monkeypoacher

the tythus ltd. style of corporate conflict resolution

>infant_skull_depresser banned for sending faerie_goth_queene (new mom! congratulations!!) pictures of babies with the soft spot of their skulls pushed in

>4 years later read ban appeal, decide infant_skull_depresser (now gustavadolf1449) has sincerely reformed through Christ

>unban without consulting faerie_goth_queene or any member of the community

>leave it to faerie_goth_queene to find out on her own bc roleplay, write a forum post reliving and detailing her abuse

>let community “discuss” whether unban is deserved (WE ARE HERE)

>ban gustavadolf1449 a few days later for raid rules or something

>never elaborate

>repeat 4 years later

An uneasy calm swept through Veletz in the wake of the Adrian soldiers' march. The east wind rippled the red-and-white banner hanging over Vasile tower. It bore gray clouds over the horizons of an abandoned watch, and the cries of gulls that settled on the tops of barricades and the roofs of vacant homes. A mule toddled through the square, unburdened and sniffling its nose into the tents and shanties of soldiers.

Paulie S. had daydreamt when he was younger of defending Adria from the forces of tyranny. Though, being limited in his imagination, he pictured himself writing impassioned speeches to deliver from the rostrum while sabatoned thugs pounded at the gates. What rich irony, he thought to himself, that it turned out the other way around.

Paul Sarkozic suffers a nervous breakdown.

"Four old men, terrified of their irrelevance, will pose no obstacle to the righteous and unstoppable cause of Adrian liberty. Fight on, men!" says Paul Sarkozic from atop a stump!

I'll echo everyone else in the thread and say that the best way to deal with burnout is to take time to read. Or watch movies, or play games, listen to video essays on 2x speed while playing games, or do whatever the source of your inspiration is. A large part of creativity is the function of your brain taking apart and recombining stuff that it's exposed to; it's hard to wrap your head around how much more stuff you were taking in as a younger person - between having more claims to your time, no one forcing you to take on challenging material, etc., it's not that anything has fundamentally changed about you - no one loses their imagination, but time and circumstances radically change to interfere with it.

I can also recommend looking up literary magazines for topics/genres you're interested in. I say this not because I'm a pompous jackass (I am) but because they tend to publish a variety of curated fiction + articles from people who have read a bunch about some interesting but somewhat inaccessible topic and are inviting other people to look into it too. There are lots of great fantasy fiction zines, for instance, who publish stuff by authors who are honestly not far off from LoTCers in background. Regardless of what you're into, there are lots of ways to make the internet do the legwork of finding stuff to read for you. 

I'll also add a word of recommendation warning for the wonderful world of online piracy. Definitely do not use sites like Library Genesis or 12ft to get material that's too expensive or obnoxious to obtain. The purveyors of paywalled online articles and ebooks provide you with the ISBN/DOI for their content out of infinite generosity and a commitment to academic rigor, not because you can copy-and-paste it into the search engine of a Kazakh piracy website and get the full text for free. 

"I don't know about you all," Paulie S. says, the tankard of Carrion Beige sloshing as his arm stretches out for emphasis, "but I LOVE Adria."

Just now, gohliad said:

"Where are the real and true Adrian peoples in support of Heinrik?" Anna asks. "So few and far between, it seems, though I suppose it only viable considering his interest lays not with the people."

"I'm right here." says Paulie S. in his sultriest voice. 

Paul Sarkozic frowns as he reads the signatories. No matter who wins the inevitable conflict, the loss to his beloved nation will be incalculable.

3 hours ago, GoodGuyMatt said:

 

Ludrik Katzak, the harasser of citizenry laughed as he read such. "I'm sure Pavel liked the soup and drinks we served him! Asking for 150 minas for the Duke's brother is barely demanding" he said then towards Marius, one of his younger brothers. He then made to prepare for what's to come again.

