Jester Class

Asmodron

Do you believe the Jester class fits in with Achaea's theme, and if not what would you change?

Aktillum

Jester class is fine and House CiJ have done a decent job of giving themselves a "performance artists" type roleplay, considering the class was (literally) designed to pay tribute to Insane Clown Posse and most of the early guildhelp files were copied from the Principia, ad verbatim.

clanhelp juggalos if you don't believe me.

Sohl

Pranks just has terrible flavour text. Change it to something less stupid, and it'll be a decent class.

Sylvance

I think that CIJ does an excellent job of making Jesters fit the bill for Achaea.  Without CIJ, I think Jester is totally a WTF class, thematically.

Eld

Another anti-Pranks vote. So many of the abilities just feel way too anachronistic (especially those damn balloons). Not sure exactly what all @Sohl is including in "flavour text", but if he means "find more thematically appropriate ways to provide the same functionality", then yeah, that would take care of most of my problems with Jesters.

Sohl

Yes that.

Blujixapug

no

delete:
balloons
jitb
props
giraffes
bananas
Carnivalis Institute
Tarot
Puppets

reskin:
hocuspocus
badjoke
graffiti
Pranks

Remake as "performers" or "acrobats". Establish them as a Cyrene or Hashan House of acrobats/spies. Neutral Houses are a festering cesspool of stagnation and irrelevance at constant risk of bad leaders stopping things up like a clot of potato peel shavings in a sink of dirty water. Give them a real mission statement, a specific enemy, and an ideology that can bring them into conflict with others. Give them more abilities themed around disguise, travelling, information-gathering, entertaining, deceiving, masks, acrobatics. Make them less cartoonish.

Maybe like, lion-taming? As part of the circus concept. Maybe that is too CIJ though, or has too much overlap with sentinels.

Maybe a "tinkering" skill that incorporates manufacturing things like bombs and traps from moving parts. Archimedean artifice. Imagine if it had a Lego-like aspect, like Minecraft's redstone circuitry, where some abilities were the straight-up creation of specific items with single purposes (bombs etc), but the greater portion of the skill was devoted to a variety of abilities that could be pieced together to interact in complex and creative ways. Some abilities are triggers - perhaps on entrance from the north, perhaps on hearing speech. Some abilities receive input from a trigger and somehow manipulate it - perhaps requiring four people activate it, perhaps implementing a delay of 10 seconds - before transmitting it to another device which receives and manipulates input, or to an output device. Some abilities are an output devices - perhaps releasing a cloud of smoke, or a firework, or a thousand nails exploding outwards in all directions. Maybe that's too clockwork and high-tech though.

Moonfox

Having been around the CIJ a long, long time (and having Jester friends from the guild days...) I dunno. I completely disagree. I feel that I'm a part of the playerbase that wants to be silly, tell jokes, have fun and NOT have to fret over our enemies or make everything about combat.

Fact is we have a mission and enemies just like every other House. Our enemy is the Greyfaces that don't think that comedy has a place in the world (same ones that claim we shouldn't have a House or any of the silly skills we do) and our mission is to laugh in their faces.

Just because something isn't in line with how YOU want to play the game doesn't mean it doesn't fit. Never has there been a time in history where entertainment didn't have a viable, influential place in the world. Fun has always had its critics, and will continue to stand the test of time in the face of nay-sayers.

Sobriquet

Jester class is fine

Delphinus

@Moonfox: The problem is that none of it is entertaining; it's all camp and puns and crass sight gags. I appreciate the few jesters who do satire and do it right despite this, because they're playing the royal fool at his best. It's clever and biting and it has the sting of truth, and it's actually working toward a goal that isn't LOL GIRAFFES SO RANDOM XD.

[spoiler]
Nice motto, by the way:
His motto: 'I didn't choose the hug life... the hug life chose me!'
[/spoiler]

Aktillum

@Delphinus You sound like someone who's been around too much paperwork lately. Are you sure you're not a cabbage?

There will be silly players. Let them be in the CiJ, so they don't have to be in your house.

edit: giraffes.

