I'm seeing a deficit of aides in game, or even of PCs who want to play aide types. Maybe the role isn't appealing, OR maybe someone out there just needs a nudge toward this fun role. I've played aides and aide-adjacent roles a lot, as well as nobles who had lots of aides/minions. So here is a guide for you, if you're maybe interested in playing an aide!

Note: This thread is not about any particular PC in game right now, whether a leader or an aide. This is not criticism of them. They all seem great! Rather, this thread is in support of the idea of playing an aide and how to have fun doing it.

Why should you aide?

• Get adjacent to future legendary PCs: Nobles, templars, and GMH family members are often the longest-lived PCs in the game. They often become the "famous" PCs that everyone remembers years afterward. It's fun to be adjacent to this.
• Get involved in plots: Staff-initiated plots are dripped to the playerbase largely through sponsored role PCs. If you're near one of these PCs, and that PC is good at handing out the plot candy, you will be directly involved in plots.
• Get involved in changing the gameworld: The gameworld only gets changed through plots. Some of these will be the plots you're involved in as above. Others may be plots that your PC leader has started and is pursuing. Your best chance at changing the gameworld in some way is going to be through a heavily plot-involved PC.
• Get more interaction than you can actually handle: Are you bored and lonely? You'll never be again! You'll be running the simplest errands for your boss and then be snatched right up for a conversation about Amos the Sorceror. You'll have three people Waying you at a time, and two of them will have the power to execute you immediately.
• Get plots directed right at your face: Do you want to feel the thrill of finding out there's a murder plot against your PC? Do you want to kill them right back? This will inevitably happen if you're playing the role well.

What type of aide are you?
Aides can have any type of class/subclass combo. Some combos make more sense for a role that will be 99% city-based. Whatever class/subclass you choose, please for the love of Tek/Muk make sure you can max out listen. You will be sad if you do not.

• Crafter class aide: The obvious choice. If you can mastercraft clothing, jewelry, weapons, armor, etc then your boss will love you forever. But also beware of getting stuck into a "craft this for me" role, because that's not much fun. Your emphasis should still be on being a good aide and hopefully your leader will support that. Consider a combat or sneaky subclass for interest or survivability.
• Sneaky class aide: Another obvious choice. But be aware that your skills/utility will not be the same as playing a full-fledged criminal type. You'll want to take instructions from your boss on how to use these skills in your role. Consider a subclass that will give you a hobby for downtimes and/or better combat survivability.
• Combat class aide: A non-obvious but fun choice, as long as you have a way to skill up. Being able to guard your boss? Knowing that you'll probably be OK when your boss' enemy comes at you directly? Leading that occasional RPT beyond the walls? Yeah, these all rule. But then you'll want to pick a subclass that gives you some utility/interest for when you're not grinding or tavern-sitting.

Find your leader
One of the most important factors in whether your aide role will be fun is choosing the right PC to aide for. The right PC for you to aide for is going to be a combination of the following:

• Do their playtimes overlap with your own regularly? Don't pick a leader you'll never see, this is fun for no one. However it's also nice when there are some times that your boss is not around!
• Do they seem OOCly fun to you? (Even if ICly intimidating.)
• Do you like their emoting style and/or dialogue style? Don't aide to a PC that OOCly grates on you. It's important to enjoy their characterization of the role.
• Do they seem to be involved in plots and handing out the plot candy? If you see them in a tavern talking about important things and not caring who hears, they are probably more likely to share plots with you.
• Do they seem to reward the PCs that are minioning for them, whether that's in coin or in bling or in greater plot access?
• Do their other minions seem excited to be working for them?

If you spot a cool leader PC that you want to aide for, and they already have an aide, you should PK their aide offer to work for them too. Yes, you can just ask to be hired in addition to their current aide. Then that aide becomes your frenemy and you compete to the death. Templars, nobles, and GMH family members almost always need a new aide/minion in game.

