What is your concept for Achaea?

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Comments

  • Cooper said:
    Are we playing different games? Pretty much every class has abilities that are useful outside of PK and are utility abilities.

    They can't give every class more utility because that's how they've made the majority of their money - talismans. If you can figure out a way to keep their revenue up while implementing this I'm sure IRE would be very interested! 

    Jovolo said:
    Yeah I do not understand this complaint at all, you could go through every class in the game and almost every single one will have a plethora of abilities that can be used outside of combat. 

    A class that is completely dedicated to utility is another thing altogether.

    Apparently we -must- be playing different games, because every class I've played has had a small handful of utility powers at -best-, and many of those are pretty situational. For example, just looking over Keorin's classes for powers that are useful outside of combat and hunting and you get a pretty small set:

    monk:
    mind sense
    mind travel
    mind hallucinate
    mind scan
    mind listen
    mind sapience (these last three are mostly just useful for spying, outside of combat)
    mind command (when a novice needs to eat)
    fullsense
    mindnet (mainly used for tracking enemies, but sure)
    mind cloak (really stretching things here)

    monk's got a handful of good powers if you're into spying, and otherwise you get an in-area travel power, mind sense, single-person illusions, and fullsense. I love all of these, but single person illusions are pretty situational, travel is made pretty redundant by prism tattoo outside of combat, and thirdeye is pretty close to fullsense outside of combat

    psion:
    psi comprehend
    psi imprint
    psi projection
    psi perception
    emulation companion
    emulation barter
    emulation lifebond
    psion gets a necklace of comprehension power, the ability to leave notes for only other psions (yay?), a travel power (actually great), an anti spying power, an even more limited fullsense, the ability to turn gold into endurance (useful for seafaring, apparently). Also lifebond, if you feel like killing yourself to save someone hunting.

    fire lord:

    flashpoint
    coalesce
    Ashrain
    Flashpoint is a good travel power. Coalesce is always fun. Ashrain is a pretty silly way of getting around a city, but I guess you could?


    Even in the -best- of these cases (monk, which is one of the better classes so far as utility goes), you've got a few powers that are handy for another sort of conflict, and then a few pretty situation ones. I don't know, it's not exactly a secret here that utility ranges hugely, with some classes getting a good set (dw, serpent, some factionals), and then some being predominantly affliction and combat skills (bard, shaman).

    Maybe it's just because I end up interacting with a lot of people who aren't combat focused at all, but players like that often seem to struggle to find classes worth putting lessons in (there's a lot of Cyrenian ex-priests who struggle to find new classes they like for this reason). If I wasn't out for combat or hunting, I'm not sure I'd have even bothered with most class skills. Some of this is just a result with how this game is designed, but if nothing else, the huge disparity in what classes get good utility (when all of them are fairly balanced in combat) seems rather unnecessary.
  • My personal complaint is regardless of utility, very few skills (subterfuge being the obvious exception) give any real immersion that the character who mastered it is in fact a master of the skill.

    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.
  • Man I'm clearly too combat focused because reading that list and seeing sapience, sense, and hallucinate listed as utility and not combat skills that you can find other uses for made me blink.
  • edited February 2020
    Ygia said:
    I don't know, and that's the difficult part! I guess I'd just like there to be more of a push for it to be a thing. Some sort of game-side support that says "hey, this is a thing you should be doing". Maybe a more strict stance against players who just toss game terms around with no care for maintaining the world. An admin-side support for Divinely led stories, so that if a Divine falls out of focus like 30% of the way into a major citywide story event, it could easily be carried on or at least the pause explained away by someone taking the guise of the Divine so that people deeply deeply personally invested in the generated story aren't hanging on a thread like "Is... is this going to continue? ...No? ...I... Guess this new clan we made full of info is utterly pointless now, huh."

    I guess I just want story and RP to be /valued/, more than rewarded. It feels like, at its absolute core, the Achaea team doesn't care about story or RP.
    I definitely agree with you on some of this. While I think that the admin team cares a lot about RP, I think there's definitely places where I feel that they could do more to actively promote it happening in the world.

