The Allanak Problem

[Lizzie]

You just have to have a unique e-mail address for each account IIRC. But most e-mail services allow you to have a whole lot of e-mail addresses, so it's basically unlimited.

[triste]

You just have to have a unique e-mail address for each account IIRC. But most e-mail services allow you to have a whole lot of e-mail addresses, so it's basically unlimited.

You can circumvent this with email aliases. All you need is one gmail account (or similar). Register as username+whatever@gmail.com and all mail goes to username@gmail.com. One email account for multiple GDB usernames. When thomoto learned this trick a little while back on discord his joy was palpable.

[Alesan]

You just have to have a unique e-mail address for each account IIRC. But most e-mail services allow you to have a whole lot of e-mail addresses, so it's basically unlimited.

You can circumvent this with email aliases. All you need is one gmail account (or similar). Register as username+whatever@gmail.com and all mail goes to username@gmail.com. One email account for multiple GDB usernames. When thomoto learned this trick a little while back on discord his joy was palpable.

Interesting. So for clarity, when you are creating a new GDB account, this alias+email string is entered in for the email field? That's all you need?

[triste]

You just have to have a unique e-mail address for each account IIRC. But most e-mail services allow you to have a whole lot of e-mail addresses, so it's basically unlimited.

You can circumvent this with email aliases. All you need is one gmail account (or similar). Register as username+whatever@gmail.com and all mail goes to username@gmail.com. One email account for multiple GDB usernames. When thomoto learned this trick a little while back on discord his joy was palpable.

Interesting. So for clarity, when you are creating a new GDB account, this alias+email string is entered in for the email field? That's all you need?

If my gmail is trashboi@gmail.com and I have a character named Talia I tend to register on the gdb with an email alias like trashboi+talia@gmail.com. You get emails for PMs etc as normal.

Edit for more clarity: the email+alias trick is known to work for gmail, but some major services like outlook do not support it. I believe in outlook you can alias with quote marks but it has not been tested. Only gmail aliases have been tested and shown to work when registering here.

Edit for thoughts on the original topic: the GDB for clan comms is a working system but not ideal.

[Barsook]

Fastmail does support this.

[Saiseiki]

I don't have the seniority to chime in intelligently on a lot of the points this excellent thread has raised.  When I started playing Arm, Tuluk was already a misty place of semi-legend.  However, I have grappled with how to rp with as many folks in Allanak and still be playing realistically.  Highlord knows I haven't always gotten that balance right, either.

The hierarchy of Allanak is rigid as all get-out, which is fine.  A major facet of the issue as I've experienced it is how silo-ed that can make everyone.  I don't have answers yet, but I'm still looking, and the intelligent analysis of this thread has me more hopeful and motivated than before it started.  =) 

Ultimately, we're here to play, to tell a story, and at least inside the city, that pretty much means interacting with others to some degree.

[triste]

I don't have the seniority to chime in intelligently on a lot the points this excellent thread has raised.  When I started playing Arm, Tuluk was already a misty place of semi-legend.  However, I have grappled with how to rp with as many folks in Allanak and still be playing realistically.  Highlord knows I haven't always gotten that balance right, either.

The hierarchy of Allanak is rigid as all get-out, which is fine.  A major facet of the issue as I've experienced it is how silo-ed that can make everyone.  I don't have answers yet, but I'm still looking, and the intelligent analysis of this thread has me more hopeful and motivated than before it started.  =) 

Ultimately, we're here to play, to tell a story, and at least inside the city, that pretty much means interacting with others to some degree.

Seniority schmeniority, your point here is valid on silos.

It brings to mind also the hot topic people were debating and complaining about last year: people playing isolated roles, and not taking risks. It was something people felt was on the rise / experiencing an uptick, and it is certainly a factor here.

I was talking with my sibling who has also played Armageddon for years yesterday about why we don't play anymore. My sibling said, "When the world is so fucked up IRL, it's hard to dive into a game where the expectation is that everyone is going to be an asshole to each other. I was in the mood for it last year when I was surrounded by fake nice people, but now I am not as into it." Player silos, and indeed players deciding not to play at all, may in part originate from the same place as the "uptick in isolated roles" we saw last year. Certain hierarchical silos are penetrable, but often when you penetrate into them your reward is death. When I came back from my hiatus, I saw so many aides get killed it was practically a meme, and when I commented on it the player base basically responded with "Yeah, aides get killed a lot, it's been that way forever."

Why the heck would anyone want to break into these silos if your reward is often to get killed in a back room?

Once cheesy, dogpiling, code abusing shit like that happens to you once, it's human nature to avoid it [for all but the most masochistic]. The only way some players might interact with an insular, murder-happy clique at this point is if they are forced to by way of a plot.

