Events
One of the hallmarks of MUDs is the ability to run large scale events and having player bases take different courses of action in response. In this, it is a sandbox with a lot of potential.
Starmourn, since launch, has been remarkably devoid of events. We have had the gang wars in SH and thats about it.
We likely need many such events that involve collaboration and competition between the different factions. This will also likely provide avenues for combat and gradually establish lore. Give rise to heroes and villains.
I understand the need to develop game mechanics and consumable items but I feel that the game is in a stable place to organize and host some events which truly test the boundaries of universe wide events.
Starmourn, since launch, has been remarkably devoid of events. We have had the gang wars in SH and thats about it.
We likely need many such events that involve collaboration and competition between the different factions. This will also likely provide avenues for combat and gradually establish lore. Give rise to heroes and villains.
I understand the need to develop game mechanics and consumable items but I feel that the game is in a stable place to organize and host some events which truly test the boundaries of universe wide events.
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Unless you're Celestine. RIP.
Also, don't uh... don't discount the large scale events we have had. Tranquility Deepness was really cool, as was the Ry'nari thing in Song. Vega got kidnapped!
I come from Imperian and over the years there have been many events that have shaped the experience there. Be it Year of Nightmares or Saving your city from extinction.
Granted Starmourn is less than a year old but that is the kind of event I’m talking about.
- Ilyos (August 2019)
In my experience the staff is very keen on responding to, and running with, player driven RP. Sure, more world events would be cool. But if you're not getting any RP at all, maybe you're just not RPing enough. Most or all of the above was player-initiated and picked up by the STs.
https://forums.starmourn.com/discussion/1044/notice-me-senpai-a-guide-to-getting-storyteller-admin-rp#latest
As an aside, I am very nervous about any world events that "force" interfactional confrontation. I am very okay with it unfolding naturally, but I think events that have a "Which Player Faction Will Win??" vibe end up causing people to engage with the event in a manner more akin to a sportsball match than an RP session.
Storytellers are voluntary people and they can be considered like any other players being here to have fun. Naturally their attention will be uneven across the people. And it will be uneven across the factions even.
For example, currently we cannot even break open the cage of an Eckin for ages in CA. No amount of RP revolving around that saying "We are investigating this and will find culprits this way and that way" will magically resolve this event in a meaningful and memorable way. Of course we can ask admin to remove the NPC and then prematurely end the storyline as usual. This pretty much happened to a few other storylines in CA where they were initiated players (i.e takeover of RedemeerCorps and Dark Triad Quantifiables trying to butt in), some storytelling happened but everything comes to a halt abrubtly when we are left alone. So that is where people such as me contact higher ups to prematurely conclude them and move on.
Admins give us a shoulder yes and I am grateful for that. So my criticism is not towards admins but the wrong thought that lack of Admin attention is because of players not RPing enough. It is cool you are having a blast enough to write a guide. But at least look from different angles as well instead of climbing a high pedestal and holding players responsible. Admin attention is not a mechanical thing like PvP or ingame economy where we can put down numbers and disprove each other.
Not having a ST for CA sucks. I agree. But I also know CA folk who are absolutely getting admin interaction right now. It's very doable.
I'm also loathe to endorse the idea that it's not actually RP until NPCs are involved, or that giant world events are the only way to have that involvement.
Tldr, I stand by my premise but apologize for the snark.
I simply wanted to point out that there is no correlation between doing enough RP and Admin attention to @Flipilaria .
I think you are mistaken in thinking that lack of events means lack of RP opportunities. There are plenty of those around both player driven and storyteller driven.
Your definition of an event and mine are different. While you are satisfied with interacting with people and sharing small stories. I want broader world scale events. Events that mean strife and shared victories and losses. Common enemies and friends. Things that people talk about for ages. We are entitled to our differences. And while you choose to be snarky about it, I say I am entitled to my opinion. The idea is to create common stories that every one can talk about across generations.
I also believe that the faction system exists to create conflict. there is little point in having a faction system if everyone could simply live in an eternal state of peace. In Starmourn unfortunately things are kind of like that. and in such cases, it becomes both player and admin responsibility to create arcs that lead to more conflict and more interactions.
As for events and what the faction system represents, you and I disagree entirely. Most of my mudding experience has been in heavily conflict-driven IREs. I spent probably 5-6 years as an Eleusian in Achaea, another 3-4 years in various orgs in Lusternia, and I played Midkemia (arguably a mud that was entirely driven by conflict) from day one to close.
This conflict RP worked because, in all of the above, each org represented a specific spot on a morality chart. They were manufactured that way. Starmourn is less so. Scatterhome loosely stands for freedom and anarchy, Song is heavily militaristic, and Celestine is late-stage capitalism. That's a basic fact. But none of these aspects necessitate or even imply a hard "we should go to war" response.
This, compared to Achaea (as an example) where a conflict between Shallam (The late city of light) and Mhaldor (the city of evil) made a lot of sense. Forcing conflict between the Starmourn factions is a bit like saying "Okay, lets put the USA, France, and Russia all to war because why not?" It's possible (especially in today's geopolitical politics) that a war could unfold between these countries, but if we placed them in a fantasy game and send them to war just because, it wouldn't make much sense, and justifying it because "these countries are kinda different from each other" is a flimsy excuse at best.
As I've stated above, roleplay that naturally leads to conflict is fine. But I strongly object to the Storytelling Team railroading the factions into conflict, especially coming from MKO, where railroaded conflict was a driving force behind the inter-org out-of-game hostility, which in turn was a driving force behind MKO's shutting down.
Big world events are cool though. Let's see an invasion or something. We have lots of bad guys for it. I don't think events need to be limited to world-shattering blockbuster events, but I'm happy to have them.
eta: natural lifespans, not counting artificial rejuv extensions.
Yes, dynamic is better. I'm not suggesting a heavily scripted event intro, translatable to "You hate each other, go fight, we'll check back in next week and announce a winner".
But certainly, a dev/event team can introduce events that they know will devolve into war if they want to. A bit of imagination behind an interesting story/event, and player reaction is usually (albeit not always) predictable. And even then, the unpredicted outcomes often make for an even better, more interesting event.