Apos

Apos

So with the wrap of the final big story of the game, Arx goes into a GMing hiatus as work begins on Arx 2. It’s always hard to estimate how long a project like that will take, but ideally will be able to begin testing with players later this year. It will be a very far time skip, with the setting significantly different and new characters, and also a new code base.

For this version of Arx, it means it’s now a low touch sandbox environment. The game will continue to stay up in a low touch environment without active staff support, so players are welcome to sandbox RP and pursue whatever stories they want, but they shouldn’t expect any kind of GM response. I’ll keep the game running, but I also won’t do any kind of deeply involved work to support it. Which means if anything ever catastrophically breaks, that’ll be it. So while I don’t plan to take it down anytime soon, I’d really encourage everyone to save anything they want to keep now- logs, events, action responses, etc.

With that in mind, if anyone wants access to an old character to retrieve stuff, I’m also fine with that, and I’ll give whoever access if they want to grab old RP records for nostalgia’s sake or pop into the sandbox.

All that said, I want to say thank you to everyone. When I started work on Arx over 8 years ago, I thought it would be a small game for a few friends. I never planned for it to become what it did, and it was the tremendous creative energy inside this community which made that happen. It was a privilege to create stories with so many truly gifted writers over the years, and there’s quite a bit I’m very proud of. I made tons of mistakes, and have a lot of regrets as well, and in the times I fell short- I’m really sorry, and I hope you’re all doing well, and still enjoying creating, whether in this hobby or elsewhere. But I think the end of Arx I couldn’t have asked for better, and I’ll never stop being impressed by how positive the environment was and how great the final stories were. So for you folks at the end, I’m very grateful.

Thanks again, everyone. I’ll be around on the sandbox- not a lot, since I’ll be busy working on the next version of the game. Look forward to seeing you in the future.

Apos

8 years is a long time for a MU. About a year and a half ago I stepped back from Arx for a lot of reasons, but one of the big ones was to get to coding so I could eventually relaunch Arx as the game I wanted it to be. The current Arx has always been completely unsustainable as it is designed and I have pretty firm ideas on how to address that and make a better game, but I just could never do that while head staffing the game full time, as it was basically impossible to find time to code while still doing everything else I needed to do.

The past year has been extremely difficult for staff, and I largely wasn’t there to help mitigate that. They’ve been facing increasing demands on their time and RL issues they can’t ignore, and the raw workload generated by the game has just gotten more and more daunting. So with that in mind, and knowing it can’t go on forever like it is, and that I can’t fix the underlying problems while running it, the game is going to go on hiatus pending a relaunch with new systems, story and characters.

But not just yet.

I decided I’m coming back as head staff and set aside the next few months, going until the end of January, in order to finish out the current story of the game. I’ll finish out the current big stories, and go very hard on this, bringing the same energy that I had when the game first launched. I feel there might be a few people who are interested in seeing how it all ends and what I have in mind, so I decided to post here for it. I honestly have no clue who, if anyone, would want to come back to take part in the story, and who currently on the game are still interested with an end date announced. But for my part, I’ll be okay with going all in on telling this story and finishing out the game whether it’s for a dozen players on or five hundred, and doesn’t really make that much of a difference to me.

For those that are interested, here’s more explicitly what I’ll be doing: all administrative requests and book keeping are going to be largely shunted aside unless it has direct RP/story relevance or acts as blocker to RP. Anyone that wants to return may, and anyone wanting to return to a long retired character for nostalgia’s sake probably can though I’ll decide case by case depending on their story. Since I’m going to be largely squelching busy work and actions are tied to the player rather than their characters, I’m raising the alt limit from playing two characters to three, mostly because I know there’s a bunch of people that have nostalgia for a small army of characters and I wanted to make it less difficult to choose for their final hurrah.

So yeah this might be a little insane of me rather than just continuing a BG3 playthrough and coding, but I’m very much looking forward to storytelling the finale of this version of Arx. The next couple weeks I’ll be doing all apps for anyone interested and then kick things into very high ear starting towards the end of October, and running at that until the end of January. Come Feb 1st, requests turn off, and that’ll be it for the current characters canonical story save for one shots I or others might GM to test systems. And then, a bit down the road, Arx relaunches as a very different game, which I am extremely excited about. But just not yet. Time to go all in on a story first.