Now, Armageddon is a harsh game, and I love that about it, don't stop making it harsh. But this gets back to the whole "We need overarching conflict," request in this thread. We need reasons for these different RP silos to interact, and we need code and mechanisms that make conflict and interaction between silos interesting. We got close to that with the PBRPT where Templars and high born folk needed to mobilize commoners for a war; war isn't the only way to get silos interacting, but it's an effective example among many options.

I posted a meme that succinctly summed up all the points above on our current state of political roleplay, but a lot of people complained about it so staff removed it. Often jokes like that are controversial because of the truth within them. "The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow." "The human race has only one effective weapon, and that is laughter." Another meme by another player was taken down for probably the same reason mine was, and like mine was probably well intentioned and meant to elegantly elucidate the problem and allow us to laugh at it. But the argument at the core of these memes is the same argument players have been making for years (and basically since Tuluk closed): we need more engaging plot arcs than "Oh it's High School Spirit Week Luir's Fest next week and next month we're having Pajama Day a gambling tournament, and if you're mean to the student body council Garrison during any of this you will be suspended murdered." I used Luir's/Garrison here to show it's an issue common to the whole game, not just Allanak.

Zalanthas is a harsh desert world, but that does not mean it's a roleplay engine for the same petty crap we deal with IRL, but with more stabbity stabbey murder. There are 50 more compelling ways to honor a harsh setting than having scattered cliques where people are "assholes to each other." Indeed, when there was broader conflict this game was not the "desert edgelord simulator," "pk mud," "murder hobo" party people critique it to be now. Harsh, desert world does not mean a world full of sociopathic murder hobos. Murder hobos are welcome, but a planet cannot exist with a 100% murder hobo population. I've seen the conflict in this game rise to much more than that in the past and we can aspire to that again. Players have mentioned a lot of mechanisms for achieving this [refactoring crim code, rethinking what is open or closed for play] and I'd love to see the game get out of a rut it's been in for a while.

[triste]

And I just want to say I am bringing up the highschool metaphor not to be dismissive or antagonistic, but merely because it's the state of things and a good metaphor for the game as it is now. If the only RPTs are High School Spirit Week style RPTs, I am simply going to avoid those like my punk ass did in highschool IRL. Maybe I'll start a plot to vandalize signs advertising Spirit Week because Spirit Week is stupid and not interesting to me, but more likely I am just going to avoid it. But not all of high school was stupid to me, I participated in poetry readings that lead me to even get published and hang out with US Poet Laureates: maybe this is why I liked Tuluki bard roleplay and dearly miss it. Yes, not all of highschool was stupid to me, I was also on the wrestling team: this might explain why I loved Gladiator RPTs and dearly miss those. Lastly, I almost joined my school's football team [but didn't because I would have been the only chick on the team at the time], but even football games are a more compelling events than Spirit Week -- Americans love that shit, and Europeans love soccer because it's a proxy for regional conflict which, again, this game once had in the form of Allanak vs. Tuluk but no longer has.

So now we are only left with RPTs reminiscent of High School Spirit Week, but what point does pride in your school colors have if there is ultimately no reason to wear those colors proudly into conflicts and plots.

We're left with HS grade roleplay, but don't even have all the options represented therein.

Ideally, Armageddon can have even more interesting plots: it takes place on an alien planet with multiple moons, is full of mind and body altering plants and substances, prowled by beasts like Silt Horrors and Rocs and the hunters who hunt them, ruled by monolithic and magick empowered governments that still cannot reign in a sprawling and nearly infinite diaspora of tribes, host to slaves and slave uprisings, hideous gith, sorcerors and psionicists, why can't we think of more interesting things to do than sip wine and have auctions for lacey doileys?

And this gets back to my last plea that many players in this thread have echoed: generally, cutting content is NOT the solution. Some of the awesome grandiose shit in setting above WAS once playable but now is no longer. What we need are more options, not less.

[Armaddict]

And this gets back to my last plea that many players in this thread have echoed: generally, cutting content is NOT the solution. Some of the awesome grandiose shit in setting above WAS once playable but now is no longer. What we need are more options, not less.

While true, I also think it pointed out that different people have different ideas of what 'cutting content' is exactly.  That likely sounds strange, but I think it's fundamental cause of players misunderstanding or disagreeing with each other.

I thought limiting apartment space would be adding content; it adds things to strive for, reasons for plotting, methods of control and bribery, and essentially becomes more of a plot device.  Others view it as a gate, a removal of access, a loss, something that detracts from options.  And there are probably plenty of places between this interpretation and that interpretation, which leads to arguments about consolidation vs spreading out, etc.

I don't think we'll get very far in any solution-seeking discussion until people are thinking about it not just in their own terms, but from terms that are as wide-reaching across those perspectives as possible.

[triste]

And this gets back to my last plea that many players in this thread have echoed: generally, cutting content is NOT the solution. Some of the awesome grandiose shit in setting above WAS once playable but now is no longer. What we need are more options, not less.

