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Post by psyxypher on Mar 24, 2022 18:06:10 GMT -5
So, with the official death of ApocalypseMUD, I've come to wonder if a successful "Arm Clone" or any MUD in the vein of Dark Sun can be done at all. I have my own feelings on the matter, which I will list below. So far, we've seen three Arm Clones try and die. Black Sands RPI, AthasMUD (I'm not even sure if this ever even opened) and ApocalypseMUD. All three of these died for one reason or another. Black Sands and AthasMUD had their own problems of being too limited in some form.
I personally think the issue is that a Permadeath RPI might not be the best fit for someone trying to gather and retain players. The nature of this creates a "Burning Man" effect, where you essentially have people who will ultimately have no influence on a world and people who could be influential being cut down by bad dice rolls, trolls/hammerdwarves and people who decided to not give a fuck or just really dislike someone else. Now, feel free to disagree or challenge this opinion, because my experience is pretty damn shallow in this regard.
The other issue is on the staff end; it takes time for staff to check every little RP related thing. It can also cause some issues if a player's client is glitchy. In particular, whenever I tried to enter a character backstory or bulletin board message into Apoc something went wrong. A little anecdote, but something I remember keenly. If staff aren't focusing on every little RP aspect, their might be more room to build the game and code.
Second, and I think this is very important, is that this game needs a novel codebase. Armageddon's codebase was meant for a hack and slash game that was tweaked and adapted to the point where a ton of staffers didn't know major aspects of it, as well as refusing to address SERIOUS problems in the game (Strength being the god stat for anything that wasn't a wizard).
Making a theoretical Arm Clone less of an RP and more of a Game might have advantages, but naturally some disadvantages as well. I for one can see it being quite hard to maintain a sense of drama if death is a slap on the wrist as opposed to final. Hard to get rid of a Defiler if he'll just come back to life later.
Anyway, this was mostly stream of consciousness brought on by a long day. I've probably missed a lot and I really just want to hear what others think.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 25, 2022 7:11:52 GMT -5
I think most people who set out to remake Arm end up making games that are too similar to Arm, which ends up creating a couple of problems:
1) Their game's weaknesses are basically the same as Arm's weaknesses. Arm's unrestricted permadeath by random PK or NPC accidents leads to stories being cut short, and now your game's unrestricted permadeath has the same issue. Your "collaborative storytelling" is full of half-told stories, cut short because someone got unlucky and walked into a mekillot just before their router disconnected. People revert to RPing personal drama stories because those have a better chance of being concluded and are relatively low-stakes. The only aspect of storytelling in a clone that you can change is making sure not to shoot down players' bold initiatives to tell world-changing stories.
2) They attract Armageddon players. Not a dig at their various "quirks", if you will, but rather that at best, your game will realistically be a rest stop for Armageddon players seeking to take a break from their "main game" after a rough death. The more similar your game is to Armageddon, the more likely this is to happen.
I think a Dark Sun MUSH could be wildly successful, and a dev could take Arxgame or AresMUSH and make a basic working game in 3-6 months. But then you'd have to be okay with a game where permadeath isn't controlled by the code, but a staff-managed natural consequence of a long-running story.
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Post by lechuck on Mar 25, 2022 22:05:42 GMT -5
I don't think it's realistic for anyone to make a new game that qualifies as an "Arm clone" and actually succeed. If someone could wave a magic wand and will a game into existence that's based on Armageddon and has a similar playerbase, maybe; but when a new game has to build up a playerbase from scratch, no, that's not gonna happen. For all its faults, Armageddon is still there for anyone interested in that type of game, and people generally won't choose some new game with almost no players over the established one that, albeit in decline, features far more players than any new MUD will. Player numbers are by far the most important factor in whether or not a roleplaying MUD is worth playing, so if its main selling point is that it's an Arm clone but it has a tenth of the players, almost nobody will see the appeal.