Apos

Sinister BMD plot to destroy MSB called “sit back and let Derp talk” proceeding according to plan

Apos

Without saying too much, if anyone has stuff on Arx 1 that they would like to keep, like past writing, scenes, images, whatever, please grab them soon. While I don’t intend to lose it, I’m getting closer to having something I want to show and it is entirely possible that all this old stuff could poof in the transition. If anyone needs login info to grab old stuff just let me know.

Apos

Okay, as I have time I’ll do some lore posts that will give a hint about the theme of the world and what changed, though it is still medieval stasis adventure-fantasy. So starting areas, beginning with Arx itself.

The Necropolis

“One stands before us in Durance. Speak thy name and testament.”

Arx is a city of history and memory. If one wished and spent time in the Great Archive, they could learn of each different age of the world. Of how the Great Necropolis of Arx was built, of how the Compact of Arvum rose with the now city of Arx as its capital, and how the Compact spread through all the world. In these walls, you could learn of the Sixth Age and how this place came to be the greatest city in all the world. We have no shortage of memorials with the names of deeds of the great heroes from those past ages, and there are reminders all around us of how many spent most of their all-too-brief lives here. Near all rest here, in our Necropolis. We built a golden age, an empire with Arx as its crown jewel.

That was before the Penitent’s arrival and the Shroud over Arx.

To this day, we don’t know who the Penitent is. Or was. There were always guesses, and the most popular was that he was the god of Justice descended in mortal form, the Sentinel made manifest and come to Arx to shield the city from what was to come. The Sixth Age ended with the Penitent crafting the Shroud over Arx, a great gray haze of a barrier that prevented all entry. The Penitent was near never seen, but we felt his eyes upon us always, and those inside that threatened the city were struck down by the Penitent’s magic without a word. Not quite without warning, his statues would turn to give notice, but near enough for most. We wouldn’t quite call it a prison, not when the Shroud only blocked entry to Arx, but any could pass through if they chose, never to return. It was, we were told, a safety measure against the end of the world, for the greatest city that ever was, a city of three million people, to ride out the apocalypse. Most at the time thought it would pass quickly.

It has been a thousand years.

“As Arx endures, we remember.”

Years winnowed us. There were the Great Callings, when the greatest among us would be gathered by the Penitent and ride out through the Shroud, never to return. Over the years, more and more stifled under the Shroud’s gray sky and the unceasing watch of a being we know nothing about, and traveled to see what world remained beyond. Age after age passed, underneath the Shroud, and we kept and honored this city despite a malaise that tested us all. Few who were born here did not at least consider leaving, even knowing that we could not be certain anything at all existed beyond the barrier. Of the three million when the Greatest City was sealed, there are under fifty thousand living within Arx today. But at least we were safe.

And then came the Vanishing.

Five years ago, during the Eclipse of Mirrors masquerade under the Blood Moon, a great mist entered the city and with it came the demons. Those with magic to fight, our Gifted, were not great in number in our current age, as how many could stand to remain and languish here when possible adventure called beyond the Shroud? But few as their number were, every last one of our puissant was killed or taken from us on one night, shocking us to our core and breaking that lifetimes long lethargy from us. We could see cracks in the Shroud now, fractures in the gray sky, and not a word from the Penitent as our city was gutted in a surprise attack.

We still know not what directed the attack, who the demonic foes were, or where those captured were taken. Some believe the city could have been massacred, and know not why it wasn’t. Some left the Shroud to seek answers, never to return. And we started to see beasts, corrupted abyssal things prowling the lands around the city. Minor foes we could handle, but more proof they could penetrate the weakened Shroud.

“Still Here.”

And now the Shroud has broken completely. The sound of breaking glass, like a million mirrors all shattering at once during the night. The lands are open to us, and as we are to them. Those with strength to do so gather to go forth. Others panic and pray, hoping that the Penitent will answer, despite that he has never done so during the past thousand years. We were born and raised in a city of ghosts and echoes, a Necropolis that has been the resting place for the greatest men and women of every age. But if one cares enough to read their stories, some believe they know what the gods will ask of us.

