Post by sirra on Apr 26, 2018 8:50:40 GMT -5
I've ripped on half-giants a lot over the years. But what it really comes down to, is that the race is designed in such a way that you either have to play a complete fuckhole (i.e, the subservient 'Yup' brigade) or else get brutally slammed and ostracized for having any detectable nuance in your RP at all. There is a very fine line to walk, but it is exhausting and not particularly rewarding.
It is a numbing and dumbing down process to play an HG for any length of time with anything approaching sincerity of concept. Those who thrive in the role tend to be those with a weird (yet vaguely sympathetic) need for being the friendly big strong dumb guy (and there's been a rare few notable HGs over the years that hung around forever as this archetype - but I still found them agonizingly boring) and those who are just horrible and moronic (of which there have been legions).
In my time with Arm, I had some kind of perennial misfortune for ending up as middle management in combat clans, no matter what I did. I probably in-depth trained/mentored more than a hundred newbies. I will take a genuinely clueless person every day of the week, over someone trying to act clueless and desperately afraid of being accused of being too smart. It creates a horrible and dangerous environment. I hated putting up with it, cause every crew needed one of the big dumb stupid fuckers.
Every newbie half-giant PC I ever dealt with, always had this veneer of shifty, disreputable artificiality as they first start out overcompensating, and then transitioned into just another 'Yup' clone. Most would retire after getting it out of their system. Though as I've noted before, there was a cadre of dudes back in the day who only seemed to app HGs.
In fact, the nearest thing that ever came to getting me to quit Armageddon for good, that wasn't related to the lazily infuriating malfeasance of its staff, was getting caught up in a half-giant role and feeling crushed between the twin pillars of everyone in the clan needing you for your OP-Strength (lifting shit, hitting shit, etc) and finding it so absolutely boring and unrewarding creatively.
Muls had more potential, but the karma requirement was so high, that genuinely good players rarely had a chance to come out of nowhere and make it their own.
For better or worse, by the time someone has Mul Karma, they're either a known quantity which takes the shine off interacting with them (Oh, hey, that's so-and-so. I wonder which clan he'll jump to next month), someone who is too good of an RPer to actually enjoy the race's combat prowess or even survive for very long outside of a delf tribe or noble house, or just some jackass that gets PK'd in Mantis Valley.
The really long-term, knowledgeable players who had that kind of karma and had the need to play a powerful role, ended up as sorcs instead. Which is why 99% of all muls that people have interacted with, have been bodies in the waste.
It is a numbing and dumbing down process to play an HG for any length of time with anything approaching sincerity of concept. Those who thrive in the role tend to be those with a weird (yet vaguely sympathetic) need for being the friendly big strong dumb guy (and there's been a rare few notable HGs over the years that hung around forever as this archetype - but I still found them agonizingly boring) and those who are just horrible and moronic (of which there have been legions).
In my time with Arm, I had some kind of perennial misfortune for ending up as middle management in combat clans, no matter what I did. I probably in-depth trained/mentored more than a hundred newbies. I will take a genuinely clueless person every day of the week, over someone trying to act clueless and desperately afraid of being accused of being too smart. It creates a horrible and dangerous environment. I hated putting up with it, cause every crew needed one of the big dumb stupid fuckers.
Every newbie half-giant PC I ever dealt with, always had this veneer of shifty, disreputable artificiality as they first start out overcompensating, and then transitioned into just another 'Yup' clone. Most would retire after getting it out of their system. Though as I've noted before, there was a cadre of dudes back in the day who only seemed to app HGs.
In fact, the nearest thing that ever came to getting me to quit Armageddon for good, that wasn't related to the lazily infuriating malfeasance of its staff, was getting caught up in a half-giant role and feeling crushed between the twin pillars of everyone in the clan needing you for your OP-Strength (lifting shit, hitting shit, etc) and finding it so absolutely boring and unrewarding creatively.
Muls had more potential, but the karma requirement was so high, that genuinely good players rarely had a chance to come out of nowhere and make it their own.
For better or worse, by the time someone has Mul Karma, they're either a known quantity which takes the shine off interacting with them (Oh, hey, that's so-and-so. I wonder which clan he'll jump to next month), someone who is too good of an RPer to actually enjoy the race's combat prowess or even survive for very long outside of a delf tribe or noble house, or just some jackass that gets PK'd in Mantis Valley.
The really long-term, knowledgeable players who had that kind of karma and had the need to play a powerful role, ended up as sorcs instead. Which is why 99% of all muls that people have interacted with, have been bodies in the waste.