While true, I also think it pointed out that different people have different ideas of what 'cutting content' is exactly.  That likely sounds strange, but I think it's fundamental cause of players misunderstanding or disagreeing with each other.

I thought limiting apartment space would be adding content; it adds things to strive for, reasons for plotting, methods of control and bribery, and essentially becomes more of a plot device.  Others view it as a gate, a removal of access, a loss, something that detracts from options.  And there are probably plenty of places between this interpretation and that interpretation, which leads to arguments about consolidation vs spreading out, etc.

I don't think we'll get very far in any solution-seeking discussion until people are thinking about it not just in their own terms, but from terms that are as wide-reaching across those perspectives as possible.

Definitely agreeing with the idea that we need to appreciate everyone's perspective on this.

The gatekeeping topic is interesting, and one way to honor multiple perspectives is to try to itemize pros and cons and the magnitude of those pros and cons.

Pros of your proposal (as an example):
- Plots and intrigue as you mention.
- More rewarding because what you got, if you get it, is more rare.
- Instead of a low value resource being available to everyone with the minimal coin needed, a medium value resource is now available to a medium size group of people with more coin and influence, which probably means higher value items for thieves to steal.

Cons of your proposal (as an example):
- Playtime becomes a gatekeeping factor in getting an apartment, because renting is no longer easy and automated.
- Playtimes (plural) become a gatekeeping factor, because you might be an off-peaker while whoever controls the resource is not.
- Player abilities become a gatekeeping factor: you either have to be some sneaky who can creepily see who lives in apartments and way them, or speak the same language as whoever is hoarding apartments, etc.

When I see a pro and con list like this, I think, we need to find a third solution. Who wants to simulate renting in the middle of a housing crisis? Alright, maybe some of you do, but ask any recent resident of San Francisco, Manhattan, or anyone who is homeless and they will agree this situation is distinctly un-fun.

What's un-fun about being homeless? The gatekeeping keeping you out of a house! That's why mechanisms exist IRL, like bidding and housing market diversification (even the world's poorest economies have shanty towns), to address this. And these mechanisms exist organically, they emerge out of necessity when not fettered by arbitrary constraints like what we have. Therefore the solution might be to add more options rather than just cutting content or making it more inacessible to more people.

Incidentally I love that you mentioned "a gate" as potentially being a good thing, because this was something else my sibling and I mentioned being a bit discontent with in Armageddon: the gatekeeping. For every secret, awesome thing in game -- such as say a magickal ability that can only be used with certain rare components -- only 2% of the playerbase or so who will get to see it. Which is fairly awesome, and something I accept for rare lore and "game secrets," but I wish it was closer to 5% or even 8%, and that the gatekeeping were a little less harsh. If you have low play times or other constraints, your chance of seeing this content is near 0%. It might help player retention if we nudged that likelihood up. The gatekeeping of apartments situation, the notion that the hoarding of apartments and grey-market transfer of apartments is somehow a good thing shows just how severely we've accepted that this game is about gatekeeping. I don't think it's friendly to new players, international off peak players, or players with low playtimes.

[X-D]

On the subject of apartments.

When I started playing, they did not exist...did not matter. And almost no coded clans...actually, I think there was none.

Few years later a very small number existed, controlled by a nenyuk PC....(This was the best time IMO) Good number of coded clans, all rather popular.

Shortly after, few more apartments, still run by nenyuk PC...did not seem to help or matter much. Other then, same number of coded clans but seemed slightly less popular.

Nenyuk PCs gone a few years later, apartments automated...Almost never used them. But number of clans and apartments the same, well, one less clan Seemed stable enough.

Currently, lots of apartments, some warehouses.....To me does not matter, I do not need them. But even with fewer coded and playable clans they seem even less popular.  So I can see where people might see a link.

If I was in charge I would experiment with it. I would drastically lower apartment numbers, say To at least half what they are now, I would have none limited to clans etc but only to the VERY high fee I would have the ones with real security...and they would not be large...but VERY hard to get into. IE strong locks, roaming guards and a desk room with several guards and a locked gate.

Meanwhile a small number of cheap ghetto rooms as well.

One fun thing about the low number of nenyuk PC controlled apartments days is...Well, there tended to only be two ways to get one of the like 5 apartments in nak.

I would then add small but secure rooms in clan compounds for those that have rank, life oath, whatever happens to be required in that clan to live in luxury. Possibly, in cases like the Byn or AOD, garrison, trooper/private could rent (at a low cost) A small cubby with cot and locker and reasonable security.

I would also re-open hunter  or other crew slots in the clans that should have them...with a solid cap to numbers. One of the more fun things of being in a merchant/noble house was working against the competition. We used to do so many bad things to Tenneshi in winrothol, and to Oash with Tor, to Kadius and Kurac from salarr. ETC ETC

[triste]

First, thanks for the history and context! And again I respect how the PC managed approach can be appealing, but also see why it necessarily changed.