A game similar to Armageddon, but not branded as a clone, could succeed. It would have to be interesting from the get-go and offer something that can't be found on Arm or any of the other established games of the genre, but it's not impossible. I think the first step would be to move out of the Athas-like bubble. It could still be a desert world and whatnot, but it has to be sufficiently different from Armageddon (and Apocalypse) that the difference itself is a selling point. For instance, Atonement shared many similarities with Armageddon: a barren wasteland (the Moon, in that case) with resource scarcity and gritty, ruthless living; but it was different enough as well with its sci-fi setting, guns, etc. Not that a hypothetical new RPI needs to be sci-fi or modern, but it's an example of how it has to offer a playing experience that isn't just Armageddon But Called Something Else.
And it definitely needs a better codebase than Arm. Armageddon is so old and outdated that it hurts. Still having a class-based system and wildly RNG stats in this day and age is frankly embarrassing. The opensource RPI codebase (known from Shadows of Isildur, Atonement and Parallel) is a much better alternative, although it has some stability issues. There are too many things wrong with Arm's ancient code to use that for another game that has to win players over from scratch, so if anyone was to try to make a new RPI, use something else. I haven't kept up on the FutureMUD experiment, and I suspect it has petered out, but that was my last hope for a new generation of innovative RPIs. Anyone know if there's still anything going on there? Anyone talk to Japheth?
All that said, I still think there's a market for games that adhere to the fundamental principles that define Armageddon: permadeath, tough gameplay, etc. It's the Dark Souls of MUDs and it has its appeals; but if you try to make something too similar in terms of setting and code, it's unlikely to be better than Arm, for all its faults. At the end of the day, Armageddon still has some 160ish weekly logins and over half a dozen staff members, and even if most of the community is rotten, that's an extremely high bar for any upstart to compete with unless the new thing has something truly unique and exciting that'll draw players in. Apocalypse did not, at all.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Mar 26, 2022 18:59:09 GMT -5
I think we need to define what an 'arm clone' is but I think lechuck kinda has the right idea, similar but not exactly the same.
Apocalypse Mud was an Arm clone. It used the exact same code and even though it made some pretty substantial changes and additions it was still, for all purposes, just 'Armageddon with occasionally neat features'. The magic system is horrible in a game where 90% of the plots generally end up revolving around magic. You're playing a game that has plots that would fit a Mush but your only way to interact with the world is via limited mud commands. You're given DnD scenarios but the only solutions are 'hack' and 'slash' and 'leave the room'.
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Post by psyxypher on Mar 27, 2022 13:07:30 GMT -5
I think we need to define what an 'arm clone' is but I think lechuck kinda has the right idea, similar but not exactly the same. Apocalypse Mud was an Arm clone. It used the exact same code and even though it made some pretty substantial changes and additions it was still, for all purposes, just 'Armageddon with occasionally neat features'. The magic system is horrible in a game where 90% of the plots generally end up revolving around magic. You're playing a game that has plots that would fit a Mush but your only way to interact with the world is via limited mud commands. You're given DnD scenarios but the only solutions are 'hack' and 'slash' and 'leave the room'. I'd define an "Arm Clone" as any MUD game that attempted to give the "Dark Sun Experience". It does need to be a clone, per se, as I'm using the term in line with "Doom clone". Anyway, I don't think the magic system is bad, per se (I think the execution works great for a medium where Vancian magic would work terribly). Bur your criticism of there not being any sequence breaking in learning magic is pretty on point. The lore on some spells seems inconsistent, since the "Sphere" words are supposed to refer to actual schools of magic. Yeah the system could be a lot better. You don't need people to be born Airbenders, as you would put it. Dark Sun Clerics were pretty hardcore, literally throwing themselves off cliffs or jumping into fire to show their devotion.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Mar 28, 2022 18:08:30 GMT -5
I think the issue arises that magic in Dark sun was never really this 'words only' system, it was from my understanding just regular DnD magic. Your sorcerer studies ancient languages and barters with astral entities for more knowledge. Sorcerers eventually had to start other world traveling to expand their knowledge.
