Post by sirra on Dec 15, 2014 1:57:22 GMT -5
Let's pretend that we could somehow get a copy of Armageddon's codebase from way back when. I remember hearing that an old version was hosted somewhere, and being played around with - but that was years ago. But let's just exercise our imagination.
How could it be managed differently to not repeat the same mistakes?
I've some thoughts on the matter. It will come in the form of an assertion, a detailing of the problem, and then a suggested solution.
1) De-Emphasize the authority, responsibility and secrecy of staff culture wherever possible.
THE PROBLEM:
If a game is in any way entertaining, it will eventually attract those who are obsessed with it, and who will want to do anything to gain an advantage. In the short term, this is usually in the form of attempting to create friendships with those perceived to be pulling the strings. In the long term, it results in these cretins actually worming their way onto staff.
How does this happen? Because staffing a game where staff have a virtual monopoly on any meaningful ability to effect change in the game world makes for A LOT of work. Armageddon staff have to do virtually everything. They have to individually load and provide weapons to merchants. They have to approve all applications. They animate NPCs and handle the RPTs. In many clans, NPCs have all the chief IC decision making ability as well.
Set aside the fact that the actual majority of staff working is jerking each other off on staff chat, talking about their pet squirrel, ripping on players they're spying on or tearily bitching about their life/work/SO and seeking comfort for it. I know.
This can't work in the long term, without becoming corrupt. Staffing is a lot of work to do right. Even staffers (and speaking far outside my Armageddon experience) who begin with good intentions, will get burned out. And they WILL get burned out.
There is only one kind of staffer who doesn't get burned out: Those who latch onto the game as their primary means of social expression, and just want to be everyone's friend, and meet up RL and shit. Those people never go away and they never slow down. That isn't harmful at first, but eventually, over the long term, those people always gain greater power via attrition. They're not usually as malevolent as Nyr. Most are simply useless and needy.
THE SOLUTION:
De-emphasize staff wherever possible. In other genres of roleplaying games, such as the World of Darkness genre, that community (a much, much larger one than Armageddon's), began as being tightly controlled, but then grew more liberal over time in allowing trusted and proven players to assume 'player-storyteller' roles. The world did not end. WoD games also benefited from the fact that there was a ton more competition for players (the largest being quite bigger than Armageddon). There's more to be said on the comparison, but not here.
How can we meaningfully reduce staff responsibility? In a number of ways.
-> Open Chargen:
If you have the karma for it, you are allowed to app it. There is no waiting process. There are no special apps. There should be no need for special apps, if say, there were more subguilds (similar to the extended subguilds they added, but never got around to including in chargen, requiring the odious spec app process) gated by karma.
Trust me when I say that an open chargen system would work PERFECTLY for Armageddon. All it would require to prevent abuse, is to permit only one character to be created in a 24 hour time span. Yes. I know, some retards are still going to use ISP to get around it. Guess what? They can and easily do that now, even with a staffer manually handling it.
Will the occasional newbie with a shitty sdesc/desc get through? Yes. But so the fuck what? How many people do you think have given up on Armageddon because they never made it through some byzantine set of criteria? Or howabout how incredibly inconsistent staff was in deciding which to approve? Some staffers would approve anything. Others were completely anally retentive. I once had an application rejected because I used a semicolon in my description. I've had 'laconic' rejected, but 'twitchy', 'brash' and 'grim' okayed.
And backgrounds? Completely optional. Grow into your character. The only meaningful 'background' information I ever added to a character was using the 'journal' feature long after being approved. Some people are helped by making backgrounds - I never was. My best, most nuanced character had a very sparse background, and I only discovered him in the process of playing him.
Now and then - although far more rarely than you would imagine - something atrocious might get through. But it will be something like, 'the skipping, smiling man who waves at you', not the 'hairy, metal-clad dwarf'. Why? Because ALL races will be karma-gated. By the time someone can app a race like dwarf, they'll know they don't have hair. And if a desc/sdesc is so agonizingly bad, then that person can be simply summoned into a room, whose description contains a reiteration of description conventions. Once they read it, and have had a brief conversation with a staffer, they can be 'killed' and sent back into chargen.