Blujixapug

The whole "we're silly!~ don't be a Greyface~" thing is pretty dumb. I mean I totally think entertainers, comedians, puppeteers, Punch and Judy-type shows, lion-tamers, trapeze artists, ringmasters, harlequins, fire-breathers, travelling minstrels, mimes, bawdy tunesmiths, acrobats, and clowns are legitimate archetypes that can potentially work in this game, with its magical medieval setting. And to some extent that's at the base of what jesters are. Many Jesters have aspired to it, and I have genuinely enjoyed some Jester/CIJ shows I've seen put on in Achaea.

But the class is too infected by some strange aesthetic that wasn't properly realised. This is what I dislike about things like JITB, parts of the CIJ guildhall (giant talking duck), bananas, giraffes, etc. It's like someone had a vision of circus clowns, performing acrobats, tricksters and evil harlequins, lighthearted slapstick, and Pratchett's Fools' Guild - but they spliced it all together in the wrong way. I don't have anything personally against people who play characters in the CIJ. I just think whoever game up with Jesters in their original iteration was smoking way too much weed, and they didn't have the right network in place to tell them "no... no, just no, and please stop logging in high" and edit their ideas into something non-retarded, and people in the guild-turned-House live in the shadow of that.

Aktillum

Blujixapug said:

I just think whoever game up with Jesters in their original iteration was smoking way too much weed

Aktillum said:

 the class was (literally) designed to pay tribute to Insane Clown Posse and most of the early guildhelp files were copied from the Principia, ad verbatim.

clanhelp juggalos if you don't believe me.

I don't understand the point you're driving, other than maybe some of the skills need to have their messages changed. The House has come an incredibly long way from its blatantly OOC inception, and it is pretty much the ideal that you are describing; a performance theatre House for Bards, Jesters and (for flimsy reasons) Serpents.

Blujixapug

Oh god, Insane Clown Posse. I missed that the first time around.

Moonfox

Delphinus said:

@Moonfox: The problem is that none of it is entertaining; it's all camp and puns and crass sight gags. I appreciate the few jesters who do satire and do it right despite this, because they're playing the royal fool at his best. It's clever and biting and it has the sting of truth, and it's actually working toward a goal that isn't LOL GIRAFFES SO RANDOM XD.

[spoiler]
Nice motto, by the way:
His motto: 'I didn't choose the hug life... the hug life chose me!'
[/spoiler]

Delphy, do you say that monks should be changed because noob monks don't know how to properly be pious and noble and all inner-tranquility and stuff? What about Mhaldorians that don't fully understand the Truths? Or new priests that haven't figured out how to live within the Codex? 

Just because people do something wrong doesn't mean that the people who do it right should have to pay for it. I'm as guilty as everyone else at times, pouncing around or babbling on and on about silly nonsense but it's all shades of grey, because there are times when I'm serious or even spouting some highbrow comedy. I think it should be noted that there is a time and a place for everything, and Jesters just think that the time and place are always right for comedy. 

(Besides, the fact that we were inspired by the Principia has always amused me to no end)

What I have noticed is that the House has been limited drastically since I left, and I am going to have to lay some blame there. We used to be able to recruit nearly everyone (except polar-aligned classes) and that gave us a much larger playerbase to work with, and we ended up with a much higher standard. There's plenty of designers, poets, playwrights and creative-types out there not allowed in the CIJ, so we have less awesome people to provide awesome leadership to the young'uns. Not trying to bash the current leadership, just my observation.

I know this was originally about Jesters being bad and not our House being bad, but IMO the things go hand-in-hand.

Ephram

The problem with pranks is that the intended audience seems to consist of like... the children in the goblin village. Young. Easily impressed. Slightly diabolical.

It's hard to take it seriously playing an adult character, whereas the potential is there for the class to be greater.

Delphinus

I'm taking @Blujixapug's gif literally. He's running back upstairs and leaping through the window, because once is just not enough.