The current system is brain dead and only works in a game where
1: It doesn't take 15 days to do what you want to do (IRL time played, not IRl days that have gone by) 2: It isn't in a RP intensive game.
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Post by psyxypher on Mar 29, 2022 0:35:22 GMT -5
Wizards in Dark Sun didn't have to barter with elementals for their advanced magic (though the third portion of the Dragon Metamorphosis required they cooperate with them) but they would basically have to study, study and study some more if they couldn't find any appropriate magical texts. This is why you'd have stuff like Defilers bartering with Elves or diving deep into ancient ruins in order to find magical texts. They also had to keep it secret as all hell, and the books went into great detail about how you'd keep a "spellbook" without any actual books. Stuff like weaving patterns into your robe, stone tablets, knots made of giant's hair, etc.
If I had to suggest a system for it, I'd say make a decent amount of spells learnable by just grinding, but make it so if you're willing to risk diving deep into caves filled with horrific monsters you can either learn stuff faster or learn some spells you normally couldn't. This would have the effect of making "hotspots" a thing where anyone in the know would hang around if they were out hunting mages, something that to my knowledge did or does exist in Arm.
Maybe you could have a sort of system where you collect artifacts and glean information from them. This could create an interesting dynamic where some wizard hires a scavenger to pick up stuff for him.
I'm actually really curious of how one would keep themselves secret as a Defiler for any extended length of time. Like, if you weren't ass deep in the wilderness you'd be leaving ash circles whenever you needed to charge up your mana again where someone WILL find them.
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ibusoe
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Post by ibusoe on Mar 29, 2022 15:13:01 GMT -5
One of the problems with Arm was that they had a retention problem. There are ways to deal with this but I'm not sure if this is the space to go into this. Part of the problem was a midunderstanding where people role up a character basically wanting a MUSH experience (e.g. Noble's Aide) trying to jam alongside people who basically want the game to be Mad Max.
These two goals (minigames?) can be interfaced by making it so that you have to pay for safety. Safety should be relatively available, but you should have to pay for it. It should be expensive to loiter in the parts of the game where armed guards are common.
Instead what we get, the Noble Aide-type characters want to think that they're running the game, while the other half are people who if they were honest basically want a more or less RP-supplemented hack and slash game. Without making the MUSH types pay for the safety that they're enjoying in the game, any time that they tick off one of the grittier castes, they are bound to cry foul when someone just straight up robs or PKs them. Noble Aide-types should appreciate the safety that they enjoy and the way to get them to appreciate having power and safety is to get them to pay for it.
But the problem that I just described is the smaller of two problems that I want to talk about. The larger problem, related to the above is that staff have made themself too essential to the game. Want to do something cool? You have to put in an application. Want Karma? You get that from staff. Want to do something nifty? You have to wish up. When something doesn't go a player's way, it's very tempting to blame the staff for this. Think how much it hurts our feelings when we feel like staff is giving one player a magic sword, but then we can't have one. While there is probably a partially valid rationale for who gets the magic sword, staff have made themselves far too essential and too involved in the process. These are mere design problems. If you were in the process of cloning Arm, what you would want to do is to take Arm and begin automating the parts that require staff involvement. Make it more worthwhile to form a little team of dudes who can accomplish stuff on their own. It shouldn't take four years to learn to play something like a sorcerer. 98% of the game should be learnable within a year. Sorcerers should be made less powerful (or something) and harder to play so that there would be less need to regulate them into the ground. Instead of saying, "The Borsail Crimson Wyverns are an elite, secretive group of tough guys and our role play standards are very high...". No. Have fewer roles like this because it only brings players into conflict when staff think that they know how to play your character better than you do.
