punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098 
|
Post by punished ppurg on Aug 27, 2019 16:25:32 GMT -5
Welcome to my reflections on Armageddon's most recent PBRPT. If you're mad about plot details being posted, you came into the Spoilers subforum on your own. Blame yourself.
First, let's take a look at how the staffers advertised this RPT; and let's try to understand the impetus and the background around this event. To save you the trauma of going on the GDB, here's a picture of the announcement thread.
Instead of calling this an HRPT, Shabago chose to call this a "Pretty Bloody Recommended Playing Time." It definitely was bloody. If the staff are seeking to measure the RPT's success by the turnover of developed and heavily invested characters, then this was a clear success. The overwhelming focus on combat wasn't to the best merits of both the RPI codebase, or in the best interests of the players participating.
Apparently, there's a big clutch of cannibals out there in the salt flats and everyone has to go out and defeat them...  Wonderful. Having got the memo to avoid using spiders or gith for the thousandth time, the staff decided to summon a clutch of NPC cannibal defilers; and let me tell you why this is so tiring to me. This is, by the textbook definition of the word, a contrived conflict: there is no narrative arc, nor is there any great Boon for the setting or the players (and by extension their characters) for participating in this conflict: aside from shoddy DIKU-based mass combat spam. As you can see in the GDB announcement thread, Shabago plays at guilting the reticent by posing "Will you hide away behind the walls?" with le funny Monty Python gif. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people are wishing they had stayed behind instead of throwing themselves into this pointless meatgrinder.
Observing and hearing the reactions to this alleged RPT, I've reinforced my conclusion that you can put the players of Armageddon into two buckets: those who invest in their character, and those that don't. That isn't to say an individual is always solidly in one camp as some sort of insult: someone could have an inspired character concept or roll really high stats on their new character, and then decide to put more effort into their development than usual. The others? They treat the game, the world, and those around them as just things to entertain them: there's no higher cognitive level of shared storytelling, roleplay, or expectation of a compelling narrative from these guys. They're on autopilot. The MUD might as well be back in 1991, doing the same old "comfortable" thing (which, amazingly, requires no work or effort for our unpaid volunteer staff team).
But I digress back to the point of the RPT. These boredom of meatgrinding conflict, of narratively inconsequential death, of contrived situations of spectacle with no tangible or lasting outcome: they condition players to be in the autopilot bucket. This is a travesty for role-playing games simply because issues grow exponentially the less your playerbase puts effort into producing any narrative of value. By the nature of these RPTs, they always attract the sponsored and most developed, "high ranking" roles in the game world at that time; and usually due to the requirements of their clan, these developed roles are expected to jump through the hoops and participate in this nonsense. I'll tell you that it is the bent arms of these players, not the nonsense scenario, that gives any depth of meaning to this pseudo-conflict. It certainly isn't found on the staffer's side of echo fireworks, codedly ignorant spawning of hostile NPC fodder, and state machine plot nodes that will never be influenced by the lowly players participating.
But the worst of all experiences, I reckon, is to have your character that you've invested in die in one of these clusterfucks. They die for nothing! The preplanned ending to this whole kerfuffle would have been reached without their sacrifice — which will be of no ultimate consequence. And the more players that die, the more the curtain is peeled back on this set dressing of a contrived, busywork patsy play. As the playerbase has no agency in the pre-planning of a story, here the ultimate blame resides solely in the storytellers: they have a fertile sandbox with infinite possibilities, but continue to tell basic, two-bit stories of cartoon villain-of-the-week conflict. At the end of the day, everything needs to fall back into the same place it was beforehand so that we can continue on with the least amount of maintenance or world-changing. Why? What compels someone to tell a story that is, effectively, no story at all? If there were stakes at play or gains to be made, the players could have some solace knowing that their character's life ended while reaching for that gambit; but that is not the case. Indeed, a meaningless death in a supposedly fertile land of "meaning" is an absolute failure of storytelling. It retroactively poisons and unmakes the significance of the character that died.
And so these exercises remove players from the invested bucket, and plant them deep into the autopilot bucket — if they decide to return to the game at all.
