Now that it's been a while, exactly how ruined is magick?

If the stigma against gickers is purely social and not justified because they are in fact dangerous even when they're trying to be helpful, then befriending a gicker isn't bad it means you're able to overcome prejudice and take advantage of a relationship. It could be something simple like oh you're near a krathi (of whatever new flavor they come in) you have a higher % chance of getting sun sickness which is coded in game. Oh you're near a viv maybe you have a higher chance of getting disarmed because your hands are damp or you get drunk faster or maybe your thirst comes back quicker .

As for breeds, sure code up some STDs and have them come from breeds. That'd be great (if a bit sex centric). In theory the downside to socializing with a half-breed is that a well played half-breed is kind of unstable and has a bunch of baggage so someday they might fuck you over with their breediness.

You act like I think Haven is a good game or has good incentivizing systems. The fact of the matter is that people ignore the documentation because their actual experiences in game are different. That is why you used to see people make alliances with rogue gickers and shit and benefit greatly from it even though they should be like pissing their pants terrified of a full branched elkros zipping around the desert. This is why Elves in Tuluk achieved absurb levels of power and influence when Sinjinn was in charge.

If there is no actual risk to associating with gickers or supporting elves over humans or dating a breed than it'll happen regardless of documentation. You can't pretend that in the past (haven't played ARM for years) that gicker fear or elf hate or breed hate wasn't a seriously underrepresented thing.


EDIT - Lets not forget that the docs aren't even followed by the staff themselves where House Borsail gained power via gickers, then hates gickers and their involvement in the city? Or any of the other weird double-standard/double-thinks that make very little sense which occur throughout the game.

Is there some reason that you don't think applying some kind of risk to associating with gickers would benefit the game? Wouldn't it enable you to be like. I knew Amos but one day he stood to close to one of them krathi sorts and the gicker was doing his hojo mojo and his flame arms set poor Amos on fire. Gicker said that just happened sometimes. Like when gickers cast (might not be this way still) they would manifest signs of their element and the more powerful they were the more intense the manifestation. Just take that same code. Add a % chance that something bad might happen to a bystander. Bob's your uncle you're set. Then it becomes. Hey be scared of gickers while casting because you never know!

It wouldn't be the only reason. It would be an enforcing reason. Not only that but the playerbase (in the past) has pretty much shown that if there isn't a coded consequence then they'll do whatever they want. It's kind of like a MUSH player saying that you don't need to code in perma-death or combat code because they'd rather deal with the bad RPers than have coded requirements to resolve story.

Instead of adding code though you could always update documentation. You know gickers eat babies, gickers become less human over time, gickers like to mess with mere mortals. Whatever. Like I said in theory half-breeds shouldn't need code because their social stigma backlash is based on them being unstable and untrustworthy. Which is true. Elves likewise are all thieves, it's part of their culture so the social stigma there is also true. Dwarves are all goal obsessed little bastards who don't know how to use punctuation, so the social stigma about them being driven but "selfish" or focused on a specific thing is also true. In theory that means the gicker hate is also true but either documentation doesn't give gickers enough guidelines on how to RP being a soulless abomination or there isn't a coded factor to make it true.

Unless out of all social stigmas in ARM, gickers are the only innocently stigmatized group.

I suppose I've had a much better experience with the playerbase than you have. If the playerbase did whatever they wanted and associate with whomever they wanted to in order to eke out some advantage, damn the docs to hell, then I wouldn't be playing this game. I think people just get way too worked up over the offenders and start saying that's just the way the playerbase is.

My argument is nothing like the comparison you just made. This is the cultural backdrop that is enforced. Are nobles REALLY inherently better than commoners just because of their birth? No, but that's the social perception. We are playing characters in an ignorant, primitive, almost entirely illiterate society. It makes zero sense to say that all their prejudices have to be reasonable prejudices and their beliefs have to be backed by code. It's condescending to the playerbase and I expect better. And despite what your experiences may have been, I consistently see better.

If there had to be some "incentive" to not hanging out with magickers, I guess I'd make it so that magickers who deeply explore their element (which I guess isn't even possible anymore) are likely to go mad. There might be ways to mitigate it, but magickers would then have the earned reputation of being unpredictable and flying off the handle for no reason, barely kept restrained by the gem, and even then not always so.

As for elves and half-elves and dwarves, I would definitely change a few things about them to make them less rigid if I could, especially half-breeds. Their docs and personality quirks seem contrived to me. I can work with them, but I don't like them.

bingoyup. thought itd be cool to have sort of a sliding scale for magickers now, based on how much they focus on their element they may become more witchy and less mundane the more spells they branch, sort of like u lose a skill for each spell u gain, makes for more varied degrees of witch that players cant really sniff while letting full magickers technically be able to exist in gamenegative cantrips can keep idiots in line, make it so whenever an offensive spell is cast in room it temporary side effects on pcs in the room or something, could be increased thirst if its a fireball, etc., stjn or stam damage if a wind spell, etc

Are you new to Armageddon?