A rebuttal - the Rise of the Metagame

Read this shit again since you obviously missed it the first time bilbo:


6. Players being nice to one another





It is easy to get tunnel vision when thinking of conflicts between players and just get angry or choose sides, and I am just as guilty as anyone else about escalating bullshit nerd flap fights.





But... maybe we can just... try to stop talking as much shit about other players or groups of players. I know everyone likes to grab their popcorn.jpg when the flame and troll gears start grinding, but there is a tendency to - as Synthesis wrote earlier today - to speak in superlatives or generalities about other players or groups of players. At the end of the day, this just widens whatever standing divides there are and, in the end, makes for a toxic environment at times.





I'll put forth an effort to do better myself. You who are reading this... don't have to at all, but it will probably be better in the end if some people acknowledge they've been wrong and just cut it out.



No apologies are necessary or even acknowledgements... we can all just silently try to do better than some of us on both sides have been doing.

He played Sharlo for like 15 out of those 16 years, leading Kadius through its best period.

For the people that festival was oriented toward, it was pretty cool I'm sure. I'm not trying to say it was shitty or poorly done... I'm sure PCs and staff put in a lot of work.

I dunno, maybe I just get too awkward with big groups like that with lots of nobles... Probably just not my thing.

Again, not trying to say players did poorly... I think that nobles and nobles employees, who is seemed to be mainly for, enjoyed the shit out of it.

and I think it is good for players to actively practice making stuff like that work. Definitely not without benefits to attempt group things on Arm. I don't mean to disparage the players who were involved, but just to point out that, yes, it is easy to impact the game when you are in a restricted role and have heavy staff support, especially with social events.

It is a little harder when you are trying to exceed much beyond that, though. That was the original point.

I'm fine with kurac's pepper eating contests and other social gatherings like this in game. Parties, festivals, and contests all have their place. And if there's another one happening tomorrow, cool. I think what kronibas may be getting at is that this sadly is the height of power a merchant/noble/templar seems to possess anymore. I'd love to see the current spell list of the active templar pcs, because I bet they're enough to make a 2-day vivaduan laugh their butt off at them. When I played a jihaen I felt like a sitting duck despite the additions to their skill tree. I'm supposed to be leading armies and yet when I spar a warrior recruit it's a question as to who's going to win the next round. I really think it's because the imms stopped giving power. They were angry that they got told off for pampering their favorites, so now nobody gets anything at all. Like a spoiled brat. The coddling that once took place was so unbelievably blatant they may as well have openly declared that this player gets special treatment for reasons OOC, not IC.

Make the road to success long and difficult, throw obstacles in front of our path, keep rewards to a minimum but enough that we're happy to come back for more. It's a delicate balance, surely. But it's not really THAT hard to manage. Right now the current host of imms I see aren't even trying. And why should they when the culture of limitation probably affects them too. That quote I keep pasting here has no element of truth to it anymore. Let's take the "fabled elemental being" line. If you wanted to say it makes sense players shouldn't be able to become one anymore, ok fine (I don't agree but ok I'll go along with it for a moment). But it's like literally every line can now be scratched out. Some things need to go but not everything. I'd rather see a greater focus on change rather than removal. But I could start an entirely new thread alone on discussing what has been added to the game (which is very little).



Actually, there are nothing BUT limits. Barring the ludicrous doesn't count if you consider the examples below, all of which are now no longer possible/allowed under the culture of limitation policy.



This is such a joke I don't think I need to even talk about this one. Next.



No longer game policy, not allowed for the same reason defilers were nixed: too much work.



Alright, actually this is probably the only one not expressly forbidden or just utterly impossible. Though what they can do with the riches is probably quite limited now.



You mean like the jade duster alliance in all their glory and power? Mark my words, there will never be another house duering ever again.



I also don't think this one even deserves commenting, it's that obvious.

So what does that leave us with? Festivals and pepper eating contests. Which are great, sure. But these should be the average bread and butter for players while the successful few launch their surprise attacks on the city and go down in history, even when they fail to try, or emerge as a lowly merchant who eventually climbs his way to the top seat in house kurac, or evolve into some arcane creature, or countless other things expressly forbidden under the new culture of limitation. Empower even a handful of players while at the same time making it clear that they've actually worked for those empowerments and you'll see the game world thriving like it once did.

I'm fine with giving indies a hard time. The theme of the game world is that every tiny resource, even a half-rotten fruit, is fought over. Your indie hunter who knows how to live off the lands without help from anyone should be given the hardest time, there should be entire armies of hostile tribesmen chasing him down and making his life a constant chase. It's only natural that the great companies ruling the known world are the only ones with any real power. The catch to this however is if an indie can inspire lots of people to follow him and join his cause. Throw him some curve balls, make life difficult for him (while also showing you're doing it for storytelling purposes, not to be an OOC twat!) but give him a chance to become the next house deuring. And if that indie has more people flocking to him than the busiest clan in the game then he deserves a little empowerment. And by empowerment I don't mean a warehouse they get to rent for 2 months and a bunch of master crafted jade dusters. You can't topple salarr and let some indie and his large group of followers take over with their new clan every single day, of course. But when has it ever happened? Or to put it another way, when has it ever happened under the new culture of limitation?

What I just think is weak is to be prevented from doing even some of the more basic things, and then to have some fucker snidely ask just exactly what you've done.

To block someone from trying to do shit outside of a character suspectible to swift force storage... and then accuse them of not doing stuff.


No, staff need to relinquish control and let more outside of the range of sponsored characters happen.  And they need to make players feel like this is a Real possibility, which won't really happen if some of them just talk shit about players on the GDB.