I would then add small but secure rooms in clan compounds for those that have rank, life oath, whatever happens to be required in that clan to live in luxury. Possibly, in cases like the Byn or AOD, garrison, trooper/private could rent (at a low cost) A small cubby with cot and locker and reasonable security.

I would also re-open hunter  or other crew slots in the clans that should have them...with a solid cap to numbers. One of the more fun things of being in a merchant/noble house was working against the competition. We used to do so many bad things to Tenneshi in winrothol, and to Oash with Tor, to Kadius and Kurac from salarr. ETC ETC

I love, love, love all of this (just say "re-open hunter" five times and I'll start quaking and quivering), and +1 to all of this (all y'alls ideas rock usually).

[X-D]

Well, like I said, there was a short time where, when apartments went automatic there was essentially the same number of them and I did not notice any real change to the game in general other then not having to find that lone nenyuk PC to get an apartment. Automated apartments better IMO.

But I am All for apartments being back in HIGH demand like during nenyuk PC days. I am against the Oh you have to be in this clan or that one for one of these apartments...That is what clan compounds are for, give them "apartments" There, maybe even for a reasonable price if they have the right rank. Leave in warehouses, Have like 3 apartment buildings. 1 with 5 small HEAVILY guarded rooms for like 5k per month, the next with 5 small rooms, much lower guards but locks almost as strong as the high end apartments for about half the price. I would also add in a bit of code to make those two buildings "clans". You rent a room there you are clanned Swank apartment renter. This would allow the NPC guards to act properly towards intruders.

Then a building with 8 VERY low end apartments in the last building, no guards, maybe 3 levels of locks...none very good.
And that is for Nak.

Luirs and Storm I would also cut the numbers in half and have a single "building" Each with no more then 6 apartments, but with at least two Silly high priced ones with Silly good locks. You want into the Swank safe Storm apartment, get in good with the primary renter or make them go away one way or another. 

[Armaddict]

Definitely agreeing with the idea that we need to appreciate everyone's perspective on this.

The gatekeeping topic is interesting, and one way to honor multiple perspectives is to try to itemize pros and cons and the magnitude of those pros and cons.

To be clear, I think I am a minority perspective here at this point, I'm just a vocal one.  This will be long-winded and ramble-y in true Armaddict style, filled with off-the-cuff analogies, but we'll see how it sits.  Mostly, when I talk about this opposing perspective, it's not because I believe everyone needs to just fall in line with me, but that I believe the balance is out of whack because of some relatively simple things that impact a whole lot of things 'above it'.

TL;DR: The aversion to things like gates are because of a substantial 'drift' of the playerbase as options have been made available that took more prevalence over the course of time than they were originally meant to.  The game isn't being played improperly, and people are not roleplaying poorly; there are just inherent elements of the game that cannot come to fruition purely because of this shift in player preference and perspective.  To fix it doesn't require anything heavy handed, it just requires an appreciation for and an allowance of these core conditions of the game.

Full Version:
You can view today's Armageddon as either the product of a massive genesis, or as an example of a mass exodus.  I don't mean in terms of players coming and going, because that's a natural state of any long-lived creation; it waxes and wanes, it changes, and it preserves itself.  I mean in terms of departure from the overall narrative of the world we interact with.  I've the suspicion that most people view Armageddon as the former.  We're on an evolutionary path, and we leave behind vestigial parts of lore or game-theory or concept that are either non-contributors or something that can be harmful if not removed.  For some cases, that is clearly the case.  My perspective is the latter.  I don't believe changes are always bad, but I believe there are bad changes.  I don't believe that people are playing a different game, but I believe that some features, additions, and modifications left core elements of the Armageddon experience behind.

First analogy:  Consider the average character narrative in Armageddon.  The 'Armageddon for dummies' version of the game that we all like to tell new players when they join up, and we tell it with great enthusiasm and happiness that they've arrived.  It's like a road map.  We have a very highly prized 'main street' that winds and curves, it doesn't go in a straight line.  We lined it with shops and attractions.  Join a clan.  Play in this location.  These classes play easier roles, wait to play these classes that play more lore/game-knowledge heavy roles.  This will maximize your interaction and storytelling, with an increasing scale of both combined with increasing danger the more turns of 'main street' you go around.  Don't worry that it gets hard, or that you die, or that there's strife, or that you're afraid for your character; these are clearly-defined parts of the game, right down to being in direct competition with other players over scant resources.  Always fear what other characters will do to win. 

