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Comments
They generally feel like combat check lists with a few odd attacks that don't work well and a few utility abilities that only occasionally make sense.
There's not much grounding, and this might be fine for the few skills described purely as attack skills (though imagine if these had flourishes and such!), but elementalists barely feel as such, alchemists hardly do alchemy, etc.
Most class skills end up feeling like skins wrapped around purely mechanical abilities. This doesn't contribute to the feeling that Achaea is meant to be an RP mud.
It feels like if something is not in my specific coded or flavoured skillset, I simply can't do it. But I guess that's just me thinking a little rigidly.
It's also difficult to know when something should or could 'progress'. For an example, for about 40 IC years now (barring the time I was an exile), I've been tasked with keeping the Silverveil clean as a rote thing, but I can't just RP out some horrible corruption seeping in to make my job meaningful, or my specific cleansing making the Silverveil much more sparkly and pure than usual, surely? That feels like pushing past what I'm supposed to be allowed to do as a player - powergaming, or power-RPing. Areas are the purview of the admins and Divine, and saying a thing is a thing when the room desc says it isn't feels weird to do. If the thing isn't there, it isn't there. Plus, my RPing out something happening to the Silverveil would probably have people looking at me like "...no, it isn't? It's exactly the same as it always is".
Another example, my character wants to do a LOT of stuff in Jaru to improve or support it, but I've spoken to denizens and mailed them and got nothing, so where do I go there? Do I just RP cleaning the streets with soap? Because I codedly and RP-wise can't, say, build new buildings or hire workers or put anything actually into place. I can't paint the dilapidated buildings prettier, especially when I don't have the artistry skill, and even if I did it wouldn't actually change unless I got an admin's attention - and if I didn't, well, I'd just be painting the same 'dilapidated' building over for like 50 years in a row and being like "hrm, it looks exactly the same, thats strange, maybe someone is scrubbing it". So going around RP'ing building something without admins being like "hey I'm the mayor and yes do this thing" would feel... weird. Especially because I know nothing would actually visibly change at all, ever, until an admin did something. And RP-wise, I'm a Targossian trying to fuck around with the development of Jaru without the Mayor's sayso. Those gardens aren't mine, those roads aren't mine, why am I fucking around with them without asking first (even though I did ask and got no response)?
I could RP out teaching the vNPC populace of Targossian children, in lieu of there being an actual school or whatever, but I'd just be standing talking to myself and an admin might step in at any point and be like "actually, there's no kids in Targossas because they're all taught in New Hope" or whatever and make me feel like a fool. Or just... not do anything, and fellow citizens just walk past me and be like "why are you talking to yourself" then head off to the arena to train.
Do you get what I mean? You can't actually /do a thing with purpose and results/ without an admin's sayso, surely? So I don't get why "players just have to make the things happen" is a thing. I mean, I spent at least a couple months praying in the angel goo lake and performing dozens of different variants of rites, and researching different rites that had similar effects in the past and the meaning behind things, and the players in the clan were just like, "yeah this probably isn't going anywhere unless an admin comes back" OOCly to me, and the story fizzled because otherwise it'd just be us trying new things over and over with no result. I kept trying, even after everyone else stopped, and it just felt like headbutting an invisible brick wall because I couldn't just RP out the angels getting better or a rite working without an admin actually being there to echo a result - I was told as such directly by two players.
I'm getting very mixed messages about what a player can actually do without stepping past their means or looking like a massive fool.
I'm really genuinely trying not to be a whiner or anything like that, I'm just genuinely confused as to where the line is and what a player can /do/ without a single admin or god or npc doing anything at all. Please understand. This is confusing to me, and it feels like everyone else already has some secret answer I'm just not getting and is laughing at me. I have tried things and pushed things with more fervor than those around me at times and still gotten nowhere or even gotten mocked OOC for taking things too seriously at times. And it feels like somehow everyone else just knows something I don't.
