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Comments
Kavaya says, "I believe they would do anything. Filthy slavers."
Kavaya spits on the ground in disgust.
Kavaya says, "Nobody should ever be forced to wear shackles."
(The Mhaldorian Covenent): Melodie says, "No one tell her."
The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."
(Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
(Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."
(Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
(Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
Plus the threat of power doesn't mean much when denizens get revived by Ugrach too
I do at least feel like the "moron", "idiot", etc. is something I've seen pretty frequently.
That's not to say they're all like that. I thought the tash'la scholar was fun and amusing, even though he didn't think highly of us.
You say to Azmodai, the Pit Fiend in Mhaldorian in a steady voice, "I can do nothing but return the sentiment, Eldest."
Azmodai, the Pit Fiend says, "Now that we have an understanding, what do you have?"
I'm just saying, I wouldn't really knock some of them for being fed up with us.
Psh, denizens love me.
Or want to love me, as the case may be.
You have emoted: Jiraishin smiles crookedly at Shaylee, Lady of the Waves.
Shaylee, Lady of the Waves says, "Perhaps you will make a good concubine,
Prey."
The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."
(Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
you’d think we are all a little slow as well.
Adventurers are pretty much a race of bumbling idiots who rely on others for their powers. We buy power from artefacts made by (I forget the race right now), The last 4 classes we have learned we kinda just only graduated with preschool level of knowledge and think we are tough shit, and we basically only bumble our way through life groping at anything in our immediate vicinity in the hopes it’ll do something.
The only reason adventurers didn’t headslam their way into extinction is because strings were pulled and we get begrudgingly revived every time we think we can flirt with that death knight and only good things will happen.
I'm not sure where the admin stance is on customisations being created by adventurers, but since some of the restrictions are that adventurers can't create those items, this implies that adventurers can create other customised items, which would presumably include artefacts too. I could be wrong here, but one of the rules is that a custom item (including artefacts) can't have its roots in historical lore, implying heavily that all custom artefacts are made either by adventurers or player-imagined background NPCs.
Likewise, though adventurers might not reach the level of gods or demigods when it comes to stolen skills, they do reach a fairly decent level of competency, sometimes within months of their first exposure.
And although it's true that adventurers die quite often, aside from weirdos like Lenn, I think the vast majority of them have pretty insane kill/death ratios against denizens. I somehow doubt Penwize, for example, has died two and a half million times, but he's sure close to having killed that many things.
Honestly, @Shirszae, from now on I'm using your outlook:
I personally like it, because it gives us the excuse to treat them in belittling ways as well.
Apologies for this mini-rant, I just am a huge fan of divine interaction (even when it's not positive), this was just more of a series diatribes and frankly only a few people deserve that.
My favorite denizen interaction had to have been Damaris, in Hashan. Poor gal always tried to enact change! I really did enjoy some of my days there, and I wholly believe that Twilight made my time there have meaning. It's hard to explain. Leaving Twiguy was far harder than leaving Hashan.
Aegis, God of War says, "You are dismissed from My demense, Astarod. Go forth and fight well. Bleed fiercely, and climb the purpose you have sought to chase for."
Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
(Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."
An older problem than Achaea by far (or Ultima VII, but I like this game so tough Tectons) and lampshaded, lampooned, subverted, inverted, reverted and played utterly straight. We had a fairly big event a long time ago that directly confronted "Hey isn't it weird how death is fairly meaningless for nearly everyone?" with the Vertani. Alright, this got promptly lost in how the event played out and the main plot line of "most obvious invasion/Mhaldor was right AGAIN", Hingar dying and not dying in a fit of poetic cruelty/hilarity, and then being put into a box before loving effort and joy was put into creating a wonderful bit of descriptive work and colour into what is now one of the premier murderhobo hunting destinations of 2019.
Wow that's actually pretty horrific in context. I have no Vertani teachers, yet I must scream.
Anyway my point is that you really do have to remember that the team puppeteering denizens that they themselves did not create, have minimal or no prior experience with or the like may at best have three or four lines on the wiki or maybe possibly some denizen crib notes attached to their file or on a post-it note somewhere.
I want you to imagine a scenario, you're a god (how horrific) and you're patroning a city you weren't a player in. You thought "what I'll do is spend three actual days reading every single city news post, talk to anyone you can incognito to gather general info, and keep my mouth shut for a bit to better understand the cultural nuances of this place" You think you're so goddamn clever. Then you see that someone is breaking from the usual GREET, AGREE, SAY EVERY NOUN BACK FROM ANYTHING THE DENIZEN IS PROGRAMMED TO SAY" routine and you think "okay let's reward this person, let's have some fun. You banter back and forth a bit.
But it turns out this denizen has some past interactions under a different divine team member, who is gone and didn't leave any notes. The player involved knows this but you don't. You say something completely uncharacteristic to the denizen involved because you were honestly working off what must be a common basis of "Well if the player is saying this then a natural reply foiling that will make sense" and there's nothing in your somewhat basic notes on THIS character to contradict that response.
The result is you rightly tick the player off, their immersion is ruined and they are also sad because what was such a HUGE moment for them (pretty much any moment you get any personal one-on-one time with a denizen that is specific to YOU, the character) has been forgotten. But you're a great person and a good roleplayer, so instead of (again rightly) getting grumpy you bounce it off the wall and make it a bit of a joke, or imply that the forgetting is somehow a subtle ploy, you essentially feed the puppeteer a line to direct them back on track.
What you can do for the player now is remember that, append some notes for yourself and future potential puppets. The player did this for you too, and hopefully you remember that in future so a) You better research next time so you don't get caught out like a schmuck and b) you're not scared off ever touching any character you haven't got complete and utter character awareness of, which means nobody will ever get a response out of any denizen that isn't completely two-dimensional or part of your order.
So this story actually happened. The who was involved and what or when are irrelevant but its stuck with me ever since that while a lot of the time the roleplay is spot on and beautiful, the times it does go awry (and it does) are an opportunity for both sides rather than an awkward horror. It also reminds me that on both sides there is a genuine wish and effort going on to create these completely unique moments that are very specific to games like Achaea and not really found in many other places. These moments reward play and stick in the mind long, long, long after mechanical introductions for me, and many others.
- The more self-important and pompous but still generally benevolent scholars (such as the Rubedan master).
- Research-obsessed academics disapproving of anything that stops them from their studies, including giving lectures to "the public" (the Albedan master, perhaps).
- Scholars who had concluded that Achaeans, so reliant on Free Primes, would be unable to grasp the complexities involved in higher-order alchemical arts and are not shy about making that opinion known.
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
It's always been very silly that the system implies characters reach levels beyond natural understanding... oh, but the lore says they're only novices.
@Vastar Thanks for responding, it's an interesting read. I think (well I know as far as myself, but for some of the people I've talked to) the problem isn't any single incident. Personally I've had a couple where I felt it could have been played differently by the Admin, but like I said before I don't think any of them were hard to justify by themselves. The problem is that it feels like nearly every event we're seeing the 'Adventurers are idiots' denizen attitude play out, and for some of us, it's starting to feel a bit overdone (obviously I don't have all the data).
Dunn tells you, "I hate you."
(Party): You say, "Bad plan coming right up."