Make no mistake, this PBRPT has been a failure. Surely some of the blame resides in the sponsored roles that participated (one templar in particular, spectacularly); however, the burden falls on the storytellers' shoulders most. They are incompetent, in a word, at their very title. Do away with these "evil has cropped up and is put down" spectacles, and produce something that would pass a creative writing English exam. Put stakes at play beyond the investment and worth of the characters who have (foolishly) come to participate in your firework show. Tell a story that is more than simply noise instead of silence. Prove me wrong!
|
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,515
|
Post by Jeshin on Aug 27, 2019 16:49:07 GMT -5
What was the final outcome of the shebang?
|
|
mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,695
|
Post by mehtastic on Aug 27, 2019 17:09:33 GMT -5
"Cannibal defilers". lol.
I've been wondering if someone would break down this complete mess, so thank you for actually doing so. What I got out of it second-hand was largely the same reaction.
My honest opinion is that Shabago (who, btw, somehow is an administrator) and the storytellers either don't read, or read so shallowly that they don't understand how plots are actually written. "Evil appears and is put down" is the plot arc that defines high fantasy in its infancy. The genre has progressed in decades since. Writers do better and readers deserve better. Armageddon's players are no exception.
If they want to see how an actual multiplayer game plot is written, they should look to other games that provide better examples.
|
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,515
|
Post by Jeshin on Aug 27, 2019 17:13:07 GMT -5
I believe this cannibal encampment might have been the culmination or the continuation of that... Apply to be an unlucky person role that we can't tell you more about.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2019 5:27:23 GMT -5
I dont play enough noble and leadership roles to have seen most of this plot arc.
in 2009 and 2010, there were a series of ongoing plots around a tribe called the Madrek. There was a bunch of scouting and build up minor points that was working towards what looked like a Salarr vs Madrek conflict. I lost my long term southern pc and played in the north for a while. It looked to me like this plot crashed and was forgotten. The cannibals were referred to as Madrek in this event, and it seemed like there had been a recent buildup between Borsail and the Madrek.
I know nothing about the earlier Lord of Ash storyline from Halaster or pre-Halaster times.
I know almost nothing about the plane of Nilaz plot where Hasan was bargaining with a demon and one of his pc underlings was being converted from a whiran to a defiler during the plotline.
There have been storylines around the current crop of templars that I know little about, but have no desire to spoil. I saw definite signs that this set of storylines was being built on, and has been running for at least a year.
I'm a little frustrated at the story being available to few if any players, but maybe if I played year + nobles and templars I'd see the larger presentation.
On the mechanical flipside, I dont have much sympathy for people who lost pcs in this rpt. We knew it was coming. It had happened before. On top of that pattern of clan reset / tpk / whatever, had you asked yourself what a raider victory could look like?
I dont think Allanak was going to lose. Failure would have killed lots of southern pc leaders, but there were "only" blue robes in the field.
With that many templars and gemmed in the field, most of the power mechanics got played. In one fight there were ten shields of mists in play and at at least six mon drovian weapons. One human pc was buffed with some combination of spells, spice, and rangz as to hit harder than one of the half giants. Archery and backstab were very hard to counter. I suspect more pcs died to pc archery than anything else.
No one had enough cures for terradin. I saw wek-pav elementals, pav and sul mounts, chain lighting, sandstorm, summon, walls, healing, several elemental shields, a couple nilaz spells, which pc has full access to drovian magic, etc.
In short, I think we got our high power, no glass ceiling combat event. Anyone who sided against Allanak and are annoyed about losing a pc, I'm sorry, but you havent been following the storyteller rhetoric on "appropriate world response".
I will say it was a freakin horrible idea to let summon back into the game. I do have pity for the players who lost pcs that way. The precedent the use of this spell set was both obvious and stifling. Tell me with a straight face you hadnt once considering using that spell, that way, yourself.
|
|
mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,695
|
Post by mehtastic on Aug 28, 2019 6:22:51 GMT -5
On the one hand, only gamble what you can afford to lose. Combat RPTs have combat, and potentially, death. If you don't want your character to die, just don't log in.
On the other hand, "only gamble what you can afford to lose" applies to staff too. The staff treat the vast majority of PCs as disposable. If you're a secret plot PC that got in on a special call for an RPT, you are super-disposable. Sponsored roles are more or less disposable, especially if they're not performing up to standard and if the impact of their death would further some story.
