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Storytelling / Performing
Blackharp
The Zoo
Greetings Everyone!
I have been gone from Achaea for a long while now and in that time I made a visit to Midkemia Online where I discovered an amazingly kick-ass skill that I was wondering if we could bring to Achaea? The skill is in the Performance skill tree for rogues and it is called storytelling. This is the AB file for it:
"PERFORMANCE - STORYTELLING
Syntax: STORYTELL PERFORM
STORYTELL WEAVE [color] <illusion>
STORYTELL SING/SAY [adjective] <text>
STORYTELL EMOTE <text>
STORYTELL FINISH
Cooldown: 24 hours
An irrefutable talent of any aspiring bard is their ability to captivate audiences with songs, poems and stories in taverns across Triagia. With their amazing voices, agile and well honed skills, and their many years spent training - most bards are capable of such inspiring works that both themselves and the audience leaves the tavern feeling more worldly and more experienced than ever before.
Upon finding a tavern, a bard with the storytelling ability may use STORYTELL PERFORM to begin a performance. Then, using the three storytelling abilities - weaving, singing or saying, and emoting - they build up their performance and gradually build the tension, drawing the crowd into a state of enrapt adoration. An optional color from 1-15 (See CONFIG COLOR) may be used to augment the illusions you perform, and an adjective (visible by simply using the command without any arguments) can be also optionally added to any singing or speaking. When the performance has drawn to a close, the bard will be able to STORYTELL FINISH to end their piece, with everybody present and yourself recieving experience dependent on how well the performance went.
A warning to all performers: crowds usually disperse with great haste should the bard cease to act within 10 minutes of their last action, or attempt to leave the venue! "
How this skill actually works in the game is that a Bard would walk into an Inn/tavern/bar and start a storytelling show. If you walked into the room you would see a line saying "So and So is performing a story in the corner, JOIN STORY to listen". The only way you could see the performance was to JOIN STORY, that way random people in the room wouldn't be spammed with the show. As for the abilities, it mostly amounts to the performer being able to do a long form of hocus pocus, enact story specific emotes, and put on a good show. The benefit to this was that the performer and the audience would then gain some experience from the show!
I feel like getting A performance skill like this would go a long way towards bringing storytelling back into the realms and also giving jesters and bards a serious way to put on shows. It would also give the general populace a good reason to go to these shows (other than the obvious awesomeness of the performer). My apologies if this post seems rambling and doesn't make much sense, but I am tired and wanted to put this up before I forgot about it. If anyone has any questions, comments, or smart remarks feel free to say so and i'll reply tomorrow when I am more energized.
23
Comments
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Community moderation, while not infallible, could probably be applied to this. Say, after a story completes, those attending can rate the performance in some way (say, applauding, booing, shrugging, whatever). Storytellers build up a reputation by doing these stories, and the xp their stories generate becomes a function of that reputation. Divine/celani could randomly sit in whenever they're bored and participate in the ratings, with their ratings weighted more heavily. It'd be way harder to game this sort of system if you make it take a reasonable amount of good-rated storytelling before the xp you produce becomes anything remotely noteworthy.
I've always been a believer that you get the best results out of something that's properly incentivised, and I think something like this could be stellar if it was.
But perhaps that's approaching the "too much work" boundary.
In traditional RPGs, GMs are often tasked with granting experience rewards for subjective accomplishments, so it might be fitting if admins could do the same.
The only potential issues I see is that it'd reward people who're actively involved in orders, etc. and maybe that's a bad thing? Also, extra admin overhead, even though I figure it could be a pretty casual thing.
See, this is why I wish you had a way for players to contribute with coding/development efforts in some way. Then whenever you say that, I could just offer to do it myself!
Alas, no such luck!
Not sure if that is how xp works anymore . . . been away for awhile. Either way, Lord Sarapis, even if we could make this a skill with no XP reward I could see it becoming a HUGE favorite.
Another Idea I had for it, if a performer is doing a show, would it be possible for them to temporarily change their SAYS name? For example, if I was doing a show:
(Story) Blackharp says, "Hello Everybody!"
STORYTELL SAY AS HARPY "Hello as well Everyone!"
(Story) Harpy says, "Hello as well Everyone!"
Including the (Story) tag before the line would make sure people realize it is the storyteller saying things, and it would also allow a storyteller to put on a more "convincing" dialogue.
All in all, I am REALLY happy to see this is seriously being considered. Like I said earlier, Storytelling has been my main draw to MKO and if Achaea got it I honestly don't know if I would ever set foot in MKO again.
Just keep in mind that simply because we like something doesn't mean it's going to be implemented any time soon. I do like this, and it's actually not much work. so it has a better chance than normal of getting implemented in the forseeable future.
1) A jester could pull off a show like this with Hocus Pocus now that the murmuring is invisible (THANK YOU FOR THAT!), but hocus pocus is fairly limited in character count if I recall correctly? So maybe a slightly extended hocus pocus would be nice for setting the scene or doing "Illusionary" room settings? Also, if someone is doing a show, maybe cut down the mana cost of the illusioning since there is no way this skill should be usable for PK?
