mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,699
|
Post by mehtastic on Sept 19, 2019 6:39:26 GMT -5
tHe GuIlD iS nOt a StRoNg ClAn aNd NeVeR hAs BeEn: Conceptually, the Guild is a medieval mafia in most applications of its affairs and business. The clan itself has been around for as many years as one can remember, always hiding from the Templarate's keen eye. Even though not always seen blatantly, the Guild demands a fear from the town's merchants, commoners, and other organizations. No one seems to know much about the intricate affairs of this highly secretive group, but there is no doubt that they have eyes and ears almost everywhere in town hiding in the darkest corners and even among many other organizations. The Guild is rumored to work out of the Westside of the infamous network of abandoned alleys and streets in northern Allanak known as the Labyrinth; however, their reach seem to have no limits when it concerns their sinister business. The reality is obviously different. As a PC member of the Guild, good luck getting even a scrap of information out of other organizations. Is a burglar scooping all the shit out of all of your protected apartments? The Nenyuki landlords won't talk to you, and if they do, they didn't see anyone suspicious. Is someone running their own spice-smuggling op? Good luck bribing the gate soldiers into giving you a description of who they confiscated spice from recently. Hell, good luck competing at all, considering how the new spice rot code completely undid efforts to make spice-smuggling an actual player source of conflict and plot opportunity. The status quo is boring. Stop arguing for boring. |
|
jkarr
GDB Superstar
Posts: 2,070
|
Post by jkarr on Sept 19, 2019 9:40:36 GMT -5
What makes a clan strong? It will always be the players. Virtual means shit all. The staff can only animate so much. You get a lot of pcs you get a strong clan. Guild will go thru phases of pc numbers but typically these are pockets of cliques arising where players want to play all together so the guild provides that closeness. No clan has had the staying power that the byn has and I dont think ever will. The way things currently are, strongest clan is the one that is loved most by the staff. Or more precisely, the one in which their pets have characters. Let's say, I'm a Byn Sergeant, a Salarri recruit can shit on my face and I'd get 0 support from the Byn. If a staff Pet's character is slightly abused, suddenly the Captain of Byn pops up waving his dick like a Black Robe and since it's coming from a staff NPC animation, the lot accepts and justifies it like idiots staffpets tend to play roles that can fuck up work or future contracts for the byn at large if theyre offended so if that is the case then yeah but if not then agreed that is stupid |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2019 13:17:36 GMT -5
Out of curiosity. Whom do you think are current "staff pets" and what makes you think so?
|
|
najdorf
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 265 
|
Post by najdorf on Sept 20, 2019 9:31:35 GMT -5
Out of curiosity. Whom do you think are current "staff pets" and what makes you think so? Any player favored by staff ICly for OOC reasons Also, people that I don't like. |
|
tedium
Clueless newb
Posts: 164 
|
Post by tedium on Sept 20, 2019 9:57:40 GMT -5
I did have a SEPARATE chip on my shoulder because of the whole etiquette bard sleeping with a criminal elf thing that everyone just let go on forever but that was more why is this allowed to happen shake fist at the sky than any wronged action against me.
I remember that at one point players posted rumors about how she was openly talking about her breed baby at a party, then staff deleted them en masse and created a new rule that said you have to identify yourself as the person spreading rumors from now on.
As for the Guild being a medieval mafia, the lore doesn't back that up. I know that's what the help files say, but the mafia has legitimate businesses that act as fronts and allow for "clean" people to interface with the underworld. The mafia is involved in politics using their clean fronts. In the real life it's for money laundering, but the same premise applies here. The rinth is culturally distinct, to the point of having their own linguistic pattern, and has been set aside as exceptionally poor and filthy. Businesses that anyone can start don't really exist because Allanak doesn't have a capitalist economy. There are Merchant Houses and Noble Houses who perform economic activity, and generally, they're feudal or mercantile at best. Integration isn't really possible in any meaningful way unless you also have a "clean" front that launders the rintherness from them the same way that the mafia has to launder their money to make it legitimate.
They say "mafia" but really they're drawing on the archetypes of inner city ghetto vs. white suburbia, not an actual mafia crime syndicate. It's not a criminal enterprise that has its fingers in everything, it's a culturally distinct place of exceptional poverty and violence where you go to buy illegal drugs and weapons. Nothing about that is the mafia. If anyone is the Mafia in Arm, it's Kurac, who basically runs a legitimate business (desert survival gear and a Las Vegas style entertainment oasis in the desert) that gradually bleeds into the criminal (smuggling and spice sales throughout the known).