I’ve spent hours researching moghedu, sitting in rooms, writing sermons, leaving scrolls and journals around (free propaganda ya’ll) and I’m okay with not getting anything back. If I do my part, and I’m interesting enough, a volunteer may want to participate. Until then, I’m gonna go back and ramble to mhunna about his failures (while he spams web on me like a newbie targeting Atalkez).
We have jobs and families and lives, and I'm past the point, personally, where I can pr want to spend multiple hours a week barking up a tree for the love of barking, without some kind of resolution or reply to make it worth it.
Even if the reply is 'no,' or 'not now,' for the record, I much prefer that to 'keep yelling at the void in perpetuity until something happens! Maybe. But probably not.'
My concept of Achaea is one where the admins are not so cavalier with things like that. It might strain believability a bit, but I would much rather a 'all books were found under the rubble',than the alternative.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
With that in mind, I don't think that there was really much more that Deucalion -could- have done in regards to that event. There's a few things on the admin side that didn't get established before he disappeared, but really, 95% of the story establishment seemed to be gone, and the rest was put solely in the hands of the players to take that opportunity and build on it. And there's still a -huge- opportunity for making use of that story there, both as a way to build up the non-pk cultural side of the city, and possibly engaging with the broader world, either with or without further admin assistance.
In practice, that's probably not going to look like finding a permanent way to heal the angels (that event seemed to indicate that they'd be stuck that way for a long time, even), or building rituals that have a mechanical result, because that's impractical without a patron. Instead, it would look like building on the lore with events or by building on that nascent clan, using the lore that the admins have already established to get players involved and tell new stories on the player level. Eventually, this could lead to admin recognition (working rituals, a new Deacon of Celestia, ect), but the bulk of making anything of that story would -have- to come from the players. Even with no patron, that's got a huge amount of potential for making something with a lasting impact and lasting stories, all it takes is someone willing to step up and do the work to tell them.
I do share some of your frustrations, though. I feel like the admin's approach is often to refuse to give clear guidance on lore or how the world works until it's relevant to an admin-driven event, at which point any player-built lore tends to get tossed aside. I don't think this is the -only- reason that players fall into the bad habit of thinking that only things with admin involvement matter, but I do think it feeds into this trend. When people know that their work might end up looking like little more than IC fanfiction, it can be easy to hold back. This is especially the case because so many basic facts of the world aren't well established (do vNPC populations exist? How permanent is death to your average denizen? How much can adventurers do with their powers, and what results can rituals have?), which can result in other players not taking player-run stories seriously or wanting to be a part.
-I earnestly believe that every player has a huge amount of potential to affect the game world, far more than most people believe. Too many people get stuck thinking that things are in some kind of fixed state when player created lore is the foundation of much of the game. Honestly, I'd venture that in a lot of situations there's more potential to affect things as a player than as a godrole. For instance, who do you think had more of a long term effect on Cyrene: Verrucht, or any of the half a dozen gods that patroned the city or were involved with it over his tenure?
-However, having an effect on the world takes a good understanding of what your best tools are as a player. In my view, where players have most of their influence to make things happen is in organisations and events. Organisations give you a lot of potential for reaching other players and creating shared roleplay (which is much more likely to attract admin notice), and when it comes to city and houses, they have a ton of mechanical power and built-in influence on the world. A lot of the most influential player roleplay that I can think of didn't come from working individually, but by building up an organisation and getting people involved. Helen's alchemy institute, the Devotionist groups in Cyrene, the Curia Spiritus, and the Asterian Restoration are just a few examples. And while I wasn't around at the time, it's my understanding that Flair, who is probably the most-cited example of a player who had a big impact on the game world, did what he did by building organisations to support his roleplay and building up a house. Houses and cities also have the potential to get patrons, which is usually your most direct way of getting admin support for things.