    Personally, I'd really like to see more collaboration OOCly between admin and org leadership. I know some gods do this, but it seems to be rather rare, and I think that's a shame. While I fully believe that it's on players to take the predominant role in creating most RP, I think a lot could be said for player leadership benefiting from the experience of admin roles, as well as being able to develop story arcs for their organisation that could then have some admin backing (which, whether we like it or not, is a huge part of any player-made stories being seen as 'legitimate').

    I also do thing that more coherency and consistency in terms of city-wide stories could be good. This is obviously impractical in lots of cases, but given the level of turnover in godroles, it can be frustrating when stories just immediately end because a given god disappears. There were some neat things happening under Neraeos that are just never coming back, for instance, and I expect that unless there's a chance in stance, we're unlikely to see some of the more interesting Cyrene-related denizens (the Bairn Muurn and Shuun) until or unless there's another Neraeos, because they fall under his IC purview. Obviously, there can't be any sort of perfect consistency between one patron and the next, but I do think more could be done so that huge parts of a city's lore or culture won't be lost for years on end, which is often the result right now.

    In the end, players need to be the lead in roleplay efforts for a lot of reasons, and while gods can -support- that, I think the mindset that a lot of people have that big stories -have- to come from admin tends to hold things back a lot. It's simply not possible for a whole lot of reasons for an admin to be in charge of the day to day roleplay that makes the game world feel lived-in. I'm not sure what clan you mean (was it the angel goo lake thing from a while back?) but something like that being successful is always going to be much more on players taking it and running with it than an admin pushing it, even they stay active.

    Creating the best roleplay environment takes cooperation from admin, player leadership, and the rest of the playerbase. I think there's places the admin could definitely improve their approach, but just as much, if not more, is on the rest of us to build the world we want to play in.

  • edited February 2020
    I guess it's just difficult to know when you're overstepping your bounds as a player, then. Like, I as a simple paladin/preacher/whatever can't do massive restoration of angelic spirits, right, surely? Especially without admin involvement. I'm not the angel, I don't know when they're 'healed'.

    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.
  • You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Just because you didn’t get a volunteer response 99/99 times doesn’t mean you don’t try for shot 100. If your org lacks a divine, talk to opposing org players and see if they can build something collaborative, spark a fight over the proclaimed innocents of x settlement and have ashtan attempt to corrupt them towards Chaos. All that might happen is a bit of pk, sermonising to vacant NPCs but if you don’t even do that, you won’t be ABLE to get anything.

    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).
  • edited February 2020
    Ygia said:
    I guess it's just difficult to know when you're overstepping your bounds as a player, then. Like, I as a simple paladin/preacher/whatever can't do massive restoration of angelic spirits, right, surely? Especially without admin involvement. I'm not the angel, I don't know when they're 'healed'.

    ...

    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.
    So let me lead by saying that I don't play in Targossas, so everything I'm saying needs to be taken with a more-than-healthy serving of salt. That said, I did hear a bit about this particular situation, and I feel like it's maybe a good example of some of this stuff. Bear in mind too that I'm by no means experienced or good at affecting the world or working with admin, and I'm really just rambling about my experiences and views in the hope some of it might be helpful to someone or useful for discussion (I also -really- don't feel like studying right now, and rambling here is a good excuse not to).

    (After writing this whole thing, I realised it went much longer than I meant it to, because I'm absolute shit at brevity. Unfortunately, I actually do need to study and so can't spend a while editing it down, so I'm just going to stick it in spoilers to avoid clogging up the thread)

    First, on the matter of the angel goo lake in particular, and maybe the clan that was being discussed, if that's the one (in which I pretend that I have any idea what I'm taking about):

    To my understanding (and my assuming from very limited information, to be clear), the goal of the angel goo lake event wasn't to be a story arc with a single, definite conclusion, where the angels would be healed and the problem would be solved for good. Instead, it sounded like it was meant to: a) establish/reveal more lore about Celestia and the nature of angels (which has some interesting tie-ins with the later stuff in Nur), b) make explicit the lore behind Targossas' ties with Celestia, which was in a weird spot after Shallam got nuked and took most of the foundation and the history for that relationship with it, and most importantly, c) to establish a foundation in the roleplay for why forms of culture and roleplay unrelated to warfare were not just helpful to Targossas' broader efforts, but were essential to maintaining the alliance between the servants of good on Achaea and their Celestial allies. In other words, actually healing the angels was likely never meant to be the OOC goal behind that arc; the goal was to create and encourage new avenues for roleplay and stories within Targossas.