@Aktillum: Everyone has come a long way from their blatantly OOC inception. We're past the point of stating the obvious, thankfully, and have moved on to the meat and potatoes of what makes for an engaging narrative. This is why people are hating on the current forms of jesters, the CIJ, and the Pandora character.

Xith

Jesters are a medieval thing, just like knights bards and the rest of Achaea.

I've heard plenty of "wah, wah, flavor text, wah" but Jester has a zesty flavor and laugh-in-your-face-ed-ness that keeps Achaea from being Greyfaced. The primary reason I never considered joining the CIJ is because they put rules on Jesters too, and those rules suppress all the grand utility of the class and the fun side.

Yes there are limits, and even being foolish should be done with appropriate grace, but summary: I wouldn't change a damn thing about the roleplay side of jesters.

I wouldn't be opposed to somehow having a subclass of dark jester with altered pranks flavor text so that Mhaldorians don't get upset tummies: black balloons, jerk-in-the-box, mhunskin peels, dragonflybombs, bitchpowder...

Delphinus

Re: Greyfaces, notice how Erisian chaos is slowly getting axed from the narrative. There's a reason for this, and it's related, and it's good.

Xith

Delphinus said:

Re: Greyfaces, notice how You damned kids with your walkmans and your Donnie Osmond.

Aktillum

@Delphinus That's fair, but I think some of the things you're portraying as negative are the meat and potatoes that CiJ members love. I don't think the CiJ would appreciate if Quackers was suddenly replaced with Ruphio the Lion-Tamer. Jesters don't even use whips.

Personally I feel like most of your concerns would be addressed by bringing Eris back.

Edit: Lol @ Eris getting axed from the narrative, you know Oblivion is lifted from the Principia too.

Eld

Aktillum said:

@Delphinus That's fair, but I think some of the things you're portraying as negative are the meat and potatoes that CiJ members love. I don't think the CiJ would appreciate if Quackers was suddenly replaced with Ruphio the Lion-Tamer. Jesters don't even use whips.

Personally I feel like most of your concerns would be addressed by bringing Eris back.

 Sounds more like they'd be exacerbated by bringing Eris back.

Moonfox

Wheee bring Eris back!

Sohl

Original Eris was a fantastic divine. There's a reason she got her own game. There are even parts of Erisian chaos which are neat and interesting. The vast majority of it, however, and especially what's been passed on through the generations of players since Eris left, is stupid. And not the "let's be fun and stick it to the greyfaces" stupid, but legit, "these people are idiots" kind of stupid. Same goes with the thematic flavour that jesters have. It's insipid.

I've no problem with what some of the above players have said about playing a light-hearted character, trying to be achaea's humorous side and whatnot, but jester flavour is a really piss-poor way of having that. It's the reason why there are so few jesters. 

We're better than it.

Sohl

Aktillum said:

Edit: Lol @ Eris getting axed from the narrative, you know Oblivion is lifted from the Principia too.

I'd rather go more fully into Nihilist philosophy IC, but in summary: there was a certain subset of erisian teachings that was related to the idea of the end of the world, but it's not what we base our (read: Babel's order) philosophy off.

Asmodron

lol.

no

Nellaundra

I worded that really poorly and I can't be arsed to word it correctly for maximum trolling.

Delphinus

Babel's religion is 10% heat death, 20% Lovecraft, and 15% concentrated power of will. The Principia Discordia and Robert Anton Wilson really had nothing to do with it.

Sohl

I like your post, but your math is a bit off.

Eld

The other 55% has already fallen into Oblivion.

Salindera

I actually like parts of Erisian chaos. It's interesting from a philosophical outlook (I can see how there were issues, of course, and Eris probably deserved getting axed if only for Bopolia).

As for the actual topic at hand I don't think that people are really saying things that are all that different. Nobody seems to be denying that certain jester archetypes could and can fit into Achaea really well, or that comedy is not a worthwhile pursuit or one that should be an option for players. The gripe seems to rest in the aesthetic aspects of the class and house, and if those are so core to jester rp that changing or removing them would really harm current jesters then that is likely a problem unto itself.