Armageddon: Incentivized Roleplay

Theoretically Karma incentivizes roleplay. Just not acting out scenes, but also being part of a story, creating the story, staying true to the story, etc. Or at least ... it should incentivize it.

Staff interest incentivizes roleplay. Meaning a boring indie #413 who spars and hunts all day, all code, little rp, will have a lot less feedback, support, and reaction from storytellers and the world around him then someone who has a compelling ongoing story happening. Not because that's the rule, but because STs are just that much more interested and involved with the interesting charas.

RPE? Role playing environment?

Ah, gotcha. I've played a fair amount of role play encouraged MUDs. All of the RP was so airheady it was painful.

Edit: RPIs sometimes suffer from air-heady RP, even. I don't see it very often in Arm, but I'd see it in SOI sometimes.

"Digging" the room is a one-shot command.

Building the room with just a desc can take five minutes or an hour, depending on how inspired you are when writing the desc.

If you're really good, you can dump the flags on there in about a minute or less.

So, in theory, completely establishing a room - flags, desc and all - should take 'maybe' ten minutes.

That is not including anything hidden in the room. That is extra.

The biggest issue I see in Armageddon is Veteran Syndrome, where older players

A) Have seen the entirety of the game world for what it is, and want something new, and
B) Are not given as much freedom/support to do what they want as some newer players.

The problem with A), is that veteran players have all of this meta knowledge inherent with the system, and then can use that knowledge to keep themselves alive, but they become jaded in that the 'grind' has now become as simple as go to zone A, farm this, if see this @ skill level x, then haul ass.

The problem with B), is that many times veteran players WANT to do more, they WANT to bring the world alive, but they find themselves hammered down by what most people see as the "Aggressive NO Cannon" - in other words, what plots they do have or want to have are made brutally difficult, bordering on insane, because the "world" is supposed to be harsh.


House Salarr owns ALL weapons and armor.
House Kadius owns ALL clothes, jewelry, foods, and misc. decorative products.
House Kurac owns ALL desert wear, spice production, some misc. spelunking gear.

House Kurac AND Kadius own most alcohol production (sans some random middle House and the Sun Runners).


Three organizations control nine different facets of economic stability, which gives players very few options. The creation of a Minor Merchant House is nearly impossible - it requires Staff Support AND a large amount of coins AND a Templar willing to actually "let" you buy a Warehouse and start that process up.

Then you have to pay huge fees in taxes.
Then you have to bribe the other Houses if anything you make falls remotely into their category.
Then you have to bribe the Templar more because that's just how it is.

Now you have to write up documentation (normal), establish a line of progression, establish a rank structure (normal), and -survive-.


I repeat. You need to SURVIVE. In Armageddon. Where at the drop of a hat anybody can see that you're loaded, doing well, and decide they don't want you to do well. Where Staff can do any number of enormous things to make life difficult. Where a Templar can have you executed at the behest of a GMH if you fuck up.


You have to beat the entire game world as a whole, in order to get a Minor Merchant House established in game. The amount of effort involved in such an undertaking is almost not worth it.



So, those of you who just see me as a pointless troll who comes here to spark Kronibas and Grumble and rail on you, this is "my" take on the game world as it stands. And I still play, because I believe maybe one day I can change the world a little bit. Not a lot, just a little. I'll add my mark, someday.

Obviously one of the incentives of roleplaying is leaving your mark in the world.

Duh.

I was elaborating on a point Purg made.

Duh x2.

Maybe read the thread.

arma only incentivizes char reports if your staffer is interested in your plot and 90% of them are NOT. the rp never grts you karma unless you are playing the kind of Pc and plot they like. sycophantic fuckwits therefore take lots of karma while good rpers who arent going for the concepts staff find interesting or important stay at 0-2 karma for life. karma is total fucking bullshit

You were jumping off on an off-topic tangent because of your reaction to half of his third paragraph, and nothing you said was about incentivizing RP. Quoting Purg just highlighted how much of what he said you weren't replying to in order to run your mouth about vets and Arm being harsh. Maybe stick to the original post's topic.

I'd like to believe RPIs shouldn't need to incentivize RP. The problem is if they don't use rewards or punishments, they may well incentivize playing the game like anything else on the web, and you'll wind up with the RPers being outpaced/pked by the people trying to "win" the game. You may not need a cookie or a paddling, but if that's what it takes to keep the kindergarteners you're sharing the game world with playing the same game as you, it can't be avoided.

Arm (at least prior to the recent past) deincentivized RP by basically punishing anyone who was trying to accomplish anything that wasn't a direct contribution of time to being a game piece in a plot some staffer conceived of. You want to just explore and hunt as part of an indy group? Expect a world response dropped on you. You want to kill someone in a clan you have a legitimate beef with and make the mistake of letting staff know in advance? Expect a world response dropped on you in advance. You want to play your character concept the way staff approved when you applied for the role? Expect force storage.

As much as I dislike the karma system, there isn't a good way to make a system that eliminates human bias. At least not in a MUD.

Say you're GMing a tabletop game where you reward XP for good role play. It's pretty easy to judge, because you're there for everything that happens. You can ask someone for their motivation for something that seemed OOCly-driven right when it happens, not when they've had a day and a half to construct an excuse. You don't have a separation of running the game from judging the gameplay; they happen at the same time.

Flip that around and you've got a MUD. The game runs itself. If you're not there when something happens, you only find out if someone tells you or if you read through the logs. So in order to judge all of the role playing going on (or lack thereof), you'd have to read through the logs and occasionally interrogate people after-the-fact.

So pretty much every system you come up with will be okay at best. I'd personally rather see Arm use something more granular than the karma system. Like a list of things someone is trusted with, and roles/guilds/races/whatever you can only get if you've got all of the specific checkboxes filled in that the role calls for. Like if you don't act like a shithead when you're playing a giant, you can be trusted with a high-strength character and can play a mul. It still requires someone evaluate/re-evaluate you, though.