This is vastly less work for staff than the current system, and it will channel their focus onto those who truly NEED them. Not veterans for them to comb over with anal thoroughness.
But how do we get to play a dwarf, you might ask?
-> Player Voted Karma:
There should be only one way for a player to acquire karma. That should be through the votes of their fellow players.
You might ask - well, won't people just vote their friends? So what? You would only be allowed to vote for one character one time. Friends already write each other kudos. Staff already give their friends undeserved karma.
You might ask - well, won't some unethical assholes create numerous alts, and hide their ISP to log in multiple characters to all vote for their alt? Someone will probably try it eventually. But remember, I said staff were to be de-emphasized, not eliminated. It's the difference between a police state in Ferguson, Ohio, and complete anarchy. A VALID STAFF RESPONSIBILITY should be to watch out for flagrant cheaters like ISP abusers. They should protect the community from those who legitimately try to harm the game. It's the difference for shooting someone because they engaged in violent armed robbery and shooting someone because they wouldn't get down on their knees and suck your cock in a prompt and timely fashion. Not that Armageddon's current staff would know the difference.
Staff should always be on the lookout for ISP abuse, and suspicious spikes in karma votes. But staff cannot give karma. Staff does not receive karma for staffing. However, the fact that ideally, a karma vote can only be given once in a lifetime of a PC, and any given PC should probably only be able to advance one level of karma at a time, means that any actual abuse of the system should be prohibitively difficult to get away with without being obvious. Meaning, it would actually be easier to just be a good roleplayer.
You can vote someone at any time. And at any time, you can 'unvote' them. No player knows when/if another player is voted for. No more kudos is an unfortunate casualty of the system. But you can more solidly show your appreciation for someone with your anonymous vote. Staff never gave a shit about how many kudos you received, anyways. And many people were circle-jerky about them, even if it could be pleasurable to receive one now and then...The far greater pleasure will come from advancing a karma level.
Each new karma level would require more 'votes' (10 for 0 to 1, 20 for 1 to 2, etc).
-> Logical Karma Restrictions and Spec-App Musings:
Karma 0 would be humans, with all the conventional classes available, and the basic subguilds.
Karma 1 would open up elves. No desert elves and city elves - just elves. The same reason there isn't city humans and desert humans.
Karma 2 would open up half-elves and some extended subguilds.
Karma 3 would open up dwarves and earth/water mages.
It would continue like that. There are many people who actively post on this board who could come up with a great karma list that is way better than the current one. I would only assume two things: That there will be more than 7 karma levels, and that Templars would be a karma-gated class, the same as sorcs and mindbenders are.
If someone achieves the karma to play a templar, and wants to play a templar, they should play a fucking templar. If the community wants to VOTE on certain roles being restricted to once a year (so the same guy doesn't keep creating templars or sorcerers), that could be an early established order of business. I think that'd be a good idea, but I wouldn't force it on others either.
Once a templar is created, they simply request/wish up to get set up, and a staffer will do that and leave them be. They begin as the lowest rank of templar. Since it supposedly takes IC decades to advance beyond that tier in the game world, there will be IC decades of playtime before promotion needs to be addressed. Templars should be free to establish their own hierarchy and areas of responsibility though, and cooperate/compete as they see fit with VERY little NPC involvement/oversight.
Because really, what does a superior templar have to give even the slightest shit about, how your templar dealt with a commoner in the Gaj? Anyone that achieves the karma necessary for a templar is going to be someone mostly interested in making fun for those around them, not some fuckhole who has never done anything before, and got dumped into the role by Nyr.
No doubt, at some point, some drama will arise. But guess what? It will be much less drama when the people involved earned their way to the role via the community, and without staff intervention or favoritism.
--> 'Automate' Houses:
What about noble and merchant houses, like Borsail or Kuraci? This is the one tricky area.