Just like how inner city gangs get their drugs and weapons from actual mafias and cartels, the Guild gets their spice from Kurac. They can call the Guild a mafia all they want, but the reality doesn't back that up.
Now, if they want to say that the Guild is actually the cutthroat and criminal wing of House Fale that pretends to be a regular gang for plausible deniability, and House Fale is the dopey, fun-loving face meant to make you think that they'd never have a bunch of filthy, murderous rinthers as their enforcement arm, that would be one thing. But I've never seen even an inkling of that from anyone, and I'm sure that staff would put their foot down and draw an arbitrary line in the sand preventing it because reasons (Even though House Fale is the only House to be lifted from commoners and, lets be real, it would actually make a lot of sense if they saw the use in rinthers because of it).
|
|
delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,670
|
Post by delerak on Sept 20, 2019 10:14:19 GMT -5
I did have a SEPARATE chip on my shoulder because of the whole etiquette bard sleeping with a criminal elf thing that everyone just let go on forever but that was more why is this allowed to happen shake fist at the sky than any wronged action against me. I remember that at one point players posted rumors about how she was openly talking about her breed baby at a party, then staff deleted them en masse and created a new rule that said you have to identify yourself as the person spreading rumors from now on. As for the Guild being a medieval mafia, the lore doesn't back that up. I know that's what the help files say, but the mafia has legitimate businesses that act as fronts and allow for "clean" people to interface with the underworld. The mafia is involved in politics using their clean fronts. In the real life it's for money laundering, but the same premise applies here. The rinth is culturally distinct, to the point of having their own linguistic pattern, and has been set aside as exceptionally poor and filthy. Businesses that anyone can start don't really exist because Allanak doesn't have a capitalist economy. There are Merchant Houses and Noble Houses who perform economic activity, and generally, they're feudal or mercantile at best. Integration isn't really possible in any meaningful way unless you also have a "clean" front that launders the rintherness from them the same way that the mafia has to launder their money to make it legitimate.
They say "mafia" but really they're drawing on the archetypes of inner city ghetto vs. white suburbia, not an actual mafia crime syndicate. It's not a criminal enterprise that has its fingers in everything, it's a culturally distinct place of exceptional poverty and violence where you go to buy illegal drugs and weapons. Nothing about that is the mafia. If anyone is the Mafia in Arm, it's Kurac, who basically runs a legitimate business (desert survival gear and a Las Vegas style entertainment oasis in the desert) that gradually bleeds into the criminal (smuggling and spice sales throughout the known). Just like how inner city gangs get their drugs and weapons from actual mafias and cartels, the Guild gets their spice from Kurac. They can call the Guild a mafia all they want, but the reality doesn't back that up.
Now, if they want to say that the Guild is actually the cutthroat and criminal wing of House Fale that pretends to be a regular gang for plausible deniability, and House Fale is the dopey, fun-loving face meant to make you think that they'd never have a bunch of filthy, murderous rinthers as their enforcement arm, that would be one thing. But I've never seen even an inkling of that from anyone, and I'm sure that staff would put their foot down and draw an arbitrary line in the sand preventing it because reasons (Even though House Fale is the only House to be lifted from commoners and, lets be real, it would actually make a lot of sense if they saw the use in rinthers because of it).
So what your saying is the guild would have to be operating legitimate businesses.. like a shop in the bazaar etc. using it as a front for illegal stuff? I think the problem is that there isn't much for them to do in terms of illegality. There is spice and that's it. In the real world you have everything from money laundering, hundreds of different kinds of drugs, shake downs, paid protection in the neighborhood. The guild could operate with some of these, such as assassinations, paid protection etc. however they just don't have the PC power to do it and never have. The only time the guild was truly powerful was when bhagharva ran it and used Vortex (the vortex-tattooed man). This was a generic NPC that if he died with he would simply reload it and his reasoning he explained to me at the APM was that the Guild basically just took some joe-shmoe cut-throat, slapped some vortex tattoos on him and called him the boss. It was actually a pretty cool concept but you can't do that anymore these days. People will cry foul like crazy. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2019 10:16:55 GMT -5
Wait. What? Where is that stated? The rule of identifying yourself on the board when spreading rumours?
