The Rinth Needs Teeth - Uncensored Version

Issue of show and not tell.

The staff can say any one clan is "the clan" with the most influence in an area. The issue is if there is minimal confirmation of this statement it's like okay. Guild PCs are dying and Elf PCs are thriving so...

There's a few low effort ways to address this:

1. Make echoes of things occuring showing it to PCs.
2. Make rare event triggers of NPCs attacking (single attack) PCs of opposing factions like 0.10%
3. Provide a hidden shopkeeper NPC that sells goods to Guild people at favorable rates allowing them to show off their power
4. Stop claiming a single clan has longterm power and just have it fluctuate which will stop the primary complaint that the game doesn't play like the staff say the world should.

I usually get echo warnings for this kind of situation.

To give you credit gdbjohn, much of the staffers throughout Arm's history chose not to read the GDB, either.

Brokkr doesn't appear intellectually sober enough to offer a point, let alone an argument. The players have to read between the lines written in invisible ink: if you try to create something according to the theme but staff simply don't like it, you're going to have overpowered mobs spawned on you to wipe you out. It's been like that for 20 years. Why do people still play this garbage?

the shitty lack of coded enforcement is what leads to players bitching on both sides. example:

Riev:


i had that same experience. elves would stand outside the folley and throw in daggers at guild PCs in there. jack shit got done about it, and it'd be really easy for them to kill PCs by just hucking in poisoned daggers without fear of coded retribution because there's nothing coded to represent guild protection.

brokkr:


awesome. so hopefully maybe staff will eventually respond, possibly after my character or members of the guild crew are dead and either kill elf PCs (unlikely) or 'roleplay' roughing them up which has zero long-term consequences. when elf PCs do get punished, they get pissed off and cry about it like qwerty has for years.

Yeah. The Guild is pretty much an illusion. Supposedly it's run by this weird shadow cabal of powerful whoevers, but it's never allowed to come into play. They only exist virtually. The clan usually has 1-3 players in it and is no more powerful in reality than what those players can accomplish. If they can't fuck you up, the Guild as an entire organization is incapable of fucking you up. There are players who will play along and pretend that the Guild is this scary mafia that you don't mess with, but there are certainly also players who see through the illusion and know that the worst that'll happen is a stern talking-to from staff. If you want to fuck with the Guild, the 5% chance of an animated mul is really not much of a deterrent. It's evidently a gamble that people are routinely willing to take, judging by how often the Guild is wiped out.

I'm not even sure what the solution really is. After all, you can't have staff animate a black-robed Putin to lay waste to the entire eastside every time some elf thinks it's funny to chuck knives into the Folley. I suppose one thing that always stood out to me was how the AoD seemingly has no policy whatsoever of respecting the power of the Guild. Generation after generation of Guilders end up executed whenever some blue-robed templar gets bored and wants to put a notch on his belt. This plays a big part in undermining the clan's purpose. People will play along for a while if you bribe them, but the moment you do anything that lets them justify the guillotine, it's the end of the latest iteration of the Guild. This happens year after year, almost like clockwork. Guidlers flounder for purpose, find something that makes them feel like their existence matters, do it, and get rounded up and put to death. The only exception was when Gin and Quick ran the show, and the reason for that is self-explanatory.

Been a couple of years since I have logged in here. Wanted to say Vex knocked it out of the park here. Players sometimes want plot armor but then act ridiculous as if nothing will ever happen to them, and have no idea how to run a proper criminal. These same players then bitch on message boards trying to oocly motivate imms to save their PCs from the hole they have dug for themself/ get revenge from beyond the grave. The Guild at PC level is little more than a street level gang generally, one of many gangs, and not one at the top. You have NPCs, a hideout, inbuilt contacts and generally what I have seen almost always is players will hold back for some time because you are "Guild". The Guild have many coded advantages over other criminals already such as elves who traditionally had to build from scratch.


In the distant past I remember it would always end in a Guild/Eastside bloodbath when the Guild Bosses would demand too much of the pclan/indie elves without the muscle or smarts to back up their threats. The elves on the other hand never demanded anything from the Guild PCs, but the Guild PCs constantly trying to flex their virtual clout can only really go so far before it becomes abuse and players acting like kids when they make up some rule during a game on the spot that makes them invincible.


If an elf is tossing knives into the Folley you better believe imms will come down on them like a ton of bricks. I have heard these stories forever about the Folley elf tossing knives but have never seen it or heard a firsthand account ic.


I have seen a guild PC backstabbing PC elves inside the tent bar which is run and guarded by Jaxa Pah though. This awful twink called Smoke, I think it was. Half Elf.

I have seen a few solid Guild crews over the years. Guild suffers from several vunerabilities that elves generally don't though, all of which are ic. Guild are much quicker to kill each other to promotion, and because everyone is out for number one betrayals are common. Humans and even dwarves have a lot of varied opportunity compared to elves, and opportunity breeds ambition. Guild leaders are rightfully paranoid, because they know that their own second in command is always more likely to kill them than any outside force. I am sure if people had the stats more guild leaders have been killed by their own guys than have been executed.

So... Hope that helps!