How these Houses are established exactly, deserves debate. Because they are essential to the game in many ways. My personal preference would be to tie them to karma as a subguild, which acknowledges their having been born in the lap of luxury. Perhaps one of three possible House-only subguilds to suggest either a conniving/manipulative individual, a studious/trading one or a leader/warrior. They select that subguild, and then they wish up/request for a staffer to set them up with their noble House.
Without exception, all Noble/House members would come in at the lowest tier. But even the lowest tier would still have an obsidian stipend, personal guards, compounds and access to all kinds of luxuries. They would still have the ability to hire employees, and depending on their own initiative, increase in power and influence. They would be given a freer hand, and less dependent on NPCs or staff RPTs. They simply aren't at the level of needing to deal with their House senator or some shit.
In time, Houses can establish their own player hierarchies. Someone who exists and thrives for years in that role will naturally rise to a justified position of authority in the events of the city. No one will mind, if after 20+ game years, a staffer elevates a PC into a more prestigious title, or a PC is spoken of as having ascended to higher affairs when they retire.
Let's be realistic. Armageddon is a dirty world. Most of the city RP is in taverns. No truly prestigious/influential nobles would spend even a fraction of the time in public among the riffraff that the game's current 'movers and shakers do'. But at the same time, freed of the confines of arbitrary NPC oversight and staff anality, they'll be more empowered than ever before.
Most organizations, like the Byn or tribes, can handle themselves fine without special treatment. Tribes have access to tribal specific stuff in their camps.
Merchant Houses, like Kurac or Salarr, would have ALL of their available items stocked on special vendors in their compound warehouses, who will only interact with the Merchant. They will have a cost, defined by their craftsmanship, materials, and what the logical 'tithe' would be to the higher ups. The merchant can buy as many of those as they acquire the sids for, and sell them for whatever profit margin they can manage.
This stock would not be infinite. Ideally, once a week, a staffer could check bins for supplies that have been brought in by the House, and depending on the rough quantity, re-stock the vendor and delete the materials. This would be vastly less work for staff than the current alternative, which is them hunting down and individually loading in every requested piece of equipment.
Tribal camps already move about on their own.
--> Concentrate the Playerbase:
Destroy Tuluk. It should be a dangerous, treacherous ruin up north, overrun by kryl and cannibal halflings who ate all the skeet lizards.
Allanak will be the center of civilization. There will be no Northern 'Houses' or 'Templars', unless some players get together, in some mad expedition, to try and carve out their own territory up there.
There will be enough conflict within Allanak and its environs to not need the fake, artificial dynamic of a competing city-state. Luirs, Red Storm, etc, will continue as normal.
--> All Staff Are Equal:
Staff are treated as volunteers, with fairly limited compensation, whose main desire is to tell stories and enhance the game world for those around them. They are not our babysitters. They are not to be buttered up or manipulated, because they can't really give you anything that you can't acquire from other players.
They are not tied to any one clan. All staff respond to all requests, and all are equally responsible for the 'clans' such as they exist in the game. PC leaders have much greater independence, and even the lowest tier should be in a position where they do not require permission or animated NPCs to tell them what to do. If it's so needed, a player should eventually rise to that role.
This is not a situation where some ignorant, out of the loop NPC Byn lieutenant appears out of nowhere, with no grasp of recent events, to try and force his agenda on the sergeants.
The answer to every question should be how to best take staff OUT of the loop, where daily events are concerned.
Without singular responsibility for one clan, when staff aren't seeing to their once weekly-task of checking storage bins for how much stock a House vendor should be re-supplied with, or situating a new templar or noble, or helping a clueless newbie...They can spend that time telling stories.
Major policy issues should be settled by consensus, with shareholder input/voting as required. Like any successful organization/charity/company in the world operates today. Here's a fact: There's not one successful company in the world where all the decisions come down to a some social recluse neckbeard reeking of sweat and need. We should approach it like normal, rational, sane hobbyists.
--> Staff should create, not contain events:
What are good examples of creating RP events?