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Post by psyxypher on Mar 29, 2022 16:46:30 GMT -5
One of the problems with Arm was that they had a retention problem. There are ways to deal with this but I'm not sure if this is the space to go into this. Part of the problem was a midunderstanding where people role up a character basically wanting a MUSH experience (e.g. Noble's Aide) trying to jam alongside people who basically want the game to be Mad Max. These two goals (minigames?) can be interfaced by making it so that you have to pay for safety. Safety should be relatively available, but you should have to pay for it. It should be expensive to loiter in the parts of the game where armed guards are common. Instead what we get, the Noble Aide-type characters want to think that they're running the game, while the other half are people who if they were honest basically want a more or less RP-supplemented hack and slash game. Without making the MUSH types pay for the safety that they're enjoying in the game, any time that they tick off one of the grittier castes, they are bound to cry foul when someone just straight up robs or PKs them. Noble Aide-types should appreciate the safety that they enjoy and the way to get them to appreciate having power and safety is to get them to pay for it. But the problem that I just described is the smaller of two problems that I want to talk about. The larger problem, related to the above is that staff have made themself too essential to the game. Want to do something cool? You have to put in an application. Want Karma? You get that from staff. Want to do something nifty? You have to wish up. When something doesn't go a player's way, it's very tempting to blame the staff for this. Think how much it hurts our feelings when we feel like staff is giving one player a magic sword, but then we can't have one. While there is probably a partially valid rationale for who gets the magic sword, staff have made themselves far too essential and too involved in the process. These are mere design problems. If you were in the process of cloning Arm, what you would want to do is to take Arm and begin automating the parts that require staff involvement. Make it more worthwhile to form a little team of dudes who can accomplish stuff on their own. It shouldn't take four years to learn to play something like a sorcerer. 98% of the game should be learnable within a year. Sorcerers should be made less powerful (or something) and harder to play so that there would be less need to regulate them into the ground. Instead of saying, "The Borsail Crimson Wyverns are an elite, secretive group of tough guys and our role play standards are very high...". No. Have fewer roles like this because it only brings players into conflict when staff think that they know how to play your character better than you do. Part of me thinks that the concept of Karma (in this theoretical Arm clone) should be removed. Instead make it so you can play what you want (with some restrictions; I personally think stuff like a Mul Sorcerer would be both too imbalanced and not exactly lore friendly) but make it so players suffer any and all consequences. If you're going to be a Sorcerer you need to be super careful if you go anywhere remotely civilized or you'll have Templars spawning on your ass. To my knowledge there used to be (and possibly still is) a system where Gathering would spawn Templars or city guards. HellMOO does something similar for criminals and certain racial mutation types. Though I'm loathe to use it for comparisons mainly because my knowledge of the game is entirely second hand. What will happen is one of two things, and I think things need to be tested in order to see what happens: 1. Sorcerers will be rare, because people will need to work lonely existences 90% of the time and the other 10% need to be paranoid out the ass someone will kill them (your best bet being some PCs who you'll provide with magic in exchange for not ganking you in your sleep). 2. Sorcerers will be common, because people will know how to game the system. Preferably we want to avoid this.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Mar 30, 2022 12:11:44 GMT -5
Wizards in Dark Sun didn't have to barter with elementals for their advanced magic (though the third portion of the Dragon Metamorphosis required they cooperate with them) but they would basically have to study, study and study some more if they couldn't find any appropriate magical texts. After level 20 or so, this may have been a 2e thing maybe a 4e thing, you had to actively study the other realms to get more power. Shit like the grey/black (I believe that was the astral/ethereal). Turning into a dragon also required bartering with demons and what not. Avangion didn't but you needed to not be a dick.
