Shattered Kingdoms

I am curious, story-wise, what is the state of Krychire supposed to be atm?

I assume it's not meant to be hospitable at all with the aggro zombies (who are quite beefy).

The tribal story involved Krychire only in as much as the CoN ruled from the tower there and were forced to literally pick it up and run away. As with the story of Ayamao, most of the conflict in the Wastes revolved around the capital city. The daily workings within Grahme and Elisair weren't greatly affected (yes, Grahme is now unclaimed, but there wasn't a complete overhaul of the city), and neither were they in Krychire.

I could very easily see improvements/updates to Krychire being a part of this effort and any that make the game more hospitable to dark auras, however.

I don't disagree with the premise of darkies being a rough ride, but I'm not sure this is the hill to die on as a fix. I'll admit I don't have the few years of experience and/or papercuts built up of darkies being challenging to speak too harshly about it.

I think from a gameplay perspective having no law makes these areas more interesting as a dynamic - for two reasons, one is that citizens will be law victims like pre-tribunal times, and second that we enable playgrounds. I concede completely that from an IC perspective, it makes as much/more sense for the north to get law back rather than Ayamao to lose it. Though I think we could an RP that makes sense of dropping the law (insert grinch smile here).

The northern wastes RP style just never appealed but me, but I know a lot of people I appreciate that are die-hards for it. I don't think this is necessarily a cut and dry win for lighties. They could always just go to Sith'a'niel the entire time.

I will say I liked Krychire better than the Moot. But I'm the least invested person in the choice.

And I'll admit that I do, so I'm probably saltier than I should be. I put a lot of time and effort into my last "resurrect the darkies, do big game changing rps, etc" attempt, and it still stings.

I don't mean any offense, Meissa. ILU bb.



And also yeah, to echo Jerin, idk, I never really clicked with NW style rp outside of playing a barb or shaman. It's just...a very specific vibe/style of RP for the whole Kingdom and I personally, as not the most creative person in the world, am not really sure how to open it to other angles.

I would argue that people involved with creating character concepts in muds are fairly creative. I'd be interested to hear your ideas on making NW rp interesting and draw on your mechanical knowledge regarding npc(race, class)/shop/weapon subtypes choices for a tribal type faction.

I think that the idea that NW RP had a specific flavor is interesting. I never felt that way as a player or an Imm. To me, the over-arching theme was always sort of like Bane being born in the darkness. We're cold heartless bastards in the Wastes because we have a cold heartless climate that we have to best just to survive. Roar!

I also feel like this is an awesome moment where we get to define what the Northern culture looks like from the perspective of different tribes. Again going just based off of the lore I started to imagine when I played Ravi, each of the tribes can be good at one aspect of survival. Fox tribe could be excellent hunters and trade in furs and meat. Musox could be agricultural, etc etc. There could be lesser tribes or subgroups that add other flavor, as well. And not everyone who lives there would necessarily BE tribal. It would just be a very normal influence.

Also, 100% yes to what jreid said about the types of creative contributions that will be necessary. Sure, we might to make some things from whole cloth to actually get this done (stories, descriptions, etc.), but there is a lot of room to work with what we know in order to make it a success.

First off, thanks for at least allowing immigration back to Ayamao and the Northern Wastes for those that wanted to for RP purposes. I actually found it to be a somewhat pleasant surprise because Elisair is ripe with sprite RP, and Ayamao with elf RP, and maintaining those heritages through player history seemed to be sorely missing. The same could be said for the giants and minotaurs for the north.

The Northern Wastes actually has a huge history, outside of Krychire and Kol's Moot. Between the undead halfling village being the lost tribe of the Manencyroc, direct descendants of the first halflings to come from the Isle of C'thos and corrupted by necromatic magics. The minotaurs, skilled hunters of dragons and maintaining a prison of some terrible folks in the north who have attacked them before, as well as their keep sitting on top of an ancient prison of dark fiends, unbeknownst to them in their settlement there. The encampment of Ebor, and its giant tribes. D'aste, and its spiritual centaur tribes. I think a lot of the history of why the Northern Wastes exist, exactly who Kol was and why Krychire is there may only be known by a few people.