Pavel Sarkozic has to hand it to them, it was good soup.

yuge

"FOR THE DUMA, FOR THE DUKE, FOR LIBERTY!" Paulie S. screamed, his last clear image that of the buckling Aaunish ranks before he was swallowed into the mass of writhing, struggling bodies. When he arose, the chainmail shorn from his body as he stood bloodied and beaten above the defeated invaders, the Dumacratic nation he had defended all his life still stood with him. 

23 minutes ago, squakhawk said:

 

 

its a meme sent in a few discords i took thirty seconds to find then circle in prntscr. lighten up bud. You don't even need to strawman that you have to be subjected to the terrible fate of being informed by reading any lore (which you then strawman again by saying its rewritten so often, sure, whatever you say - its not like I've managed lore for 3+ years). I also said specifically how harmful general, subjective, unhelpful misgivings are to any form of conducive roleplay. I know I really put the microscope on you in my post and broke down the play-by-play of what you said and what it amounts to, but you are entitled to your own opinions as much as I am to say they're worthless opinions grounded with zero experience or intent to do anything but whine. That's my opinion, you have your own, I just don't respect what you have to say because it's not helpful or representative of anything near the truth, unless maybe you're thinking from over half a decade ago. I'm just trying to give you feedback on what I think you can do to improve if you truly care, or if you just want to post on threads and get (you)s. 

 

 

 

you're inviting me to spend too much time looking for a treasure trove only to probably reply "i said that [time] ago hahaha", i'll pass.

I think things have been pretty good and they've shown, else I don't know how the **** things are doing so well throughout this time and we continue to learn and improve. Shit gets bad and has been, yes, but at least I've taken it under myself to right those wrongs and make something productive of it rather than forfeiting everything to what may or may not have worked forever ago. I appreciated our talk last week on discord because it brought up some stuff to Llir and the rest of mapdev and helped me construct some criticisms to how we're approaching things and how we should fix those, reminding ourselves of the goals we set before we figured out systems to achieve those goals. I'm not really talking about that though, nor was I before.

 

I'm just talking about over-generalizations made that provide nothingburgers of feedback (main character syndrome spookmen races, as if they do not exist or are given the chance to exacerbate elsewhere - "changing the lore so often that only sts ever bother to learn it because ic knowledge accrued becomes useless again a couple months later") - sure? It makes no sense and is just a lashout, again, to do an overgeneralization and cross your arms smugly on a thread that is just completely infactual. I'm sorry that one time four years ago when a shit admin shelved some lore and that affected your roleplay. But it doesn't need to dictate and rule how you continue to just be negative and unhelpful otherwise. I don't speak of this because I hate you or what you do, but that I love this server, and have no reason to hurt it or anyone on it. I want things to be better, I've made things so that they are better. Magic, feats, CAs, etc. are at more useage, availability, and fairness than they've ever been at any point ever before. People acknowledge that. And it's ridiculous of me to expect everyone to recognize that. But past simple ignorance and just being wrong with no intent to change that opinion is what irks me, and should irk you too if you really do want to see things improve and be better. 

an old adage says: "the more words you write the less mad you are"

i have the flu right now. so feel free to argue with james2k (who has power of attorney over me). i hope you get well soon squakhawk internet gamer

1 hour ago, squakhawk said:

 

If you really cared, or wanted to give any feedback, or even tried a bit more, you’d at least try and find things to backup what you say and offer change other than anecdotal storytelling you read in a discord. 

No lmao I'm not going to comb through the entire corpus of LoTC lore or produce screenshot evidence to prove a commonly held (and mostly subjective) belief. Everything I said came from my personal experience. Source: I made it up. 

Besides, I was arguing w another player about something else entirely and threw out some very generic misgivings about magic lore, none concerning you or the lore team or anything you might have done in specifics - which struck such a raw nerve with you that you took the time to open photoshop and write 400something words to cry about it

Since I wasn't arguing with you and you didn't address anything I said besides questioning my bonafides as a minecraft sorcerer, I don't really know what to say except you're entitled to your feelings. You are also entitled to run your team and your roleplay however you like. But maybe your time would be better spent on something other than trying to start an argument with me on the forums.

also find it kind of grotesque that the part of the "lore iceberg" below "can I please have magic?" and "is this an event site?" (which I think are perfectly reasonable questions) is a joke about players grooming minors into doing fetish roleplay. which is apparently something I'm supposed to know about to be a true initiate into the esoteric art of roleplaying a wizard online? I don't know how to interpret that.

