't meant to be balanced or 'fair', and that's one of the reasons I used to love it. No silly balance discussions where everyone whines about how their class needs a boost and some other class needs a nerf. Magick is supposed to be grossly overpowered, and Zalanthas' entire history reflects that fact. Which is why it should be feared in the first place...

Wait...whirans? Easily the least powerful of all the mage classes and easiest to defeat? Once one single spell was removed they became almost neutered. Every other mage class was overpowered compared to whiran, specially vivs. Not that I am complaining, I think mages should be overpowered...if all they have is spells.

Currently I think they are grossly under powered, but I think that could mostly be fixed by some slight changes to mechanics and things I have already mentioned.

Quote from: Akaramu on January 20, 2019, 01:06:50 PM

So what? Armageddon MUD wasn't meant to be balanced or 'fair', and that's one of the reasons I used to love it. No silly balance discussions where everyone whines about how their class needs a boost and some other class needs a nerf. Magick is supposed to be grossly overpowered, and Zalanthas' entire history reflects that fact. Which is why it should be feared in the first place...

Defilers are supposed be grossly overpowered. They are feared because they wound the world. Imagine if there was a guy walking around the real world who despoils acres farm lands, so that he could brew some tea, with a snap of his fingers. It's not the tea-brewing that's necessarily scary, it's the field of ash and starving population left in his wake.

Elementalists get flak because the commoner doesn't have the savvy to distinguish between an ash-layer and an elementalist. And because of propaganda efforts from the city-states. And, granted, because of the occasional magical explosion.

Quotefor travel and exploration without combat

Risk-free exploration cheapens the exploits of those who face danger to go to the same places. I don't think it's good for the game, at all. The idea of guy flying all around the world without direction sense is absurd, besides.

Quote from: Akaramu on January 20, 2019, 01:06:50 PM
Curses have been mentioned... I'd love to see curses that can be cast across great distances (meaning, from an elementalist temple...) and lower the maximum mana pool while they're maintained. To have max mana again you'd have to dispel your maintained curse(s).

This is clever, although I don't like the idea of it originating at such great distances. To curse someone, you should have to be in the same room as them. It should be a hidden cast, so that only the observant will notice it being cast.

I do like the idea of maintaining it over time, though I think that time should be related to the power with which you cast it. There are seven spheres of power - thus I'd suggest a RL day for each power it is cast at, from Wek at 1 RL day, to Mon at 7 full RL days.

Of course, you would also be able to remove your own curses, ideally.

>curse status
You are maintaining the curse of weakness at Een on the broad-shouldered woman.
You are maintaining the curse of thirst at Mon on the bearded, grey-eyed templar.
Your mana pool is currently weakened by 35 points.

You know, gotta be honest. With all the years and years gone by of elementalists within Allanak, I'm surprised that people haven't gotten wise that 'elementalists aren't the shitty ones' in terms of magick.
I guess the obvious answer is, 'the templars keep people afraid of the elementalists because they don't want commoners getting more associated with magick users, and they keep up the bias that way. A regular person who would become jealous of a magicker may turn to sorcery'.
That's a lot of work, though, on the part of the templarate, to keep that shit up for so long.
CONVERSELY, HOWEVER
The way it currently is that elementalists are tools of the city and the templarate, and 'the more of them, the better' is how the city operates, since having a templar that has a guy who can heal his wounds / pyroblast his enemies / assassinate someone while flying.
Being gemmed is a gigantic social stigmata that can make or break a lot of people. Often, people who have magickal potential will either kill themselves out of disgust, flee the city out of fear of being gemmed, or begrudgingly become gemmed. Being 'gemmed' is something similar to becoming a slave, as no matter where you go, you will be known as a magicker, and you are easily spotted and easily slain with nary an excuse.

This argument made, I would have a hard time understanding why Templars would keep up the whole 'magick is a curse' schtick when the chances of sorcery is relatively low and to encourage less rogue elementalists would be a far easier solution. It would result in more elementalists, better relations between elementalists and regular people (holy shit check it out no more fucking elementalist quarter riots isn't that a fucking thing) and a more stable and unified Allanak as a whole.
It baffles me that a city-state attempting to ensure the cooperation of all of the citizens under a god-king-dragon would willingly try and shame one of their most useful assets to the city and mark them as targets to the Known.

Whirans are massively spooky in current gen. The other three, regardless of set up, basically aren't. Removing one thing didn't make them less potent, hah. They still got massive murder potential for little effort.

Spooky curses could be cool. Also sounds like it'd be just ridiculously annoying as a well known person though, because you're going to have like, 10 curses on you at a given time the second you make one enemy. Not sure I entirely approve but I have some tentative curiosity. Maybe it could be set up to affect people with magick in some form or another less.

I think setting up any given magicker to have terrifying potential (and not just through some spam-cast DPS spell or something, cause that's just not going to compare given Arm's style of melee combat spam, with the delays involved) is the way to go personally. I hope staff are working on this or thinking about it at least. There's a lot of opinions going around here, and the thread seems to have pushed into thoughts on things in a way that's cool.

There could easily be other avenues for getting rid of curses. If you're already cursed, maybe it's worth it to find someone who can fix it.

How much is that gemmer in the Quarter,
the one who makes curses go away.
How much is that gemmer in the Quarter,
pay him and have a less shitty day.

This thread has been heavily modified. Please post your political comments in a political thread on the off topic forum. While we at Armaggedon are always willing to be inclusive, conversation that derails into topics of current political events should be taken to the OOC forum. People in this thread, and in the game, do not need to be reminded of current world dilemmas. This is a roleplaying game, we are here to hack motherfuckers up with bone swords, please enjoy that fact in the game-related forums here at Armageddon.org.

Thanks, Akariel. Really didn't expect that here. Appreciate not locking this up. I think we have and continue to squeeze some good thought out of the subject. It's good to see staff has their eyes on it, even If lamentably, it's to let us know when we're getting heated or messy.

Quote from: Akariel on January 23, 2019, 09:21:25 PM
This thread has been heavily modified. Please post your political comments in a political thread on the off topic forum. While we at Armaggedon are always willing to be inclusive, conversation that derails into topics of current political events should be taken to the OOC forum. People in this thread, and in the game, do not need to be reminded of current world dilemmas. This is a roleplaying game, we are here to hack motherfuckers up with bone swords, please enjoy that fact in the game-related forums here at Armageddon.org.

Wait...my entire post was deleted, and I never once talked about current world political events. It was entirely about politics and propaganda in game, and how that relates more to a society as demonstrated in Orwellian literature than in RL. It was a long post that I clearly put thought and time into.

Why was it deleted?

As I look closer at what posts were moderated out...I'm still trying to figure out why on some of them. OnlyPlaysTribals' post had nothing to do with real world politics AT ALL, and it was moderated out too... I have a copy of the unmoderated thread open in another window for reference. I'd repost the quote here, but I'm not attempting to be combative or post something objectionable. I'm just trying to find out what parts of it are objectionable.

Most likely nothing, My bet is Akariel just went, How can I do this easily? I know, everything from this post on....INTO THE ABYSS!!!

That is how I tend to do things. :)

Quote from: X-D on January 24, 2019, 07:23:34 PM
Most likely nothing, My bet is Akariel just went, How can I do this easily? I know, everything from this post on....INTO THE ABYSS!!!

That is how I tend to do things. :)

The above is true. The subject of conversation was brought up and mentioned in multiple posts, so I removed the thread from that point down. If you would like to repost portions that are not related to the moderated subject, please do.

It should be noted we never 'delete' anything when we moderate, we just move it to a moderation forum. All the posts are there if you want to put in a request (to me, clanned GMH) to look over one of your posts, and possibly readd it to the thread.

How about giving all mages ONE spell that can be very devastating and scary, and that is related to their element, but it's on a long timer, like an IG month, and costs all spell points. Mages would have to be extremely careful of when to use it, and other folks wouldn't know when or if they have used it. Like a sunburst for krathi for example. Area spell that does high damage and sets you on fire possibly.

I think giving everyone one or two scary spells would be great. Maybe two, and these would be more dangerous in tandem. Like, for example, preventing people and animals from leaving the room and also being able to breathe fire on them. You'd not start with the room trap, but would branch it right away, and then breathing fire would be your last spell.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on January 08, 2019, 07:09:44 PM

Code Select Expand

A Viv working magick around you might dehydrate you and suck the water from your waterskins.
A Krathi working magick around you might scorch your clothes, or catch them on fire.
A Rukkian working magick around you might cause you to sneeze dirt or be blinded by dust.
A Whiran working magick around you might knock you off your feet because of sudden gusts of wind, or blow something you're holding off in a direction.

I've always liked the idea of being around magick potentially being a coded detriment for mundanes. It's not something the magickers would try to do - it's something that would just happen around them when they cast spells that they couldn't help. Perhaps they could protect a few companions from these effects, but for the most part, just being around a casting mage would be scary code-wise for mundanes.

Code Select Expand

A Viv might curse you to always be thirsty for x IG hours.
A Krathi might curse you with a weak bloodburn.
A Rukkian might curse you to move slow for x IG hours.
A Whiran might curse you to be unable to listen for x IG hours.

I've always loved the idea of curses being a real thing, with overlapping curses between classes that made figuring out what sort of mage had cursed you hard or impossible. There wouldn't be a message telling you who had cursed you. You would just start experiencing these detrimental effects, and you would have to beg a magicker to uncurse you before the timer ran out. You wouldn't want these curses to be unplayable effects, just hindrances that just made the idea of being around a magicker unpopular.

Curses already are a real thing with a variety of spells. I do not think this stuff needs to be added, its trying to enforce something as real that is part of superstition and fear factor in the culture, making these things actually _real_ would just cause hair trigger reactions from people. Its not about enforcing this sort of thing more than it is how you present the magicker character and how they do what they do. These arent' real effects, theyre superstitions and stuff made up from a group of close minded and very much raised to believe that these things can happen people. Making them real would detract from that part of the setting.

Magicker subguilds may need some tweaking, but that won't change how magic is precieved, because its the players looking at it as a non threat, in my opinon, and in my experience.Got no idea how many times i've been disappointed to see someones reacting to magic with a neutral apathy than I have seen them react with fear.

This is going to be an unpopular post but here it is: You cant control however others behave or react. You can only control your own actions.

What you can do as a non-magicker:

React with visible fear or hate. Firing off 20 thinks is good and all. But it's not generally perceivable to any other PC. Way someone your disgust. Take your ale and go to another table or leave the bar completely. Make a warding gesture with your fingers to try to protect you against the witch.

