Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

[Aria]

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

• I'm still not sure how journals work (not white vs black, but the thematic nature of them). I play a PC that probably wouldn't do much writing in journals, and I don't OOCly see the point, to be honest. But, from references made, they seem to be IC as much as OOC. Will I get penalized for not using them?

Journals are, in fact, considered IC material. White journals are IC material that has been publicly published in the Archives. The Great Fire at the Archives and the loss of so many journals is a fair part of why there's so much missing history, IC. If your character is a history nerd or the investigating sort? There's some motivation for journals. If your character is the religious sort? Journal please Vellichor, and there's more motivation for journals! If your character just really loves attention being paid to him and his life/opinions/fancy wordsmithing? Motivation for journals.

On an OOC level, they act as reminders and record of what you've done on the PC -- for yourself, for staff, and since it's a roster game? For future players of your character should you drop the PC and return him to the roster. You also get a nice XP bribe from staff for doing them.

[fortydeuce]

@aria said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

If your character is a history nerd or the investigating sort? There's some motivation for journals

Yes to the latter part, at least. But I'm not sure what sort of stuff would be appropriate to publicize. Certainly I don't want to put "HERE IS A @CLUE" in there, if they're considered public IC, and he'd probably keep his opinions on people close to the vest. Do you mind giving an example of something that might be more likely? Thanks.

(Edit: Roz kind of covered that bit, too. Thanks, @Aria!)

[Roz]

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

• Does the startup gear (I forget the command) include stuff you can have made from crafter PCs? If not, it should, as it would be a nice way to RP with them and get them some decent crafting tasks while new PCs have money to burn.

The startup gear command is startgear. The point of it is that you can use it to create stuff your character would already come in with, and it was also created when there was way fewer PC crafters with shops around. In any case, you can just startgear/refundremainder to cash it out and go straight to a crafter.

• I'm still not sure how journals work (not white vs black, but the thematic nature of them). I play a PC that probably wouldn't do much writing in journals, and I don't OOCly see the point, to be honest. But, from references made, they seem to be IC as much as OOC. Will I get penalized for not using them?

Check out the Vellichor helpfile if you haven't already. Journaling is basically a religious directive that is hugely commonplace for the society, so there's another layer beyond the instinctive "would my PC be a journaler in terms of my own sense of what journaling is." Most characters are going to have grown up with this being a part of their everyday lives from childhood.

They are IC in that White Reflections are housed in the Archives and accessible to anyone who wants to read them. Black Reflections are private forever and ever (unless you will them to be released upon your death and then -- die). But you can write whatever you want in your Whites, really, that you feel comfortable being public ICly.

There's also nothing wrong with mostly or entirely writing Black Reflections. You won't be penalized for not writing anything, though. You just won't get the XP.

• I have zero interest in pretty ANSI described clothing. Is there a functional bonus to wearing a fancy tiara? My PC is in the "wouldn't bother IC" camp, but if there is a functional reason (does it affect stats?) for him to have better clothes (I know steelsilk etc., but the rest of it?), let me know.

When there are social systems, there will be a bit of coded benefit for fashionable characters in terms of prestige and the like, but that specifically also won't just be a contest of "who has the prettiest ANSI/ASCII," it'll be about embracing thematic elements and the like.

So no, there's not a functional benefit to having super pretty ANSI.

Also, I'm Derovai (at least 2.0, maybe 3.0). Hi.

Hi!

[fortydeuce]

@roz I know who you are from this thread. Hi! Thanks for all the answers to questions on info-chan.

And OK, that makes more sense for the journaling. Private journaling, absolutely he'd do, but I was having my trouble wrapping my head around "why would the PC share his opinions for all and sundry?". I'll have to come up with some stuff that's less "Here are my opinions on other PCs!" and the like, though, because... yeah, not so much.

[Griatch]

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Please set up a way, if possible, to page shortened names. Sure, that can lead to mispages, but it would be about 1000% (totally real percentage!) easier to me to page foo=Stuff instead of page foobartholicus=stuff

Without modifying anything game-side you should be able to use a nick for this, at least for the people you page a lot:

nick page foo=$1=page foobartholicus=$1

Here $1 (with no following whitespace) means that this is where "the rest" of your input goes (without it the nick would not accept you entering anything more; you could use $2, $3 if you wanted to catch individual words). You could then page them with page foo=<text>.
You could put any abbrevision on the left, so

nick pf $1=page foobartholicus=$1

means that you can do pf <text> to page them. See help nick for more info.
.
Griatch

[fortydeuce]

@griatch said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

nick page foo=$1=page foobartholicus=$1

Thanks! I asked on the info chan about how to get nick to do this, and the impression was that it probably wasn't possible. Much obliged.

ETA: As a test...
nick page der=$1=page derovai=$1
results in
You must use the same $-markers both in the nick and in the replacement.

[Griatch]

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@griatch said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

nick page foo=$1=page foobartholicus=$1

Thanks! I asked on the info chan about how to get nick to do this, and the impression was that it probably wasn't possible. Much obliged.