Just now, satinkira said:

 

the generalisation problem

 

no, magic isn't really special anymore (Go on cowards, reduce the numbers of people who have dark magic and make the lore posts and MArt posts private), and I do agree with you that more should be done on the 'veil', and that most magic isn't special anymore due to oversaturation, and that redlines shouldn't be policed so thoroughly as it currently is as long as it provides to the narrative, and that generic fantasy tropes do help to add to rp. 

however, what I'm saying is that voidal magic doesn't need to exist as the mage trope. while it certainly can, it doesn't need to - because, as you say, the general theme of the lore existing as 'ripping holes in the veil' and so on doesn't match the outcome of the magic. this isn't to say that magics that aren't following of tropes are somehow better. ultimately, it all comes down to how the magic is roleplayed (which is why redlines should be more lax and loose...) because what's important isn't the spell and the having the magic, it's the roleplay that it creates

it wouldn't be special if fewer people had it, is the point I'm trying to make

making magic lore private or whatever doesn't really fix anything. the people who thrive in a highly gatekept magic environment are the same kinds of boring cliquelords who thrive on restricting other ppl's creativity. they're the people who spend hours in these threads and in lore discussion shitting on everyone's ideas and who write 10,000 words of inexplicable redlines and loopholes and caveats for their own benefit, they are the ones (not johnny fireball-thrower the fire evocationist) who make cool ideas hard to execute.

I think as a general rule ppl would have more fun on this server if they abandoned the idea that roleplay has to conform to some standard to be worth doing. and instead met others at their level and riffed off each other to create interesting ideas. roleplay stuff for its own sake, because you enjoy it, not because you think it makes you look cool or special

ITT : we act pretentious about pretending to be a wizard

59 minutes ago, satinkira said:

void magic = bad, average void rper is a *casts fireball player who doesn't actually rp considering the fact that through the very existence of their magic they pollute the world and rip a veil between the natural world and the Void. also a v gatekept and oocly controlled magic at higher levels and also known as the 'silver magic' because it's basically used mainly by celia'nor and haelun'or

voidal magic could be so good, but instead of rewriting the original lore they keep throwing on bandaid additions and new abilities that often don't provide much to rp (like that one ability that solely exists to watch for voidal tears basically being eye aesthetic along with environmental protection through dreams). REWRITE THE ORIGINAL LORE TO FIX THE PROBLEMS, EXPLORE THE WHOLE 'WE'RE MESSING WITH THE VOID' ASPECT MORE, CHANGE THE NERFS TO VOIDAL MAGIC. please. 

also don't mass spread it, write another fireball wizard spell. voidal magic can and should be special, but it isn't

i will share a terrible dark secret with you: no one thinks any magic is special. even if it is canonically the rarest magic in the world that only you and the guy you made up to teach it to you can use it. something becomes special when it is written to be special, to exact meaningful consequences on characters and the world that they live in, which most magic is not. most magic is written to be generic powerups with circumstantial weaknesses like maybe one step above "my character Plimbert the Deathstalker has orc strength and super agility and immunity to conventional weapons, but he can be instantly felled by a rare ST material on Tuesdays"

even genuinely well written and interesting concepts have an insurmountable hurdle in having to be actually executed through the medium of minecraft text with everyone having a different level of lore knowledge and reading comprehension. what's special is the stories you create with your friends, and magic is just a device you can use in those stories

also this whole "tear in the veil" concept would be cool if it actually meant anything, like the ST were willing to actually expand on or roleplay it at all. so far we have had a voidal tear event that turned part of the map blue for a month and didn't go anywhere, a few voidal horror CAs, and like 100,000 "voidal magic is eevil!!!" forum posts.

