Let's Spread Lore: A Modest System Proposal

[Laeonathan 3929]

God please no... I think everyone before me explained why already.

[Diogen 3061]

16 hours ago, Islamadon said:

I'm an elitist and I think this proposal has too much faith given to the average player. I used to be in the boat that lore should be accessible to everyone, and I encouraged the Lectors to spread alchemy as a result. While the Lectors existed I took tabs of the alchemy production on the server overall. I noticed that many players had achieved alchemy in a domino effect from us and were using our document system to mass produce it on the level that we were. We, in a sense, made alchemy TOO accessible.

In the month of AUGUST 2022, I recorded each alchemy ST req every single day and made a total tally by the end of it. It is also worth noting that I informed the Lectors to avoid producing Blasting Potions and Tanglefoot themselves as to not spoil the sample. These were the results:

TOTAL


POTIONS THAT COULD BE USED IN CRP


If you take a look at the chart, Blasting Potions and Tanglefoot were heavily produced to give players an edge on CRP. This was also pre-nerf, meaning that the Tanglefoot would've stopped people dead in their tracks and the Blasting Potions would've been AOE hammer hits every 2 emotes. If you take a look at the chart which focuses on the POTIONS THAT COULD BE USED IN CRP, Blasting Potions, Cockatrice Breath and Tanglefoot made up 50.7% of all potions. This means, definitively, more than half the potions being used in CRP were cancerous in nature to deal with. This was because they were the best potions to use in CRP, and the player base which now had a wide access to Alchemy opted to mass produce the potions that would give them an edge.

Since then, my mentality has shifted to one of Gatekeeping. I think the average player, when left to their own devices, will seldom act for the betterment of the server and will instead do anything to get an edge over others. I too fall victim to this mentality often, knowing that I can be jumped by a random bandit if I am not prepared adequately for what cancerous lore they might throw at me. I think that enabling any player to get access to any CA, Magic , etc. will lead to disaster as they will find ways to abuse the spirit of the lore in favor of powering up like an anime.

It is also worth mentioning that Lore itself is constantly being altered due to the actions of players as is. Amendments, Nerfs, Rewrites, etc. feel like a constant occurrence because players either want to buff themselves or the ST has to step in to remedy an oversight which led to lore-looping and/or power gaming. Our lore is fragile and player written, I dread to imagine what horrid deeds we'd be forced to deal with if anyone could do anything. This is not even to mention the stream of rewrites, additions and amendments being proposed by those who just dipped a toe in.

In Runescape RP we reached a point of saturation, given that there were no applications whatsoever, where everyone was a max level Ancient Magic user who could spam Ice Barrage, had Dragon Weaponry (equivalent to Carb), Agile Leather Armor (for dodging and absorbing spells), Hand Cannons and some level of CA (OMG MAHJARRAT?). I don't want to see LOTC fall down the same rabbit hole.

ALSO, on PKs, I don't think PKing makes one a better RPer or not. I don't think it's wrong for people to not want to PK given the time investment; they just want to have fun on the server and may have IRL commitments that make restarting every week a hassle. For the past decade I've run on personal PK clauses and have just now learned KLONING for le immortality. If we want to see more PKs, CAs shouldn't have immortality written into them and should instead have a catastrophic off-switch like every other bad guy. Where did the phylactery for Liches go? I'm not against heroes also having some critical weakness like this if they get a Holy Magic, but come on... Most CAs are Monsters!

okay, those are actually really good points, i might have changed my opinion on the topic

[Nooblius 5794]

After thoroughly reading about it and giving it some thought, I consulted my economics homework and have returned with the principle of unintended consequences:

 

I agree with the principle, and the analysis of the effect the difficulty to attain magic has on making people reluctant to PK. I do also consider Islamadon's analysis that PKing doesn't correlate as strongly to quality RP as we often think.

 

Nonetheless, the issue is that this doesn't actually help spread lore, just addresses willingness to PK, and not to mention in a way that isn't necessarily good faith as now people are PKing not for story but because they know it has less threat of disrupting the comfort of their RP (they can still do a certain magic, and on the more niche ones they basically get a free ticket back into a community). As Xarkly states, this really does only affect the people who already have "inroads" so to say within Lore groups.

 

I do think there's an important question to ask about how we spread lore and how the way we manage it logistically effects that spread. On LOTC, mechanics are tied to culture. There's debate whether they should or shouldn't be, and I always find it a bit ironic as the current popular verdict seems to simultaneously be against having a magic tied to a culture while denying magics on the basis of no culture for RP. Due to this dilemna, it's hard to tell people to spread RP when they're also having to make a judgment call about the culture of their community, both OOCly and RPly. 

 

We can't put the cart before the horse; a culture/avenue of RP is the main goal of magic. But the avenue of RP means aesthetic more than it does actual mechanics, and often it's very hard to deviate into multiple aesthetics within a single magic despite that being an intended goal. Were I making a magic system from the ground up, I would have it be that there are many basic mechanics/spells you can pick and choose from that are altered in aesthetic and minorly impactful capacity by a culture/technique of doing magic. This removes the problem of "gatekeeping" whilst still allowing people to Roleplay cultures and unique aesthetics, but would require a change on a scope larger than the Lore Games (shudder), so it's not a very good solution. 

 

At the very least, I think self-awareness is the first step in considering a solution to spreading lore, so we need to ask and understand in depth how the player community, magic management systems, lore criteria and lore writing itself all affect lore spread.

 

 

On another note I disagree with the idea that magics need to be faster to master because you want as much meaningful character development as possible. Where I would absolutely agree is that it should be made less dependent on a TA to control their student's learning, because frankly it's definitely possible and maybe even better to learn without a TA but instead through the Lore and Guide directly. We on the LT know how many times word-of-mouth lore traditions come around, and we also know the times we've been guilty of it. I'm almost universally opposed regarding this and don't think I've found a single person to agree with me though because it pulls into question our entire system of MA management. I posit that our system provably doesn't work.

[ReveredOwl 5314]

I disagree, people who have had magic on another persona should not be able to just mysteriously get it on their next. It is unfair and they should have to go through the time of effort of finding a teacher and learning it again, just like Joe Average. No special priviledges should be given to people just because they once had magic.

[Zarsies 6024]

A diverse lot of good and strong takes. I appreciate the engagement and deconstruction, it's more than I had when the idea was conjured.