But simply put...main street becomes crowded.  There have always been alleys, side roads, and short cuts that were quiet.  Off the path.  Sometimes they were based on getting ahead in some weird way.  Sometimes, they were just about getting off the beaten path and doing your own thing.  This is -particularly- prevalent for those who are looking for new experiences in the game, or off-peak players, or people who just -don't like the crowd on main street-, and over the course of time, we've built more of these.  Options.  Conveniences.  'Better ways' that offset the detriments of traveling main street.  They are, quite frankly, often awesome...but the result is that over time, there's a near-scramble to avoid main street.  All those attractions and shops and things become derelict over time.  We implement glass-ceilings and see entire curves cut off of main street.  Some turns of main street even start to look entirely nonsensical, because there's a blockade that way and a side road over here.  This road map of prime narrative of the game suddenly doesn't even make sense anymore, not because of anything in particular, but because these side roads that have nowhere near the flesh of the main street just became shorter ways to the same place, with prettier views to boot!

This is my mass exodus of the game.  You're in the game.  You're playing it well.  You're doing what people would expect you to do, particularly as you do experience different parts of the game.  But as a whole, it means we've left the narrative behind and are now scratching our heads...all we know is that over here is better than over there, because there is nothing even -happening- over there anymore.

The Allanak Problem
This is the Allanak problem to me.  If Tuluk were still around, the problem would be present in both places, I think, but less so in Tuluk due to surroundings, and making the problem shallower in both since in the end, the two always had each other.  But we removed Tuluk, without creating an atmosphere in Allanak that was conducive to the same interactions.  And then we added side roads to make those other places still available in the game more suitable for those wanting those atmospheres that Tuluk left as a gaping void.  The problem is...they aren't on main street.  Allanak is the purest form of main street left in the game, and it saddens me when I hear things like 'People steal from you there' or 'the political intrigue there often ends in death' or 'Templars are overdoing it'.  Allanak wasn't better or worse in the past; it was just one of two places that was truly -convenient- to base out of.  Jobs were there.  Conflict was there.  Opportunity was there.  Shops were there.  Enterprising groups looking for adventure based out of there. 

We've bolstered the infrastructure of our side roads without making it fully part of main street.  That's why I'm saying this isn't 'nerf Luirs!' or 'make people die again!'.  It's that we've gotten comfortable with the idea of being off the path that was incredibly reliable for creating danger, regret, joy, sadness, loss, and excitement, and that path is the one with built-in strife, challenge, hardship, and both dependency -and- suspicion.  We've cut out -whole swathes- of main street and made the road that replaces it to the next curve dull and easy to walk along in comparison. The staff have eliminated Tuluk and overarching conflict and direction, and also the natural drive and motivation for progress along main street (i.e. glass ceilings and power limits).  But we, the players, have eliminated the appreciation for toil, luck, failure, and surprises because we're cramming into convenient sideroads that aren't fully developed.  They are rural roads, and we consistently have complaints about the lack of a city life (metaphorically speaking, of course).  These things we're missing are not gated, sequestered parts of the game that require unnecessary time; they are goals, locked achievements, and points of direction for a character to move towards, obstacles be damned.

The Storytelling Narrative
We talk about this game as a storytelling game, and it really, genuinely, -truly- is.  Part of the beauty of that setup, though, is that it isn't -your- story, or -their- story, or -his- story, or -her- story...it's a complicated weaving of all the stories intermingled into the Zalanthan epic of neverending dystopia.  It's heroic stories buried under villainous pretense, and villainous stories that end up being anti-hero stories, and low-fantasy stories tossed into the midst of what-the-fuck-is-going on stories.  That makes it -spectacular- to partake in, as long as you embrace it to whatever degree you can manage to tolerate loss and failure.  When we twist it into -my- story, or a progression-only based story, all of the linked-in stories suffer.

If we were authors, we aren't building the epic.  We're building threads of a giant tapestry.  Sadly, only staffers are really privy to the vision of that tapestry, but even they can't see it all at once.  But they get to eagerly watch this story and that story catapult towards each other on this terrible-or-amazing trajectory...only to have it cut short by who-the-fuck-is-this-guy-and-where-did-he-come-from?!  But then they look at that guy.  He conveniently wrote bios (I never write bios, sorry!).  They look at his friends, and look into -his- clan...holy shit, -this- guy is awesome too!  What's -he- doing?!

We aren't building the epic.  We aren't on unfettered paths of progression until we get to point B...we're actually removing all of our own point B's, just as surely as they're being removed from the game.  We -are- building the 'holy shit, -this- guy is awesome too!'.

Summing it up.  This has not been a genesis to where we are, in need of 'fixing' the evolution.  This has been an exodus away from our willingness to tell awesome stories in favor of controlling as much of the story as we can.  Embrace the envelopment of the side roads into main street.  Embrace the weird balance of player and character and circumstance that make for the unexpected, the difficult, and the unexplainable.  We play the red-shirts that end up not being red-shirts.  We play the heros trod underfoot by the epic already in motion.  Please, for the story, stop embracing the convenient; just be glad when it shimmies its way up for air in your character's hard-fought, grit-filled, ultimately meaningless existence that propels the story -out- of meaninglessness.