    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.

    As for the more general questions of rp and impacts on the world I'm not going to pretend that I've got any expertise on this subject, but if anyone is crazy to have read this far and wants to read more of my thoughts, I figured I'd share some of my own conclusions I've come to over a few years of struggling with this sort of thing. These are very much just my personal views, but they're what I wish people had told me when I started out:

    -Firstly, there's no secret answer to any of this stuff, and no one has some magic key to getting admin backing or having concrete impact on the world. I'm a city leader, and while this has lead to more admin interactions then your average player has, I still struggle with these same issues. Some players have learned how to work in the system well enough to get better results, and some are well known enough as great roleplayers that they catch admin attention easier, but those are very much the exception, not the rule.

    -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.


  • JurixeJurixe Where you least expect it
    There are two very important conversations going on here, some of which I'm sure we've discussed peripherally:

    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.
    If you like my stories, you can find them here:
    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


  • JurixeJurixe Where you least expect it
    edited February 2020
    I wanted to add on something to my last sentence:

    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.


    If you like my stories, you can find them here:
    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


  • Keorin said:
    Stuff

    You are not far off but I feel I should comment a little on the angel stuff since I was CL during it. First of all, as Keorin said, the goal on an OOC level was never to heal the angels. We were explicitly told it would take centuries or something. If you roleplay that you've suddenly healed the angels, you are going too far because you're contradicting what's been established. The purpose of the event was to do the things Keorin mentioned - essentially to add more culture to the city and provide the RP opportunities associated with tending to the healing of the angels.

    The problem from my perspective, and why I said it's tricky without a patron now, is that the method we established had a mechanical component. There's an item you use to give devotion to the angels, and the angels reject you if you have no "bond" with them. We were trying to create a method of forming those bonds but it was never finalized, so now anyone who roleplays forming a bond and contributing devotion to the angels is in contradiction of the actual mechanics (if you touch the item, it'll say you can't give devotion because you have no bond). I do think that creates a somewhat awkward situation in the absence of a patron.

    Some roleplayers would probably just ignore the item, not touch it, and use custom emotes to roleplay that you're forming the bond and contributing devotion to the angels like we had planned, in spite of the mechanic. But the mechanic existing as a way of proving you're wrong kind of sucks. Otherwise, I completely agree with Keorin. I don't think the angels were ever intended to react much to the healing. They're near dead and the action to be done is mostly just in your tending to them. Them not responding isn't really an issue because they're basically unconscious. They were even sedated IC to reduce pain.

    However, I also have to add that even when we had a patron, getting this all going fell on the players. He was never going to tell us how to do it, so waiting to be told would never get you anywhere anyway. If players had acted sooner, we'd probably have finished the bonding process. We were asked by angels and denizens multiple times why there had been no progress and I was making a lot of effort to get someone to take charge of it. Someone who wanted to be known for this sort of thing (Farrah had IC reasons for not wanting to do it). And nothing ever really happened while Deuc was active and stuff could have moved on.

    But as to your other comments/questions, everyone wonders those things and there's no special secret. The general idea is to do things your character should be able to do and keep it believable. If you do, people will play along even if you're roleplaying about something that isn't there. God knows tons of Mhaldorian sermons involve bringing in slaves and torturing them, etc. If you do IH, there isn't actually a slave there, but we know there are tons of slaves in Mhaldor and Mhaldorians are perfectly capable of harming them so no one is going to argue the slave isn't there.