Because most of the heroes were born here too.

Apos

I do not believe that those left involved at MSB are capable of running a successful online forum about text based role playing games. Whether you think that bar is high or hilariously low, they don’t cross it.

Apos

Since I’ve been asked, let me give some stats to the fellow nerds out there that have been wondering just how much was going on under the hood for the past 8 years.

Arx had a few players. There were 2689 character bits created, played by 1889 unique player accounts. A few of these changed hands, as there were 5602 roster applications submitted.

Players liked exploring. There were 4933 clues to be discovered and 359 revelations. They did tend to share these, with 151,687 instances of clues shared or discovered, and 6363 instances of revelations discovered.

Players built a few things. Of the 156,997 unique objects in the database, 1858 were retainers, 4081 were places set down in rooms for tabletalk, 4000 were rooms created on grid, 1481 were temp rooms for PRPs, and of surviving crafted items, 37813 were player made clothing, 1083 were hairpins, 3876 were wearable bags, 3398 were weapons, 2457 were perfume, and 24919 were tchotchkes.

Players liked the goal system more than I expected. There were 4376 goals. 257 were classified as megalomanic, 39 of which were marked as successful. The least popular category was Heartbreaking Modest, with a mere 30 goals. 1 was marked as failed. It was to find true love, and buddy, let me tell you, that’s not an easy goal.

First impressions was more popular than I expected. There were 102,698 First Impressions written. They were overwhelmingly positive, and the amount of negative ones were far under a fraction of a percent.

Players like Played Bys. There were 14979 images uploaded to character galleries, and it being a roster game with people wanting clean slates, there were 6979 photos stored in the end.

I wrote 1277 global emits. At least 4 of these were mavs to the entire game. I will still be getting shit about it in Arx 2 without a doubt.

Players wrote 706 theories. It was fun to read these. Some were truly unhinged.

Game started with 41 crafting materials. We ended with 91. I am pretty sure we would have had many times that if I had agreed to every ‘I want to create a new material’ action or request. It was way more popular than I ever anticipated, and oh boy did it create a lot of work, with each recipe taking a long time to create. And on that note, started with around 200 crafting recipes and ended with 459. 27045 items were modeled, as fashion was a bit more popular than I expected.

But mostly, people just loved to RP and write. There were 7528 cal events run. For message objects in the game (board posts, journals and messengers), there were 1,519,201 created. Since mosts were not persistent, there were only 40,601 messengers still existing at the end and 90,562 journals. Of that, 37,072 journals were private black journals. Black journals, on average, were significantly longer than white journals. I’m not going to query a character count, but I’d say the average length was around 4 or 5 paragraphs.

I can look up more for the desperately curious but that’s it for now.

Apos

My dog Braum certain he saved me from imminent death this morning at the hands of a deer.

oh deer

Apos

@Narson said in Bannings:

It isn’t like BMD was set up by people on a jolly jape

Interrupt this only to request that this become the official clique name

Apos

I appreciate people running a game or forum or anything making a very earnest attempt at being fair minded, but yeah I wouldn’t lose sleep about this one.

Sure, I go through the ‘what if they are well meaning but being silly’ motions too, like yeah okay maybe someone they cared about was called creepy unfairly and they get really set off by it, but I don’t think that was likely. The DM thing didn’t sit right with me for another reason, because there’s two likely possibilities really:

Either:

The person has a huge, longstanding grudge with lolRae and was able to immediately think of a thread from whenever ago on a whole different forum for why they disliked them. I can’t think of someone like that coming to another board but to pick a fight, and they aren’t gonna be someone that will make the forum a more fun place to be if that’s the case.

Or:

They have never heard of lolRae before, and incredibly obsessively searched through MSB until they found something about them they thought made lolRae look bad and then shared it with a stranger. And while I think the term creepy might get thrown around more than it should, holy fuck that would actually be super creepy. Let’s just say no to super angry obsessive stalker types tyvm.

So sure maybe they were someone that’s normally chill and having a bad day but uh, yeah.

Apos

The Kingdom of Aythirmok

“One stands before us in Durance. Speak thy name and testament.”

