Why Conflict Needs Consequences: The PBRPT

I mean, most people play games to have fun, so you're hardly alone there. But Armageddon's something of an outlier in that regard, both in terms of its playerbase and the design of the game itself. In the interest of not painting people with a broad brush, I'll focus on the game design in general. Basically, the game advertises itself as a collaborative storytelling game, not unlike a large-scale tabletop RPG. But by design, the game is a hack-and-slash MUD with unrestricted PK (at least ostensibly; we'll ignore staff backlash toward PK in certain cherry-picked instances) and where staff largely don't participate in story development (the lack of a metaplot that I mentioned earlier in this thread, in August).

Taking all these facts together, we can assume:
- Players have sole responsibility for their own "fun", in terms of story development. Staff guidance is minimal until they want to change some facet of the world, then it's at maximum until that plot ends.
- Without an overarching metaplot for players to work around, there is nothing going on in the world by default for players to be involved in. There's generally no ongoing crisis.
- When there is an ongoing crisis, the outcome of that crisis is largely staff-determined. Player actions have minimal, if any effect.
- Taking the above into account, players have no reason to collaborate on a storyline as a single, solidified group. Players do collaborate, but usually against other groups of players.
- Therefore, the plots that allow for the highest amount of player agency are in interpersonal plots - plots that pit two or more characters against one another in a relatively small scale conflict, such as competition over money, status, influence, and/or a promotion.
- To perpetuate an interpersonal plot, players have mainly coded means at their disposal, as well as socialization to bring others into a cause.
- Players who give their PCs a "social advantage", such as being highly visible and approachable, amass social power as well as the coded power of the PCs they attract. Other players without that "social advantage" feel out of the loop and may resent those that do have a social advantage. This is what you observed directly, and I propose the rest of this list explains why you observed it.
- Since interpersonal plots tend to be on an extremely small scale, and don't involve wider organizations, they tend to leave much to be desired.

With players unsatisfied at the end of a plot, the cycle repeats itself, with the players hoping they'll get "more out of it" next time. Barring some introduction of a metaplot, something that players can collaborate on together against some sort of crisis or threat, the game will remain in this cycle, stagnantly. And even with a metaplot, nothing is stopping players from competing: take a hypothetical example where Tuluki forces occupy Allanak, somehow. There could be rebels who want to overthrow the Tuluki oppressors, enclaves of gemmed fighting for survival, as well as traitors who prefer a Tuluki yoke over an Allanaki one and will do everything to keep it. These groups could conceivably come into conflict, but it would be for reasons of advancing the metaplot, and the outcome of those conflicts would actually have an impact on the broader world. This would leave more satisfying conclusions, and players would take less issue with other players' actions in this scenario because, against an impossible crisis, a lot more actions seem "fair".

I'm neither a writer of any significance nor a teacher. What insights I have about this subject come from my studies of game design, practice as a hobby-level game designer, and my experience playing RPGs with other people as well as DMing games for friends.

Also, while I criticize Armageddon regularly, I would love to be wrong about my view of how plots are organized on Arm and the level of damage the lack of a metaplot does to Arm, and the playerbase's morale. But I don't think I am. Armageddon's biggest flaw is that it lacks a consistent, overarching story, and many of the game's other flaws can be derived from this one.

I'll add, however, that metaplots do have their disadvantages. The biggest one is that, if done improperly, metaplots can feel extremely restrictive and jarring. Going back to my example of "Tuluk occupies Allanak", valid objections an Armageddon player might raise include: "Tuluk appears to be a substantially weaker force than Allanak", "Tuluk has no resources to gain by occupying Allanak", "I simply don't want to play under that level of oppression and will play in Red Storm instead". But I'm not responsible for coming up with a good metaplot for Armageddon, nor do I want to come up with a good idea here and make it untouchable in staff's eyes by virtue of it being on the shadowboard.