Ostracize people who aren't suitably scared or intolerant of magickers. Start rumors about them being a witch. Attack them in the desert or alleyway for being a witch lover. Charge them more money for goods and services and tell other people why your doing it.

Arm soldiers can actually investigate people who are friendly to witches. Demand entrance to their room to look for evidence. Pay other people to spy on the witch lover.

Dont become tolerant of witches. Sure, maybe one of them saved your life 100 times over the span of a couple of years. But why would they do that? Surely there's a price you will eventually have to pay. Even if you do trust that one witch, dont give that trust to any other witch. Dont trust that you know a witches limitations.

Magickers can do other things:

Avoid putting yourself in situations where you are going to engage in casual conversation with non witches. This is hard to keep up, so if you do break it then ask really specific and intimate questions. Like how many teeth their mother has missing. Or when the last time they masturbated was and which hand did they use. Ask for a lock of hair and carefully put it away. Maybe wrap it around a figurine of a mercenary or elf. Ask for a drop of blood and smear it across a stone that you then carefully hide away.

Sit in a tavern by yourself at a table and watch people and mumble to yourself (whisper me curse the breed. Curse the breed).

Ask hunters and grabbers to get you creepy things. Like a scrab eyeball that has been urinated on by an elf. Or 10 sets of Charlton entrails. Or a rose that has been picked when only Jihae is in the sky.

If you are the kind to heal people then ask them for a scraping of skin or a rag that is drenched in their sweat. Or something they're wearing.

Try to predict the future as a whiran by throwing entrails in the air in the desert and then studying how they land on the ground. Drop the entrails and arrange them where they land.

Report anyone who tries to sleep with you. Clearly they're degenerates and likely a closet witch themselves.

Curse people if you have the ability to do so. Make sure to ingratiate yourself to the templarate first and target only the weakest of the weak.I

Look someone in the eye and wish them a safe day before leaving to return to your temple. Have your gaze linger before you leave.

For those who feel like there is no point because no one else does this: for every person who does roleplay correctly there is 1 less person doing the wrong thing. That's all we can control unfortunately.

I'm just going to go ahead and call dibs on entrail-based divination for future concepts right now.

Oh oh also don't forget that people who are tolerant/accepting of witchery are precisely the kind of people that turn to sorcery out of jealousy for the non-mundane and/or becoming enthralled with forbidden knowledge. Any non-witch talking about witch shit like they understand it and not in the context of "this is how I kill witches" is clearly trodding the dark path. Those people are dangerous.

How do you know what turns someone into an ashlayer? Maybe it's not that hard. It's rare but it's not like mythical rare. They get this way somehow, and you know it starts with someone saying, "I want to understand this" or worse "I think I could control that"

witch lover = prelude to becoming an eldritch abomination

John, I liked reading your comment. It has lots of interesting ideas for RP. Sadly, I don't think any of them are useful to the playerbase.

Overlooking the "RP better" base of your argument, which by this point has been beaten so far into the earth all its missing is a gravemarker, the things you suggest are simply suicidal. Why would I RP my PC being needlessly creepy when 1. The natural reaction on Zalanthas to most things is violence and 2. There's simply no reason to. 3. Nothing in the docs supports this?

You contradict yourself. If my PC is unmanifested thick skulled and superstitious, why then when they manifest would they be playing into those same superstitions now knowing a host, if not all of them, to be falsities? To take a real world example would be a person acting miserly for some reason because they married into Judaism.

The problem is ecsacerbated further because once the witches are playing the oppressed person the brunt of superstition is on the mundanes. This is problematic because, considering there's nothing religious about magick, there are no rites or rituals, hence nothing to be superstitious about.

Honestly, the desert elves work far better for a target of superstition. They have rites they perform coupled with weird beliefs, are often isolated and xenophobic, and there's the language and racial barrier.

If you want to see better superstition I suggest a petition to have the superstition page on the site expanded and also suggest that each spell, in the help info, have a suggested rite associated to it, because currently it's simply a cookbook and not the necronomicon.

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 02:04:11 PM
If my PC is unmanifested thick skulled and superstitious, why then when they manifest would they be playing into those same superstitions now knowing a host, if not all of them, to be falsities?

Errr, how would they know they are false, exactly? What way would your character have to know that they aren't using ceremonial magick, but rather practical magick?

Quote from: Brokkr on January 30, 2019, 02:20:18 PM

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 02:04:11 PM
If my PC is unmanifested thick skulled and superstitious, why then when they manifest would they be playing into those same superstitions now knowing a host, if not all of them, to be falsities?

Errr, how would they know they are false, exactly? What way would your character have to know that they aren't using ceremonial magick, but rather practical magick?

The time you forget to light the candles and pray to Ra before your bath are you still clean afterwards?

They may not get it immediately, but if a chunk of magick is experimentation anyone could eventually figure out what is and isn't necessary. If locks of hair and half-elf teeth were actually helping then that'd be the norm. Zalanthas has had a lot of time to experiment with what works. You don't think some Krathi would pull you aside on week one and tell you to quit urinating on your components because it's not helping and the stench is unbearable?

Quote from: only_plays_tribals on January 30, 2019, 05:51:51 AM
witch lover = prelude to becoming an eldritch abomination

When I see extremist statements like this emerging, I wonder why we don't just declare elementalists equivalent to sorcerers and be done with it. It's pretty clear that some of you would like to put a gate on their quarter and just keep it locked.

• You want to experiment?  With magick!?!?  Are you insane?!?!?!  Someone way a TEMPLAR quick!!!!
• Locks of hair and half-elf teeth may be necessary for certain magicks to work.
• See point one on experiments but also...too bad magickers can't write down what they learn to pass on.
• My Krathi would publicly encourage the practice and privately imitate/explore/laugh at what you are doing.

Add component crafting recipes that start from any humanoid corpse.

(Also, player corpses should never disappear; they should be starting points for several crafting recipes, naturally decompose into various unjunkable objects, and eventually, if unmolested, become skeletons; change my mind.)

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 02:04:11 PMJohn, I liked reading your comment. It has lots of interesting ideas for RP. Sadly, I don't think any of them are useful to the playerbase.

To be honest this was a much nicer response then I was expecting. So thank you.

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 02:04:11 PMOverlooking the "RP better" base of your argument, which by this point has been beaten so far into the earth all its missing is a gravemarker, the things you suggest are simply suicidal.

If you aren't careful, yes. But if you work hard to make yourself more powerful (by making yourself indispensable to the Powers That Be whether they're The Guild, House Borsail, House Oash, The Arm or The Templarate) then you'll be surprised with how much you can get away with.

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 02:04:11 PMWhy would I RP my PC being needlessly creepy when 1. The natural reaction on Zalanthas to most things is violence and 2. There's simply no reason to. 3. Nothing in the docs supports this?

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 02:04:11 PMIf my PC is unmanifested thick skulled and superstitious, why then when they manifest would they be playing into those same superstitions now knowing a host, if not all of them, to be falsities?

Because everyone hates and fears magickers. The only thing keeping a magicker alive is the fear stops people from outright attacking them. If you don't make people fearful of you then they will simply hate you and try to kill you.

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 02:04:11 PMYou contradict yourself.

I'll need you to explain how.

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 02:04:11 PMIf you want to see better superstition I suggest a petition to have the superstition page on the site expanded and also suggest that each spell, in the help info, have a suggested rite associated to it, because currently it's simply a cookbook and not the necronomicon.

I don't think making magickers a pseudo-religion is required to make them scary.

Did my post equate to "roleplay better"? Yes. It's pretty much the only thing each individual player has control over. Putting in curses that get placed on someone for being in the vicinity of a magicker for X period of time would simply make magickers OOC pariahs as well as IC pariahs. Once upon a time we had half-giants who could recite shakespeare and come to the most extroadinary conclusions. We had elves who were routinely trustworthy and thri-kreen and halflings walking around Allanak as if they were ordinary people. RP has improved dramatically on this mud and that's because PLAYERS made it happen by improving how THEY roleplay.

The only suggestion I've seen to address the problem is curses. That would make a hard to play role completely unplayable. If anyone has any better suggestions I'm willing to discuss them. But ultimately the only thing we as individual players can control is how we as individuals roleplay. If you don't want to roleplay a magicker-hater without the code forcing you to, then don't. But don't then turn around and complain about how nobody hates magickers.

In regards to the contradiction, I think acting out paints a target on your back in this game far more often than making you impervious to it. That is a matter of opinion between us. What you see as a straight train of thought appears contradictory to me.

That said, you and Brokkr make a lot of good points. I would absolutely love to see magick users portray this kind of occult mysticism. If it pops up in game after this discussion I will be thrilled.

My point about "not wanting to play" either a hater of magick or creepy magick user is less of not wanting too, but an attempt to determine why someone would do that, considering it appeared to me there waszero incentive one way or the other.

Lastly, the rites was a soft suggestion, similar to Zalanthan medicine. There are plenty of maladies with cures that are flavorful more than practical. If there were single sentence blurbs attached to some of the spells I'd find it pretty interesting. "Best to be performed in the shade, as the light of Suk-Krath will hasten the wilting of energies called forth", "one must be careful not to disurb the ring of salt lest the djinn escape", etc. I know Armageddon prides itself, regarding magick and religion on giving the players full agency, but I think a small push of direction would go a long way here.

Acting out does paint a target on your back. That's why it's important to start with hassling unaffiliated half-elves or unaffiliated poor northerners in the beginning. Also make sure you get the support of the Powers before you do too much.

There is zero reason to hate on people from an OOC perspective. If everyone got along everyone would achieve all sorts of goals. But it would also be against the docs and setting.

Ultimately we're playing a game of make believe where our character can be permanently killed at any moment. You can "play it safe" and avoid painting a target on your back, probably get bored playing a role that doesn't match your expectations and either suicide or stop playing the game. Or you can try to bring the world alive, encourage others to act in accordance with the docs by providing opportunities for them to do so and most likely die a quick and violent death.

I personally get bored if I play it too safe. I dont mind dying quickly and abruptly in an effort to bring the world alive.

Quote from: Brytta Léofa on January 30, 2019, 03:30:02 PM
Add component crafting recipes that start from any humanoid corpse.

(Also, player corpses should never disappear; they should be starting points for several crafting recipes, naturally decompose into various unjunkable objects, and eventually, if unmolested, become skeletons; change my mind.)

Yes.