Having a marauding band of tribals settle across the northern road, where they will cause trouble until they're either dealt with or exterminated.
Describe a plague that has broken out in the 'rinth.
Animate a gate guard to give someone a hard time, or just unexpectedly bring the world to life in little ways.
Have the NPC Byn Captain give missions to a Byn PC Lieutenant or Sergeant, which they can then use to direct their own underlings.
Even better: an NPC senior noble or templar gives a mission to their junior noble/templar which will require them seeking out that Byn Lieutenant.
There's a right way and a wrong way to use NPC leadership. The wrong way, is Armageddon's current practice of making them suffocatingly overweening. I've been in clans where we could not do shit without NPC allowance, and writing weekly reports to the guy, and getting hardly a response, and who would only show up once a month, if that. Leaving us holding our ass the rest of the time. And when they did show up? It was usually only to contradict pre-existing RP.
No. Fuck that. That's abuse. One of the only valid reasons to ever animate an NPC leader is to give them a mission or a task, that you intend to actively see through, like raiding a nest or providing an escort. It doesn't have to be a big deal. This is Armageddon. Being given a reason to guard a wagon, and having some delf show up and shoot one arrow at it before buggering off, is a great time for all involved.
A staffer needs to realize that their strength and benefit to the game is as a force multiplier. In this case, an RP multiplier. There are countless ways that an Armageddon staffer can create lasting fun for people, with often only a minute or two of their time. I remember those moments with far more fondness than the railroaded, overly elaborate RPTs dealing with TEH END OF THE WORLD.
---
I could and will keep going, but this post is long enough. But I will say a few more things in closing: There is too much OOC secrecy in Armageddon. It started as a way to enhance RP, but now it's only used to hide abuses.
Code mechanics should be freely discussed on the forum. They will find out anyways. Why maintain the fiction? The only thing on the forum that needs to be moderated is spam and the malevolent dissimulation of IC knowledge related to current events. People will still spread things they shouldn't, but it just shouldn't be allowed for someone to die, then log on the forum to bitch about it.
No account notes, except which are public and can be seen by staff and the player at any time.
No special applications means no snowflakes.
OOC staff adjudication should be only in the most extreme circumstances. Most everything should be handled as ICA=ICC. No retcons. No rezzes. There will be complaints, but unless someone is cheating, staff doesn't need to get involved.
Staff should be treated as chairmen of the board, and the players as volunteers. I think, given that staffing will be much less materially rewarding (no karma 7 for becoming staff) that it will attract a better caliber of player.
Staff would not be able to play and staff at the same time. They could however temporarily resign from staff whenever they felt like it and focused on playing. In fact, since virtually the sole responsibility of staffers will be RPTs and pasting content that players have created and submitted, those who linger and do nothing, should be encouraged to take a break.
No politics. Because fuck you, this is just a game. leave it IC. There should be no tangible advantage to staffing beyond the pleasure of telling a story and making the game more fun for other players. The moment someone gets an entitled attitude about what they 'deserve', one of two things should happen: A) They move on, or B) We find a way to remove staff further from the equation.
A diku-based game can never be fully automated. But we can bring about a state of events which requires something like 70% less input from staffers. About 50% of that responsibility can be dispersed among the playerbase. 20% of it, (like elaborate circle-jerks regarding the highest echelons of power within Armageddon's world, one step removed from Tektolnes himself) has no basis in a game with 50-70 people playing prime time, at best.
Sending a Jal templar to clean out the sewers - fine. Some kind of masturbatory Game of Thrones-style fantasy politics, all 'masterfully' choreagraphed by Nyr...no.
There should not be private forums for clans on the GDB. That's just a pain the ass. It should be handled by the in-game bulletin boards.
And I can't stress enough that staff should be fluid, and not turn into a club where people chat and rub each other's back on staffchat.
Some people might say, why should they solo-emote, if staff can't see their hidden genius and reward them for it? Well. Staff never rewarded the good solo emoters anyways, and rarely saw it unless the person was already playing a templar or some such. And that's a selfish, un-fun, douchey reason for solo-emoting. It's still possible a hidden player might see you and reward you with a vote, though.