The question you hear the most is how we can stand the cold. It’s true, you can freeze to death if you aren’t careful. Only the foolhardy are out during the peak of winter during a storm, or brave the wilds without ample provision. But it’s almost an old friend, the cold. You get accustomed to the silences in the dead of winter, of places so still that even one doesn’t even need a Gift to hear spirits talking on the wind. Our lodges are built for it, our holds can stand the worst of it, and there are far worse things than waiting out a storm by a hearth. Better than the spring, for certain, as we’re reminded all too often. Because as bad as the cold can be, we’re always warmed by one simple fact:

The armies of the dead freeze in the cold.

“Salt and steel guard us well, ere the dead march from hell.”

Life in Aythirmok is in tension with those two facts, then. We can’t sow on frozen ground, and that same thaw means the dead may come. It’s a real pickle. Everyone always hopes it won’t be this spring- the scouts are always watching, we ask spirits for predictions of dubious use. But we always need to be prepared as if it will. The southern barriers to the Deadlands have been rebuilt on every incursion, and those without a Gift do their best, but you always know it’s counterproductive to even try melees to stall them, as much as the berserkers wish to be unleashed. Some bites and you just grow their numbers, and you can hardly count on them to stay dead even if you drop them, however much the dead are begging you to help end their torment. But what choice do we have, really? It isn’t as if only we would starve if we give up the thawed grazelands, they’d be eating each other in the cities of Salvation or Tenebrum without our shipments before too long.

That’s also the answer to ‘why would anyone live in a land that is attacked by armies of the dead every few years’, too. Hardly any choice. Best farmlands in all of the continent after a thaw, a number of the richest mines, and that’s more than enough for some. For most though, it’s home, and someone has got to do it, and some day we’ll end the Deadlands for good and all.

Some day.

“Winter is the kind season.”

We’ve held our own for the better part of a thousand years. Some Harvests are far worse than others, mind. We face down the greatest Affliction in all the world, and the spirits have long been in our allies in this. Maybe not as helpful or easy to understand as you might hope, but still, we’ll take what we can get. Now don’t get me wrong, it would be nice if we knew why we had to have a geas, or if they even made a little bit of sense. What does never refusing a drink if offered, or you can never eat with a stone fork, or any of these have to do with anything?

Spirits, as a rule, are very odd. But some help is better than none.

Apos

@ten said:

@apos

what’s the polytheistic sitch like?

Much broader. So Arx 1 had the Faith of the Pantheon as having clear allegorical nods towards religion in medieval Europe, and while I was happy with a lot of the stories based on that, I found there was some parts of world building that were counterintuitive and very restrictive, and that made me lean another way.

It’s a very wide polytheistic pantheon, with relatively few extremely strong institutional faiths (notable exception inside Luxen), and the gods and goddesses being worshipped individually. Much closer to hellenistic polytheism with a significant number of major gods, and then a much larger number of minor gods and deity gods. (ie Ares vs say, Hypnos. Sorry sleepy bro). Player characters can have a chosen faith as a declared outward worship on their sheets, and some institutions (like noble houses in Umbros), have chosen patron deities. The main difference is it would be more like Arx 1 discipleships of being focused on a single deity than a broader unified religion. I found most PCs generally wanted to RP that even when it wasn’t the case, and it’s easier conceptually for people to latch onto.

Did the great famine in the 7th age lead to the toppling of the monarchy or are we still lords and ladies-ing it up?

Depends on the region. Arx doesn’t have nobility any longer, and hasn’t for quite a long time. Luxen is a republic, and recently overthrew their nobility as a counter-revolution to a coup attempt. One very significant NPC polity is a mercantile oligarchy. Arx 1 was the entire PC population underneath a single crown, which was held by a PC. This is very much not the case here, as the different regions are very much divided and separate states, and no PCs are in control of them. But even for the feudal other states, they each have some quirks that probably aren’t quite how people would think of feudal, like in terms of succession.

Umbros: the imperial title is done by tannistry succession, a weighted election done by the magically powerful voting for the strongest noble. While the lower titles have their own succession, but usually strongest enatic-cognatic child.