No problem. I'm surprised that was the impression. Modifying tell (which is an alias of page) is actually one of the examples in help nick
.
Griatch

[Griatch]

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@griatch said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

nick page foo=$1=page foobartholicus=$1

Thanks! I asked on the info chan about how to get nick to do this, and the impression was that it probably wasn't possible. Much obliged.

ETA: As a test...
nick page der=$1=page derovai=$1
results in
You must use the same $-markers both in the nick and in the replacement.

Heh, you are right. That would be a parsing issue with all those = it would appear. That's something for me to fix on the Evennia side I think. Mapping page der $1 instead will work for now.
.
Griatch

[fortydeuce]

@griatch Please drop me a PM when it's fixed, because paging foobartholicuses all over the place is something I mess up about 25% of the time (so lazy, and so my instinct is to shorten the name).

Edit: Caught the fix! A bit easier, but I can't use equals signs with that, which is also instinctive. Still would like to be able to p der=Test and page der=Test, because that's where my instinct goes.

[Griatch]

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@griatch Please drop me a PM when it's fixed, because paging foobartholicuses all over the place is something I mess up about 25% of the time (so lazy, and so my instinct is to shorten the name).

Edit: Caught the fix! A bit easier, but I can't use equals signs with that, which is also instinctive. Still would like to be able to p der=Test and page der=Test, because that's where my instinct goes.

Sure, it should work. As for fixing, when I get around to fixing it in Evennia it does not necessarily mean it'll be fixed in Arx immediately, you'll have to ask the Arx folks for that - Evennia is the underlying Engine Arx runs on, I have nothing directly to do with Arx per se.

Edit: Here is the new Evennia issue if you are interested.
.
Griatch

[fortydeuce]

@griatch Got it; thanks. And yeah, page der <thing> worked, per above.

[fortydeuce]

Side thought: as an investigate-heavy PC with no retainers and at least a week or two's wait before being able to get any, it would be cool if investigate-heavy PCs could have another slot opened up to @investigate or @helpinvestigate, especially while we don't have any retainers to do the dirty work for us.

[skew]

@fortydeuce I used nick page foo?$1=page foobartholicus=$1 where the ? translates to any individual character. Which does mean that typing page foobartholicus=hey! resulted in You page foobartholicus with "artholicus=Hey!"

[Roz]

@griatch said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@griatch said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

nick page foo=$1=page foobartholicus=$1

Thanks! I asked on the info chan about how to get nick to do this, and the impression was that it probably wasn't possible. Much obliged.

No problem. I'm surprised that was the impression.

I'm the guilty party, but I thought @fortydeuce was specifically looking for a name alias situation, wherein he could set an alias just for a person's name and have it work anywhere. Not just paging a specific person. Or I would've started looking at setting up a page alias!

@fortydeuce said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Side thought: as an investigate-heavy PC with no retainers and at least a week or two's wait before being able to get any, it would be cool if investigate-heavy PCs could have another slot opened up to @investigate or @helpinvestigate, especially while we don't have any retainers to do the dirty work for us.

Unfortunately, I doubt that one's going to happen; staff has had to do a whole lot over the months to throttle the rate of investigation to something manageable for them so that they're not creating quite so many clues every single week. Having a high investigation does give you the benefit of starting investigations at a much reduced cost. (Characters with Investigation 0 spend 50 AP, whereas characters with Investigation 5 I think have it all the way reduced to 25, along with the reduction in social resources.)

[fortydeuce]

@roz No problem! Just in reading the thread, "non-investigative PC has investigative retainers" might box my PC out a bit, as a worry. But he's totally getting retainers when I can afford it. It just will be a bit of a wait, according to my social AP.

[Darinelle]

@fortydeuce Re: White Journals and Black Journals - when you choose a character to tie the journal to, these function as relationship updates. It's super helpful for me personally when I can just do a @relationship mychar=theirchar in game and see a history of all the updates I've made, for black and white journals both. It helps me remember little tidbits about the characters that I might not remember otherwise.

And 3 a week nets you 7xp so that's nice too, esp. once your two week @radomscenapalooza is done.

[fortydeuce]

Edit: Here is the new Evennia issue if you are interested.

I appreciate the notice!

[thesuntsar]

@fortydeuce I currently play on Arx and have an investigative character and no retainer helping me. My PC has a high investigation skill, between that and PC helpers I haven't felt left out. You also pick up a lot of relevant @clues through RPing and networking with other characters. A retainer helping you is great, but I wouldn't be too concerned about not getting one immediately.

[fortydeuce]

@thesuntsar Point! I just have been approached for a couple of investigations and have another couple open from jump. Since my PC is a "detective," I wondered if that might be reflected in having more investigative slots and hence more IC ability to juggle and prioritize investigations.

[thesuntsar]

@fortydeuce PCs that are capable of efficiently running or helping on investigations are in high demand. I find that I occasionally have to juggle stuff I might be doing to jump onto something more plotty. Which I don't mind at all! I like being involved. But you'll definitely run into that situation where there's more demand than you have hands.