How could it be managed differently to not repeat the same mistakes?
I've some thoughts on the matter. It will come in the form of an assertion, a detailing of the problem, and then a suggested solution.
1) De-Emphasize the authority, responsibility and secrecy of staff culture wherever possible.
THE PROBLEM:
If a game is in any way entertaining, it will eventually attract those who are obsessed with it, and who will want to do anything to gain an advantage. In the short term, this is usually in the form of attempting to create friendships with those perceived to be pulling the strings. In the long term, it results in these cretins actually worming their way onto staff.
How does this happen? Because staffing a game where staff have a virtual monopoly on any meaningful ability to effect change in the game world makes for A LOT of work. Armageddon staff have to do virtually everything. They have to individually load and provide weapons to merchants. They have to approve all applications. They animate NPCs and handle the RPTs. In many clans, NPCs have all the chief IC decision making ability as well.
Set aside the fact that the actual majority of staff working is jerking each other off on staff chat, talking about their pet squirrel, ripping on players they're spying on or tearily bitching about their life/work/SO and seeking comfort for it. I know.
This can't work in the long term, without becoming corrupt. Staffing is a lot of work to do right. Even staffers (and speaking far outside my Armageddon experience) who begin with good intentions, will get burned out. And they WILL get burned out.
There is only one kind of staffer who doesn't get burned out: Those who latch onto the game as their primary means of social expression, and just want to be everyone's friend, and meet up RL and shit. Those people never go away and they never slow down. That isn't harmful at first, but eventually, over the long term, those people always gain greater power via attrition. They're not usually as malevolent as Nyr. Most are simply useless and needy.
THE SOLUTION:
De-emphasize staff wherever possible. In other genres of roleplaying games, such as the World of Darkness genre, that community (a much, much larger one than Armageddon's), began as being tightly controlled, but then grew more liberal over time in allowing trusted and proven players to assume 'player-storyteller' roles. The world did not end. WoD games also benefited from the fact that there was a ton more competition for players (the largest being quite bigger than Armageddon). There's more to be said on the comparison, but not here.
How can we meaningfully reduce staff responsibility? In a number of ways.
-> Open Chargen:
If you have the karma for it, you are allowed to app it. There is no waiting process. There are no special apps. There should be no need for special apps, if say, there were more subguilds (similar to the extended subguilds they added, but never got around to including in chargen, requiring the odious spec app process) gated by karma.
Trust me when I say that an open chargen system would work PERFECTLY for Armageddon. All it would require to prevent abuse, is to permit only one character to be created in a 24 hour time span. Yes. I know, some retards are still going to use ISP to get around it. Guess what? They can and easily do that now, even with a staffer manually handling it.
Will the occasional newbie with a shitty sdesc/desc get through? Yes. But so the fuck what? How many people do you think have given up on Armageddon because they never made it through some byzantine set of criteria? Or howabout how incredibly inconsistent staff was in deciding which to approve? Some staffers would approve anything. Others were completely anally retentive. I once had an application rejected because I used a semicolon in my description. I've had 'laconic' rejected, but 'twitchy', 'brash' and 'grim' okayed.
And backgrounds? Completely optional. Grow into your character. The only meaningful 'background' information I ever added to a character was using the 'journal' feature long after being approved. Some people are helped by making backgrounds - I never was. My best, most nuanced character had a very sparse background, and I only discovered him in the process of playing him.
Now and then - although far more rarely than you would imagine - something atrocious might get through. But it will be something like, 'the skipping, smiling man who waves at you', not the 'hairy, metal-clad dwarf'. Why? Because ALL races will be karma-gated. By the time someone can app a race like dwarf, they'll know they don't have hair. And if a desc/sdesc is so agonizingly bad, then that person can be simply summoned into a room, whose description contains a reiteration of description conventions. Once they read it, and have had a brief conversation with a staffer, they can be 'killed' and sent back into chargen.