The staff decided to drop the low fantasy they've been clinging to for over a decade and embraced the power of high-fantasy, spell-slinging super-events. They do this from time to time, when things don't seem "interesting" enough. Then there's a backlash about how there's "too much magic" in the game and how "only magickers get to get involved in plots". Then things go back to normal stagnation. If your character survived the RPT, prepare to be bored, or get killed in a post-RPT riot that serves as a "world reaction" to the PC's brazen embrace of magic. Staff can afford to lose the low fantasy, and they can afford to lose player interest if they think they can get it back later.
Staff would never let Allanak lose, because staff can't afford to lose Allanak. They can't afford to lose coveted noble and templar positions, they can't afford to lose the gemmed as a plot device, etc. Staff would never expose the story to too many players, because the more of it that's out there, the more likely it's going to leak. I won't delve into it publicly too much, but staff have taken measures to prevent leaks from the staff team, or at least catch them as they occur.
Summon is pretty dumb, and so is gate. That being said, I look forward to the anti-magic backlash when it inevitably happens. Shabago has already been busy silencing player dissent on the GDB.
|
|
faroukel
Displaced Tuluki
What's a story without a villain?
Posts: 201
|
Post by faroukel on Aug 28, 2019 7:56:36 GMT -5
Gotta admit...even if the plot was wonk (dont know Arm)...at least the guy tried to do -something-? I think that in itself is a rarity in the RPI world (when it comes to putting on large scale, staff-led RPTs).
I don't know the particulars, don't understand what a templar is supposed to do, and so on...but I think the hearts in the right place.
I guess you can only hope that the host takes away what went well, what went bad, and improves.
|
|
mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,695
|
Post by mehtastic on Aug 28, 2019 9:51:20 GMT -5
Gotta admit...even if the plot was wonk (dont know Arm)...at least the guy tried to do -something-? I think that in itself is a rarity in the RPI world (when it comes to putting on large scale, staff-led RPTs). I don't know the particulars, don't understand what a templar is supposed to do, and so on...but I think the hearts in the right place. I guess you can only hope that the host takes away what went well, what went bad, and improves. Absolutely. It's a rarity in the RPI world to see large scale, staff-led RPTs because staff of these games tend to have a policy of minimum effort for maximum impact. In other words, they want their efforts to reach as many players as possible, thus extracting as much value from their own work fot the game. The thing is, Armageddon staff (as a body) have repeatedly made the mistake that thinking that players with PCs at the top of the hierarchy should be involved with plot details while the general playerbase is fine with just seeing the end result, whatever that may be - the grand, final battle or whatever. The thing is, the individuals who make up staff (as a body) constantly change over the course of time. Staff (as individuals) repeatedly fail to study the mistakes of their predecessors and don't seek to do better than them, even though doing better than them would be relatively easy, considering they have the benefit of hindsight. So yes, I hope the staff don't get discouraged from trying to do better, but I'm bemused by how little staff seem to reflect both on their own past work and that of their predecessors. If they do self-reflect, it certainly doesn't show. |
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,515
|
Post by Jeshin on Aug 28, 2019 10:59:06 GMT -5
You know the staff could probably make magick scarier and balance high tier RPTs by just applying what they do with rangz.
Oh there's 5 gickers in here casting. Okay wild magic surge, the fucking elements are going haywire because all these motherfuckers are channeling energy from their linked planes.
OMG WE SUMMONED A MON TIER MONSTER THAT IS ATTACKING US BECAUSE OF OUR HUBRIS USING ALL THIS MAGIC IN ONE SPOT
Just make magic disruptive to the fabric of the material plane. Planes are canon in this game, they exist, people go to them.
|
|
mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,695
|
Post by mehtastic on Aug 28, 2019 11:30:22 GMT -5
Don't count on staff to make changes to the game that hinder their own gameplay experience or that of their friends.
|
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,515
|
Post by Jeshin on Aug 28, 2019 12:23:12 GMT -5
I don't, I'm just pointing out easy solutions. They already have an ifcheck if you wear to many magic items you start humming. Just have an ifcheck for # of spells or # of different elements cast in a room within a certain timer, give it a range so it can't be -to- easily gamed.
|
|
punished ppurg
GDB Superstar
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Posts: 1,098
|
Post by punished ppurg on Aug 28, 2019 12:38:38 GMT -5
What? And give a reason for congregations of magickers to be feared? Surely not, Jeshin.