Know your place

• Study the current Allanaki rank table: https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Allanak%20Hierarchy. Your rank is not nearly as high as you think it is. If you've just been hired as an "aide" to a junior noble or blue robe templar, you're actually an "assistant." It's probably not the moment for you to get all high and mighty, and it will take a few IC years of effort for you to rank up and become special. That's part of the fun of the role.
• Understand the nuances of rank, influence, and other factors of social play: https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,36595.0.html Plenty of discussion there.

Be competent and useful
Figure out what "competent and useful" means to your boss. Here's a non-comprehensive list of things your boss might find useful:

• Running errands (if you have the haggle skill especially)
• Relaying messages
• Coordinating meetings with other PCs
• Having your own meetings with PCs near your own rank
• Crafting things
• Organizing RPTs or other events
• Gathering information
• Gathering and relaying the news of the day, whether from rumor board posts or other PCs
• Knowing all the relationships between different PCs in the city
• Providing your thoughts/opinions/observations on PCs or plots
• Guarding your boss
• Recruiting other PCs for the clan or their plots
• Deal-making

Make friends
You're going to need to do some tavern-sitting on a regular basis. If you never want to tavern-sit, then aiding is not for you. You can't meet everyone you'll need to meet if you never tavern-sit. If you're not making friends, you're sucking at your job. (Sorry, I don't make the rules.) Make friends. Make all the friends.

You will need the following types of friends as an aide:

• Actual friends and/or love interests. These are the PCs that your PC would be really sad over if they died. They have the power to change your PC's trajectory (inevitably toward tragedy). You probably need a few of these.
• Less-close friends and acquaintances: These are your go-to PCs for when you need X. You will need a lot of these, ten to twenty.
• Frenemies: Probably you'll have a few of these. They might just be the other aides. Yes, you need to make friends with the other aides in the city, all of them if possible.

Recruit (use) your friends

• Your spies: You have a friend that works in an enemy organization? Perfect. Emotionally manipulate them until they're actually working for you instead.
• Your minions: When plots come your way, use the friends you've made (see above under "Make friends") to hand plot candy to them.
• Your clannies: Some of your friends might want to join your clan! Be awesome and it could happen.

Take initiative

• Under "Be competent and useful," we discussed that it's important to know what your boss' priorities are. Once you do know, take initiative on those priorities. Don't wait around for your boss to tell you what to do, instead make their job easier.
• Get hobbies of your own. You will have downtime. Hobbies help ward off boredom in this role.
• Pursue your own plots. Does your PC have a dream, no matter how far-fetched? Pursue it.

Negotiate your benefits
Here are some benefits you might get from your boss, either regularly or as occasional gifts:

• Gear (armor and weapons, maybe clan-specific)
• Pretty things (clothing and jewelry)
• Salary (you will never think it's enough)
• Food and water
• Housing / a place to store your stuff
• An interesting relationship (no, you do not have to romance/ERP your boss for it to be an interesting relationship, also your boss should be mindful of the consent rules for leader PCs https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Consent)
• Plot involvement

When you first start working for your boss, expect less than you think you deserve. It's Zalanthas, you haven't earned shit yet! Then, as you become more valuable to your boss, you can negotiate for better benefits. Make your boss desperate to keep you and you will prosper.

Don't die
If you've decided to play your aide as a hunter/grebber on the side, you will die. If you want to not die, don't do this. If you're OK with dying prematurely and missing out on the plots that your boss wants to involve you in, well, you do you. But long-term aiding and/or dying to plot is where it gets good.

I'd like to encourage you to try it.

I play combat characters.  I dislike crafting entirely.   I never thought I'd like playing an aide.

My favorite character was designed with the idea of getting him in Salarr to be a hunter.  Could never find the PC to hire him in, and ended up getting into a noble house's combat arm, which was subsequently closed.  He got folded in as an aide, and I was thinking, "This is really going to suck."

Much, much fun.  My PC got into things I never thought of doing.  He became close to templars and several nobles, he helped kill or ruin many as well.  He participated in all kinds of things I never even knew went on in the game, really excellent things brought around by staff and PCs alike. 