This is vastly less work for staff than the current system, and it will channel their focus onto those who truly NEED them. Not veterans for them to comb over with anal thoroughness.
But how do we get to play a dwarf, you might ask?
-> Player Voted Karma:
There should be only one way for a player to acquire karma. That should be through the votes of their fellow players.
You might ask - well, won't people just vote their friends? So what? You would only be allowed to vote for one character one time. Friends already write each other kudos. Staff already give their friends undeserved karma.
You might ask - well, won't some unethical assholes create numerous alts, and hide their ISP to log in multiple characters to all vote for their alt? Someone will probably try it eventually. But remember, I said staff were to be de-emphasized, not eliminated. It's the difference between a police state in Ferguson, Ohio, and complete anarchy. A VALID STAFF RESPONSIBILITY should be to watch out for flagrant cheaters like ISP abusers. They should protect the community from those who legitimately try to harm the game. It's the difference for shooting someone because they engaged in violent armed robbery and shooting someone because they wouldn't get down on their knees and suck your cock in a prompt and timely fashion. Not that Armageddon's current staff would know the difference.
Staff should always be on the lookout for ISP abuse, and suspicious spikes in karma votes. But staff cannot give karma. Staff does not receive karma for staffing. However, the fact that ideally, a karma vote can only be given once in a lifetime of a PC, and any given PC should probably only be able to advance one level of karma at a time, means that any actual abuse of the system should be prohibitively difficult to get away with without being obvious. Meaning, it would actually be easier to just be a good roleplayer.
You can vote someone at any time. And at any time, you can 'unvote' them. No player knows when/if another player is voted for. No more kudos is an unfortunate casualty of the system. But you can more solidly show your appreciation for someone with your anonymous vote. Staff never gave a shit about how many kudos you received, anyways. And many people were circle-jerky about them, even if it could be pleasurable to receive one now and then...The far greater pleasure will come from advancing a karma level.
Each new karma level would require more 'votes' (10 for 0 to 1, 20 for 1 to 2, etc).
-> Logical Karma Restrictions and Spec-App Musings:
Karma 0 would be humans, with all the conventional classes available, and the basic subguilds.
Karma 1 would open up elves. No desert elves and city elves - just elves. The same reason there isn't city humans and desert humans.
Karma 2 would open up half-elves and some extended subguilds.
Karma 3 would open up dwarves and earth/water mages.
It would continue like that. There are many people who actively post on this board who could come up with a great karma list that is way better than the current one. I would only assume two things: That there will be more than 7 karma levels, and that Templars would be a karma-gated class, the same as sorcs and mindbenders are.
If someone achieves the karma to play a templar, and wants to play a templar, they should play a fucking templar. If the community wants to VOTE on certain roles being restricted to once a year (so the same guy doesn't keep creating templars or sorcerers), that could be an early established order of business. I think that'd be a good idea, but I wouldn't force it on others either.
Once a templar is created, they simply request/wish up to get set up, and a staffer will do that and leave them be. They begin as the lowest rank of templar. Since it supposedly takes IC decades to advance beyond that tier in the game world, there will be IC decades of playtime before promotion needs to be addressed. Templars should be free to establish their own hierarchy and areas of responsibility though, and cooperate/compete as they see fit with VERY little NPC involvement/oversight.
Because really, what does a superior templar have to give even the slightest shit about, how your templar dealt with a commoner in the Gaj? Anyone that achieves the karma necessary for a templar is going to be someone mostly interested in making fun for those around them, not some fuckhole who has never done anything before, and got dumped into the role by Nyr.
No doubt, at some point, some drama will arise. But guess what? It will be much less drama when the people involved earned their way to the role via the community, and without staff intervention or favoritism.
--> 'Automate' Houses:
What about noble and merchant houses, like Borsail or Kuraci? This is the one tricky area.
