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Didn't Tek's daughter Ms. MetalArm already like assume power and/or start the black robe rebellion or something? I could have sworn she took power and/or is sharing it with 2 other people right now?

Listen son (I'm calling you son because I am being a dick). Unless IsFriday killed you with a sexually flirtatious fme character that complained about being sexually objectified, you haven't experienced the true IsFriday ride. 

context / story / gossip / link to thread?

I don't actually think the ARM playerbase is "bad". I think that they RP what the situation is and in my examples with elves in Tuluk under Sinjinn and gickers in general there isn't really a downside to allying with these anti-establishment or anti-social forces. Why?

In the case of Sinjinn and the elves, the dude like ran Tuluk. He had Qoriya if not in his pocket then in his corner. You were better off playing ball or sucking up than trying to treat him like shit because then you get knifed in the throat and your character is dead.

In the case of gickers, befriending one yields pretty big advantages in not just code but also access to plot (like sirra said). Normally the association isn't even bad because if Blue Robes or whatever find out what you're doing you have better odds that they use you as an informant on the rogue gickers or ask you to do special tasks with your rogue gicker ties because you and them are expendable. Doesn't sound that bad to me.

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.

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.

Instead of docs being enforced on the game. Have the game enforce the docs. Add some element to gickers that make them actually dangerous to non-gickers besides social stigma and you're set. As long as your friendly neighborhood gicker has no downside like causing disease, blindness, genderswapping, famine, whatever. Then functionally there's not downside to associating with them because they were(are?) the most powerful people in the playerbase.