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Post by psyxypher on Mar 30, 2022 13:13:18 GMT -5
Wizards in Dark Sun didn't have to barter with elementals for their advanced magic (though the third portion of the Dragon Metamorphosis required they cooperate with them) but they would basically have to study, study and study some more if they couldn't find any appropriate magical texts. After level 20 or so, this may have been a 2e thing maybe a 4e thing, you had to actively study the other realms to get more power. Shit like the grey/black (I believe that was the astral/ethereal). Turning into a dragon also required bartering with demons and what not. Avangion didn't but you needed to not be a dick. Something on these lines. I'm not familiar with having to study the Grey/Black (outside of 3.5 Athas.org stuff) but you did need to cooperate with elemental creatures to advance your Dragon Metamorphosis. You also needed to convince a bunch of 10 Hit Dice+ creatures to willingly die to fuel your transformation. Which is either another example of lack of playtesting or it was intended to threaten to kill a LOT of people. Granted by that point, you're powerful enough that you were strong enough to back up any and all threats you make. Not something that'd work great in a MUD, IMO. The Grey was the Athasian name for the Ethereal Plane (and the plane of the dead) and the Black was the name for the Plane of Shadows (some kind of mirror plane, which was described as separating everything that does and doesn't exist).
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ibusoe
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Post by ibusoe on Apr 25, 2022 18:23:42 GMT -5
If I was going to resuscitate the undead game, then I would start working on campaign background materials for a Darksun Mud. I'd do something like set it in a remote part of the desert near the Tablelands. The theme of the campaign would be a mini-civilization that was connected through a desert passage achieved with the use of an archipelago of oasis.
About twenty years ago, a critical failure happened in the oasis network and one of the essential nodes in the path of travel dried up, mysteriously and overnight. Since then communication between the Peninsula and the Tablelands has effectively been cut off.
Things rolled along for the first couple of years or so, however with time anxiety about the waning prospects of reestablishing communication with the main land began to infect the thinking of both leader and policy maker alike. This resulted in a civil war between two rival factions of the predominant religious cult, two similar sects of the Kalakian Order.
The rest of the Templars had allied themselves with one faction or another in order to avoid the unhappy possibility of being left without an ally in the civil war. Maybe about two years ago sounder minds got control of the leadership of both factions, resulting in a ceasefire.
So this would be a post-war isolation apocalypse, one of the funner apocalypse.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Apr 26, 2022 12:11:26 GMT -5
I'd probably do a Shetno/neighboring tribals situation. I don't think what Not-Arm had was a mistake, I really liked it. Whether I think there should flat out be 0 guards or anything, I dunno. Maybe very VERY few.
A small local town that has enough water to have a reason to exist but is too far/not resource intense enough for a city state to justify ownership. All of the towns rulers (We can figure out which method is 'cooler' for a town, it could be an elected council [The veiled alliance was a democracy so who cares at this point], a duel, decided by bloodline and marriage, voted on by a council of the powerful people in town , etc etc. Hell you could let the current mayor/whoever decide how the next one will be elected with some crazy bureaucratic bullshit that if they don't decide a method the other ruling parties do and they can decide how often. Do some wacky shit) The point being: Any level of the government that is represented in the town should be fully playable, achievable, and other things. Not this 'You can do ANYTHING*!' shit where the * is 'You can't'. If there is a member of the local government who is in charge of the town purse, you should be 100% able to get his job. Whether through politics, getting elected honestly/hired, or because you stabbed him in a fucking alley and fabricated a credible background that you should have his job, and threw some money at the current mayor/person who decides to give you that job.
The most 'important' person in the town should be some poor shit merchant family member who's family sent them there to 'represent the interest of the family' even if the area has very little resources the merchant house should care about. Shit like: Sending a Salarri to the Black Wing outpost to represent Salarri interests. Who gives a shit about Salarri? I don't. Can they still politic and intrigue? Yes. Are they important? No. Not really.