How these Houses are established exactly, deserves debate. Because they are essential to the game in many ways. My personal preference would be to tie them to karma as a subguild, which acknowledges their having been born in the lap of luxury. Perhaps one of three possible House-only subguilds to suggest either a conniving/manipulative individual, a studious/trading one or a leader/warrior. They select that subguild, and then they wish up/request for a staffer to set them up with their noble House.
Without exception, all Noble/House members would come in at the lowest tier. But even the lowest tier would still have an obsidian stipend, personal guards, compounds and access to all kinds of luxuries. They would still have the ability to hire employees, and depending on their own initiative, increase in power and influence. They would be given a freer hand, and less dependent on NPCs or staff RPTs. They simply aren't at the level of needing to deal with their House senator or some shit.
In time, Houses can establish their own player hierarchies. Someone who exists and thrives for years in that role will naturally rise to a justified position of authority in the events of the city. No one will mind, if after 20+ game years, a staffer elevates a PC into a more prestigious title, or a PC is spoken of as having ascended to higher affairs when they retire.
Let's be realistic. Armageddon is a dirty world. Most of the city RP is in taverns. No truly prestigious/influential nobles would spend even a fraction of the time in public among the riffraff that the game's current 'movers and shakers do'. But at the same time, freed of the confines of arbitrary NPC oversight and staff anality, they'll be more empowered than ever before.
Most organizations, like the Byn or tribes, can handle themselves fine without special treatment. Tribes have access to tribal specific stuff in their camps.
Merchant Houses, like Kurac or Salarr, would have ALL of their available items stocked on special vendors in their compound warehouses, who will only interact with the Merchant. They will have a cost, defined by their craftsmanship, materials, and what the logical 'tithe' would be to the higher ups. The merchant can buy as many of those as they acquire the sids for, and sell them for whatever profit margin they can manage.
This stock would not be infinite. Ideally, once a week, a staffer could check bins for supplies that have been brought in by the House, and depending on the rough quantity, re-stock the vendor and delete the materials. This would be vastly less work for staff than the current alternative, which is them hunting down and individually loading in every requested piece of equipment.
Tribal camps already move about on their own.
--> Concentrate the Playerbase:
Destroy Tuluk. It should be a dangerous, treacherous ruin up north, overrun by kryl and cannibal halflings who ate all the skeet lizards.
Allanak will be the center of civilization. There will be no Northern 'Houses' or 'Templars', unless some players get together, in some mad expedition, to try and carve out their own territory up there.
There will be enough conflict within Allanak and its environs to not need the fake, artificial dynamic of a competing city-state. Luirs, Red Storm, etc, will continue as normal.
--> All Staff Are Equal:
Staff are treated as volunteers, with fairly limited compensation, whose main desire is to tell stories and enhance the game world for those around them. They are not our babysitters. They are not to be buttered up or manipulated, because they can't really give you anything that you can't acquire from other players.
They are not tied to any one clan. All staff respond to all requests, and all are equally responsible for the 'clans' such as they exist in the game. PC leaders have much greater independence, and even the lowest tier should be in a position where they do not require permission or animated NPCs to tell them what to do. If it's so needed, a player should eventually rise to that role.
This is not a situation where some ignorant, out of the loop NPC Byn lieutenant appears out of nowhere, with no grasp of recent events, to try and force his agenda on the sergeants.
The answer to every question should be how to best take staff OUT of the loop, where daily events are concerned.
Without singular responsibility for one clan, when staff aren't seeing to their once weekly-task of checking storage bins for how much stock a House vendor should be re-supplied with, or situating a new templar or noble, or helping a clueless newbie...They can spend that time telling stories.
Major policy issues should be settled by consensus, with shareholder input/voting as required. Like any successful organization/charity/company in the world operates today. Here's a fact: There's not one successful company in the world where all the decisions come down to a some social recluse neckbeard reeking of sweat and need. We should approach it like normal, rational, sane hobbyists.
--> Staff should create, not contain events:
What are good examples of creating RP events?
Having a marauding band of tribals settle across the northern road, where they will cause trouble until they're either dealt with or exterminated.
Describe a plague that has broken out in the 'rinth.