And if you don't think PCs can make lasting changes to the gameworld, you can.  He did.  He burned the Tuluki cotton fields.  And he did other things that had great effects on the time and place that he was, all planned out by the players of nobles around him.

Do it!  And go along with the plots your highborns make for you.  It's lots of fun.

Fantastic guide! I encourage those wanting to try the aide life to give this guide a go. 

A successful/interesting aide run is also the most prominent sign that someone will be a great noble or templar when we are looking at role applications. I will personally always favor someone with a successful/interesting aide in their backlog over someone who doesn't have that experience.

I refused to play an aide for Season 1 as I wanted to do something else, and I had pretty much just finished playing a 'winner' of an aide.

Good stuff!

Aide is alternately a really tough, demanding, and unique, rewarding role. I often don't know even when playing it if I love it or hate it. It's high pressure without much room for mistakes. It's also an easy, vulnerable, common target. There's a certain kind of power but it's surrounded by pitfalls. All that can be kind of exhausting and I understand why a lot of people don't really go for those roles. In a certain sense, aides are sort of a lot of the stress without much of the protection or decision-making power.

Some sponsored roles can barely function without them, but it sure feels sometimes like there are a lot more sponsored roles than there are people who want to play aides. It's almost always sort of been like that, that I can remember.

All that's not to be a downer of course. It can be a blast too. But it's unique and uniquely challenging.

I don't know if this has changed but last time I played an aide it was a bad experience.

It's really easy to get burned just playing an aide in good faith. Anyone might kill you for any reason, including your own employer. You're generally seen as disposable. There's this strange clingy misogyny that seems to haunt female aides in particular.

I think if you hate X about being an aide and love Y, you are in the ideal spot.

An aide is an enhancement to noble players, not quite a tool but certainly a support and communications asset. Enemy noble players might target a noble's aide to avoid political issues but you're probably not going to be singled out unless you have been being a tit of some kind.

QuoteYou're probably not going to be singled out unless you have been being a tit of some kind.

In my experience, this isn't true. Aides are an easy target to kill. And players (previously, it's been a while for me) would kill them mostly because they're easy to kill.

Edit: And on top of that. I resent the idea where I might lose a lot of effort being put into my character because someone else decided "You've been a tit."

This is a collaborative game and as an aide, I would kind of want to create an interesting give and take dynamic. If it's a crapshoot on whether someone will decide to kill my pc over that, I don't see the point trying.

At the basic level, sure.

But if a noble has 700 hours on their person and is pushing five plots and you have 600 and are pushing two plots, who gets the go ahead to survive there?

I have been a victim of violent downsizing on the aide population, I have also been a very long lived aide. I think it's a little bit too unclear to have a strong opinion of as you almost always don't have all the information you need to make a proper call on whether a role ending was fair or good for the game.

Perhaps I sound a little callous, but I am almost universally collaboration over conflict driven. I'm just being open to possibilities.

Quote from: Inky on August 15, 2024, 09:37:36 PMIn my experience, this isn't true. Aides are an easy target to kill. And players (previously, it's been a while for me) would kill them mostly because they're easy to kill.

This is true. But it was pretty true of any character that was not a sponsored role. It just so happened that aides were often a tad easier to kill often due the demands of the gameplay style.

The whole point of 'PK' rules was to begin addresses the OOC discrepancies between players. This does not always mean you don't get pked or understand the reason, but it should be happening less and staff should be reviewing your murder. From an OOC level an aide, or dusty grebber should be given the same considerations as a noble.

That said, the staff still have to address a few elephants in the room, mainly revolving around the protection and benefits of certain clans due to historic play to win mentality within the game, which sometimes elevates players and clan roles to red templar levels of imbalance. This tends to either prevented conflict all together or sometimes creates a need for quick murder as an only option of resolution. As well as the existence of what are essentially PK clans, I'll use the now closed crimson wind as an example. And finally the lack of strong Mercy options. I digress though, some of this stuff needs its own thread.