It sucks too, because there are some really cool things in game that existed for RP purposes and were fleshing out to huge world building tools, and they got abused or hoarded by people and removed. The hugest appeal to this game for me was its unique way of world building and how well it worked seamlessly with the code. I know there are only so many ways now to roleplay something like creating the Darkstar Pendant, because of how accessible so many parts of the game have become to some veterans, but it's something that could evolve and change with roleplaying as players make that happen.

People who are into these types of games don't want some Diablo Immortal type game. The appeal of these types of games are the world building potential and the masterpieces they can eventually become.

Start with what currently exists, and build an outline from there. We know that the north is a loose collection of preexisting racial tribes who have been influenced and corrupted through necromancy. The giants, centaurs, minotaurs, and halflings all existed there before necromancy was reestablished in the realms by humans and the deep-elves. There was supposed to be an emergence of the Dracolich's brother who would revive Frostfang, albeit undead this time, to plague the realms in frost and death once again. It was supposed to be the coming of the Second Dragon brought on by the Brotherhood of the Second dragon. There's a whole badass backstory waiting to happen, and is already started in the code, and just needs to be repaired and finished. There are so many epics in SK just waiting to happen.

To offer some small measure of support in response to the measure of grace on your part, I will say you were one of the few dark aura people at the time of your effort that seemed to care about doing RP beyond the bare minimum required. Which sucked.

It wasn't your fault in the slightest that I could tell, maybe it was mine, but even with creating a PC to try and give at least one more character with some interest other than demands for in-game loot runs and PK it was still largely a waste of time because of a complete lack of interest from the larger side.

That experience seems to mirror the lack of interest Meissa was talking about too.

IMO it seems to me the number of players willing to play a dark aura when they are behind in numbers is as low as it is because the number of players who want to play a dark aura for anything beyond more freedom in PVP is also low.

Every time I can recall in somewhat recent memory there being a strong dark aura RP going on it was almost always from players choosing to roll together with a set RP in mind ahead of time. Not that unlike there not being evil characters in tabletop campaigns unless the whole party is evil basically.

It just seems like the lack of power in the evil side of things turns into a bit of a negative feedback loop on a side that leans power gamer to begin with. Then so much of the evil RP for most people is wrapped up in a power fantasy making it even tougher for people find a role they want to play on that side.

baby changes I would make to help dark aura:

-add judges/legal system in the Northern Wastes again
-maybe no need to have instant-attack super strong undead in Krychire
-easier way to get to Crucible HQ
-roads to various locations throughout the northern wastes
-fix the kol's moot quest if still broken?
-buff hellions and necros somehow to make them at least slightly more competitive against elves/paladins/fist
-make dark aura locations more accessible -- ch'zzrym and empire pretty far away
-lots of trainers are only found in exile, sith'a'niel, or nerina, so maybe more trainers easily located around wastes/empire

I have tried to play a dark aura character for balance, and I thought the RP was neat. But, as a normie player, it was just HARDER to play. Harder to survive combat, harder to get to places, harder to find allies/friends, harder to do quests, harder for lots of things, and the payoff isn't worth it for an underpowered PC. Playing a lightie/grey aura is ez mode and that's really appealing. If it was harder to roll a dark aura character for RP/logistics reasons and THEN you got the big reward payoff of having a nice strong character, that'd be one thing. But you scramble around looking for the right trainers, good places to train, waiting for people to rez you when you die, waiting for allies and friends to come around to do group stuff together, traveling back and forth from Empire/North/Crucible HQ to find most people in a centralized location like Teron/Nerina... and then end up with a character that gets absolutely [REDACTED] blasted by one haiya from the latest elf Fist paladin.

And worse than that it [REDACTED] with your RP! How am I gonna pretend that I have the strength to overtake the light and expand the Empire or whatever when I can't even survive a bolt of glory and I have two other people in my tribunal who log on sometimes versus a who list of lighties?