Actually, you are right about your last statement, except different house. Overall, people use mafia just because it's a recognizable brand. In reality, it's an OCG. An Organized Crime Group. Mafia is just one of many. That's why they're not called mafia, but are called ... The Guild? The Thieves Guild? I mean the only other more common d&d trope then the thieves guild is ... an adventurer's tavern, I guess. Or a sorcerer's tower.
|
|
tedium
Clueless newb
Posts: 164
|
Post by tedium on Sept 20, 2019 10:30:40 GMT -5
So what your saying is the guild would have to be operating legitimate businesses.. like a shop in the bazaar etc. using it as a front for illegal stuff? I think the problem is that there isn't much for them to do in terms of illegality. There is spice and that's it. In the real world you have everything from money laundering, hundreds of different kinds of drugs, shake downs, paid protection in the neighborhood. The guild could operate with some of these, such as assassinations, paid protection etc. however they just don't have the PC power to do it and never have. The only time the guild was truly powerful was when bhagharva ran it and used Vortex (the vortex-tattooed man). This was a generic NPC that if he died with he would simply reload it and his reasoning he explained to me at the APM was that the Guild basically just took some joe-shmoe cut-throat, slapped some vortex tattoos on him and called him the boss. It was actually a pretty cool concept but you can't do that anymore these days. People will cry foul like crazy.
I'm saying that the guild should have their fingers in a noble or mercantile house and manipulate high-level politics in that way. To do that, they would need a front that acts as a legitimate part of Allanaki society, IE, a GMH or a noble house, because those are the legitimate facets in the eyes of the Allanaki government. There's a shit-ton of illegal stuff they can do but staff won't let them do it. Spice is coded and generally useless which is why staff okays it. I mentioned literacy before, but there's also rogue magickers, trade in magickal artifacts, trade in metal items, defrauding various noble houses, smuggling other illegal goods into the city, etc. Because these require either rule changes or staff support they'll never happen. Staff have a boring vision for the game and then wonder why no one tries to "be the change" that they've said is forbidden.
But really it goes back to a reason for existing. Most of the clans in armageddon don't have reasons to exist, and so there is no narrative drive for them. The Guild almost has one, as its practically in open rebellion to the Highlord's rule and hints at times at wanting to bring the class system down, but that's not something staff will actually let you RP as a clan. You personally, yes, but if you start spreading literacy and trafficking in magic weapons or reach out to now-closed Tuluk to start a rebellion, they put their foot down.
The "Borsail Dark Brotherhood" schtick is such a stupid fucking idea. You know who make great spies? Slaves. Nonhuman slaves. Nonhuman slaves with a biological, magical compulsion to lose their shit and murder things at random. Yeah that makes 1000% sense and isn't totally contrived nonsense. Players can't really get involved in that, though, which leads to goofy shit like spymaster Borsail hiring the Byn to spy on people because that's where all the actual players are, and staff need to show off their totally brilliant and not at all a catastrophic failure Rowyn Borsail plot.
But at the same time we can't have nobles who fight in the arena because ThE LoRe WoUlDnT mAkE sEnSe.
Side note: The Guild isn't organized. They don't do organized crime. At best they get people to sell spice on corners, like gangs do. You're splitting hairs, but all of the things about crime guilds apply to what I said about mafias. Kurac acts more like a "thieves guild" than the Guild, except that they don't have pickpockets. The guild is more like the proprietors of a neutral ground for pickpockets. Their crime is distinctly not organized.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2019 10:38:59 GMT -5
It's not Borsail either. You're reaching, but it doesnt matter. The lore is so old and so obsolete, it doesnt even really affect any gameplay.
As a matter of fact, by Borsail House Lore. For them to be associated with the guild in any way is a maaaajor in house faux pa. They're are "by lore" the least likely guild associates. Granted, it all depends on how secret they can get. Nell used to be a high member of the Guild, while being an aide to a borsail noble.
|
|
tedium
Clueless newb
Posts: 164
|
Post by tedium on Sept 20, 2019 10:48:25 GMT -5
Are you talking about having ties to the guild specifically? Because Borsail has their own criminal spy network fueled by Mulrage. I thought you were referencing that as an example of a noble house with a crime syndicate, and was pointing out how stupid it is in itself. We can't have cool stuff but we can have slave mul assassins.
Obsolete because staff want to move in a different direction? Or obsolete because staff stopped engaging with the Guild at that level? You're so close to admitting that staff have neglected the Guild and let it wither into nothing while trying to make it sound like anything but that.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2019 11:11:16 GMT -5
That staff wanted to move in a different direction. The original guild was so mired in sorcery, undead, and nilaz, etc, etc. It began to move away from all that.