I'm pondering the narrative about "aides are easy targets / easy to kill / die a lot." I feel like there's some truth there--obviously this has happened to players. But also I feel like it's probably overstated as a statistical reality. This is just my perspective from having played aides and aide-like PCs a lot, as well as sponsored roles with minions, and from being on Southern noble/templar staff. Yes, I've PKed minions a few times; yes I've had death threats and attempts on my own aides/aide-likes; yes I've seen aide PCs get PKed while on staff. But the VAST majority of aide PCs fizzle out and store, or die to boredom (adventuring). So I still encourage players to try out this role, especially if they see a cool leader or clan they want to join as an aide. I think it can be such an incredibly fun role and it has the potential to add so much for other PCs--not just the aide's boss but other clannies and the wider city environment.

And since this is a how-to guide, here are my recommendations for staying alive while aiding!

• Be useful and competent. I said this above, but I cannot overstate it. The more useful and competent you are, not just to your boss but to the others around you, the more likely it is that you'll survive whatever is coming your way. A useful/competent PC is one of the most valuable currencies in this game. Your boss will protect you. Your friends will protect you. Sometimes even your enemies will protect you, if they don't want someone else to kill you first!
• Expand your network of contacts. Then expand it again. Then do it again. Keep doing this. Never stop doing this. Why? Because this network of contacts is how you'll find out about threats against your PC. An aide with no contacts isn't good at their main job and is also hurting their own survivability.
• Don't disobey your boss or do obviously stupid things. This feels like a gimme, right? But going against orders and doing it repeatedly is the fastest way to die. When I've had to PK minions it's been because they tried to kill an important NPC, or because they were massively insubordinate, or because of a betrayal.
• Don't massively screw up by not knowing your own place in the hierarchy. As above! Learn the rank table, love the rank table! It's easy to get on someone's wrong side and become a PK target this way. If you need help with understanding rank/hierarchy/influence, ask here, or better yet find someone to teach you in game. There are PCs in game right now who are very knowledgeable about these topics who can help.
• Choose some combat skills. Again, as above, a combat-class aide is a very viable role. And it can be a ton of fun!
• Specapp an advanced start for your combat-class aide if you're really worried about survivability. Staff have said (in Discord) that this is equivalent to about a 15-day playing time boost in combat skills.
• Be aware that what kills most aides is boredom. Boredom leads to wandering in the desert when it's not really part of your job (DEATH), or it leads to storage (DEATH).

For what its worth, I think this season has been tremendously better at not forcing PK on players when they are clearly only engaging on the PvE or just world plot elements of the game. The PK conflicts and elements are still there for those that want to engage in it, but much easier to avoid for those that don't.

It really creates a much more ideal game for newbies and purely social characters.

It is also something to keep in mind when choosing a boss as an aide or when hiring an aide. Maybe some nobles should be looking for more combat/stealth capable assistants depending on what they want to achieve.   

If the attitude from other players is "be useful or die" then it's better to just not play an aide. And I think it's really telling that some people here don't understand how that attitude would keep people from trying the role.

Which is a shame because I like the idea and concept of the role. I'm just not really interested in losing my pc or having my time investment treated like garbage.

Quote from: Inky on August 16, 2024, 03:28:37 PMIf the attitude from other players is "be useful or die" then it's better to just not play an aide.

Which is a shame because I like the idea and concept of the role. I'm just not really interested in losing my pc or having my time investment treated like garbage.

I tend to agree.

From a narrative or storytelling perspective -- say Game of Thrones adjacent or Crusader Kings III, or the Godfather, or the Tudors -- Aides, courtiers, hanger ons do seem like low hanging fruit for political violence (or even just violence to send a message).

However, I think particularly with the new stronger stance from Staff on PK/PK Justification, we should consider more the player on the other side of the PC. There almost always is room for escalation, starting small, going bigger and bigger. Or more and more complex. Or more and more devious.