Quote from: Eyeball on January 30, 2019, 03:03:08 PM

Quote from: only_plays_tribals on January 30, 2019, 05:51:51 AM
witch lover = prelude to becoming an eldritch abomination

When I see extremist statements like this emerging, I wonder why we don't just declare elementalists equivalent to sorcerers and be done with it. It's pretty clear that some of you would like to put a gate on their quarter and just keep it locked.

Well, the thing is, most commoners would probably be very happy to do that. The Ruling powers say we have to live with them, though, as long as they have that fucking gem around their throat so ... we ... do. Commoners are supposed to be far less educated about the realities of magick and those who wield them, generally speaking, than the Kings and their Templars and the Highborn, so our fear and terror and hate is based on all of that uneducation (I'm aware this isn't a real word) and powerlessness.

Quote from: John on January 30, 2019, 07:05:25 PM... curses ... would make a hard to play role completely unplayable.

Why? I'm assuming it's because we would know that being around a magicker opened us up to curses. And we would know we'd been cursed because the code tells us we were. Assuming this is why ...

... what if we changed the idea of curses to something far less detectable, something that gave no messages at all? What if, for example, your thirst just ticked faster? Or your hunger? Or you took longer to recover HP? Or Endurance? Or you randomly lost movement points? Or you suffered from using the Way just a little more? Or failed to send a Way sometimes? Or suffered just a little more HP loss from an attack? Or were thrown off balance just a little longer from a failed ... kick, or bash? Or ... about a million other things.

And none of this ever sent the victim a message?

Maybe that would be less ... magicky to the victim? There's a good chance the victim would never know this was happening to them, and yet they would suffer in a way that would not be very intrusive at all. And yet, the idea still remains ...

... hmmm.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on January 31, 2019, 05:14:10 AMWhy? I'm assuming it's because we would know that being around a magicker opened us up to curses. And we would know we'd been cursed because the code tells us we were. Assuming this is why ...

It isn't why. It's because you're taking a semi-iso role and turning it into a 100% iso role. You're stopping a magicker from being involved in any extended period of RP in a game where almost all meaningful RP requiring an extended amount of time to be carried out.

Armageddon lost thri-kreen and largely slaves as playable roles because of how isolated they are. Reducing magickers into becoming an equally isolated role removes something from the game for zero gain.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on January 31, 2019, 05:14:10 AM... what if we changed the idea of curses to something far less detectable, something that gave no messages at all? What if, for example, your thirst just ticked faster? Or your hunger? Or you took longer to recover HP? Or Endurance? Or you randomly lost movement points? Or you suffered from using the Way just a little more? Or failed to send a Way sometimes? Or suffered just a little more HP loss from an attack? Or were thrown off balance just a little longer from a failed ... kick, or bash? Or ... about a million other things.

And none of this ever sent the victim a message?

Maybe that would be less ... magicky to the victim? There's a good chance the victim would never know this was happening to them, and yet they would suffer in a way that would not be very intrusive at all. And yet, the idea still remains ...

... hmmm.

Notice how when someone gets something picked from their pocket most of the time they go ape shit and start scanning and metagaming their way to working out who did it? Well that's the effect all of your suggestions would have. Because even without echoes most of the suggestions will be easily noticeable to anyone who has a prompt.

And let's say you do come up with an effect that isn't noticeable, why bother coding it? We are suggesting curses for being around a magicker because we want to discourage people from being around magickers. But if we produce curses that are so subtle that they aren't noticed, then you end up with zero behaviour changed. So the curse has to be noticeable with a clear cause and effect. And if the effect is noticeable then you end up having magickers become an iso role.

What if these random oddities of the code (the ones you suggest become curses) happen randomly, anyway? And people can just blame it on magick. That's basically what superstition is all about, afterall. It's not about a mage ACTUALLY cursing a victim. It's about a victim experiencing something unfortunate or strange in their lives, and blaming it on the mage. The mage doesn't have to have anything to actually do with it. It's basically shifting the blame from "random natural life" to "the witch did it."

Things like taking a few ticks longer than usual to regen to full stamina, in a place that regens it quickly. Or the drunk code coming faster than usual, or tripping more often while you're only slightly intoxicated. Or your torch burning out more often when you use it at night.

If these things happen randomly, it shouldn't be hard to blame it on a witch. But once again, it falls to the player of the people these things are happening to, to roleplay their characters' superstition.

Quote from: Lizzie on January 31, 2019, 09:16:06 AM
What if these random oddities of the code (the ones you suggest become curses) happen randomly, anyway? And people can just blame it on magick. That's basically what superstition is all about, afterall. It's not about a mage ACTUALLY cursing a victim. It's about a victim experiencing something unfortunate or strange in their lives, and blaming it on the mage. The mage doesn't have to have anything to actually do with it. It's basically shifting the blame from "random natural life" to "the witch did it."

So let's take code where things happen over time (sometimes randomly) and introduce an extra random component so that we can blame the extra random portion on magickers? Why not just blame magickers for the existing effect without the semi-random component thrown in? What is the semi-random component actually adding to the game?

Quote from: John on January 31, 2019, 09:22:45 AM

Quote from: Lizzie on January 31, 2019, 09:16:06 AM
What if these random oddities of the code (the ones you suggest become curses) happen randomly, anyway? And people can just blame it on magick. That's basically what superstition is all about, afterall. It's not about a mage ACTUALLY cursing a victim. It's about a victim experiencing something unfortunate or strange in their lives, and blaming it on the mage. The mage doesn't have to have anything to actually do with it. It's basically shifting the blame from "random natural life" to "the witch did it."

So let's take code where things happen over time (sometimes randomly) and introduce an extra random component so that we can blame the extra random portion on magickers? Why not just blame magickers for the existing effect without the semi-random component thrown in? What is the semi-random component actually adding to the game?

It adds more emphasis on the notion that magicks can cause weird things to happen, because the entire world of Zalanthas is a magick-created world, from an IC standpoint. I feel like these random oddities of "coded ticks" aren't frequent enough to make people think SOMETHING is happening right now because I'm suddenly turning thirsty, and I can't attribute it precisely to the fact that I'm in the middle of the salt flats. And I've fallen down 3 times in 3 rooms even though I'm almost sober and it's mid-day and there's no wind to blow sand in my face. It still needs to be random, it still needs to be infrequent, but it needs to be slightly more frequent than it is now. Right now the frequency really IS random. I'm saying - make it be just slightly less random, and slightly more frequent. Put in a new variable called "random_magick_world_effect" with maybe 15 different possible attributes attached to it, and toss it in once every RL hour of play.

I don't think making things more random or less random is going to make people suddenly sit up and go "oooh! Magick!" If people want to RP being supersitious, there are currently plenty of opportunities to do so both with code and without code. Changing the code and then telling people "pretend the new RNG is magick!" isn't going to increase any superstitious roleplay. After all, staff could just SAY they've done it and to behave appropriately. People are already plenty superstitious on an OOC level, being sure they know how something works when in reality it's just RNG or completely non-existent.

If I'm being 100%, honestly, you could add a million shitty, terrifying things that magickers could do to mundanes to the game, and they would still be very much a non-iso role with one simple(ish) change to the game.

Allow all the clans to hire them.

It's like elves and the Byn. I imagine non-elves in the Byn don't like elves any more than non-elves not in the Byn do, but they have to work with them, because the Byn hires them. Or rather, takes their money. The Byn doesn't hire, exac ... you get the point. So those racist people in the Byn have to balance hate/work in their interactions with those elves.

And your superiors don't care what you like. They care about what helps them do x,y, and z. So if they hire gemmers, or in some clans, ungemmed, you have to work with them anyway. Whether they can curse you if you piss them off, or whether being around them does weird shit to you or not.

Yeah, that makes magick more obvious in a PC's life, but really ... we all OOCly know it's there, and for an unclanned, they can just go on with the way things are. I feel like letting all, or most, of the clans hire magickers would not only not hurt the game itself, but allow for the roleplay of dislike/hate/fear/etc to evolve the way I'm sure it does for players of elves in the Byn, and possibly Kurac (I haven't played in Kurac in so long that I have no idea if they still hire elves).

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on January 31, 2019, 10:42:46 AM
If I'm being 100%, honestly, you could add a million shitty, terrifying things that magickers could do to mundanes to the game, and they would still be very much a non-iso role with one simple(ish) change to the game.

Allow all the clans to hire them.

If you think it was bad when Drovians removed mundane spies from the game (the sneaky, sneaky type who would eavesdrop rather than the pretending to work for you while reporting everything to someone else type) and scouts from the game, letting every clan hire magickers would make that 1000 times worse for every role in the game. Magick would go from hated to the most desirable employee in the game.

But if there was an infrastructure in place that allowed the Powers that Be (merchant houses, gangs, templars, nobles) to surreptitiously employ magickers for specific jobs then that'd be the best of both worlds. It would give magickers something to do, it would give people opportunities to try to find out what the magicker did and who for, and people would still be incentivised to employ people because they're less likely to betray you (even if only marginally less likely).

Unfortunately the game doesn't currently have any infrastructure to help facilitate this. Fortunately with templars and player run clans the infrastructure needed can be implemented by pioneering types.

Desirable? Sure, for the bosses. But that makes sense. And I think that kind of depends on what exactly the role of the clan was. And these new magickers aren't really the swiss-army knives of the old days, either, so they aren't exactly the same nuclear bomb they used to be. They're more like a high-yield missile.

But for the mundane employees? Wouldn't that honestly create more hate for magickers, while having to have it balanced around tip-toeing around the lines created by their employees?

And if the full sub-class is too much, then the touched? I have no idea if Templars can tell the difference between a touched or a full mage, but if they can, then perhaps a Templar sanctioned touched?

Yes they're desirable for the bosses. Along with everyone else who gets to enjoy the perks they bring to the table. And while magickers aren't the Swiss army knives they once were, they are now mundane+extra and once they get to have the same rights as all other nonsponsored PCs, certain combinations will become the optimal solution and the meta game will become you HAVE to have that magickers subguild to  with that guild.

Also boss and hireling RP will be limited with these magickers if we include the curse idea.

As for touched only. I don't know. I personally suspect the touched subguilds are a waste but I don't know for sure as I haven't really played any. But I don't really like the idea of codifying the subguilds into the RP that obviously.

I also don't see how forcing mundane and magickers to work closely with one another is going to foster fear and distrust.

Why can't this just be solved the old fashioned way?

