hi, i'm evilcabbage, resident serial killer of armageddonmud. i am a prolific killer in the game in that in the eight years of playing armageddon i have managed to kill exactly six pcs, all of which had especially good reasons behind it.

i start with that so you understand what kind of a player i am. i do not do things without reason, and generally if your pc dies by my hand, you deserved it. you may not know what you did, but somewhere along the line you made a bad mistake and someone wanted you dead. this... has never happened to a single new player that has ever come to the game.

the community in armageddon that we have right now, barring the unadulterated rage of some people who a) do not play anymore, and b) do not have a feel for the current climate, is incredibly helpful to new players. we don't bend over backwards for them - we don't hand them keys to the castle. but if you come to our discord and you were to ask, "hey, @evilcabbage, can you give me some advice on how to get started", chances are i will answer you and give you some helpful advice.

if you were to, for instance, go, "hey, @evilcabbage, what is a blue robe templar," i would tell you "blue robe templars, addressed as lord or lady templar, are the magick-wielding authorities of the city of allanak and require bowing when they enter an area, and when you approach them to speak to them."

if you went, "hey, @evilcabbage, my pc lives in allanak and i need to know where to buy water", i could tell you where the water sellers are and how to get the knowledge to use them. generally you shouldn't tell me your pc lives in allanak or wherever to begin with, but for very simple things like "how should i react to x robe entering a room", i will be more than happy to tell you the appropriate titles and addresses and what you should do.

why would i do that? because this isn't a game where concealing basic information any citizen of a city would know is considered good. the people who come here, and make the complaint that certain people are staff bootlickers, forget that some of those people they call "bootlickers" were on staffs naughty radar for doing bad things - and improved as players.

here, i'll quote something from hedge:

"They'll lynch you in-game for a minor error that's easy to make, like emoting walking over to the message board to read it - reading is illegal, you see. The message board is right there and newbies fresh off the wagon don't realize it's an OOC construct, because it exists as an object in the room, so they emote reading it and every bored soldier PC, tavern idler and their cousins are leaping at the chance to antagonize them for it."

this does not happen. we do not lynch people for emoting reading it. we ooc politely, "the message board is actually just a gaggle of rumor-mongering people, not a real message board, as reading is illegal for commoners and restricted to important merchant house family members and the highborn (nobility and templarate)".

despite what hedge would tell you, we "are" very welcoming to new players. the welcome might be an introduction to being mugged and murdered, or being abused, or being treated lower than low because you're a commoner and that's a templar, but you are being introduced to the world.

if you make crazy egregious mistakes like punching people with "kill" instead of "hit" in a tavern brawl, yes, you are going to be introduced violently to crime code. you might try to steal from someone, fail, and get caught. you might call someone the wrong title - generally they'll correct you. it might be mean, the way they do it, but they will correct you and 99.9999999999% of the time it does not end in your death unless you revert to insulting said person.

i hope i have cleared some of this stuff up for some of you. i'm here until thursday.

i'm going to make a statement i have made on our discord before, but take the threat with a grain of salt.

if i am assisting a new player in ooc, and someone has a problem with that, that's too bad for them. i can pkill them so they'll be quiet and i can return to helping.

on a serious note, if someone takes issue with it, i am not a nice person. i will tell them to shut up, i'm helping a new player, they can kindly go somewhere else because this new person is more important than they are to me. i'm very protective oocly of newbies and when they have questions or issues, that takes precedence. an old player might get salty, but he won't ragequit because i told him off. a new player might ragequit because he feels he's being treated unfairly in a generally unfair world, and i have to explain how things work, and that we don't hate them, our character might hate their character, but we're all in it for the story. we aren't here to make you as a player feel unwelcome.

we want new players butchering people and going on well-roleplayed murder sprees too.

@d-bone said in Armageddon MUD:

Well there tend to be a few examples- but all of which could color a player to refrain from using ooc.

The first example is a new player asking questions oocly about things his character would icly know to other characters in game. Said players asked questions would likely respond not with an ooc answer, but a simple ask IC.

General communication about things you can do in the game oocly are highly discouraged, if not punishable infractions.

A benign question asked oocly- even if your character icly might have knowledge of such- that is illegal could be something as simple as:Hey is it a good idea to go outside the west gate and hunt there or is the east gate safer? Some games go find out ic, Arma has a much harder stance on that shit, not only do you not get the answer, you should be 'reminded' not to ask questions like that.

Thus after maybe a week of this behavior- of being 'encouraged' or 'punished' to use ic communicion only, a player is not going to WANT to ask for a retcon until the scene is far too far in.