-Events are something players can have total control over and that can have a big impact by bringing players together to create shared experiences and shared memories. If you look at a lot of what the Asterian Restoration has done, for instance, big events like those both have big impacts in the minds of players, and also are a good way of catching admin attention. While players are obviously more likely to jump on events that admin are involved with, there's really very few tools that players -don't- have for putting on events
-On the other hand, affecting the world or building lore through solo efforts or by trying to directly create mechanical change tends to be very difficult. Without getting lucky and getting noticed by a god, you're more or less out of luck. And if the roleplay you're working with is at all tied to a city or organisation and there isn't a patron, it's just not realistically going to happen. So while I don't think a single person working at rituals is likely to succeed, an organisation that's been built up around those efforts with a good player-created culture and several involved players has the potential to do quite a lot (for example, you might not be able to improve Jaru just by trying on your own, but if you were attempting it as a house effort, or as, say, an artistic/cultural clan meant to appease Celestia and heal the angels, there'd be more than just potential for it to happen).
-Know what methods you have to reach the admin and try to make things happen. The roleplay email address, sending letters to denizens, and patron requests tend to be the most direct way of doing this. All of them (particularly the first two) have a high chance of leading to nothing, but you'll be far more likely to get something that way than by trying to talk directly to a denizen or hold rituals on your own. One thing I wish I knew sooner, as well, is that you can do all sorts of things through the customisation email address (with enough credits. If you have some idea for an item or something like that, you can send them an email and ask for a quote, which can be a good tool for making things that might otherwise only be in the purview of admin.
-Finally, be prepared to put work in, and to fail a lot of times before you might be successful (though really, what doesn't that apply to?). The players who are best at making this sort of thing happen are the ones who aren't afraid to go out on a limb and screw up or look like an idiot for trying. Have enough self-awareness to see where you can do better and how to improve, but be as shameless as you can be - the biggest obstacle to making big things happen is yourself. In the end, the only real secret is hard work, practice, pushing your own limits, and being willing to keep at it when you fail.
Finally, in case you haven't read it yet, here's a link to Jurixe's great pinned thread over in the rp section of the forums. While it's -slightly- tangential to some of this (it's more about running events or activities or stories), it's a great practical guide to making events happen that can bring people together and build interesting stories. Gods know I should have taken more of it to heart before making some faceplants of my own, and a lot of what's in there is just generally good stuff for if you're wanting to learn to make things happen.
1. Feeling like an RP thing is going nowhere is discouraging. What can we do about it? What is in our scope? When do we know to stop?
2. Players are the main ones responsible for making their own RP. We are the main drivers of the story.
I think it's key to realise that these are complementary, not opposing, views. You absolutely should be trying, as a player, to do things that help drive the story and to create interesting opportunities. And in Ygia's case, it sounds like she definitely tried.
But the reality is, we don't have a lot of staff to put in the time to pursue individual threads and/or perhaps they're simply not interested/not able to support the line you're going down. It can most definitely be discouraging to keep trying and wondering if anything you're roleplaying will ever transition to some tangible effect or change, or whether you're just essentially playing make believe within a fantasy world. Fantasyception.
So where is the middle ground?
Yes, it would unquestionably be great if the admin could support our individual RP efforts more, which is more difficult if your city doesn't have a Patron. You can try to get your efforts noticed, such as writing letters to denizens, talking directly to them, holding activities and rituals etc in their area for at least a somewhat consistent period of time to show anyone who's watching that yes, you are serious about this line of questioning.
What sorts of things can you do? If it's rituals, just do something open ended with no visible conclusion, or involve players as much as you can in things like a historical tour, or field trips, or something like that where you can control the outcome. Things that should make sense to react, should react, ie if you're a Magi and want to summon cleansing flame, that makes sense to actually happen. However if you're talking about purifying something, I don't think you can say that 'the corruption recedes from this item' just because you purified it in a ritual.
Unfortunately we are somewhat limited in that scope - I take a fair few liberties with my work, but I always explain that away as illusions (because they are). I'm not visibly trying to change the world.
But as above, resources, divine and mortal, are limited. After a few weeks, if you last that long, talking to yourself and doing rituals that you can't really create the outcome of is dispiriting. So that's when you come up with an RP reason to give up that line and pursue something else that you find fun. Cleaning the Silverveil isn't working? Oh well, maybe it's something that can be revisited later. It looks ok right now, so I'm going to focus on the city right now because more effort is needed there. But it can always be on the backburner and you can try to revive it from time to time, or when you get a new Patron. Or at least talk about it occasionally so it doesn't seem like you've abandoned it.