[Lizzie]

On the subject of apartments.


One fun thing about the low number of nenyuk PC controlled apartments days is...Well, there tended to only be two ways to get one of the like 5 apartments in nak.

Your memory dims as your years climb, XD! (Yes I can tell him that, he and I are the geezers of this game).

When I played a Nenyuk PC, there was "that tenement building" where the Aide apartment building is now. There were hm - 6 apartments on the first floor, and 6 1-room apartments on the second floor, plus that room with the curtain that didn't close, plus the 2-room apartment down at the end. The curtained one wasn't rentable. It was just a curtained room. On the ceiling in the first floor hall was a faded mural that was an "extra" description - you could look at it and see a general idea of what it had been before it faded (some kind of circusy looking thing if I remember right). So that's 13 rooms in a single building, each for rent.

Then there was the building down near the Oash Elite barracks, the one that got destroyed in the spider plotline a few years ago. That was a 3-room home; a foyer with a cabinet, a kitchen with a built-in granite countertop sink and cupboards, and a bedroom loft upstairs. I wrote all the descriptions for it during an IC renovation project. And up on Ruk's Way there were two, before Ruk's way stopped connecting to Caravan (remember that?). Another one in the Elemental quarter across from the Drov temple I believe was reserved for the NPC templar who lived in it, but it's possible it might have been rentable at one point before I came along.

There were two on Stonecarver's between the Plaza and the furniture guy.

There were two 2-floor luxury homes on Theyak's, and all the one-room crappy buildings with crappy doors you see along Wall and down on Dragon's whatever were rentable. There was also that freaky always-dark one near the Templar quarter gate, that was cursed by that Drovian chick who lived there.

There were two near the bazaar - one where the aide apartment building is now, and the other around the corner to the northeast.

So that's around 2 dozen rentable spaces in Allanak. They were always full, though at one point, one person was renting three of them and I had to put the kibosh on that. Templars would order my PC to reserve three for their aides and favorite soldiers or what have you, plus their own place they'd rent, plus whatever room they had available in the templars quarter that Nenyuk had nothing to do with. So there were rare occasions when only 3 or 4 people were paying rent on all of those apartments. It got to be a headache. I'm pretty sure that's one of the biggest reasons why they automated: it was way too much OOC work to keep up with it IC, and it wasn't quite as much fun when your entire logged in play time was spent scrambling to not piss off a templar because there weren't any vacancies and the only person you could kick out was another templar's aide.

[Brokkr]

The tenement was a player creation

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,5835.msg559913.html#msg559913

It went in around 2002, from what I see on account notes.  Some of the period X-D is talking about would be before that.

[triste]

Armaddict's post is very beautiful and inspiring, but it hurt reading "We play the red-shirts that end up not being red-shirts," because some people play this game for years, play red shirts for years, and never get to "not be a red shirt." This is a fact. People state this when they quit sometimes. I used to have sufficient play times to be "not a red shirt," but now I am finding you can only be a red shirt by the rules of role applications when you have less than 10 hours of playtime a week and that sucks. Gate closed. We need to drop some of the myths of "main street" as Armaddict calls it and be clear about some of the huge gates right in the middle of the street:

Yeah, better get off main street and find a side road, good thinking! We have to empathize with the people locked out and not participating. This is why I make the points I make because we have to make sure everyone gets woven into the "tapestry" of the story; the fact is we have a lot of dangling threads who are advised to just... suck it up and deal with it, or give up and fall away. You talk about weaving tapestries as if there is some magic lady at a loom weaving everyone into the story equally, but the weaving definitely isn't done in equal measure and it's looking a little... rough from the state of things.

Saiseki's point on silos elucidates this and was spot on. [edit] Duh, I think that was also the point you were making with the mainstreet/sidestreet and tapestry coming together metaphor. Yeah. Agreed. Silos and cliques suck. Weave people into your plots, even if they are an off peaker and so on. Also, have a variety of scenes for people to be woven into us because not all of us are into whatever banquet scene or whatever is being woven at the time.

[wizturbo]

Really well written post Armaddict.

I think some recent IC events make me believe the Main Street is alive and well.  The Senate comes to mind as an especially awesome thing - I really hope this becomes a frequent event, perhaps annually so players can count on it!  But with all that said, I hope we continue to lean in on that.  It's important that the side streets remain open... we don't want people who are trying to escape main street have no where to go, but main street is more critical for the health the game when it comes to staff and player focus in my humble opinion.

Here's my take on what should be the "main street" of Armageddon:

• The Arm of the Dragon and the Templarate
• The Allanaki noble houses
• The Greater and Minor Merchant Houses
• [Insert current antagonist clans] (maybe they change over time due to IC events)

Anything not on that list should still exist, still potentially influence main street in interesting ways, but should come with the understanding that support is more likely to be limited.  That's just my two cents.