(On the RPI I play on currently, during a travel phase to arrange play times for about 10 or so players.. I used ooc personally.. 4 times total? During a trip, over the course of a week. This was to arrange travel times.. with diverse players. Instead players tried to try and match u preal time to in game time which is all sorts of stupid and difficult. Imagine how much easier if everyone was just willing to use ooc and not afraid people would call them out on that shit)

in our game people will say "we're having x happen in x weeks (our in game version of rl days), and will clarify with an ooc as to when exactly this thing will happen.

also, if you asked me oocly whether the east or west gate of allanak was safer, i would reply in ooc: the entire desert outside the city is basically unsafe, so there is no real way to say which is safer oocly.

the nuances of that could be explained icly by those that know, and i would probably add "you can definitely find that out icly by asking".

well, we're not making contrarian viewpoints - except that i don't think anyone here who plays armageddon and is assisting in advertisement has said "not" to use the ooc command for things like asking brief questions.

yes, you can get mugged, crime-code generally turns off at night in the streets unless an npc is very nearby. you won't be mugged for being new, but you can be mugged, it's something new players should come into the game expecting could happen. i don't see the issue.

i had it hard when i started out, and other people before me probably had it harder. oocly, we are here to help people. icly, however, it depends on who you talk to. i thought that would be obvious.

there are ooc warnings if you read help labyrinth, or IC if you walk into the labyrinth rooms and see "this place looks like a total shithole". you'd know you stumbled into the rinth, and you'd have a pretty good idea that some very bad people live there. this isn't a mush only forum, we're advertising for a mud. if that does not appeal to you, and you have no prior experience with our mud, then i'd ask that you respect what we're trying to do here and go about your business elsewhere.

well, we're not making contrarian viewpoints - except that i don't think anyone here who plays armageddon and is assisting in advertisement has said "not" to use the ooc command for things like asking brief questions.

yes, you can get mugged, crime-code generally turns off at night in the streets unless an npc is very nearby. you won't be mugged for being new, but you can be mugged, it's something new players should come into the game expecting could happen. i don't see the issue.

i had it hard when i started out, and other people before me probably had it harder. oocly, we are here to help people. icly, however, it depends on who you talk to. i thought that would be obvious.

there are ooc warnings if you read help labyrinth, or IC if you walk into the labyrinth rooms and see "this place looks like a total shithole". you'd know you stumbled into the rinth, and you'd have a pretty good idea that some very bad people live there. this isn't a mush only forum, we're advertising for a mud. if that does not appeal to you, and you have no prior experience with our mud, then i'd ask that you respect what we're trying to do here and go about your business elsewhere.

i can choose at any time to play a character with boosted skills or magickal powers.

i simply generally prefer playing without them.

i've earned my karma.

cool.

anyways, any information you as a player or character would "NEED" to know to get started can be found on our website, or in the ingame helpfiles, or via helpers accessed via discord or our help-chat client (if that still functions, i don't know, i never used it).

i'm just a regular player who goes out of my way to make sure newbies don't go sprinting out the gates and get murdered by the first big ugly thing they see that wants to eat them.

@layla said in Armageddon MUD:

I have literally made a bowl of popcorn to eat while I read this thread and knit. Thank you all so much for the entertainment.

you should come play armageddon instead, it's more more fun than eating popcorn.

ganymede i did tell you to take what i said very much with a grain of salt because i'm not actually going to pkill someone when i'm helping players out.

you're also taking everything i say and drawing it down to its basic level, i.e. "we want new players butchering people and going on murdering sprees".

did you actually read what i wrote there, or are you just making these insinuations to make us sound worse than we are? how do you know we're credible? it's very simple, players are set into categories in discord: helper, staff, builders, online. i am one of the credible sources - in fact, pretty much everybody is credible, because we're not here as players to make you as a newbie feel unwelcome. we're welcoming you -into- an unwelcoming world. whether that means you get introduced to it at the point of the knife, or donning the brown hooded military aba of the t'zai byn, or the armpatch of the arm of the dragon, well, that's up to you and how you play, and a small bit of luck.

never once did i ever say i wanted newbies butchering and murdering new people in that context. i didn't even say i was going to pkill anyone (in a serious manner) when i was helping someone. go back and reread everything i wrote. the words "well roleplayed" and "take this with a grain of salt" were in some manner used. if a newbie just goes randomly murdering people, they're going to get caught and butchered themselves. there has to be roleplay behind it - good roleplay. good justifications. i personally played a pc who butchered people - who went on a murder spree. a few players died. before they died, they got a great scene.

this is mu*soapbox, not mushsoapbox. we're advertising for mudders, and maybe for mushers who want to play, to show them a new world. a dangerous world, where consequences can be immediately dire, or where the benefits can be outlandishly good depending how you play the cards you're dealt.

now, to arkandel. so, here's how it works. we have a karma system, as you know. this karma system serves a dual functionality - it allows you to play more powerful (i.e. magickal) characters, and races (i.e. half-giants, muls, who all have very in-depth documentation on how they should be played).