Animate a gate guard to give someone a hard time, or just unexpectedly bring the world to life in little ways.
Have the NPC Byn Captain give missions to a Byn PC Lieutenant or Sergeant, which they can then use to direct their own underlings.
Even better: an NPC senior noble or templar gives a mission to their junior noble/templar which will require them seeking out that Byn Lieutenant.
There's a right way and a wrong way to use NPC leadership. The wrong way, is Armageddon's current practice of making them suffocatingly overweening. I've been in clans where we could not do shit without NPC allowance, and writing weekly reports to the guy, and getting hardly a response, and who would only show up once a month, if that. Leaving us holding our ass the rest of the time. And when they did show up? It was usually only to contradict pre-existing RP.
No. Fuck that. That's abuse. One of the only valid reasons to ever animate an NPC leader is to give them a mission or a task, that you intend to actively see through, like raiding a nest or providing an escort. It doesn't have to be a big deal. This is Armageddon. Being given a reason to guard a wagon, and having some delf show up and shoot one arrow at it before buggering off, is a great time for all involved.
A staffer needs to realize that their strength and benefit to the game is as a force multiplier. In this case, an RP multiplier. There are countless ways that an Armageddon staffer can create lasting fun for people, with often only a minute or two of their time. I remember those moments with far more fondness than the railroaded, overly elaborate RPTs dealing with TEH END OF THE WORLD.
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I could and will keep going, but this post is long enough. But I will say a few more things in closing: There is too much OOC secrecy in Armageddon. It started as a way to enhance RP, but now it's only used to hide abuses.
Code mechanics should be freely discussed on the forum. They will find out anyways. Why maintain the fiction? The only thing on the forum that needs to be moderated is spam and the malevolent dissimulation of IC knowledge related to current events. People will still spread things they shouldn't, but it just shouldn't be allowed for someone to die, then log on the forum to bitch about it.
No account notes, except which are public and can be seen by staff and the player at any time.
No special applications means no snowflakes.
OOC staff adjudication should be only in the most extreme circumstances. Most everything should be handled as ICA=ICC. No retcons. No rezzes. There will be complaints, but unless someone is cheating, staff doesn't need to get involved.
Staff should be treated as chairmen of the board, and the players as volunteers. I think, given that staffing will be much less materially rewarding (no karma 7 for becoming staff) that it will attract a better caliber of player.
Staff would not be able to play and staff at the same time. They could however temporarily resign from staff whenever they felt like it and focused on playing. In fact, since virtually the sole responsibility of staffers will be RPTs and pasting content that players have created and submitted, those who linger and do nothing, should be encouraged to take a break.
No politics. Because fuck you, this is just a game. leave it IC. There should be no tangible advantage to staffing beyond the pleasure of telling a story and making the game more fun for other players. The moment someone gets an entitled attitude about what they 'deserve', one of two things should happen: A) They move on, or B) We find a way to remove staff further from the equation.
A diku-based game can never be fully automated. But we can bring about a state of events which requires something like 70% less input from staffers. About 50% of that responsibility can be dispersed among the playerbase. 20% of it, (like elaborate circle-jerks regarding the highest echelons of power within Armageddon's world, one step removed from Tektolnes himself) has no basis in a game with 50-70 people playing prime time, at best.
Sending a Jal templar to clean out the sewers - fine. Some kind of masturbatory Game of Thrones-style fantasy politics, all 'masterfully' choreagraphed by Nyr...no.
There should not be private forums for clans on the GDB. That's just a pain the ass. It should be handled by the in-game bulletin boards.
And I can't stress enough that staff should be fluid, and not turn into a club where people chat and rub each other's back on staffchat.
Some people might say, why should they solo-emote, if staff can't see their hidden genius and reward them for it? Well. Staff never rewarded the good solo emoters anyways, and rarely saw it unless the person was already playing a templar or some such. And that's a selfish, un-fun, douchey reason for solo-emoting. It's still possible a hidden player might see you and reward you with a vote, though.