besides having negative effects on my character personally (which i still have to interpret the lore creatively to do) if i play void magic as dangerous and unpredictable as you say it is --> instant blacklist for stepping out of one 1,000,000 redlines prewritten into every piece so that it isn't more Powerful than the flavor of the month deity or misc. magic/feat/creature. despite all of this I genuinely enjoy void magic RP because it gives me just a little more poetic license to write a character than anything else, and because I didn't need to join someone's obnoxious discord to obtain it

there is obvious utility from a game design perspective in having magic that just lets you throw fireballs or majjyk missiles -- that's why it's one of three classes in nearly every roleplaying game system does exactly this. sometimes people gotta throw fireballs to kill giant spiders, and I genuinely don't see what's wrong with that.

the seething disdain you people have for generic fantasy tropes is what prevents people from actually doing interesting high fantasy rp, because tropes are a part of the genre, and playing with them/building on them is how you make genre fiction

23 minutes ago, alexmagus said:

people going into a realm of pure energy would be weird.

maybe the void realm is a mirror of our realm. or a memory of our realm is impressed on it every time a void mage breaks the veil to steal its power. or maybe the void is what's behind the fourth wall and the literal keyboards and screens and maybe some grass. its not the most outlandish concept ever to have the Void (or the Interstice, or the Intergument, or the Borderworld, Xen, or something else this stuff is all made up) be an explorable place in game or at least a tangible place/thing that could be fleshed out in rp. that would give people some cool stuff to do

i feel just so. so old right now

making food decay because ppl i guess think there's too much food (?) is a waste of server resources in basically every sense. it's a waste of our tech team's resources fixing a problem that doesn't really affect (or arguably benefits) the average roleplayer. it's a waste of our server's computational resources on a plugin that periodically has to update the contents of chests/player inventories. it makes the literal resources in the game go to waste and forces players to find a way to dispose of them. real heads remember the chests full of rotten Nexus food and the laggy composters. lol

3 hours ago, DahStalker said:

everyone who said yes never had to tolerate the food decay plug-in lmao

if it were me i would focus on adding fun stuff to do with the food surplus (like a cooking plugin!) and maybe add food decay as an afterthought to that

17 hours ago, wowj said:

we need a mina sink instead of more mina - theres already so many ways of getting mina irp "Run Bar" "Get rare Ore" etcetera.

none of those things u mentioned have anything to do w money supply and they would still be viable ways of earning money even if the currency was so deflated that diamonds were 0.0001 mina 

what ur really complaining about is that people r hustling harder than you (maybe getting rare ores is just up to green tag favoritism? idk) and since they already have the resources deflation is going to punish you way more than them lol.

I'm sure I'm just parroting other ppl in the thread by now but the particulars of lotc economy are a huge waste of time to focus on. The voting stimmy helps the casual rper buy basic items. If you're going to add things like the caravan system from two maps ago or mob dungeons or whatever make sure they're fun optional distractions that you can do between roleplays and not shit like this map's "u have to kill 10 vortex boars to make a suit of armor to pvp" 

17 hours ago, Borin said:

teach me the history of tiles from the inception to now monkeypoacher

genuinely don't know how this idea was conceived - but I think it just got too confusing to keep track of the territorial changes in the big coalition war and the map transition between vailor and axios (when there were like a dozen more nations than there were at the start of the previous map) so some admin came up with the idea of superimposing these tiles on the map to make it easier to refer to/keep track of who owns what

no one really thought of how this system would incorporate ppl starting new settlements at the time, because the consensus was there were already too many. so for instance tiles have never been subdivided into smaller regions that could be realistically claimed by a small group of players for a charter/settlement/lair/whatever.

the map immediately after axios was freebuild, and generally speaking people weren't allowed to claim land without nation status, so it wasn't a problem. but when the staff decided to do a reactionary 180º turn and gatekeep placing blocks behind an application again, they resurrected the tile system - still without thinking of how it would mesh with their plans to have "charters" which could be claimed with 5000 mina and ten human souls.

