Boundaries, RP, and Shitty head Meta-gamers THE THREAD

I can't speak with anything resembling authority on the Rinth, so I'll steer clear of that portion of the discussion. I wanted to ask, though, RGS, what is your current experience with Allanak? This isn't an attack, or a "gotcha" question; I'm honestly curious. I believe you play the game in good RP faith, and I respect that you're in this neck of teh interwebz woods as a counterpoint opinion that isn't simply "trolling for dollars", as it were. So, where would you place the current RP ecosystem of 'nak? Stagnant? Thriving? Quiet, yet consistent? I think OT makes a fair point that 'nak is THE center of civilization, and thus, in an RPI, should be the center of RP gravity. Your sense of it?



You know, I considered OT's position that the Reborn announcement had a deleterious overall impact on RP. As to the initial impact, almost certainly - and who could blame us? The End of the World was nigh, and a lot of players, both vets and not, wanted to try out all manner of roles and/or situations before they became an impossibility. I don't see that as irresponsible nor invidious to the welfare of the game. After Reborn languished, and, mercifully, had a stake put through it, there was a second wave of disturbance. My sense is that it was a kind of devolution, long and incremental while still subtle. It's entirely possible that I left when that particular trend hit its nadir, and that things have improved since then (in fact, I hope so).

My question here to you is two-fold: Do you believe the Reborn announcement had a net negative impact on RP? And how do you assess the current powergaming-to-roleplay ratio? While it's not possible to argue against your position, id est that there "will always be players focused on winning", do you believe they currently make up more, less, or equal to the percentage of the pbase as Arm. in the most RP-intensive era you've experienced?


I know the above is a lot to ask. I also know there isn't a truly objective way of verifying any of this. I do respect you as a vet, though, who has stuck out some Bad Times and who has an appreciation of this strange text-based world we've all spent so much bloody time and energy on over the years (or decades *cringes*).

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, RGS. I appreciate the perspective, and agree that catching larger patterns can be difficult from a single PC perspective. I guess we'd need to make the KKK (Kool Kids Klub) rounds and start gathering data points if we wanted something even approaching objective, and even then one has the problem of said Klub's members being pre-screened. (And for some reason, I thought we started right around the same time, but I guess I have a few years on you - circa 2005.)

Jesus Christ. If someone is giving you shit for attacking NPCs in the rinth, it's probably because you did not demonstrate a very good IC reason for throwing knives at the kids or for assaulting the beggars. No shit people don't like it when you behave bizarrely on their turf. Trying to rationalize it after you get caught isn't going to work.

Nobody cares in the rinth if you pick fights with NPCs that are actually nasty, because it's a lot less of an IC stretch. Also, don't fucking whine you don't have anywhere to twink up. Crimcode is turned off at night and there are far more squishy targets Southside that make much more sense for your aspiring criminal to target than the handful in the rinth everyone knows about and will give you shit for messing with.

Most people don't attack the kids and beggars, because they're crap for skilling up. People attack (or, if they're smart, allow themselves to get attacked by) the NPCs that can actually fight, otherwise it's like sparring an unarmed merchant with cerebral palsy. And you can bet some people will treat you like America's government treats Edward Snowden if they witness you fighting any NPC in the 'rinth. Not everyone, but definitely some. There have notably been twinked-up elf assassins who went around and systematically PKed everybody they found fighting NPCs, even human ones. I wonder what they'd say if you asked how they maxed backstab in the 'rinth, but whatever. Just Arm Things.

This is mainly because fighting NPCs is the only thing that there is to do in the 'rinth, so it's the only thing anybody can react to. If someone has tried to play an actually 'rinth-bound character, as opposed to the ones who spend most of their time southside, it takes about four days before they're scraping their foreheads along the walls while muttering incoherently as total isolation has robbed them of their sanity. So when they see anybody else, they take an obsessive interest in whatever they're doing; and most of the time, what they're doing is fighting NPCs. It's actually a fairly natural reaction, if a mostly OOC one.

The thing is, though: if you were to use skills only when your character has a real IC reason to do so, some skills would take such a retarded amount of time to bring to usable levels that those skills effectively wouldn't exist. If you could use throw only when your character had a genuine IC reason to want to murder that NPC, your throw skill might reach journeyman after three RL years of playing that character. So people just gloss over it and decide that it's kind of a retroactive catching-up on skills that their character should reasonably have after a life spent in the most violent, ruthless place in the world.

Almost every skill is completely and utterly useless until at least halfway to max, after all, and few can be raised in any way that resembles actual practice. You can't throw knives at a target painted on a door or anything like that. What can you do, then, besides throw at NPCs?

I have been the side of the rinthi PC who follows around others. Inevitably they almost always attack the beggars or the kids, not the thugs. Keeping track of which NPCs get killed the most, it's definitely the Westside beggar and cripple. So if you tell me that's not who usually gets targeted, bullshit.

The only time I've seen anyone get trouble for fighting actual thugs in the rinth is if they were on the other race's side, they had paid protection but were breaking rules, or they were doing something ICly ridiculous for other reasons. I have played several rinth-bound characters and never gotten shit despite fighting my share of NPCs (even when Nobody was around).

It's not hard to come up with an IC reason why your character is getting into fights. That's nonsense. The thing is you need to actually make it part of your character, and signal it whenever it makes sense to. "I hate breeds enough that I kill them on sight, including that one NPC that happens to be a good match for me" should be evident both when you're doing the deed and when you meet someone in the Folley and are making idle chit-chat. Most rinthi players I've found are happy to play along if you prove there's more to your character than OOC twinking.

Yes, that's a higher expectation for RP than you face if you want to skill up in the wilderness. But low RP expectations for wilderness play doesn't mean that's the bar we have to tolerate in the rinth.

Sounds like a run-of-the-mill contrarian moron. There's a new one each month, somebody on a new account who shows up and makes a dozen "every single thing you say is bullshit" posts before disappearing again. Like I've been saying, it's almost like a rite of passage for anyone wanting more than three karma to come here and act stupid, call us all fagheads, and then present a collage of their posts to staff.

Ignorance for breakfast, dysinformation for lunch, and ad hominem attacks for dinner. Dessert is hyperbole, preferably chocolate.

...Oh, in RL?! Chinese.