2) A bard would not be able to do the coloured illusions as they just have Prelude aka basic illusion. So this would give them a new tool to become effective storytellers that couldn't be misused for PKing or combat. It would be a purely RP skill for a class that is supposed to be all RP but don't really have many effective skills for RP'ing outside of combat.
3) Performances: If you have ever attended a show (which I think most of us have) then you know how loud and obnoxious they can be, for both the audience and the people who happen to stumble into the room. By making it possible to "WATCH SHOW" or something like that (maybe using the same mechanics as Spin the Bottle?) you could make it so that people who are in the room but not watching the show aren't spammed with something they don't care about. You could also make it vice-versa where the audience members don't see people entering and exiting, but I could see that being dangerous if you are the type who needs to watch out for attacks or thieves a lot.
3a) It would also be pretty awesome if you could make it so that while a person in the room NOT watching the show wouldn't see the show, they could see the reactions/emotes of the audience. If there is a really suspenseful scene in the show and the whole audience gasps, you (as an outside observer) may not have seen or heard what caused the gasp, but you definitely should have heard the reaction. I could totally see that as a fun way to encourage people to watch the show, just to find out what everyone is laughing or gasping about!
4) . . . I know I had a 4 but I forgot what it was
A thought on XP, could you maybe weight it based off of show length and the number of people in attendance? For example, a really long show with one person in attendance would get maybe 50xp for the performer and 100xp for the listener? Where as a shorter show with 10-20+ people could reward the performer with 700xp and the audience with 1400xp? You could also help mitigate the people looking to cheat the system by making sure the performer gets significantly less than their audience (like in the examples above). Also, make sure that a show that is performed with at least one audience member. If there is no one who has JOINED/WATCHED then the show should give no XP.
EDIT:
Another potential fix for cutting down the XP spammers, the Cooldown for this is currently set to 24 hours IRL. Maybe double or triple that? Make it so you can only do it once per RL week or something?
EDIT:
And can I volunteer Scarlatti for this task? I happily volunteer to help Him test it! *Runs and hides*
This way you have a trade skill that is focused on roleplaying in order to make your money. You can also have it be one of the few trade skills that require you to roleplay and quest in order to gain it (instead of just dumping a bunch of credits and getting a license when you may or may not be skilled at this at all!). I know this is counter-intuitive to the credit selling/money making theme of trade skill learning, but I feel like it would work.
You could then have the different levels of the trade skill be the different abilities of the performance.
Novice: PERFORM SHOW - You gain the ability to start a show in a performance space (bar/tavern/inn/stage/etc).
Adept: PERFORMANCE SAYS - You gain the ability to disguise your voice well enough that you can pretend to be someone else speaking during a performance.
Gifted: PERFORMANCE EMOTES - You have practiced different forms of movement to the point that you can pretend to be someone else while performing (Do named emote other than your own. Like doing the SAY AS NAME).
Virtuoso: PERFORMANCE ILLUSION - Through study and rehearsal you have gained the ability to cast short, and basic illusions while performing.
Mythical: PERFORMANCE COLOURS - Gained the ability to cast coloured illusions of moderate length!
Transcendence: PERFORMANCE REWARD - A well performed show is reward enough in and of itself, but you have reached a level of peak performance that not only enlightens your audience, but you also learn more yourself. Performing a well-acclaimed show now grants experience to the listeners and to yourself!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Again, this is just a rough idea of how you could make the storytelling skill available to all classes and not just Bards and Jesters. This way anyone, no matter of class, would be able to be a performer of some type.
I'd also like to see the different ranks earned through performing before a judge of some sort and if they approve of your performance then they would rank you up one level. Or maybe it would be just a single skill but in order to learn the different parts of storytelling you had to visit different performers around the realms and you could only have 2/4 advanced options available (like seafaring). Everyone can start a show and then from there you have to choose between the bland illusions, the coloured illusions, the says, and the emotes. That way you could specialize in what sort of performer you want to be. A storyteller, learn the SAYS ability. An acrobat or mime? Learn the EMOTES ability! etc etc
Again, this is random rambling from a Silly Harp, but I like the ideas of it!
Yes please.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
If there isn't going to be any xp gain, why should I forego the age-old system of emotes in favour of adding yet more complexity to a ritual or performance?
I highly doubt that, in the end, people would use this system more than the current system of emoting. Sure, the novelty of a new toy would make the use of the skill spike, but it would eventually wane and die off, only being used by a small handful of people. Yeah, the privacy would be nice and all, but if you're sitting in a room with a group of people, you would be hard-pressed to not overhear the story anyways. Privacy can also be achieved by sitting on a couch or bench and speaking to those who are seated.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to something like this being put in, I just can't imagine that it would be used as much as some seem to think. The issue is not people being mechanically unable to perform, it's that most people don't want to put the time and effort into a performance or are too afraid to put themselves out into the open. A new system isn't going to fix the creation aspect of a ritual, sermon, or performance.