Inferna: Enatic succession by strongest gifted among daughters.

Aythirmok: Strongest child, no formal gender preference.

Pre-revolutionary Luxen: Primogeniture.

Ariwn: Succession? What’s that?

@InkGolem said:

Maybe I’m slow right now, but are we starting at some point after the Arx bubble burst and people set up enclaves elsewhere? I’m a bit confused.

So yeah, these civilizations have been going on outside of Arx for a long, long time, meaning some PCs are coming from Arx and emerging into a world that’s not very post apocalyptic at all, and others are starting in societies that have been going for a long time. It is very unclear to all PCs, whether they came from Arx or another starting region, why Arx was under the Shroud if the world was going on seemingly just fine for many generations and why it’s dropped now, and what that means for everyone. Maybe a good time to mention that the popularity of the clues system in Arx 1 caught me by surprise, and I’ve made that more of a focus from the start this time.

so is the implication that these are possibly characters from Arx 1 that survived the finale? or is it pretty firmly not anybody who was ever on screen?

The latter and I hadn’t really thought too much about someone wanting to do the former, but with how separate the stories are, and how every Sleeper has no memories, I don’t think it would be that disruptive, frankly.

Apos

@junipersky Have two I’m pretty happy with, point in fact. Both human older guys, one from Arx and one from Inferna.

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@Dreampipe said:

@Apos Might’ve been answered before but I’m a bit slow - are there still going to be roster characters or is this all OCs?

There will be rosters, though how they work is a little different. I didn’t really like how there was so much ambiguity over who was overseeing a character’s story and what they need to do to advance, and just a lot of blockers in general, so rosters’ stories are directly connected to GMs, and so it’s designed to try to filter people picking up rosters that have active stories they can be involved with and that have active GMs overseeing it.

Apos

@ten said:

aw hell to the fuck yeah.

a contrary question though: are humans still a thing?

So not really spoilers to give a demographic breakdown, along with a bit of mechanics. Each starting area has multiple Beginnings, which also break down along different playable species.

Arx: Human caretakers, as far and away the dominant majority, with a small minority among Sleepers (individuals have been in a magical slumber for the past thousand years and awaken with no memory), as well as Misbegotten (magical births with no obvious parents), that can be other species, including elves and Daeva (think aasimar).

Umbros: Overwhelmingly human, including near all of the nobility. Very tiny minority populations of khati and infernals (tiefling equivalents).

Luxen: Humans are the majority, while khati are an extremely significant minority, particularly concentrated in the capital city of Salvation. The Khati beginning is profoundly different than a human witch hunter beginning.

Inferna: Infernals (in two subspecies, Sireni and Cinderi) are the majority, with a large human minority, and a very tiny khati population.

Aythirmok: Nearly all human, tiny amounts of other species.

Ariwn: Large human commoner population, but the rulers and warrior caste are decidedly not.

Only playable elves will be from Arx with no starting knowledge of their culture, or any connection to any that survived outside the Shroud. Might notice I have not mentioned any half-species, and that gets into a much deeper lore topic deserving of its own pace.

Apos

The Grand Principality of Inferna

“One stands before us in Durance. Speak thy name and testament.”

Any description of Inferna is rife with misconceptions, lies, and inaccuracies. You’ll hear Inferna described as an unbearably hot Island realm, its nobility comprised of Abyssal-blooded Infernal pirates who prey upon all those who dare to cross the Strait of Consequences. Tall tales of slaughtering all of their crews, seizing all of their riches, and malevolent agents of chaos slipping into other realms to sow dissent and corrupt the innocent. This is, of course, ridiculous.

The Isles of Inferna really aren’t that warm. Pretty mild, actually, depending on the season. Nice sea-breeze.

As for the rest, we would certainly take issue with the word ‘slaughter’. Most ships can pass unhindered, even! Not so much Luxen, who refuse to surrender lands that are rightfully ours, and will continue until the day Cinderus once again flies its rightful banners. But even then it isn’t as if we kill everyone, and many in our houses are talented individuals who cheerfully joined our ranks rather than staying with the stupid and dull. And while a few houses are noteworthy exceptions, we really as a rule don’t engage in wanton bloodletting. The least interesting crew members just are politely ushered off the side of the ship, and well, if you lack the water-breathing of the Sireni or the wings to fly like the Cinderi, you can scarcely blame us for what your gods refused to grant you. That’s a skill issue on their part, and feel free to take it up with them.