As an auxiliary statement: let the fallout of this RPT re-ink the statement that should be tattooed into the forehead of all the game staff right now. DIKU is not designed to facilitate large-scale player combat. GURPS (the bones of your code balance) is not designed for large-scale player conflict when operating out of turn. Alas, the capability to retool the game to have some sort of "emote combat" that other RPIs use is most definitely not possible with the current crop of developers.
|
|
faroukel
Displaced Tuluki
What's a story without a villain?
Posts: 201
|
Post by faroukel on Aug 28, 2019 12:51:14 GMT -5
while my understanding of actual code is limited, Im not so sure about the comment of Diku not being designed for large scale player combats. I mean rather, I agree , that its very unlikely the DikuMUD team thought their code would eventually host 100's of players potentially at the same time all interacting with the engine, but perhaps, they did? Don't know.
That said, I think the problem with hosting large scale RPTs on any Diku based mud isn't necessarily Diku, its planning. Most mass rpts I've been involved with as a player, were designed to stuff as many people into one room and reduce the amount of admins needed to run the plot. Basically, the least amount of resources for the biggest supposed bang for the buck.
Never really works that way. Crashes, lost in garble, etc etc.
As a one-time RPT hoster, always tried to have partners in on a RPT staff-side. Never plan for everyone to be in one room. Use wiznet to communicate with other staffers. Even better, use the online portal to refresh room logs to see actually what is happening in the other room. Have someone on hand who can just react to any twist or turn. Never railroad, and leave it open. And so on.
What if you don't have these resources? Scale back the RPT, trim down the concept. Postpone. Don't try to barrel forward on your own, or at least, don't be surprised when these posts crop up when you do. And when the posts do get tossed around, and they inevitably will no matter what, don't take it to heart, move on and improve and try again.
|
|
|
|
Post by shakes on Aug 28, 2019 13:24:11 GMT -5
I didn't see really anything of this rpt but I heard about the people who died in game.
I'd say this isn't a storyteller problem, per se. He/she arranged for some fun and people showed up.
But it seems like it very quickly devolved into "I'm going to use my magic like an I-WIN button and punch it as fast and as hard as I can." type of bloodfest. Which in a game that so seriously pits the haves versus the have nots is pretty shitty.
For a final death toll ... I'd look at who had magic and who didn't.
I blame the players involved for going to the "I-WIN" automatically. And it's seriously why I avoid them in game like they're the plague.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2019 13:42:44 GMT -5
I'll go out on a limb; I liked the (whatever)rpt.
I liked that the allanaki forces finally got drawn out by some combination of pride, greed and lust for violence.
I liked that pcs were scared. Several were as afraid of getting killed, as failing to maintain the 'story' the templarate was going to want told afterwards.
I like that there was more than one emotional note to respond to. For several weeks before the event, there was pc bonding and questioning of weak leaders. During the event, the battle on saturday that allanak lost was a gut punch. Seeing a very strong pc or two eat it cast a long shadow. Heck, we almost had pvp during the looting phase at the end. If staff wasnt shooing us out of the rpt rooms, I'm pretty sure it would have happened.
One of the things I liked best about this event is how quickly evaluations of pcs changed going into the event, and back after the event. Up to the ride out, a bunch of the allanaki side were "dirtbag missile catching cannon fodder". As soon as it came time for shieldwalls and medical care, suddenly the characters were living in a meritocracy. Ten minutes after the argosy got back home, I saw social prejudice reapplied.
Well done.
I loved the mek fights. Once we got engaged, it was the usual hitpoint vs critical hit race, but the engagements were hilarious. Orders were disobeyed. There was some obligatory heroism. There was a whole lot of long lived characters waiting for anyone else to get attacked first.
I loved the fact that a pc got conscripted into the battle for being loud during a templar's speech.
|
|
Wonderful. Having got the memo to avoid using spiders or gith for the thousandth time, the staff decided to summon a clutch of NPC cannibal defilers; and let me tell you why this is so tiring to me. This is, by the textbook definition of the word, a contrived conflict: there is no narrative arc, nor is there any great Boon for the setting or the players (and by extension their characters) for participating in this conflict: aside from shoddy DIKU-based mass combat spam. As you can see in the GDB announcement thread, Shabago plays at guilting the reticent by posing "Will you hide away behind the walls?" with le funny Monty Python gif. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people are wishing they had stayed behind instead of throwing themselves into this pointless meatgrinder.
