Treshure

@squakhawkthis has been accelerating since lotc's teamspeak broke in 2013 for a week and everyone migrated to their own, officially. the big tent is gone and we have killed it take a sledgehammer and start nuking nation and RP group discords. force them back into the dark and bring all the activity back onto the official lotc discord, or not at all. there should be no place to plot other than in the server, or discreetly. Discreetly is still bad, but this normalization has led to RP degradation on a macro scale

This is incredibly spot on. I wrote up a bigger post that I ditched but this sums it up much better. Flays were scary because they were invested in the IRP consequences. Shit, even guys like DPMAGICIAN loved political scheming RP, which made their PvP that much ******* scarier. Their icy RP personas were believable. The Ferrymen have no spine, no agenda, no plan. It’s just a club. I will say that the Ferrymen have a much better temperament than the old PvP groups. I saw Flays flash their guns on old show yourself threads, and I can’t even tell you the racist shit they used to say on their TeamSpeak. But you can have an edge without flashing swastikas everywhere. I just miss a PvP group with as much bite OOCly as they give in character. It’s hard to sit through a bandit encounter knowing he’s gunna get it on with an Azdrazi slay queen princess afterwards — these are not people I would take seriously, ever

idk the vibes just feel off I blame a lack of strong male energy

i worship cernunnos by halo jumping onto bears with dual wielding machetes, how does this lore address me?

Did y'all ever get around to making a new player plugin? Not saying it has to be mine, but I still think improving the newbie experience via plugins Is the best pound for pound return on investment that you can get

Malin's Irish goodbye has given elves PTSD for generations. If he ever came back with the milk, shit would go wild

Abandon the mina system and let players figure out a physical currency to barter with. Let voting mina be converted to a small selection of materials (iron, gold, etc). If you want to control for the amount of currently available physical currency, limit the amounts mined in the mine world/overworld, depending on how you're running it. Any attempt at a real economy is just going to be another flip to players complaining that this shit is too hard, that they hop on to roleplay and not to grind, etc etc. Minecraft is a resource abundant game, so the effort to instill "realism" will also change how people interact with the game in a noticeably negative way. Just model the economy towards behaviors that are conducive to roleplay. If you're transferring tons of iron as a payment from city to city, for instance, have it so that a large amount at one time weighs down the player and requires a mule/military escort. Set up opportunities for bandit ambushes. I dunno. I think the huge problem is that voting for the server is such an essential activity that there may never be enough of a mina sink to counter it. At the least, physical currency can be easily forgotten about, robbed, or despawned after death. Certainly more so if you stop propping up currency with an NPC banking system that is artificially secure. We've been at this for many, many years. Too little results by playing things too carefully. Just go wacky and see if you can make something work in the spirit of making conducive roleplay.

A Petraman claps. "WE COME FROM CROWS! KAWKAW!"

An Ithelanen of old hears of war in his native country. Emboldened by the need to preserve the lives of his kin, he departed his small hamlet the next day. His home would be found empty — stripped of all weapons and wealth, left quickly on a northern, dusty road.

Summed it up as best as could be. @SquakHawk My harping on intuitive & effortless design has gotten worn and tired at this point, but I think it's worth bringing up again in this conversation. @Lojo613 and @Srihit the solutions on the nail - grant players maximal freedom and use plugins to deal with the fallout as much as feasibly possible. Every step we remove from the roleplaying process is another foot into the bureaucratic, out-of-character meat grinder. The reason we hold organic, free-build projects like the Fringe or the Whispering Crossroads in high regard (or any regard at all) is because of the free spirit of roleplay they embodied and thrived within. Nobody remembers build quality. Everyone remembers the experience. I think it's important to question the paradigm used to make decisions in map design. I believe that instead of trying to perfect a system that players can exist within, it is more important to design a system that relies and thrives upon player-led interaction. In praxis, this would look something akin to a map without pre-builds or even roads. Players would be encouraged to stake their claim, and Story Team members would lurk in the dangerous corners of a still unexplored map. Without the creation of a perfect "present" of a map ready for players to consume, players will actively be thrown into the mix to shape the landscape and story of the map. Staff resources would be directed to designing a map in size, story, and geography that would facilitate the most roleplay and engage the player with their environment. This is in essence a completely different approach, but I think it merits some discussion.

I'm digging the way you're using plugins to overcome the need for manual moderation. Tech Team has been putting out some solid shit - thank you for all that coding.

A faint creak had alerted Nob to the four legged intruder - his old hound, come through the backdoor and snaking past the aged farmer. Nob pulled open the door that the dog had crept between, and with it he was met the vastness of the setting sun. Where the sun had left, shadows now draped, and the entire country now held a soft twilight purple before all would sink away. That old farmer smiled and thumbed his tape recorder.

case in point

LotC has been suffering crab mentality surrounding Discord for a very long time. We continuously thought that it couldn't get worse after everyone shuttled into their Teamspeaks circa 2013, but that has been proven against again and again since then. Discord has got to go.

The transparency is always refreshing. I think that direct intervention can only be justified once. It would be far more preferable and less disruptive to smooth out a system that Iviarelle's group could have fallen back on. You might recall me arguing about this earlier with Narthok's rebellion and their subsequent lack of anywhere to go. I think this is just a learning moment for designing around behavior. Our systems have to reflect how roleplay naturally plays out, including the recurring scenario of rebels having a cause without a home. There are of course more issues at hand, but I believe they can be addressed in the same manner.

The Wayward Druid smiles in a lost, distant grave.

Wanna play some VR soon? I don't have a gaming PC at the moment but I did pick up an Oculus for my birthday.

"A new Sultanate?" The youth almost spat out the question, glancing above the tavern's sea of heads to see if he had spoken too loudly. His eyes cut right back against the trader. "Aye, and from what I've heard, they've laid claim to all of the desert," the trader spoke in between bites of dry bread and cheese. "...something about how it belongs to them. Hah! Sultans." The trader toyed with the word in his mouth and returned back to his meal. The youth kept his eyes fixed on the tavern's door, however, long and waiting, staring up the path north. He thought about his travels and the folk that he had met along the way. But an old call was kindling again. Now, more than ever before, he felt the pull back south - back home.

Of all the bitter exchanges we've had, my only regret is allowing the conversation to become a question of character rather than ideas - and make no mistake, this is something that I instigated. Life is shitty and friendships will fall apart on LotC, but there is only one thing that brings you and I and everyone else here: the singular passion for roleplay. I'll put my baggage aside and appreciate your efforts towards a better server and niche, if at least for one post. You've put in a hell of a lot of quality work and made sure that the goodness will continue. Cheers to that, and enjoy your retirement. 🍻