Players who know how to play magickers (as a subguild) simply making mounds and mounds of corpses out of the rest of you, until you learn to fear subguild magickers?

... damn you, John. I don't have a rebuttal. Yet.

Good points.

I still would really like to somehow get magickers to be able to walk the line that elves/breeds walk in the clans that hire them. That line where they're there, your bosses said they're there, you don't have to like them, you probably are weird if you do like them, but they're there and they're useful to your boss and sometimes to you too and so ... suck it up. Add boss-roleplayed fear to that (particularly since PC bosses are really at best middle management and so they would mostly still have the typical commoner's education regarding magick), and you set up a clean case for player-supported mingling and appropriate magicker interactions.

Obviously, there are a couple of clans where magickers can interact, but I'd obviously like a wider-spread system of this, beyond those couple of clans and the tavern.

As far as fostering fear and distrust, working together doesn't need to create any sort of real trust or understanding. Hatred is ingrained in people from birth. Just because someone grows up and meets these people on their own terms doesn't change the fact that you were bred to dislike/fear people that are different than you. Education changes that, but Zalanthans don't really have education.

I'm sure you'd see more magicker-friendlies, but if the magicker is worth their karma, they should be able to discourage friendlies if they're wont to, and veteran mundanes would most likely shore up the gaps there. Actually ...

... putting incidental curses in code, unbidden by the magickers themselves, that happened to those around magickers while also allowing them to be hired would soak up a generous amount of the buddy-buddy thing too, I think.

Quote from: Brokkr on January 31, 2019, 11:48:37 AM
Why can't this just be solved the old fashioned way?

Players who know how to play magickers (as a subguild) simply making mounds and mounds of corpses out of the rest of you, until you learn to fear subguild magickers?

... I mean, sure, but I like stories that don't involve corpses sometimes, too. By no means am I suggesting that magickers shouldn't be villains here and there, but I prefer stories that don't end in violent death all the time. I know, I know, blasphemy, but a good book doesn't end on the 30th page because the robber shot the cop. Sometimes good short stories do, I guess ...

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on January 31, 2019, 11:51:21 AM
As far as fostering fear and distrust, working together doesn't need to create any sort of real trust or understanding. Hatred is ingrained in people from birth. Just because someone grows up and meets these people on their own terms doesn't change the fact that you were bred to dislike/fear people that are different than you. Education changes that, but Zalanthans don't really have education.

I'm sure you'd see more magicker-friendlies, but if the magicker is worth their karma, they should be able to discourage friendlies if they're wont to, and veteran mundanes would most likely shore up the gaps there.

Reread this thread. It exists because people aren't being afraid of magickers and people genuinely don't understand why PC magickers should foster that fear. Throwing in employment as it currently stands would make that worse, not better.

Curses that are time based will simply limit how long PCs stay in the same room. Which limits meaningful role play. Also those magickers better never idle in the compound lest they curse all of the VNPCs.

I don't think elves and halfelves are a good mark to measure magickers against. They are simply too different.

Quote from: Brokkr on January 31, 2019, 11:48:37 AM
Why can't this just be solved the old fashioned way?

Players who know how to play magickers (as a subguild) simply making mounds and mounds of corpses out of the rest of you, until you learn to fear subguild magickers?

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 08:02:12 PMI think acting out paints a target on your back in this game far more often than making you impervious to it.

Everyone has become so damn risk adverse. I worry the game won't ever see another Plainsman again. Hopefully someone with the code know-how will get inspired and make a magivker worthy of being feared,

Quote from: John on January 31, 2019, 12:13:04 PM

Quote from: Brokkr on January 31, 2019, 11:48:37 AM
Why can't this just be solved the old fashioned way?

Players who know how to play magickers (as a subguild) simply making mounds and mounds of corpses out of the rest of you, until you learn to fear subguild magickers?

Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on January 30, 2019, 08:02:12 PMI think acting out paints a target on your back in this game far more often than making you impervious to it.

Everyone has become so damn risk adverse. I worry the game won't ever see another Plainsman again. Hopefully someone with the code know-how will get inspired and make a magivker worthy of being feared,

The game will NOT ever see another Plainsman again, because sorcery is no longer an option as a main class, and has been split up into different paths. Plainsman was Plainsman, in part, because he had access to ALL of the sorcery paths, not just one.

Quote from: Brokkr on January 31, 2019, 11:48:37 AM
Why can't this just be solved the old fashioned way?

Players who know how to play magickers (as a subguild) simply making mounds and mounds of corpses out of the rest of you, until you learn to fear subguild magickers?

Ahh. The "build it and they will come" approach.

Quote from: Brokkr on January 31, 2019, 11:48:37 AM
Why can't this just be solved the old fashioned way?

Players who know how to play magickers (as a subguild) simply making mounds and mounds of corpses out of the rest of you, until you learn to fear subguild magickers?

They don't, is the problem. Whatever one believes the reason to be, magick has stopped being "the old fashioned way." If making mounds of corpses was something people had a reason, desire and opportunity to do, they would. But they don't. So if mounds of corpses is the expected result, something needs to give players the reason, desire and opportunity to do that. Right now, I don't see what that could possibly be. It has been so long since big, world-shaking things happened that I think we've forgotten how, and why, mounds of corpses are made.

Quote from: Greve on January 31, 2019, 03:39:31 PM
So if mounds of corpses is the expected result, something needs to give players the reason, desire and opportunity to do that.

Reason:  This thread
Desire:  This thread
Opportunity:  Exists

Because they wouldn't have any fun with me using magick to make it stupid easy to kill them with mundane skills.  But if this is a challenge I guess I could make a PC and give it a shot, I just don't think anyone really wants that.

Quote from: Brokkr on January 31, 2019, 04:26:47 PM

Quote from: Greve on January 31, 2019, 03:39:31 PM
So if mounds of corpses is the expected result, something needs to give players the reason, desire and opportunity to do that.

Reason:  This thread
Desire:  This thread
Opportunity:  Exists

I think you misunderstood my point. When I say reason and desire, I don't mean a thread where people say someone ought to do it. When I say opportunity, I don't mean that it's technically doable. I mean something that actually causes players to do it, encourages it and facilitates it. The proverbial mounds of corpses are still absent despite the fact that this thread is almost a month old, and the concerns voiced in it are much older still. Magick didn't lose its spook factor this month.

You can tell players to do something until the heat death of the universe, but if the game doesn't lend itself to doing so, they won't. There are no wars, no noteworthy conflict between groups of player characters, no enemy city-state, no encroachment on tribal territories. There's no signs of feuds between noble houses or between criminals and templars. There's no Copper War, no Gin and Quick, no CAM, no Dragonthralls... none of the things that used to make magickal headlines. For better or worse, the notable events from a decade ago were things that just don't happen anymore. Doesn't matter whether or not one liked these things. The fact is that they fuelled the magickal spook factor by making magick happen, and happen for actual reasons.

Today? Well, you could create an elementalist and go around murdering people, sure. But why? Some contrived reason based on nothing but the desire to see it done? Evidently this isn't enough, because people don't do it. That's not to say that nobody at all is trying to do scary magick, but clearly not enough to create the expected results. We could really do with something like an extended HRPT where the gemmed population of Allanak rebels against the city, fighting back against the restrictions and prejudices they've suffered under. I expect there's a lot of players who would be delighted to play a scary magicker under those circumstances, with real tangible reasons to do it. You might then say that nothing's stopping players from starting a rebellion like that themselves and BEING THE CHANGE, but at the end of the day, we can see that nobody is doing anything like that.

And opportunities? I don't think they're as readily available as you suggest. The new brand of elementalist can't live by the spell. Magick now serves mainly to enhance the otherwise mundane parts of one's character. The elementalist subclasses whose spells I know of would all be beaten pretty easily by two mundanes of the same class and skill level. Most of the spells that were powerful before are still powerful, but you don't have the same kind of ammunition. You can't survive being a lone antagonistic magicker because most of your coded arsenal consists of the same mundane skills as anyone else. And attempting it is even less appealing now with the way karma regeneration works.

If you really wanted magick to be a meaningful, relevant factor again, you have to do something to encourage it. If you don't, and you maintain that it's not happening because the entire playerbase has collectively failed to make something happen that should be happening, everyone might as well pack it all up and call the whole thing a failed experiment. If fear and loathing of magick is meant to be something we invoke as a frequent aspect of our roleplay, there needs to be something that fuels that sentiment. When you can play for a year straight and the only magickal thing you ever see is pleasant, peaceful gemmers at the bar, you quickly grow bored of scowling and muttering at them.

Players are not neglecting to react to magickal things around them. There are no magickal things around them.

I was going to ask John the same thing as 7dv did then I found the issue.

QuoteDid my post equate to "roleplay better"? Yes. It's pretty much the only thing each individual player has control over. Putting in curses that get placed on someone for being in the vicinity of a magicker for X period of time would simply make magickers OOC pariahs as well as IC pariahs

Now, I do remember somebody suggesting that...but most of us do not want that, I know I do not, instead most people have suggested some sort of active system where the mage actually does the curse on purpose, pays the mana cost and upkeep. (and can do it sneaky like...with a chance of getting seen/noticed of course) I would farther limit it by saying that Though a mage should be able to have as many curses active as he has mana to maintain,  he/she should only be able to have 1 on a PC....So Malik the mage can curse Amos and Kalim but not Amos 2 times at the same time. I would be on the fence on even allowing another mage to put a curse on Amos...Oh sure, he might be a real dick and deserve it but gotta think about the player, if he is that much a dick you really should just be working on killing him. So I think I would only advocate 1 curse on a PC at a time.

As to the mounds of corpses, Much as I LOVE putting the fear of something back into the game and have made PCs just for that in the past....

My experience with the mage subs so far is that they are way too gimped to do so....true, my experience with them is limited but that is the perception so far.

When there are mounds of corpses, people (including this person, unless it's in the context of an RPT) get upset by PKs preemptively ending stories before they can begin.

Personally, I think there's ways for strong characters to drive plots and do interesting things that don't have to involve mass scale murder of PCs.

There's just two classifications of PCs that don't have to worry so much about what an elementalist can do to them: templars (a good thing) and dwarves/muls. Maybe fix dwarves and muls (and maybe half-giants) so that they are even more vulnerable to magic than a human, and the problem of elementlists not being scary fixes itself. All the sudden, the scariest PC warriors can get their asses kicked by a witch.

Quote from: X-D on January 31, 2019, 05:44:55 PM
I was going to ask John the same thing as 7dv did then I found the issue.