    Jaru is a little touchier imo. Their denizens actually got mad when Targossians were trying to do "charity work" there because they took it as an insult. I wouldn't roleplay denizens you don't really know responding in ways you might not get right, but roleplaying something involving random children or families in Targ who don't actually exist as denizens would be perfectly fine to me. It's somewhat a matter of judgment, but if you're in doubt, you can always ask others around you for their opinions on whether something is going too far.

    Flair is used as an example a lot of great RP and consequences. I can tell you for a fact as someone who attended a lot of his stuff that he definitely did not rely on admin for stuff. He followed the lore of the game but he also created his own lore, roleplayed things happening that didn't mechanically happen, etc. That's the kind of stuff that usually leads to more. It's usually how you get admin involvement in the first place too - being out doing things. But you do have to use judgment and ensure it's reasonable or people will reject it.
  • To add a little more to my prior post, the most important thing, like Jurixe said, is to create fun for yourself and the people around you. That's not only enjoyable but it's what will get you recognized in your city. People like to have fun. If you're fun to roleplay with, nothing else about what "comes of" what you do really matters. I don't think I had more fun with the ritual that burned down the arboretum than I did with several other day to day rituals we did just to "cleanse" ordinary places, to be honest. It is great to be able to cite it as a historical thing, but the most fun was always roleplaying the day to day ritual work. It's what made "being Caefir" mean something. Flair and the other old occultists roleplayed a lot of day to day ritualist stuff too, and that was what made the revolutionaries so interesting. It wasn't some single event. It was an entire journey. People sometimes put too much weight in god effects. They can be really cool when you have them, no question, but the vast majority of your playing experience is in other things.
  • Thank you for your patience. I'll think on this a bit more and try to implement the advice when I fall more into Achaea again eventually.
    I think this has been helpful in understanding how to get the most out of Achaea RP.
  • Shirszae said:
    Personally something that I've never gotten over is how much player written content (books, etc) was lost during balmeth and the subsequent destructions of orgs unless it was saved by players themselves.

    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. 
    Dear God yes
  • It can't work, but sometimes I think about what Achaea would look like if it was closer to an RPI. Short descriptions instead of names in QL/Look. Mechanically learn skills by practice/experience.

    ...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.
  • Milabar said:
    Shirszae said:
    Personally something that I've never gotten over is how much player written content (books, etc) was lost during balmeth and the subsequent destructions of orgs unless it was saved by players themselves.

    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. 
    Dear God yes
    This got me thinking.. because this happened, there's room for Historians and Archeologists RP digging up information. 

    (Though I wonder if the admins would have access to some of that information to help in the endeavor.)
  • Afaik, take for instance the Temple of Mithraea, the structure is still there.  It's simply dormant and unresponsive in allowing people in.  And catapults don't ever seem to hit the open rooms in the Temple itself, but I've known others that have accessed Temples this way.

    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
  • UtianimaUtianima Norway and Austria
    Milabar said:
    Afaik, take for instance the Temple of Mithraea, the structure is still there.  It's simply dormant and unresponsive in allowing people in.  And catapults don't ever seem to hit the open rooms in the Temple itself, but I've known others that have accessed Temples this way.

    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
    This makes me sad. Feel with you :(

    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.

  • KyrraKyrra Australia
    When Selene died, everything became owned by Aurora and the library and most of the extra parts of the Temple all disappeared.

    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.
    (D.M.A.): Cooper says, "Kyrra is either the most innocent person in the world, or the girl who uses the most innuendo seemingly unintentionally but really on purpose."

  • Regarding Orders: The first gut punch for me, when Lorielan dissolved the Order during the Bal'met saga, was losing access to the upper parts of the Siorraidh (including a manuscript with a lot of old player poems etc, and a globe with player memories recorded onto it). As much as I enjoyed when Lorielan returned some time afterwards, that part didn't change and it hurt. The second punch was losing access to the old Order posts. That was partly my own fault: I had saved the newsposts to my old laptop's hard drive...which was all well and good until said drive died. I'm still not over that one. (There's one particular post by Lorielan that I want to read again.) I mostly blame myself for that, but I also resent that those old posts were treated so cavalierly to start with. I can see the logic behind it--out with the old, in with the new--but I've never agreed with it and it still makes me upset.
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