[HeeBeeGB]

The tenement was a player creation

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,5835.msg559913.html#msg559913

It went in around 2002, from what I see on account notes.  Some of the period X-D is talking about would be before that.

Amazing necro, Brokkr.

Though reading through it reminds me a lot of the EotW plots and how nifty they were. And also all the players that haven't logged in since 2009

[Lizzie]

The tenement was a player creation

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,5835.msg559913.html#msg559913

It went in around 2002, from what I see on account notes.  Some of the period X-D is talking about would be before that.

Ah okay! I didn't start playing til the end of 2001 or the start of 2002. I remember my first posts on the Arm forum, which was in a totally different format, were in 2002. But I'd been playing for awhile before I even knew they existed.

[Saiseiki]

The tenement was a player creation

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,5835.msg559913.html#msg559913

It went in around 2002, from what I see on account notes.  Some of the period X-D is talking about would be before that.

Amazing necro, Brokkr.

Though reading through it reminds me a lot of the EotW plots and how nifty they were. And also all the players that haven't logged in since 2009

*boggles at the thread* I think my brain broke a little, reading a good chunk of that thread.  Oi, that's a lot to live up to!  Great to see the kind of scope this game has, though.  Wow.

[Fredd]

Something we have face up to, is that part of the problem is the community.

In the space of a month I learned about 6 PKs. All of them without much reasoning, and a good chunk of them without any real RP, not even kill emotes.I've seen noble pc's kill each other's Aides for absolutely no reason other then they are an aide to someone they don't like, and they can kill them. I don't know when this became the standard. But it's really hard to argue a roleplaying setting without much roleplay. Other parts of the world seem calmer. But Allanak seems to be the "PVP Free Zone" these days. And who wants to play that? I remember the days of betrayal, of plotting to ruin your enemy by destroying their plots. Killing eachother only as a last resort. Now its all "I call you into a backroom, you can't refuse, and you die, haha" or " I know you are less then a month old IG, but I'm killing you...Because I can."

Things need to change. And it needs to start with how we play this roleplaying game.

(i'm using the term 'learned' loosely. To avoid saying things that are considered to IC)

[Spider]

Something we have face up to, is that part of the problem is the community.

In the space of a month I learned about 6 PKs. All of them without much reasoning, and a good chunk of them without any real RP, not even kill emotes.I've seen noble pc's kill each other's Aides for absolutely no reason other then they are an aide to someone they don't like, and they can kill them. I don't know when this became the standard. But it's really hard to argue a roleplaying setting without much roleplay. Other parts of the world seem calmer. But Allanak seems to be the "PVP Free Zone" these days. And who wants to play that? I remember the days of betrayal, of plotting to ruin your enemy by destroying their plots. Killing eachother only as a last resort. Now its all "I call you into a backroom, you can't refuse, and you die, haha" or " I know you are less then a month old IG, but I'm killing you...Because I can."

Things need to change. And it needs to start with how we play this roleplaying game.

(i'm using the term 'learned' loosely. To avoid saying things that are considered to IC)

How does someone come to know about all those pks, the reasoning behind them, and the emotes surrounding the PK itself?  I've been playing quite a bit since April and don't know anywhere near that much about what is going on amongst the playerbase at large.

To bring it slightly more general, I don't understand the desire to lower the amount of PC v PC combat that some times leads to the death of some number of PCs.  That's just a good time to me, whether on the winning or losing end.  On top of that, there is always a story behind it, whether it be some grand political scheme, or your PC just wakes up, drinks a shot of whiskey, then heads out to do the day to day job of salt grebbing.  Next thing it knows it is fighting off, i.e inputting as many commands as fast and accurately as possible so that your PC doesn't die, a raging mul that came riding in out of nowhere.  Don't see an issue at all in either case from an RP point of view.  Especially in that mundane case.  Either your PC makes it out alive, and it has a story to tell, or it dies and the taverns of the nearby city are abuzz about a raging mul killing grebbers.

So maybe the above isn't fun for some players of the game, but it is to me.

In short, if you want your PC to start slashing up a motherfucker with a bone sword, my PC will be ready for you.

[triste]

I agree a bit with Spider and a bit with Fredd on this as it is all a matter of degree. But I agree with Fredd that it goes too far in this case:

Now its all "I call you into a backroom, you can't refuse, and you die, haha" or " I know you are less then a month old IG, but I'm killing you...Because I can."