Templars/soldiers showing up should be an HRPT level event. Why are they here? What are their goals? There should be actual tangible paths this plot can take. Not 'Soldiers show up, stare, then leave'. Or 'Soldiers show up, kill people, leave'. There should be actual stuff that could happen. Maybe someone is silver tongued enough to convince the Templar that: Yes, the area is valuable (Maybe they lie, and the Templar is willing to research into it. Maybe they know of a hidden resource, maybe they propose a crazy ass trade route through neighboring areas that wasn't considered previously). Why would someone do this? A cushy desk clerk job, money, prestige, power. Maybe someone wants to do the opposite: Try to get the neighboring city state not to fuck with this place at all. There's a variety of methods to doing this, the most dangerous but possibly worthwhile: Put up a resistance. While it's easy to go 'Haha the city state would just stomp them' if they are able to stand up to half giant soldiers and a Templar or two throwing magic, and the location is out there enough, no one is going to go fuck with them. It simply isn't worth it unless they send a large group of magic users to deal with the town (Sending an army requires supply lines. Supply lines through vast deserts eat money. Eating money is bad.)
I'm basically describing a DnD game because Arm Staffers got people so fucked up they don't know what a plot /could be/ they just know 'Staff dictates everything that happens and me go along with it'. If that plot had happened in Arm literally nothing anyone could do would change the outcome. Maybe a few more or a few less people die, but if staff wanted the Templars to go "Hmm we take this land' they are taking that land. It would be some NPC Templar doing it (Even if they let a PC Templar show up, if the PC Templar decides against it some Red Robe would show up and go 'Hmmm no we take land /me flies away') Then some player would complain on the forums how nothing could have possibly changed the outcome and staff would vaguebook some bullshit like 'Oh you don't know what goes on behind the scenes!' Nothing. NOTHING goes on behind the scenes very few people actually tangibly benefit from half the shit that happens, if they do benefit there's a 1/2 chance that they actually don't but 'realistically' they would but it never happens. Shit like 'Ah, having Salarr interests in this area would help me'. They do it (Whether because staff helps or not), then nothing. Then their staffer changes out a week later and it's like they /really/ never did anything.
Not sure what I'd describe it, probably just 'Slice of life Apocalypse'. Let shit happen, have a larger over arching idea of possible plot points. If those plot points (WHEN those plot points) get destroyed, incorporate a player into it or come up with new ones. Damn the evil sorcerer who was supposed to show up to 5 more RPTs died early because we can't come up with a good plot? Give the fucker who killed him some minor sorcery because 'It's a fucking game crazier shit has happened' and now we get to see what they do with it. Damn they just tavern sit all day, well do something else or make his life hell for the fun of it (In hopefully, a fun way)
I'd also have a completely different magic system, actual Dark Sun clerics (Go meet an elemental, learn magic. Fuck this char gen shit), learnable magic with a non spell-word based system (Hate spell words. The 'Power levels' and reaches shit is fine, but for the spells themselves? Miss me with that), Dwarves that don't constantly need a focus (With mechanical benefits if they do have one), Non mentally handicapped half giants (Still kinda stupid), non bipolar half elves, I'd force at gun point elves to be even bigger shit bags than they were prior, and I can't think of anything else that's 'Dark Sun' that neither games actually bothered to do. Oh yeah! My favorite part. Literally one of the biggest parts of the setting: NON DEMONIZED PSIONICS AGHHHHHH. Tired of playing Dark Sun Ips where you use mind powers and someone shits the bed. I'd let every PC have a wild talent but I'd have it apparent in lore that not everyone has one. I'd maybe let people choose in char gen to not have one if they'd rather have a stat bonus in something. I'd probably have sorcery/psionics/technically cleric stuff but thats less learned and more given, behind staff commands or another person teaching it via teach/some other command. Anyone abusing it gets slapped, support staff actually using it otherwise it never gets used. I'd let spiritual/drug using types MAYBE get something to proc at 1 point in the skill if they try a lot, but actually finding a teacher or school I'd be fine with just slapping skills on someone over time. I'd probably do a soft cap at like Jman for everything (Meaning if you wanna go learn sorcery, psionics, cleric powers? All that shit? Like a weird jack of all trades? Go for it who cares.) but anything higher would requires plots and shit. Specialized tinctures, items, etc. Would love a system where your skill is dropped X points without a specific focus (A psi crystal kinda thing).