QuoteDid my post equate to "roleplay better"? Yes. It's pretty much the only thing each individual player has control over. Putting in curses that get placed on someone for being in the vicinity of a magicker for X period of time would simply make magickers OOC pariahs as well as IC pariahs

Now, I do remember somebody suggesting that...but most of us do not want that, I know I do not, instead most people have suggested some sort of active system where the mage actually does the curse on purpose, pays the mana cost and upkeep. (and can do it sneaky like...with a chance of getting seen/noticed of course) I would farther limit it by saying that Though a mage should be able to have as many curses active as he has mana to maintain,  he/she should only be able to have 1 on a PC....So Malik the mage can curse Amos and Kalim but not Amos 2 times at the same time. I would be on the fence on even allowing another mage to put a curse on Amos...Oh sure, he might be a real dick and deserve it but gotta think about the player, if he is that much a dick you really should just be working on killing him. So I think I would only advocate 1 curse on a PC at a time.

As to the mounds of corpses, Much as I LOVE putting the fear of something back into the game and have made PCs just for that in the past....

My experience with the mage subs so far is that they are way too gimped to do so....true, my experience with them is limited but that is the perception so far.

7dv clearly was (he reiterated it a couple of posts before yours). I am always behind giving magickers some ability to be creepy and antagonistic. I personally don't know how good the current mechanics available to mages are. But I'm always for tweaking or changing them to help enable in the playable game what should exist in the virtual one.

Ah, I admit I did not read all his posts.

For the record, I am fully against any type of automagick curse aura.

John, upon reading my posts in our chain from this morning, I realize that I skipped over a thing - I don't want people to be cursed in any way for being in the vicinity of a mage. I want mundane people to have a fairly decent chance to be cursed in a relatively harmless, completely silent way, when a mage actively casts spells in their vicinity. And I wanted this to be offset by bringing magickers into clan structures with mundanes, thus giving players of both mages and mundanes the opportunity to interact in a mutual environment while also dealing with the havoc that magick supposedly wreaks upon mundanes.

I also want mages to be able to cast real curses, too, of course. And at first I liked the idea of giving these curses unique echoes, but now I like the idea of them being silent, noticeable only in the way the numbers and the world reacts to your curse, instead of spice-like messages conveying that you are a victim.

To me, the cry to create the next Plainsman or White Rantarri or whatever is a really good thing. But it segregates the players of all the mages even more than they are already segregated. I think the fun of this game happens when people are not segregated without plenty of other people like them in the same wagon, particularly in a specific region. I think the fun of this game happens in the mixing pot, when you throw in all of the ingredients and let them do what they do. That's the only reason OOCly why I want sanctioned magickers to be included in more clans.

I want the next magicker villain too. It's absolutely fun, of course, and good times and great story and whatnot. But I also want people to play together, and separating all of the gemmed from meaningful employment and meaningful interaction with the mundane PCs seems like less fun than coming up with a good, IC way to throw them at each other.

And of course this is an Allanak thing - I feel like it fits there fine.

I have run across magickers, and not so long ago, that scared the shit out of me. I believe it is all about perception and power. Just like any other PC, if you want to be a scary fucker, you gotta start some kind of organization and have some minions and gain some control and do scary shit. Give folks reasons to fear you other than magic, like those two hulking guards standing on either side, which along WITH your despicable powers, is enough to make me poop my pants.

It IS more difficult to just run out solo with a full mage, like before the changes,  and be scary, but I'm okay with that.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 04:58:59 AMI don't want people to be cursed in any way for being in the vicinity of a mage. I want mundane people to have a fairly decent chance to be cursed in a relatively harmless, completely silent way, when a mage actively casts spells in their vicinity.

Well that's certainly different. But what's the point of a silent curse that is so subtle people aren't even aware of it? Is it to secretly punish people for being around magickers casting spells?

Also, how often do people stand by willy nilly while magickers cast spells as if it's perfectly normal, with no RP about being disturbed by the unnatural magick? (Honest question. I honestly don't know. I can't remember the last time I saw a non-templar use magick unless I was playing a magicker myself).

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 04:58:59 AMAnd I wanted this to be offset by bringing magickers into clan structures with mundanes, thus giving players of both mages and mundanes the opportunity to interact in a mutual environment while also dealing with the havoc that magick supposedly wreaks upon mundanes.

I do think expanding which clans can have magickers would not be a great idea. There are a fair number of clans that can (or at least could) support magickers within their existing structure. Having the Byn, Kadius, Salarr or Fale hiring magickers as employees would be a bad move (nothing stopping them from contracting out to them when needed though).

Quote from: John on February 01, 2019, 08:01:45 AM

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 04:58:59 AMAnd I wanted this to be offset by bringing magickers into clan structures with mundanes, thus giving players of both mages and mundanes the opportunity to interact in a mutual environment while also dealing with the havoc that magick supposedly wreaks upon mundanes.

I do think expanding which clans can have magickers would not be a great idea. There are a fair number of clans that can (or at least could) support magickers within their existing structure. Having the Byn, Kadius, Salarr or Fale hiring magickers as employees would be a bad move (nothing stopping them from contracting out to them when needed though).

While I don't believe this would naturally occur, I think this would be an interesting turn of culture to build up towards. I'd like to see RP encouraged between magickers and mundanes, especially if it's the type where the mundane PC must be compelled to. So adding situations where magickers and mundanes can RP while still keeping to our in-game docs is a plus for me. Just, unless absolutely forced, I don't think our existing mundane clans (in their current state) would take in magickers (besides the odd exception).

Quote from: John on February 01, 2019, 08:01:45 AM

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 04:58:59 AMI don't want people to be cursed in any way for being in the vicinity of a mage. I want mundane people to have a fairly decent chance to be cursed in a relatively harmless, completely silent way, when a mage actively casts spells in their vicinity.

Well that's certainly different. But what's the point of a silent curse that is so subtle people aren't even aware of it? Is it to secretly punish people for being around magickers casting spells?

Also, how often do people stand by willy nilly while magickers cast spells as if it's perfectly normal, with no RP about being disturbed by the unnatural magick? (Honest question. I honestly don't know. I can't remember the last time I saw a non-templar use magick unless I was playing a magicker myself).

Well, the silent part just means that there is no "you feel the curse" message, but things happen that don't make sense in a normal day. Things like that thirst timer being sped up, or running taking more movement than normal, or the bout with narcolepsy, etc. I say silent because there's no echo, but you'd notice something was wrong, of course.

Of course most mundanes don't stand around acting like a magicker casting spells around them is normal, which had something to do with the idea of wanting to create situations where you had to work together. This is something that happened during the Echri period of time, and during the Copper Wars. I remember playing an AOD soldier and templars telling a Viv to create ... a place with water. My character was uber scared of all of those magickers, because they were out there in them sands, slanging magicks, yo, right where I was.

Quote from: John on February 01, 2019, 08:01:45 AM

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 04:58:59 AMAnd I wanted this to be offset by bringing magickers into clan structures with mundanes, thus giving players of both mages and mundanes the opportunity to interact in a mutual environment while also dealing with the havoc that magick supposedly wreaks upon mundanes.

I do think expanding which clans can have magickers would not be a great idea. There are a fair number of clans that can (or at least could) support magickers within their existing structure. Having the Byn, Kadius, Salarr or Fale hiring magickers as employees would be a bad move (nothing stopping them from contracting out to them when needed though).

Yeah, I know - I didn't expect the idea to be warmly received. Heh. But I really want to see all of  the players be able to interact together in a way that makes sense. Even if officially joining clans is pushing it too far, I'd still like to see more contracting of magickers, if you like that term, or what have you. Right now, the onus on mundanes is to completely avoid magickers, but if your NPC superiors push contractual service with mages on you, then that onus is removed without you breaking docs.

I know Brokrr leans hard into the villain concept, and I'm down with that, but I really don't think that every magicker you ever know should be a murdering villain, particularly when they're wearing the Gem. As long as we maintain our cap on how many magickers vs how many mundanes we have around, I don't think including them in our daily lives in certain clans breaks anything, as long as it's a role that crafted carefully.

I'd hesitate to say I am promoting it.  But you might not see the kinds of stuff sub-guild mages are capable of unless there is that kind of open conflict.

You can only kill so many mekillots solo before it gets boring.

Some of the sub-class mages are impressive, but they are grossly unbalanced. Downsizing the aspects into two rather than three may be a proper solution: split them in such a fashion that maybe it'd be defensive on one and offensive on the other, each respectively getting their flavor incantations which I won't divulge into. Point is that while it isn't the focus of the game necessarily to promote a balanced gameplay, I believe it'd be a worthwhile fix.

Lately I've been losing interest in mage play altogether due to the community response to it in that "snowflakes" are too common, there are far too many mages running about, such and such. Yet I've seen rolecalls in-game necessitating these particular capabilities, or at least since the last time I played.

I may be getting too far from the topic at hand here, so I think I'll stop right there with my two cents.

Related to above. I don't recommend anyone play any Touched subclass. My experience was underwhelming and depressing and remained that way as I branched spells and continued to play. Until these are better niched or tweaked I think most players will feel an immediate and long lasting buyers remorse. These should not be worth a CGP in their current state.

Turned the meat of this post into a request.

Quote from: Brokkr on February 01, 2019, 06:22:07 PM
I'd hesitate to say I am promoting it.  But you might not see the kinds of stuff sub-guild mages are capable of unless there is that kind of open conflict.

You can only kill so many mekillots solo before it gets boring.

No, I feel you. I agree that villains of all kinds are great things, and villains of the magicker variety are things that I certainly want to see. I'm just personally trying to see past that particular hook into the wider world and whatnot.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 04:14:33 PMOf course most mundanes don't stand around acting like a magicker casting spells around them is normal

I don't see any great need to code downsides to being around magickers casting spells if people already don't do it. To me if this was put in it would be to reward or discourage certain behaviour. But if the behviour isn't currently occurring then there's no need to discourage it.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 04:14:33 PMEven if officially joining clans is pushing it too far, I'd still like to see more contracting of magickers, if you like that term, or what have you. Right now, the onus on mundanes is to completely avoid magickers, but if your NPC superiors push contractual service with mages on you, then that onus is removed without you breaking docs.

This is something I'd love to see and is something that could be pushed on the player side as well as on the docs side. But it is difficult.