This is when the murder-happiness goes too far and ends too many plots. Indeed, myself and others have noticed how characters that "may be a threat" are terminated sooner rather than later out of laziness (OR to put it more forgivingly, out of a lack of other options) and an unwillingness to deal with the plots that troublesome character might create. Example, I had a northern PC framed and PKed in a locked room in Allanak for no other reason than it was convenient to other players within weeks of arriving in Allanak... It was a good scene I do not regret having it, but this happened after it already happened to me three times in the same year. Some people are just on the receiving end of this shit stick a lot, many threads have popped up about it and offered solutions. I love the ideas CodeMaster floated in this thread for giving people more roleplay options than the all too common and disappointing scenario Fredd describes.

We are not asking for kid skin gloves, and a kinder, cuddlier Armageddon. We are asking for mechanisms that are more likely to interweave plots, because our current mechanisms consistently terminate certain kinds of characters (and sometimes terminates the interest of players who like to play these characters). If certain concepts are playable in terms of in game mechanics and documentation, ideally those concepts can be... playable for more than a few weeks without getting PKed in a back room.

I have a character concept in the hopper that I REALLY WANT TO PLAY, but I am afraid to because it is one of those concepts that, once discovered, most people believe must be killed at all costs. And sometimes I fear the motivation to kill certain character concepts as quickly as possible is more metagaming related than roleplay related.

Because I want to be positive and because we CAN be the change, I just want to convey much love to a recent military clan PC we had who wasn't murder happy and let people go more often than not. The punishments this character devised were creative and plot generating, not plot ending. It just occurred to me I may have never formally kudosed them so I will get on that soon!

Bringing this tangent back to topic clearly, Gentleboy, OP of this thread, a relatively new player but a great roleplayer, once mentioned in discord that it can feel like more interesting, outside the box characters tend to get PKed more. A lot of people debated that this had to do with adhering to the setting / social structure within the group, but let's be real. A lot of us have been there as new players; the way in which some characters are culled can feel absolutely unfair and brutal. I wonder how our results with player retention, etc might change if people just spent 40 minutes to say, "Alright, we'll throw you in the Arena and let you fight for your life," versus `>call guard;order guard kill rinthrat` or however guard calling works. In the first case you have an event, a turning point at which the plot can branch out two or three or ten ways. In the second case, you have awkward spam of unlocking doors for NPCs in a back room so they can run in and kill you, and other flat command related echoes. In the first case you engage and provide some (usually interesting) roleplay to more than five people, usually close to twenty people. In the second case, you provide roleplay to absolutely no one outside of that room, and less people walk out of it than went in.

[Armaddict]

Eh.  The locked door thing...while I recognize it sucks, it's also an event that a lot of the time, I'm not sure how people die to it so much.  You guys really gotta understand that in real life, you wouldn't go to a meeting with some powerful dude you thought might kill you, either.  It's even an play in cinema.  If things feel like traps, stop walking into the trap expecting some -other- story to pour out of it.  Make the manhunt, it's better.  Treat meetings as they are, high-risk ventures totally dependent on a sense of courtesy and honor that -really might not exist-.  This is not people shortchanging a story, this is just depending on story to make really weird behavior of making yourself vulnerable justifiable.

Now, if it's simultaneously intertwined with a giant betrayal, where you're behind a locked door -and- it was a place you felt really safe in?  That's kinda checkmate on their part.  That's how betrayal often ends.  That is the whole trust part of the game.  I won't say this is the most spectacular awesome death, it's pretty feels bad, but to call it something that just needs to go away because of feels bad is precisely what I'm talking about in my last post.  Even if you're trusting of other players to do good scenes, don't trust their -characters- to be in a locked room with yours, jesus.  That is so far away from the Zalanthan world I can't even comprehend.  The worst part of those deaths is usually the 'I KNEW IT WAS A BAD IDEA' after.  It sucks that escape is so hard in this game in that scenario, and so easy in other scenarios.  It sucks that these buildings are as hard to get out of as they are to get into.  But that's just...stuff we already know.

Likewise with older PC's killing younger ones.  Like they're only supposed to kill if it's a fair fight?  They're supposed to go out of their way to find reasons to leave yours alive?  This is, again, the push towards...-my- story.  -Mine-.  Not the narrative of the game as described or structured.  Not the zalanthan epic.  Anyone targeting newer players or characters tends to get theirs.  Far more often, I see people behave in ways where they know they're stepping on toes, but then getting upset when there's retaliation done in ways they don't agree with.  And it's all because of that -my story- thing.

And I recognize that this might come off as harsh, but my whole post was how the above thinking is entirely natural for those situations, and it will take an actual opening of awareness to -accept- those parts that feel bad in order to reverse the movement away from that high-impact narrative.  You will lose characters.  You will experience danger, fear, suspicion, hardship.  You will get pissed at things.  And as a result, more things will happen.  There will be collaboration out of necessity and distrust out of necessity and betrayal out of fear and manhunts out of desperation.  That is what adds events to the game.  Not a passive agreement to keep everyone as happy with their characters as possible.