Best posts made by D-bone

Is there a reason why this can't be 4e for the time being? Considering the book is only in beta, and large amounts of content and plot details are going to be different or changed.. I can't see the benefits of doing the 5e version over 4e, at this point in time.

Maybe when the book officially comes out, but even then.. a few expansion books would be needed imo to really flesh everything out.

Adapting a 4e character to 5e appears much easier on the surface then I give it credit for. Choose high or low stats (or averages) to make the rings, skills transfer over.. etc.

A good analogy is something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2zTrMf4eH4
TLDR- Player gets invited to game he doesn't understand. He commits some errors in thegame which requires a high level of understanding (both in terms of culture and mechanics) and is killed in the first session by another player. (L5R) They even use that same level of fucked up justification that is being used by the people on this thread to justify smacking down new players.

Amusingly Armageddon is almost exactly the same in every aspect for newbies. By the defenders own admission the theme can't bend even slightly to put up with new players, you just kill them and punish them instead. If there was open ooc communication on game, this might be somewhat fixable with ooc informing new players to be more careful in their interactions... The current round about system relies on the player popping onto a discord- a system of communication outside of the game- and requires a player not to still share ooc information. So if the noble is pissed off at you, its considered not acceptable to say to them, hey oocly, what'll get me out of this alive and not beaten up, I'm new here and don't know what to do? That shit is highly discouraged, and depending on how the question is phrased.. against the rules, which we all know new players will know how to exactly turn the question into a legal one.

but nope, opaque system with poor communication somehow thinks its justified to have a intense culture of punishment for those who step out of line. This is in a game with perma-death. If they are lucky to survive, they soon suffer a deprived existence due to poor communication from staff and the community on how they can come back. Yurp, nothing fucked up with that at all. You know whats great? Being punished for ignorance, and then told that their ignorance is all their own fault, and they suffer the consequence... in an environment they are more or less naive about.

Also I'm not an old crochty player, I'm one of those new players.. who did thorough research of the setting. I bought the core book, and everything. Yet I still got fucking shat on because I didn't know which player was which and didn't know to avoid walking into a certain noble. (Again a Karma/Approval required role.) And even after being fucked over, was still willing to play until I got stone walled by staff who refused to help me figure out how to fix my shitty situation. I didn't ask for hand outs, but basic information. Why would any new player play a shitty game like that? Ever?

My roommate invited me out to Eid al-Fitr to the local mosque- about I think two years ago from now? Which if you do not know, is sort of the one of the two major Islamic holidays, this one ending after Ramadan, with feasting ,big celebrations, and gift giving. (Depending on the culture/nation).

Anyway, being a poor terrible college student, I went, free food? Fuck yah. Also going alone is often weird, so I figured his invitation was what he needed to justify going himself. (He doesn't go to the mosque ever, after all.) Anyway, dress up, red button up shirt, jeans, look fairly nice, but not too formal. Not as formal as everyone else there, but hey.

We get there, there is food, mmm lamb. Anyway, while waiting in line for the food- a small child of about 3-4 years of age approach me, and at this time, asks me, "Hey are you Santa Claus." Which is by far the most adorable and hilarious question I have ever been asked.

That is a great memory.

Whatever Tempest. I beat a unicorn rider in the topaz championship without a single rank in riding skill in the riding competition.

And out wrestled a dragon without a rank in hand to hand.

God that was the funniest shit ever in that game. The horses though, my god.

As a fabeled and stupid Gorilla, I'll help run shit. I guess, and help with theme.. blah blah.

I maintain that I was totally going to win that until my luck ran out.

Was totally in first place too until the fuckin duel.

For those interested- atm things have stalled, probably going to have to restart from square one. Sorry.

Send a message if you want to keep working on this project, but I need to find a team with dedication to work with. All that fun shit.

Anyway, sorry for the general bad news- D-bone.

The RPI system definitely has merits, but I am still skeptical about the culture of this RPI game, even though the most dangerous staffer has been removed from their position.. I wonder about the lack of transparency that is conducive towards a healthy game environment.