it also serves the function of allowing you (for now via request, until the chargen system is updated to reflect it) to bump up your skill points by a very set level, to reflect some kind of prior experience. all new players, and all characters who DO NOT apply in this manner start at the same skill level as everyone else - at the bottom. i'm a 8 year veteran of the game, i've done a lot in the game. if i were to roll up a new character, right now, and choose nothing but the basic subguild and races and guild, i would come in with the same skills as Newbie McChaltonboots who just rolled into the game and has NO IDEA what he's doing.

i have no advantage, other than knowledge. some of my knowledge i can use, because maybe my character has done things like hunting the area around allanak, so he knows a bit about that. some of it i don't use, such as where all the best spots are to get things i need, how to get through dangerous territory alone, where to find WATER which is so very necessary to survival. a new player "shouldn't" roll into the game as a grizzled veteran, for the simple fact that they - as a new player of the game - lack the required knowledge to actually put that veterancy to use and survive.

that's why many new players are icly told to join the t'zai byn. they're new, they're just stepping into the world, their character has bright clean blue eyes - and we're going to stain them the muddy, gritty brown of the byn. we want them to enter the byn to learn to fight, to roleplay, to spar, to survive, to make friends. to drink and laugh and have sex with strangers and band together when some elf says something nasty to one of their comrades.

it's not that we don't want to help a new player play as a grizzled veteran warrior, but they - like all of us - have to earn that. i still have to earn it, and the earning it is the best part of it for me.

if you want to portray a believable character, do something that would make sense. read a couple helpfiles, then go "yeah, i had to take a break because blah blah and i'm not sure where the chalton have roamed off to, anyone know anything about that?" and someone ic will go "oh, this guy probably is one of the many believable chalton hunters but he had to take care of his pa/ma/sis/brother" and they will point you in the direction. not only do you look like a new player, but you're also portraying a believable hunter...

as opposed to the extreme, rolling in (as a 40 year old grizzled veteran) and going, "so, has anyone broken my record for bringing down ten mekillots in a half hour yet?"

@faraday said in Armageddon MUD:

@arkandel said in Armageddon MUD:

Roleplaying is an abstraction. You don't have (or you very rarely do) the information, experience or expertise your characters do. Do you suppose all those doctors on TV have graduated from medical school?

Yeah, both you and @Ganymede are spot-on. That's the whole point of roleplaying (and acting, for that matter) - going beyond your personal knowledge to take on the role of a completely different person.

Otherwise it's not RP, it's just a video game. Which is fine!! Hey, I love video games. But you're not going to convince me that Tomb Raider has anything to do with roleplaying when my "super-awesome adventurer/explorer" Lara Croft is constantly walking into walls and flailing around uselessly just because I the player suck at the game.

sure, but by that same token just because you roll into the game as a 40 year old veteran of hunting does not mean we should have to give you knowledge, because you the player haven't even done anything to earn that. you just jumped into a world that you are unfamiliar with, in a land you don't understand yet as a person, and you want to start at like, the height of a career.

you can't just walk into games like that and "expect" things to be handed to you on a silver platter because you're new, it doesn't work like that. we can give you the -basics- to get you started on your grandiose hunting career, but i'm personally not going to tell you where to find ginka fruits or where to get such and such shell that sells for like two thousand coins because it's so ridiculously rare. there's things you have to do yourself, you have to make mistakes and learn from them.

if you roll in as a new player into the game, you have to take into consideration this: can i, as a new player, believably portray that i am, in fact, a 40 year old hunter?

well, for starters, you're rolling up a brand new character to the game. you've never played before, let's say that - even if you have. so even if you rolled in a biography that said you were a 40 year old grizzled veteran, to us as players - and maybe to staff, i don't know - it wouldn't make sense to just tell you where everything is. you wouldn't expect to roll up a character in a DnD campaign who was 40 years old and had all the best skills and stats and was level 20 while everyone else was sitting at level 1, would you? it wouldn't work for the campaign, and it wouldn't work here.

you're expecting that because you, a new player, made the choice that your character knew all this information that you don't know that we, the players, should accommodate that. i'm sorry, but that's an expectation that won't get fulfilled. if that's not your thing, then i apologize for that as well. i believe you have already stated your position on this multiple times, so i'm not really sure what you're trying to debate here.

i mean you can find some of that stuff in helpfiles, but i'm not going to personally give you the digs on every single location to hunt every great beast in the entire world just because you rolled in as a 40 year old character.

so if you're brand new and you roll up a 40 year old, grizzled hunting veteran, should i explain to you as a new player oocly where to find everything because as a 40 year old grizzled hunter you would know all of that, without you as a person having to earn that knowledge yourself?