I've actually seen quite a bit of this starting in Season 1 -- I haven't really seen people jump to the murder button with Aides nearly as much (or at all really). I do hope the things Inky mentioned are things of the past, and that we can collectively appreciate a good nemesis, an annoying aide enemy, a counterpart, a "Mean Girl" that ends up being your best friend.

There's a lot of room for growth if we face those parts of the game that make us uncomfortable (PC Cast definitely included) and figure out a way to embrace that. Why did that Aide make you uncomfortable? Why did they annoy you? Is being 'annoying' enough of a reason to kill someone?

In a place like Zalanthas, players have argued yes, you can absolutely kill someone for being annoying. I would argue that makes for a poor story in a RPI.

If you believe that is a good story, I would challenge you to try a bit harder. The Aide annoys you? Hire someone to plant a cookie laced with terradin in their pocket. Find out who their friends are and spread some nasty rumors about them, as if they were told from the Annoying Aide. Plant some spice on them and pay off a soldier to take a look. Make their life difficult and watch them squirm. Offer them a way out of their own uncomfortable situation if they dance to your tune. Come up with a good villain laugh, and buy a hand mirror to practice.

Or...Just throw a knife at them.

QuoteAs well as the existence of what are essentially PK clans, I'll use the now closed crimson wind as an example.

Fact time.

When I staffed CW during the last year of season 0, the PK count of CW during actual raids was approximately 0 and the number of murdered CW players was three. Additionally a couple of CW affiliated people did PK some PKers. CW is always going to get crushed the second staff decides there should be a "world response" or a pack of gemmers gets invoked. By the end of the season even the sand lord was cracking down on them for playing their role and Kurac was plotting to betray them. 

Quote from: Inky on August 16, 2024, 03:28:37 PMIf the attitude from other players is "be useful or die" then it's better to just not play an aide. And I think it's really telling that some people here don't understand how that attitude would keep people from trying the role.

This is definitely not what I'm saying. Aides that aren't useful are...to be honest, usually non-entities in gameplay, just like any other PC that isn't doing a lot. My point is that being useful and competent is a shield against dying. Because the more useful and competent a PC is for other individuals and groups, the more those individuals and groups will protect the PC. This is a basic rule for all PCs in the game; if other PCs want your PC to NOT die, you're more likely to survive.

Quote from: Gimfalisette on August 16, 2024, 05:44:52 PM

Quote from: Inky on August 16, 2024, 03:28:37 PMIf the attitude from other players is "be useful or die" then it's better to just not play an aide. And I think it's really telling that some people here don't understand how that attitude would keep people from trying the role.

This is definitely not what I'm saying. Aides that aren't useful are...to be honest, usually non-entities in gameplay, just like any other PC that isn't doing a lot. My point is that being useful and competent is a shield against dying. Because the more useful and competent a PC is for other individuals and groups, the more those individuals and groups will protect the PC. This is a basic rule for all PCs in the game; if other PCs want your PC to NOT die, you're more likely to survive.

Thank you for that clarification.

Quote from: Agent_137 on August 16, 2024, 05:15:43 PMFact time.

 To be clear, I've never had any issues with the players of these clans, rather my issue is with the content they game is trying to support with clan level benefits.

I just believe the only 'PK' clan that should be supported and sponsored by staff should be Templars and Militia, which serves the game in both pvp and pve capacity, and have some very defined restrictions on what they can or can't do (openly). Militia is one of the clans that get the balance between restrictions and benefits decently right. Everything else can continue to exist virtually but PK groups in this game should have only indie level support. Most other clans have more going for them than just engaging in hostile interaction with players, when a clan like crimson wind stopped raiding they seemed more like an indie trading company. 

Additionally, 95% of the conflict in this game should remain at a personal level, its not organizational, despite people insistence to keep making thing involve their clans and get staff support to kill each other. The conflict lives or dies with the few players who started it and cannot resolve it peacefully. Clanned people engaging in personal conflict are already getting tremendous benefits and have significant advantages. Organization conflict like the one between kurac and salarr, should be carefully managed by staff.