Anyway there's my autistic rant about how I'm better than every other Mud
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ibusoe
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Post by ibusoe on May 1, 2022 11:51:31 GMT -5
Templars/soldiers showing up should be an HRPT level event. Why are they here? What are their goals? There should be actual tangible paths this plot can take. Not 'Soldiers show up, stare, then leave'. Or 'Soldiers show up, kill people, leave'. There should be actual stuff that could happen. ...Why would someone do this? A cushy desk clerk job, money, prestige, power. Maybe someone wants to do the opposite: Try to get the neighboring city state not to fuck with this place at all. There's a variety of methods to doing this, the most dangerous but possibly worthwhile: Put up a resistance. While it's easy to go 'Haha the city state would just stomp them' if they are able to stand up to half giant soldiers and a Templar or two throwing magic, and the location is out there enough, no one is going to go fuck with them. It simply isn't worth it unless they send a large group of magic users to deal with the town ...Not sure what I'd describe it, probably just 'Slice of life Apocalypse'. Let (events)... happen, have a larger over arching idea of possible plot points. If those plot points get destroyed, incorporate a player into it or come up with new ones. Damn the evil sorcerer who was supposed to show up to 5 more RPTs died early because we can't come up with a good plot? Give the fucker who killed him some minor sorcery because 'It's a fucking game crazier shit has happened' and now we get to see what they do with it. I have an alternative take on this. From the way I look at it, the more you increase the responsibility of players the happier they will be with their own lot in the game. For example, if a clan fails to generate a lot of money, then cutting down on their amount of free water will I think make players happier. If they care about the clan, they'll be happy to spend twenty minutes per real life week grebbing for it. If they don't care about the clan, they should leave the clan and go sign up for something that they will end up caring about. Giving players a stake in the results will generate interest. I'd also have a completely different magic system, actual Dark Sun clerics, learnable magic with a non spell-word based system (without spell words)...,I'd force ... elves to be even bigger (jerks) than they were prior, and I can't think of anything else that's 'Dark Sun' that neither games actually bothered to do. Oh yeah! My favorite part. Literally one of the biggest parts of the setting: NON DEMONIZED PSIONICS AGHHHHHH. Tired of playing Dark Sun Ips Yeah, the reboot not only will have semi-legal psionics, but the psionics schools will be PC-run at times. Psionics will also be the gate way to druidism, both the elemental, paraelemental and royal seminaries, and to sorcery. Mage battles should be held primarily through psionics in my opinion. OK, I'm going to set up a copy of CoffeeMUD in a few weeks. Let's get Grumble to run the game?
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Post by Azerbanjani on May 1, 2022 22:28:14 GMT -5
"Psionics will also be the gate way to druidism, both the elemental, paraelemental and royal seminaries, and to sorcery. Mage battles should be held primarily through psionics in my opinion."
This is something I don't think Dark Sun ever actually mentioned but makes a lot more sense. To get clericism you have to contact an Elemental. Elementals seldom are just chilling around (Though thematically? Sure. You've been spurned in the desert, you call out for help, the earth responds and gives you a task [Go bury yourself for 3 days and live], you do it) A psion who has abilities to fuck with things would have a much easier time bargaining with elementals. They also would be more reliable. (Though with the DnD class system TBH a warrior is more attractive, more HP)
Most Sorcerers knew a smidgen of psionics from what I understood but it makes a bit more sense for them to be more likely to pursue sorcery. I imagine most are pursuing defiling simply because base rules people barely know preserving exists but I imagine there are a lot doing the 'Hiding my sorcery as psionics' thing (I loved that system).
Druids are neat.
I forgot to mention the 'Clerics are allowed in the cities and generally well liked by the populace' thing as well. Everyone loves the guy who can make them water. None of this Armageddon 'I hate the water temple' shit.
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