...not even if the npcs ask you to do something regarding mage contractual work. But rather, if the NPCs let you know that it's frowned upon and publicly not done but is not expressly forbidden, if done quietly and without much ado. A "don't ask don't tell" kind of thing. As long as it can't be traced back to your clan, and as long as no one gets the idea that your clan supported the contract, they'll look the other way.

This kind of deserves its own thread, but I firmly believe that incentives to certain roles should be pointed out more. For example, while a majority of the world hates you (or should) as a gemmed, you also get many benefits. You get to work close with the Templarate which instantly means you're never without something to do (unless your playtimes don't match up much, etc.), you get special housing assuming all the apartments aren't full (of course the temples are always there), and to top it all off? You've got magick - which in itself is cool, so let's improve upon that benefit just like how the Whirans and Rukkians have been worked on.

I point this out because I think role retention would be greater if people out there knew the benefits to keeping a character actively pursuing a position if it is within their reach. It creates more opportunities to really enjoy quality RP! Try not to feel bogged down by the beginnings of a clanned group, it can change for the better. Although of course there comes a time where you do hit a ceiling, such as blue robed templar not able to obtain the red robe and keep up with it! However, I think most understand my meaning when I say that things can sometimes feel bleak at first in clanned play, especially when you're a martyr like a gemmed (assuming you're clanned as one). Try to hold in there and play it out, although there's no shame in storing or deserting either. I'd say this reflects the sponsored roles of reigning gladiators too, never forget your role in the city: you're a celebrity, not just any ol' "slave", but the premium Borsail cut. Not just a combat bot, but a social icon! I think most peeps get this, I just wanted to reiterate it (and this is coming from someone who does not enjoy gladiatorial play at all lol but would like to one day give it a shot).

Bah, I'm terrible at getting a point across but I'm loving all this conversation! Wanted to jump in again, add some more points into the mix while hopefully not derailing the topic too much.

Every clan has a cap on how many pcs can be employed there at a time, and House Oash frequently hits this cap (and is the only one I've seen to do so) fairly often (although I don't know if this has changed or gotten worse since subguild mages.)

What if noble Houses could all openly hire mages (except Fale, who would turn their noses up, naturally) up to a certain 'legal' number?

They have always hired mages secretly, so long as the mage could keep their tracks hidden and their mouths shut, but you'd also have openly hired ones with armbands and cloaks and whatever, which would be good for people like me who are off-peak, who could come in and 'ask burly pay' and 'ask cook steak,' and who would at worst be the kind of player who would stay online from 1 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays in the hopes that they would be of use to their noble. I guess I'm thinking of the sort of playtimes I myself could afford.

The only thing I could foresee for sure if all the Houses started hiring witches would be that they would hit their clan caps real quickly and it would actually really become hard to get hired in a big House clan, like it is sometimes for House Oash. It would probably change the flavor of these clans too, when half the people you deal with are witches. Thus, legal witch number caps for clans. It could be low, like five or six.

I don't think Noble Houses should be publicly hiring mages, some of the lower places in the Known, sure. Byn, Garrison, maybe even the Arm could publicly put a few on. To 'fill' the ranks only. Have a krathi whose sole job is to get tough as fuck and burn the ever loving shit out of things be sworn in as a seperate rank similar to private, but with no real power.

The Byn is already the best populated clan. On an OOC level, they don't need more members.

If you want to join a mundane clan as a magic subclass, just don't get caught. Don't get gemmed. Work something out with your superiors to keep your secret safe. A Fale noble, let's say, would have uses for a secret Whiran. A Sarge in the Byn could find value in a secret Vividian. That sounds like more fun with more plot potential than the Power Rangers openly joining mundane organizations.

Or play a criminal. The Guild, the Jaxa Pah, raider parties -- they're already breaking the law. Going to be a lot easier to convince the boss to look the other way when the boss steals shit and slings spice for a living.

It is in the docs that Fale 'hates magick stuff' but I guess the reality could be different, as I've never been in. Noble houses ain't usually my cup of tea.

I think like what, 3-4 noble houses actually employ mages? From what I know (I could be bullshitting), the House that does maintenance and sewer shit actively hire them. The issue arrises that these houses are boring as all fuck and the work the magickers do are, I assume, fixing shit. So it doesn't sound like an interesting role.

The other two houses available for play hate magic, so I don't see it fitting in unless staff comes out of the sky saying "The patriarch/matriarch/whoever the fuck runs the house had a stroke and said magick is okay now"

Though I would like to see other houses be in play, so maybe they could be added that way.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 05:09:59 AM
To me, the cry to create the next Plainsman or White Rantarri or whatever is a really good thing. But it segregates the players of all the mages even more than they are already segregated. I think the fun of this game happens when people are not segregated without plenty of other people like them in the same wagon, particularly in a specific region. I think the fun of this game happens in the mixing pot, when you throw in all of the ingredients and let them do what they do. That's the only reason OOCly why I want sanctioned magickers to be included in more clans.

I want the next magicker villain too. It's absolutely fun, of course, and good times and great story and whatnot. But I also want people to play together, and separating all of the gemmed from meaningful employment and meaningful interaction with the mundane PCs seems like less fun than coming up with a good, IC way to throw them at each other.

And of course this is an Allanak thing - I feel like it fits there fine.

Mmmmh, I had some rad times with the Plainsman (oh so briefly) but methinks you are forgetting how pissed the PB eventually got and I'm pretty sure there was some fall out about power gaming and a shift away from that because the world began to feel kind of like everyone were the imms pawns.  Considering the LARPy feel of the game nowadays where there's already a lot of imm reliance I'm not sure I like this idea.  I mean maybe if it was a PC... I dunno.

I agree magickers should be incorporated more some how but as to how I dunno.

I should play a witch.

I bet, I could make people scared of witches, in an awful hurry.

That sounds great, Vex!

Quote from: Bebop on February 04, 2019, 01:25:31 PM

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 01, 2019, 05:09:59 AM
To me, the cry to create the next Plainsman or White Rantarri or whatever is a really good thing. But it segregates the players of all the mages even more than they are already segregated. I think the fun of this game happens when people are not segregated without plenty of other people like them in the same wagon, particularly in a specific region. I think the fun of this game happens in the mixing pot, when you throw in all of the ingredients and let them do what they do. That's the only reason OOCly why I want sanctioned magickers to be included in more clans.

I want the next magicker villain too. It's absolutely fun, of course, and good times and great story and whatnot. But I also want people to play together, and separating all of the gemmed from meaningful employment and meaningful interaction with the mundane PCs seems like less fun than coming up with a good, IC way to throw them at each other.

And of course this is an Allanak thing - I feel like it fits there fine.

Mmmmh, I had some rad times with the Plainsman (oh so briefly) but methinks you are forgetting how pissed the PB eventually got and I'm pretty sure there was some fall out about power gaming and a shift away from that because the world began to feel kind of like everyone were the imms pawns.  Considering the LARPy feel of the game nowadays where there's already a lot of imm reliance I'm not sure I like this idea.  I mean maybe if it was a PC... I dunno.

I agree magickers should be incorporated more some how but as to how I dunno.

Heh. Well, I'm not sure I'd want to see another situation exactly like the Plainsman, but I would like to see another long-lived villain in that vein, however they managed it. And of course, I'd like it to be a PC, not staff.

More Highlander style combat between magickers. Encourage them to kill each other, too. There should always be that lurking advantage for murdering each other. YOUR SOUL IS MINE!

Quote from: MeTekillot on February 04, 2019, 11:09:38 PM
More Highlander style combat between magickers. Encourage them to kill each other, too. There should always be that lurking advantage for murdering each other. YOUR SOUL IS MINE!

Not gonna lie - I think that would be fucking awesome.

Yup, more incentive to do what I already do.

I 'love' that!!!

Every time an elementalist gets chargenned, some other elementalist loses 50% of their mana level, but both become capable of sensing each other's presence.

I just think they should power up when they kill each other, not be penalized for existing. Just require murder to break the ceiling of what cooperation offers you personally.

Maybe when you kill another mage, you can then engage in a ritual that raises a (victim mage's element) ticker. Once you absorb enough of that element, you gain the ability to choose one fully branchable skill from that element, and the ticker resets. In order for the kill to count, the mage you kill must be of almost equal or stronger power than you.

Perhaps you can sense how strong a mage is with a insta spell. You could pop this in combat, or not. Something with a message along the lines of, "You sense their connection with their element is weak/average/strong." (relative to yourself). This would help you decide whether taking them down was worth it or not.

This would keep newb mages from being ganked by vets - it almost encourages veteran mages to help them get stronger, for betrayal later on. Can you trust your mage friend? Mmmm, think hard.

HP lovecraft galore. I love it.

And if you kill a sorcerer, you raise your mana cap.

I am loving these ideas, give mages an excuse, and reason to murder each other besides "He said my third fuckbuddy had an ugly mole on his nose!"

It occurs to me that it might be hard to do a ritual on a dead body, since the code treats a dead body as a container. Unless that body had a flag on it telling what element it was, this might be best done when the victim is in critical condition. So the ritual might be a different way to give the victim the mantis head.

The Rukkian caster lies here in critical condition.

>em walks in a circle around ~rukkian, drawing a circle and lining it with Krathi runes.
The Krathi killer walks in a circle around the Rukkian caster, drawing a circle and lining it with Krathi runes.

>cast ritual Rukkian
You chant some words, drawing elemental force from the Rukkian caster.
You fail to grasp the elemental force within the Rukkian caster.
The Rukkian caster shivers, pain gnawing through their sub-consciousness.

>em sighs and grasps hold of %rukkian head, placing his thumbs on ^rukkian forehead
The Krathi killer sighs and grasps hold of the Rukkian caster's head, placing his thumbs on his forehead.

>cast ritual Rukkian
You chant some words, drawing elemental force from the Rukkian caster.
You grasp the Rukkian caster's elemental force with your very essence.
The Rukkian caster's body spasms as the last of their breath leaves them.

Or better yet. The coded command can only be activated while the victim is alive and awake and ends when the character dies. This makes it a shitton more complicated, but a fuckload more fun. It'll require significantly more planning, but assures a better death scene.

I'm not sure that creating an incentive for mages to kill other mages will do much to make magick scary for mundanes, which was the original topic here.

Besides, I think it's a little risky to introduce something that lets you "level up" via playerkilling. PvP is best when there's roleplay behind it and worst when it's just done for the sake of it. Killing someone because it gains you spells sounds like the latter. I'd much rather see PvP that happens as a result of events and decisions than PvP that happens because some dude discovered that he'll get +1 power from killing you.