Guild is peculiar. It is often given to the noob Staff who like to play in clans who are actively rough and tumble. Which makes it fun to play with active staff, but the coded developments (like new rooms and stuff) are slow to non existent. It got better a little bit when it got moved from independents to GMH circle. Guild is also mired with the PC cycle problem. As in, nobody survives for very long and you need a steady group of stable PCs that live for awhile to achieve anything. Thing is that Guild is such a PC activity dependent clan, it's a little hard to go heavy on their support, because if you support it too much, it becomes too powerful. People tend to go along with it, just because it suddenly gets a lot of interaction, while that should be achieved by playerbase. And when a leader survives for very long, he is in perpetual waiting period for more members so he/she can do shit. When enough stable membership accumulates, shit begins to happen for them aplenty. A loooot of plots got started and abandoned, because suddenly the group a staffer was developing a plot for just got annihilated to a bunch of npcs, climb fail checks, an occasional execution, but mostly just npcs. Lots of facepalm moments. And when a group 'does' live long enough, it's in a "spar/idle" circle and when they're ready to do dangerous stuff ... they die to something stupid. Or they're full of people who completely disregard the virtual world, that the only staff interaction they get is staff reminding them about the virtual world, which tends to turn hostile and hurt feelings and then suddenly nobody wants to do anything with each other.
Overall. The Guild is a Hard Clan. But so was Red Fang. I'd like to remind you that Red Fang had "NOTHING" for it. No camp. No special gear, except for a tattoo that they hid immediately. It was a player who created the camp (Despite the staff refusing to code it). Then a string of other players who perpetuated the camp until it became such a landmark within the gameworld, that staff coded it in. Then ... then RF ruled the world until finally being wiped out.
|
|
mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,699
|
Post by mehtastic on Sept 20, 2019 11:30:33 GMT -5
That's a long way to say the staff neglected the Guild and let it wither into nothing.
It's a smaller-scale version of when the staff didn't know what to do with Tuluk, so they let Nyr change it over and over again before finally giving up on it. What's going on in Tuluk right now, by the way?
Staff know that they'll lose a lot of the superficial support they get by ending official support for Labyrinth play, so they just hope that bureaucracy will finally do it in.
In hindsight, the history of the Red Fang shows how easily staff can undo years of player effort. So the whole "Guild pulling itself up by its bootstraps" argument is irrelevant; players aren't going to invest time into something if it's clear staff have no interest in supporting it, and a potential interest in undoing the effort.
|
|
tedium
Clueless newb
Posts: 164
|
Post by tedium on Sept 20, 2019 12:32:04 GMT -5
That staff wanted to move in a different direction. The original guild was so mired in sorcery, undead, and nilaz, etc, etc. It began to move away from all that.
And it began to move toward what exactly?
Like Mehtastic says, maybe comparing them to a clan that was wiped out and permanently closed despite their incredible, unprecedented player success is maybe not the best idea, unless you specifically want to send the signal that accomplishing things as the Guild will cause staff to step in negatively. Staff has a reputation for shitting on player goals and ambitions when it diverges from their mystical, ambiguous vision, or even the "outdated lore" that they won't enforce but will dredge up if it means snuffing more stories that they didn't create.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2019 12:45:15 GMT -5
Weeeell. Kind of. Yeah. Red Fang ruled the whole world for a year easy. You think things will not step up? The war was began by players. Each side was escalating it.
If the Guild grows in power, at some point they will become capable of killing a lot of people. It will be up to them how they do it. If they do it carefully, balancing on the edge of a razor of power, then okey. If they start doing it indiscriminately, ignoring the virtual world, then yes. The Red Robes would step in. It's happened before. There wasnt annihilation, but there were labyrinth blockades and so on.
The RF players knew what was going on and knew that SR was a 'much' bigger tribe in numbers and magickal power. It was well explained to them. They knew exactly where things were leading and why and how. They had a lot of ways to avoid extinction. They just made choices that lead to it.
Now. There was a lot of cheeeese in that plot. Like RF would kill a prominant figure of SR and SR would know immediately without any witnesses, or psi communication. I dont argue that. It was lame. But the point is that RF played hard core, with very little oversight and constraints from staff. They played a game of high stakes, rose as high as the players could, and burnt as bright as no other clan burnt before. Other clans that have more support, contingencies, virtual hierarchy, etc do not burn as much. Are more constrained, but ... dont go extinct.
The final show down of RF vs SR did happen PC vs PC. Granted RF lost their best leader/warrior a day before that. But it was quiet literally a roll of a dice on that fight. If that day, RF playerbase won the fight against SR playerbase. RF would not be extinct. But they got steamrolled sooo bad.
|
|
mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,699
|
Post by mehtastic on Sept 20, 2019 12:48:24 GMT -5
The Guild's ultimate strength, its secret to perpetual existence, is that it is weak. Genius
|
|