“Please, Envala, let this happen because it would be so fucking funny.”

Anyone traveling from Inferna gets quickly accustomed to being treated with distrust, and for native Infernals it is far worse. Not that most would ever call us anything but ‘imps’. And admittedly, a lot of our houses don’t exactly help matters. The dagger length claws of the Cinderi and certain houses insisting on handshakes has made for memorable incidents but much less than one might assume, with hardly ever any ambassadors losing a hand or two. And it isn’t as if we lack for treaties and agreements with most realms. We even had a perfectly good one with Luxen of all places, lasting right up until their revolution.

But if anyone else starts a conflict, we are most certainly going to end it, after we discover the most hilarious and delightful way to do so.

“Don’t marry the mark.”

Look, it’s nothing personal. There’s relatively few of us. We’ve already lost one kingdom, would rather not lose a second, and we have neighbors all too happy to expand. So we have to think of ourselves first, and every other realm isn’t making it easy to be overburdened with a generosity of spirit.

There comes a point when everyone treating you like a villain makes you decide to own it, after all.

Just treat us fairly, and we won’t have any problems. Trust us.

Apos

@MisterBoring said:

@Apos That’s cool. Are there going to be parts of the Arx 2 backstory that will cause devout Arx 1 players to squee?

Probably, though I hadn’t really thought about it too much, and I think if it happens it is more a consequence of my creative process versus other people. A lot of people like to really be focused on the current setting, and then work backwards from explanations, keeping things vague until it would be story significant and needs to be defined. And that’s valid and I think there’s a lot of arguments for doing it that way, and I think it’s really helpful to keep narrative room to maneuver.

My process tends to be the other way, where I tend to start at the furthest back point and then work forwards and think of all the different pivot points in a history and the different decisions on the way, and how this resulted in things being the way they are. It lets me get an easier grip around it, and in some ways that’s why the interest in Arx 1’s lore caught me off guard, because at its heart it was honestly more for me just so I could keep things consistent in my head than for anyone else. So Arx’s reboot is a lot of the same way, where because of how things happened, that leads to other things, which led to other things again, which in turn created these different states and all these dark secrets waiting to be uncovered, and some would point back to different decision points that PCs made or brushed up against.

It let me learn a bit from what I saw as my mistakes in the first iteration of Arx, in how I could keep things clearer- like for example, breaking up the different time periods into ages, so it’s much easier to see what was contemporary of what. Not really a spoiler to say that Arx 1 happened during the 6th age of the world, and the game starts at the beginning of the 10th.

Apos

@MisterBoring Yes, but not very directly.

Apos

@real_mirage It’s canonically the same game world, if warped by the passage of ages and catastrophic events, though I am trying to write it so it should not require any knowledge of Arx 1.

Apos

@hellfrog said:

I thought the premise was that it was a small (ish) population in a sealed city that was just opened up to the post-apoc world. In-city empires? Nations?

Thank you, let me explain a bit. So what I’m doing now is posting lore introductions for different starting areas, from the angle of an unreliable narrator for different areas.

Mechanically, a new player making an OC character would select a region, and from there they can select a different Beginning from the different cultural groups available, and some of these could have very dramatically different starting stories (like playing a member of an oppressed group within a culture).

Arx as a city has been cut off for a thousand years (from their perspective), and now the world is open for them to explore.

The other starting areas are different realms that have risen up since the most recent apocalypse. There is Luxen, Umbros detailed above, and then we have three others: Inferna, Ariwn, and Aythirmok. Past that, there’s several neighboring powers that won’t have CG available initially, but will open up later- Blighton, Jadairal, and the Southern Compact.

One significant mechanical difference from Arx will be a replacement for clues in our Codex system, which largely has all the IC knowledge that a character has. So if someone has specific cultural knowledge to their starting area, they would start with that in their Codex, and something shareable to other characters, and something they could research further as they delve into histories.