Quote from: Greve on February 05, 2019, 12:31:02 PM
I'm not sure that creating an incentive for mages to kill other mages will do much to make magick scary for mundanes, which was the original topic here.

Besides, I think it's a little risky to introduce something that lets you "level up" via playerkilling. PvP is best when there's roleplay behind it and worst when it's just done for the sake of it. Killing someone because it gains you spells sounds like the latter. I'd much rather see PvP that happens as a result of events and decisions than PvP that happens because some dude discovered that he'll get +1 power from killing you.

This guy RPIs.

Cool ideas, but the thing that makes magick scary is that you don't know if that Gemmed is going to fireball you in front of the entire Gaj for being a dickhead, or if just associating with her is going to make your next child a mutant.

In reality, we don't care. The Templars will take care of any issues, and you don't see a lot of public manifestations anymore. So its just someone to sneer at, but secretly do sexytimes because taboo is cool and magickers have more karma, and more karma CLEARLY == better mudsex.

You want spooky mages? Give each one a coded curse that the can put on someone. Still initiates law code, but now that person is LEGIT FUCKED for a day or two, and they'll think about their words next time. Doesn't need to be a "can't walk, game unplayable" kind of curse, but something... visible. Vivs cause visible blemishes, Krathis cause painless-but-horrid-looking burn marks, etc.

Make it so that magickers can do shit to you without having to kill you, but a reason to hate them.

Quote from: Greve on February 05, 2019, 12:31:02 PM
I'm not sure that creating an incentive for mages to kill other mages will do much to make magick scary for mundanes, which was the original topic here.

Making magickers more powerful makes them more scary to mundanes. Making magickers gain more power by killing each other stokes meaningful conflict. Meaningful conflict involves more people than just the two people trying to kill each other. I suggest my previous assertions of reintroducing all the cool magick shit that's been whittled away along with meaningfully increasing magicker power when they kill each other.

Quote from: Riev on February 05, 2019, 03:25:50 PM

Quote from: Greve on February 05, 2019, 12:31:02 PM
I'm not sure that creating an incentive for mages to kill other mages will do much to make magick scary for mundanes, which was the original topic here.

Besides, I think it's a little risky to introduce something that lets you "level up" via playerkilling. PvP is best when there's roleplay behind it and worst when it's just done for the sake of it. Killing someone because it gains you spells sounds like the latter. I'd much rather see PvP that happens as a result of events and decisions than PvP that happens because some dude discovered that he'll get +1 power from killing you.

This guy RPIs.

Cool ideas, but the thing that makes magick scary is that you don't know if that Gemmed is going to fireball you in front of the entire Gaj for being a dickhead, or if just associating with her is going to make your next child a mutant.

In reality, we don't care. The Templars will take care of any issues, and you don't see a lot of public manifestations anymore. So its just someone to sneer at, but secretly do sexytimes because taboo is cool and magickers have more karma, and more karma CLEARLY == better mudsex.

You want spooky mages? Give each one a coded curse that the can put on someone. Still initiates law code, but now that person is LEGIT FUCKED for a day or two, and they'll think about their words next time. Doesn't need to be a "can't walk, game unplayable" kind of curse, but something... visible. Vivs cause visible blemishes, Krathis cause painless-but-horrid-looking burn marks, etc.

Make it so that magickers can do shit to you without having to kill you, but a reason to hate them.

Cynically, people hate pickpockets and burglars miscreants more than magickers because they can avoid the crimcode and mess with you regardless, so the obvious solution would be for magickers to be able to do this, too.

Quote from: Greve on February 05, 2019, 12:31:02 PM
I'm not sure that creating an incentive for mages to kill other mages will do much to make magick scary for mundanes, which was the original topic here.

Besides, I think it's a little risky to introduce something that lets you "level up" via playerkilling. PvP is best when there's roleplay behind it and worst when it's just done for the sake of it. Killing someone because it gains you spells sounds like the latter. I'd much rather see PvP that happens as a result of events and decisions than PvP that happens because some dude discovered that he'll get +1 power from killing you.

I have to agree with Greve here. In theory, I find the idea of being able to extract another magicker's element (or a portion of it) a fantastic idea, and one that'd be amazing to see played out. I'm just opposed to seeing it coded. For one, that kind of circumstance seems it would be a particularly rare one, with special circumstances leading up to it.

For another, I don't agree with encouraging PK through coded boosts. While it could certainly invite conflict, I wonder if having it coded would bring about needless PKing for the sake of gains.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on February 05, 2019, 06:34:53 AM
It occurs to me that it might be hard to do a ritual on a dead body, since the code treats a dead body as a container. Unless that body had a flag on it telling what element it was, this might be best done when the victim is in critical condition. So the ritual might be a different way to give the victim the mantis head.

Code Select Expand

The Rukkian caster lies here in critical condition.

>em walks in a circle around ~rukkian, drawing a circle and lining it with Krathi runes.
The Krathi killer walks in a circle around the Rukkian caster, drawing a circle and lining it with Krathi runes.

>cast ritual Rukkian
You chant some words, drawing elemental force from the Rukkian caster.
You fail to grasp the elemental force within the Rukkian caster.
The Rukkian caster shivers, pain gnawing through their sub-consciousness.

>em sighs and grasps hold of %rukkian head, placing his thumbs on ^rukkian forehead
The Krathi killer sighs and grasps hold of the Rukkian caster's head, placing his thumbs on his forehead.

>cast ritual Rukkian
You chant some words, drawing elemental force from the Rukkian caster.
You grasp the Rukkian caster's elemental force with your very essence.
The Rukkian caster's body spasms as the last of their breath leaves them.

Why do you need this to be coded?

RP it without the coded effect and it might be even more unnerving and scary. I think it's awesome, and if you take away coded perks, then players can keep doing something different, instead of everyone having the same experience over and over which is predictable and boring.

We already have code to magick 'spooky'. But, as soon as people understand the mechanics of something, it's no longer 'spooky', just a danger to be mitigated with the proper measures. The way of making magick spooky, is for people RP'ing magickers to come up with creative spooky things like mentioned above and incorporate it into their magicker roleplay.

I've had success with this idea. My last magicker was just over a year ago, not really long lived at all, but my PC The Fortuneteller Gazanzar Siltborn got a lot of positive feedback from players and staff because instead of focusing on coded function or magick word combinations, the PC connected his understanding of his rukkian power to the moons, the sandstorms, silt sea level, kruth cards, and chance encounters. It made play less predictable, and his magick more alive and dynamic, no coded benefit however (who gives a flying fuck, already had the coded benefit of spellz).

Actually, now that I remember it, one of my most enjoyable 'magick' rituals that I ever played out wasn't with a magicker at all. I played a dwarven ranger that believed silt sea was alive and would one day swallow up the Known unless it received sacrifices and service. So my PC knocked out a salter, dragged them to the shoreline, and made them walk two leagues unarmed into the silt to see what the sea would demand from them. And, the sea sent two dujats to take its sacrifice as my PC watched rejoicing that he had provided an acceptable sacrifice and saved Red Storm from the silt's fury once again.

Quote from: roughneck on February 06, 2019, 08:26:46 AM
Why do you need this to be coded?

Strictly speaking, because we are in a MUD environment with heavy Roleplaying tools, not a MUSH where the tools are often built by the players themselves.

You can tell me that, sure, go out there and ritually attempt to suck the soul out of your victims, it'll be cool. But honestly, at one point in time, you could be told to "expose yourself to poison, because your body will build up a tolerance to it" but in game, the poison_tol wasn't actually functioning.

In the end, we're all roleplaying, but we want to see the actual effects of the roleplay. I would be devastated if Magicker A starts ritually absorbing the elements from his victims in an attempt to be a sorcerer/summon multiple elements only to either:

succeed through staff intervention only
or
fail due to NO staff intervention

Which leads to the only 'fun' alternatives, which are to succeed, or fail with staff intervention. Unfortunately, we can't all succeed, and staff are historically not good about playing out failure with the player feeling a sense of satisfaction.

Quote from: Riev on February 06, 2019, 10:19:46 AM

Quote from: roughneck on February 06, 2019, 08:26:46 AM
Why do you need this to be coded?

Strictly speaking, because we are in a MUD environment with heavy Roleplaying tools, not a MUSH where the tools are often built by the players themselves.

You can tell me that, sure, go out there and ritually attempt to suck the soul out of your victims, it'll be cool. But honestly, at one point in time, you could be told to "expose yourself to poison, because your body will build up a tolerance to it" but in game, the poison_tol wasn't actually functioning.

In the end, we're all roleplaying, but we want to see the actual effects of the roleplay. I would be devastated if Magicker A starts ritually absorbing the elements from his victims in an attempt to be a sorcerer/summon multiple elements only to either:

succeed through staff intervention only
or
fail due to NO staff intervention

Which leads to the only 'fun' alternatives, which are to succeed, or fail with staff intervention. Unfortunately, we can't all succeed, and staff are historically not good about playing out failure with the player feeling a sense of satisfaction.

Very soon after something is coded, it's known OOC'ly, and known things are less interesting and dramatic than unknown.

Focusing on uncoded activity allows you to RP in the unkown.

If your PC's human sacrifice isn't coded, isn't real, and is just a false belief they have, the end terrifying result for the victim is the same.

It's also just less frustrating. Waiting, expecting, and hoping for extra code treats just leaves you disappointed (usually). Working with what's already existing puts you in that glorious 'fuck you' fortress of not needing any support.

Yes, I specifically suggested adding it as a coded mechanism so we wouldn't need to get staff support to engage in it.

If mages gained power from killing other mages, we'd end up playing Armageddon, Highlander Edition: There can be only one.

If this was something that would affect the majority of the playerbase, I'd think it was cancer. But since it would only serve to thin out the ranks of magickers and make the ones left more scary, I'm ok with playing highlander. Let's have fewer magick PCs, with the ones we do have being scary. I could get behind this.


Flashing a hand out and clutching it into a fist, the ripped, flame-scarred man says, in sirihish:
     "Don't kill him, you fools! I need him alive!"

Swiping out to dismiss his underlings, the ripped, flame-scarred man says, in sirihish:
     "NOW BEGONE! I must finalize the ritual."


Having it be a long, involved process would be fine with me. Could take RL days of work. Not consistent, but you prepare part of the ritual at a certain spot, and then you need to wait a while for the next part of the ritual. Could make it fairly obvious that some hinky magick shit is going on in the area when the ritual isn't done or is ready to be consummated.