Criminal indie groups will certainly have people wanting to murder them and have no clan level support, but the sandlord or kurac should not be getting involved to stop them from an organizational level, they are just too small and insignificant, that is the balance. OOCly staff should already be making sure these aren't just murder groups, so other than that its the player's problem to solve if they don't want to keep paying the fee of the raider every time they come around to flirt with their lover. The irony of this is that years ago, the argument would have been that it would make it too hard for certain merchant/noble roles to find the right people to murder each other with, but in today's game this would now be an extra benefit.

I really wish I hadn't left my amazing aide career feeling utterly jaded. I haven't been able to have a meaningful aide pc (and rarely even try) since then, and that was around 2015ish.

But if I can add anything at all to the already awesome ideas in this thread, it would be to, "Have a gimmick" of some sort to set you apart in the social landscape.

Nell made it to a Senior Advisor of House Borsail, and never once in her life did she own more than 2000 'sid, and that was maybe once, she was almost always broke. But she still managed to being a major political force (how an aide managed to have House Oash spanked, and a culling of drovians in the city is still my biggest achievement in this game, and likely always will be!) with the people that mattered.

Nell was a burgular/con-artist, her only crafting skill that she ever used was cooking. House Borsail had access to a minor, but seemingly rare fruit in the south, and Nell would harvest and use them to make pastries. These ended up being her currency, and it worked on everyone from a surprised Guild Face to the Templarate. A minor, and seemingly silly item to use as such, but I think the players involved with her at the time likely appreciated receiving something that wasn't just yet another a bag of 'sid.

One meeting with a certain templar was even scheduled on the promise that she'd have a tray of her special pastries waiting at the table for him. XD

So, that was her gimmick for the most part, and I'd urge anyone playing an aide to have such an angle that suits their character. Not only was it a fresh means of interacting beyond the regular huff and puff of stereotypical Allanaki politics, but it was fun from an RPG standpoint as well.

It doesn't really need to be a gimmick as a means of advancement either. It was out of necessity for Nell. I never intended her to become an aide, so she had no useful moneymaking skills that were legal/acceptable. XD It should be something that adds to the character to both make them memorable, as well as enhancing the rp experience of yourself and those you interact with. I can almost guarantee it'll make the aiding experience much more fun in the time.

Hopefully that might help some folks out!

Bad Nell, I always told Borsail people it was highly uncool to give the forbidden fruit to outsiders.

On a serious note though, this is pretty good.

I have never played a proper aide, in that I'd always be bad at something and good at others. And I agree that a real working senior aide should be in a similar situation to a real, working noble. You have access to plenty of funding, but you don't actually have much liquid coin on you personally. It encourages you to do deals with NPCs or PCs and kind of play a balancing game.

I think at the highest cash point in his career, Oahid had 1100 in the bank, maybe close to 2000 and he constantly tranferred coins from sales into the Jal or Fale accounts, he was in fact meticulous about doing so promptly.

Everything I learned about playing a noble well and being successful in that role comes from years of playing Aides and Atrium roles. Its very dependent on who you're 'aiding' for but if you get under a really good player it is always an amazing ride.

I agree that playing an improper aide is fun, too. I would actually encourage people to try being bad aides instead of competent aides. Cheat your employer. Develop a spice habit. Feed information to other aides accidentally or on purpose. Drop trays. It can make things a lot more fun for both you and your employer.

Sure, you might die. But if that's not a sacrifice you're willing to make in the pursuit of fun, I'm not sure why you're playing a permdeath RPG.

From what I've seen PC Nobles won't mind an incompetent aide (for most faults except like, direct treason) as long as they're fun to RP around.

Quote from: Valkyrja on August 22, 2024, 03:33:28 PMFrom what I've seen PC Nobles won't mind an incompetent aide (for most faults except like, direct treason) as long as they're fun to RP around.

They are all incompetent! Worthless commoners!!

Seriously though half the fun is house training them so they word like you want them too.