I definitely think it would help a great deal to be given some sign of whether to continue or not, or even not now. However, since we can't control what happens from up there, the best you can do is manage your own expectations and focus on doing things that are within your own scope. It might sound a little defeatist, but I prefer to reframe it differently: you can have a lot of fun with the process of trying to do something, too. Maybe none of it works out and that sucks, but at least you tried.
The tl;dr summary of this is: dare to try, but if it isn't fun any more, don't be afraid to let go. Then try again, somewhere else, and have fun in the journey.
Stories by Jurixe and Stories by Jurixe 2
Interested in joining a Discord about Achaean RP? Want to comment on RP topics or have RP questions? Check the Achaean RP Resource out here: https://discord.gg/Vbb9Zfs
Don't forget, at the core of it all, that this is a game. I find it is far easier to be less invested into things (in terms of caring too much) when you focus on doing the things that are fun for you regardless of what the outcome might be.
Do you find it fun to lead rituals, field trips, community effort, do research? Great, then do it. Don't find it fun any more? Stop doing it. If whatever you do has an effect, that's great and keep on going! But if it doesn't, don't ruin your own fun by being upset over something you have no control over.
I strongly doubt Flair and the Revolutionaries did what they did because they expected something to come of it. Babel was a god that had never existed and was only periperhally mentioned. We already had a ton of gods and a Chaos god to boot. There was no reason it would ever come to anything. Yet he and his friends spent decades making stuff and doing crazy things, so I'm willing to bet it was purely for the heck of it. He is cited as a success story because yes, he was lucky enough that the admin took note and ran with it (after RL years!) but the marvel here shouldn't be 'wow he made something happen', but 'wow he kept it up for so long not knowing if anything would ever happen, but he did it just because it was fun'. (Flair and co can correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, by the way).
Every single event we have ever done for the AR was done because we thought the concept would be fun and we wanted to put it to the players to see if they agreed. We have been extremely fortunate to garner both admin notice/assistance and player support, which has made our events better than they could have been on their own, but we have never built events that would be dependent on admin support to happen. We always create a plan with the expectation of having to do it all on our own, but we also think about how we can step up our game if the Garden chooses to help us out (thank you!).
Our situation is different from yours, because ours is more player-focused rather than large narrative stuff, but the point I'm trying to make here is that you have to be flexible if you don't want to turn yourself bitter and burn out from your efforts. Enjoy what you are able to, and as for the rest, it's all a bonus.
Stories by Jurixe and Stories by Jurixe 2
Interested in joining a Discord about Achaean RP? Want to comment on RP topics or have RP questions? Check the Achaean RP Resource out here: https://discord.gg/Vbb9Zfs
I think this has been helpful in understanding how to get the most out of Achaea RP.
...it would be a nightmare. Some of it could be pretty great though. There are a lot of great rp-ers that would absolutely thrive in such an environment. Imagine a magi discovering they could create a bomb for the first time. Or an infernal practicing vivisection on kobolds. Dunno. There's a lot of enjoyment and rp to be had from "Wait, I can do what now?" because you don't have access to an AB list.
(Though I wonder if the admins would have access to some of that information to help in the endeavor.)
I've been trying for years now to find an access point, just to recover the items, books, and knowledge She directly left behind. I accept the news board is gone, but I'd like to one day access the Temple itself
So, in the vein, I've started to rebuild it on my estates, with the old descriptions, modified only to resemble the destruction Her death caused.
Won't ever be the same, but gives me something to spend gold on
We have the same issue with Thoth and the Order library. Feels so needless. And with the clan estate changes, it would be awesome to rebuild some of it, at least in remembrance of the divine and the teachings they brought to us mortals.
What exists of the Order library only exists thanks to Kayeil and I think Greys having copies of stuff prior to the Order being deleted.
I had at one stage replicated the entire temple in the subdivisions of Ashtan for folks to see. I’ve lost a lot of those descriptions with my old laptop dying though.