Quote from: MeTekillot on February 06, 2019, 03:55:11 PM

Code Select Expand


Flashing a hand out and clutching it into a fist, the ripped, flame-scarred man says, in sirihish:
     "Don't kill him, you fools! I need him alive!"

Swiping out to dismiss his underlings, the ripped, flame-scarred man says, in sirihish:
     "NOW BEGONE! I must finalize the ritual."


Having it be a long, involved process would be fine with me. Could take RL days of work. Not consistent, but you prepare part of the ritual at a certain spot, and then you need to wait a while for the next part of the ritual. Could make it fairly obvious that some hinky magick shit is going on in the area when the ritual isn't done or is ready to be consummated.

RL days of work means RL days of a player not playing Arm. That's RL days that the arm player might just decide fuck it, and play something that doesn't take RL days to play.

I mean you go there cast 'ritual part 2', go fuck off to do something else, come back later, cast 'ritual part 3'.

Couple of things: Since you'd only do Highlander: Armageddon if someone was near you or stronger than you in their element, the actual numbers of power-driven killings would simmer down in short order. Killing those who were weaker than you would net you exactly zero gain. In fact, one idea that's possible is having the ritual skill allow you to work on it or not, and those who didn't work on it might not be considered as targets.

For instance, let's call this ritual skill 'absorb elements'. Let's say that all magickers get access to this skill at day 1. If they never practice their ritual, when someone who has trained it evaluates the one who has not trained it, they get the message that this magicker isn't a suitable target because they've not pursued their elemental connection to that level.

So now, you have an in-character opt-in option. If you don't want to be a target, then you simply don't train that ritual skill. If you ever decide that you do want to start absorbing elements, you've decided to opt-in, and you are now capable of becoming a target.

I'm also fine with having to craft the ritual components. This could involve finding a room that you're confident enough about having such a ritual location in. I wouldn't want to see it be a RL days process, but it could certainly involve multiple steps.

Finally, granted, this doesn't make magickers more spooky. It does allow them to become more powerful over time, which almost every magicker player would appreciate. And granted, I think this whole thing is a bit off topic, but it's kind of a natural train of thought that's been birthed from the original topic as we've explored options for mages.

Quote from: roughneck on February 06, 2019, 10:40:13 AM

Quote from: Riev on February 06, 2019, 10:19:46 AM

Quote from: roughneck on February 06, 2019, 08:26:46 AM
Why do you need this to be coded?

Strictly speaking, because we are in a MUD environment with heavy Roleplaying tools, not a MUSH where the tools are often built by the players themselves.

You can tell me that, sure, go out there and ritually attempt to suck the soul out of your victims, it'll be cool. But honestly, at one point in time, you could be told to "expose yourself to poison, because your body will build up a tolerance to it" but in game, the poison_tol wasn't actually functioning.

In the end, we're all roleplaying, but we want to see the actual effects of the roleplay. I would be devastated if Magicker A starts ritually absorbing the elements from his victims in an attempt to be a sorcerer/summon multiple elements only to either:

succeed through staff intervention only
or
fail due to NO staff intervention

Which leads to the only 'fun' alternatives, which are to succeed, or fail with staff intervention. Unfortunately, we can't all succeed, and staff are historically not good about playing out failure with the player feeling a sense of satisfaction.

Very soon after something is coded, it's known OOC'ly, and known things are less interesting and dramatic than unknown.

Focusing on uncoded activity allows you to RP in the unkown.

If your PC's human sacrifice isn't coded, isn't real, and is just a false belief they have, the end terrifying result for the victim is the same.

It's also just less frustrating. Waiting, expecting, and hoping for extra code treats just leaves you disappointed (usually). Working with what's already existing puts you in that glorious 'fuck you' fortress of not needing any support.

I'm fine with things not being coded, but on the "possible" list. Do we need "cast ritual-fuckery" as a coded effect? Nah. But:
If I spend 3 RL weeks killing magickers, doing rituals with echoes of TRYING to absorb them, and

staff don't engage at all... that is boring and feels like a waste of time character-wise
staff engage and allow it ... that is fun but now everyone wants to do it, and it causes a hardship on the staff
staff engage and don't allow it ... all that work you put in feels for naught, but at least your character has a belief

It kind of hinges on "staff engagement" in your stories, honestly. The issue with it being coded isn't (to me) that it COULD be Highlander, that's just finding faults with no solutions. I think the issue of coding this would be that it opens up an entirely different aspect of the game that would need testing, balancing, and staff oversight even MORESO than the 5% of us that engage in this kind of heavy RP behavior anyway.

Quote from: Riev on February 07, 2019, 11:34:44 AM
staff don't engage at all... that is boring and feels like a waste of time character-wise

For something like you are describing, if you aren't sending in character reports describing what you have been doing -and- what you intend to do and what you hope the outcome is, this is likely.  If you aren't using them to ensure someone is actually around to support your final ritual or whatever, also likely. Wishing last minute or hoping someone has been watching and is planning something are not good options for this type of thing.

Quote from: Riev on February 07, 2019, 11:34:44 AM
staff engage and allow it ... that is fun but now everyone wants to do it, and it causes a hardship on the staff

They'd somehow have to know you did it. Maybe what you did, as if they did something different maybe it wouldn't work.

Quote from: Riev on February 07, 2019, 11:34:44 AM
staff engage and don't allow it ... all that work you put in feels for naught, but at least your character has a belief

Making up a cool scenario and playing it out doesn't change the fundamental way magick works just because you would like it to work a certain way.  So yeah, there is the potential for this.  It may or may not work.  You'd probably have to try to find out.

Quote from: Brokkr on February 07, 2019, 11:50:27 AM
Making up a cool scenario and playing it out doesn't change the fundamental way magick works just because you would like it to work a certain way.  So yeah, there is the potential for this.  It may or may not work.  You'd probably have to try to find out.

What works and doesn't work changes over time based on the opinions of the staff at the time.  This is frustrating for players who want to pursue these kinds of things in-game, because the hypothetical ritual that worked for Amos on Tuesday may not work for Gravos on Friday.  It didn't always seem to be that way in the past.  Perhaps some internal documentation on the "rules of non-coded elements of magick" could be written so staff could enforce them with more consistency?  Or better yet, maybe we could have a dedicated staff member for magickers over all that could help with this kind of thing.  They could handle magick across all areas of the game, and could help ensure consistency while also driving magicky plots.  There used to be more magicky plots!

Quote from: roughneck on February 06, 2019, 08:26:46 AM
Actually, now that I remember it, one of my most enjoyable 'magick' rituals that I ever played out wasn't with a magicker at all. I played a dwarven ranger that believed silt sea was alive and would one day swallow up the Known unless it received sacrifices and service. So my PC knocked out a salter, dragged them to the shoreline, and made them walk two leagues unarmed into the silt to see what the sea would demand from them. And, the sea sent two dujats to take its sacrifice as my PC watched rejoicing that he had provided an acceptable sacrifice and saved Red Storm from the silt's fury once again.

Oh, man, I remember this guy. I was lucky to survive running into him, although I don't remember much else.

Oh, I'm pretty sure that none of this idea is part of the way magick works in the world. That doesn't mean it can't be. Magick, after all, changes from time to time. But being serious, I doubt any of us that participated in the conception of this idea were thinking it'd be taken seriously. That said, I still think it's an idea worth chatting about, despite the fact that staff is probably laughing their asses off at it.

You never know if something cool will happen in the game because of something someone here said. That's always worth chewing the fat, I think.

I really like the idea of a dedicated magick staffer.  I am aware that this is a low-fantasy setting, but the aspects of magick just don't feel present for any of my PCs including magick users. Full stop. I've had more echoes about the weather than the things which are supposed to inform magicker play like strange dreams or instinct (or whatever reason a witch comes up with to justify their sudden understanding of spell X). It'd be excellent to see those actually placed into game and magick plots ran separately from your AOD plot. Also it'd be interesting to possibly put manifestation into a third party's hands. Maybe your rukkin manifests on some random Ocandra instead of the Deus Ex Machina crap where you get some magickal boon when you exactly need it (because it's suddenly convenient to the player).

Before nilazis were removed you could always count on them stirring shit up and killing some Arm soldiers every two to three months, at some points shorter than that. They were, in my mind, an integral villain in the world that, while short-lived, kept the Arm from being neurotic and searching every other unemployed pc for spice. Its a fairly boring thing, to be in the Arm off-peak. Your job is to reduce and eliminate enemies of the state, and oftentimes in this low player count era, nilazis were the only people you were hunting.

Now that there's a nice high-level nilazi type available, I can't wait to see what kind of shit they'll bring to the party.


I want to believe that a couple more mage subguilds will be added that'll bring some needed punch to gemmed life, but for now, unspeakable magick beings of the wastes is good enough for me.


I've never played a nilazi, so reading their description doesn't tell me anything but generalities I already know. I wonder what kind of abilities they will have.

Nikazi are back?  I didn't see anything post... 

With the amount of poison in the game. Magick just isn't scary anymore so much or seems to me.

I'm a big fan of magickal spookiness. I've played some spooky mystic types, though some of the karma changes have discouraged me from doing so regularly, though hopefully I can jump back in that kind of role again sometime.

I think mages, especially learned ones, being able to level some sort of curse (perhaps subguild dependent) on a person would be an interesting mechanic. I wouldn't want it to just randomly happen after a cast, but if you give a magicker a specific reason to malign you, they just might be able to - provided they knew your true name, had a lock of hair, your broken weapon, etc. Having it be silent or subtle I think would add to the weird factor - and give mundane PCs a definite reason to stay their hand, even if they might have someone backing them up. It also serves as a foci for conflict - if you have a suspicion something is wrong, or you get way thirstier than ever, well, maybe you might have a reason to hunt down mages / hire an assassin / go find something (or someone) to break the curse. A Noble might stoop to using some unsavory sorts to get fucked up shit levered at a rival, etc.

And on the other hand, maybe a friendly mage could work out a boon, or bestow some sort of protection. Charms (from tribal mundanes, shamans, soothsayers or whatever) might become an actual thing. Maybe they work, maybe they don't. Maybe some herb lore in X tribe knows that eating bloodroot paste is beneficial, etc.

Good mechanics, in my opinion, fold and wrap more conflict and institute goals. They give both sides of the equations something to work towards and lever against the other.

Quote from: Wday on February 23, 2019, 07:59:22 PM
With the amount of poison in the game. Magick just isn't scary anymore so much or seems to me.

Noted.