instead you had an awkward system where nations owned tiles and charters owned plots of land but maybe you could upgrade your plot of land to a tile if you got nation status which would happen if you got 30% activity and made an application and asked telanir nicely on a tuesday. afaik only one charter ever became a nation. 

because it was so ridiculously difficult to progress as an independent group - people would join charters, get bored of what little they could do with limited space and resources, and move on to the next thing, populating the map with all sorts of funny ghost towns. there was a huge forum war over removing these based on activity checks that were never on time or accurate. bloodbath

so to avoid having to lose face failing to implement activity checks again, the staff going into this map really didn't want people to make new settlements, I mean really didn't - you're ugly, you're disgusting, pay us 10,000. show us 30 players who want to rp with you, submit your lore to the lore team for totally irrelevant review and feedback. AND STILL settlements are in an awkward gray zone where they don't officially get to participate in wars or have clean borders. 

as you can tell the history of tiles is a history of the staff trying and failing to put elaborate abstractions on top of roleplay to make it easier for them to moderate, and forcing people to play an elaborate zero-sum game just to build a cute little town or a guild hall. we would be better off without abstractions like tiles, nation status, activity checks, etc. - roleplay gives us a tremendous ability to simulate things like warfare and national politics without heavy-handed staff intervention. 

cook.

Especially agree with just throwing tiles directly in the dumpster. Lord of the Craft's most arbitrary mechanic, does not mesh with common sense, roleplay, or any other rule on the server. People like to call LoTC a "factions server" but the literal factions plugin would do a better job than this goofy ass tile system does. 

you're not wrong

but we could just get rid of tiles altogether and replace it with towny or nexus regions or something and very few people would notice. the tile system (and thus 70% of the land on each map) only exist to be conquered and traded around like tokens in nation v nation dickwaving contests. 

On 2/21/2023 at 5:07 PM, envy said:

they're just cute & simple events (as stated at the beginning of the post) why are you hating lol

these are some of the least inspired events imaginable. they are the minecraft equivalent of search engine optimization. people hate them because they are not fun or interesting yet make up 90% of what is going on in any given settlement, and the people who host them are frequently pushy and condescending and call themselves "community leaders" for doing the bare minimum spamming the same 3 parties over and over. hope this helps! xoxo

On 2/20/2023 at 7:45 AM, Ibn Khaldun said:

I personally would love to see people's fiction writing in their signature. Would be a useful tool for Story Team to see who they can target events towards. More to your question though; I don't understand why but would venture to think it has to do with getting one over on their out-of-character foe. I do agree with you that it is unhealthy.

i gotta write stuff to put in my signature so people will maybe read it. never dawned on me that I was throwing away a perfectly good space to shill ebooks

activity is a ridiculous metric and the staff have always had a problem keeping track of the checks and enforcing them impartially anyway. wouldn't it make everyone's life easier if we just canned them entirely (or kept them only for special privileges - i.e. nation status?)

speaking from the other side of this - why the **** would I play your server if the most interesting thing I can do is punch a clock? why is the only form of progression a number that the staff gives you at the end of the week telling you how many collective hours you and your buddies have spent standing inside a specific group of blocks? 

If you want people to keep coming back here, donating, etc. you could spend the energy you are currently using to collect activity data making something fun like a PvE dungeon or an alchemy plugin (just spitballing here). but doing this might risk pissing a few guys off who really really like being Lord of the Spreadsheet so it's better to just keep making more elaborate excel formulas to tell you how much fun you are supposed to have

and it's not like I'm a hard person to entertain either - just yesterday, instead of playing LoTC, I logged on to a 24 hour 2fort server and spent like 20 minutes repeatedly taunting at the enemy resupply room until I got killed. you could make this server worth playing just by comfy halfling tavern ambiance alone - but @Llircan't do that, he has to fumble the bag, and he has to lead a team of coders to write elaborate bukkit plugins to help him fumble the bag more efficiently. i do not understand it