I basically quit the gae after one day of play because staff refused to answer a basic question that my character would icly know- after I intoned that my character basically had been robbed of all his newbie money. Oh and then got urinated on, and beaten up. Even after doing everything correctly, hey I rolled with those punches but to then get stonewalled by staff so I couldn't get back on my feet..

wewt. TLDR: If you are looking for a blast for the past in MUSH staffing policies, give Arma (and many an rpi) a try. All the systems are intentionally opaque and staff secrecy, spying and cliquishness is not only allowed, but often approved!.

Consented to being beaten up. Not the urination which happened the instance I was 'awoken' and not given a.. hey you into piss play too btw? Which again.. the robbery happened in the middle of town, by a noble, so.. yak now.

As for the fact that there are currently two new staffers there a that are nice.. thats great. The problem remains- Armageddon has historically and consistently had a transparency problem- and as new staffers are hired- the next Nyx will no doubt ingratiate himself. Thre have been eras of good staffing on Arma before, the game is over a decade old after all, but becuase the games staff culture is opaque, players won't know when they are transitioning to the next round of tyranny until it literally is sitting on top of them, and they can't get their petitions approved etc.

So what Arma needs it sounds like isn't players from Mushes... but fucking staffers who actually understand concepts of transparency and ethics. Lmao.

@Hedge Arma isn't unique in many of these things- most staff are not transparent on RPIS or what goes on behind the scenes- Arma I just know is the worst, by far.

First proposed solution- a who list where staff can't be invisible, all staff that are online must be publicly announced an online at the time. The mere fact that a player will never see when or which staff is online is insane, and a great source of mistrust for most of the playerbase. That alone is a step in the RIGHT direction. Give em tags if you want, Idle, Working, Observing, available, but they need to be fucking public. (For those of you uninitiated in RPI's, all staff are dark 100 percent of the time, and faceless)

Let's not also forget that ooc communication is highly discouraged- so some new players might encounter situations where they are told not to take it ooc and keep it ic, so they might be afraid to ask for a retcon. Oh snap, the system is designed to keep new players in the dark and kick the shit out of em. So you know all those games your encouraged to express your needs and desires in the game oocly with the people around you so they know your limits n shit? Fuck that.

You.. play on an RPI, have you never encountered it? It's not a unicorn.

I knew the comparison to dark souls was coming, and I have a huge problem with this analogy. If Armageddon was dark souls, it sounds like the worst dark souls game ever conceived.

The Mantra of Dark Soulesque games are- I'm dieing a lot and it's all my fault. As the thread established, there are a lot of reasons why a character might die or be ruined that are distinctly not the players fault. Furthermore..

Dark Souls is more fair.. and if you make a mistake in dark souls you have a downtime of approximately 3-10 minutes- and can generally figure out a way to actually correct behavior through watching, responding and experimenting. Observation of enemy beaviors, enemy placements and what not allow players to more or less to gain experience.

If we were to use Armageddon as a comparison, you make a mistake because you were not informed, or otherwise just behave not 'normally'- (or to be fair, don't take the game's wilderness seriously- though information on where you can go to new players is fairly scant) the game deletes your save file- and the reload takes anywhere from 2-3 days approval process on top of your character design process down time. Don't forget your skills are all reset obviously, so your ability to observe in detail for the future is significantly stunted until you get to your previous point. You also lose all your gear, your stats are randomly rerolled so you could become completely useless and have to suicide anyway and redo the entire process, and maybe this character will rub someone the wrong way too? Who knows! This is not a 'fair' system, especially if the game is not forthcoming with information from the gate.

Whether you actually learned anything from your mistake may be negotiable- perhaps you just got unlucky, perhaps one player was having a bad day and ganked you. Or perhaps staff decided to animate an npc and murder you, or you accidentally log onto the day of reckoning and plot that has player over turn over like nobodies business.Or a freak enemy placement, or you purchase a bunch of junk in the newbie shop because no one bothered to tell you what is actually worthwhile. Or maybe you get murdered by a templar because you somehow role played knowing how to read and instead of being a rational person, they killed you, because lets face it, those people also play this game too. I'm currently playing with some now on the RPI I currently play, I am a hundred percent certain they exist on Arma