A lot of AI sucks, I can’t stand AI writing, and I hate what it does to artists, but I think there will be much more people in our hobby in five years than there is right now.

@Deviant said:

So, I wasn’t around for the original Arx run. Would someone kindly care to share a short, elevator-pitch style summary of what this game was about? There’s a lot of snippets and anecdotes but I’m having trouble getting a big-picture view.

From my perspective, it was about a medieval world that had written off the supernatural and magic as superstition, then slowly starting to realize that they were made to forget its existence because of dark forces. Confronting and defeating those forces was the game-long arc, with the game’s finale ending with magic’s return.

So because of that arc, the second iteration of Arx will be a very different game.

@Jennkryst said:

@Apos said:

Might notice I have not mentioned any half-species, and that gets into a much deeper lore topic deserving of its own pace.

Monster-Fucker Faction confirmed.

That was actually just a linode restart. Leaving it up probably until we launch, mostly because it’s convenient as I double check very very niche bits of lore for consistency.

@Gashlycrumb said:

Siren informed me that she deliberately ignored all communication from me for half a year because I “don’t take no for an answer,” so she “can’t be bothered” with me. I am legitimately extremely annoying, but what she didn’t do is tell me that I was being punished or why,

(Nor indeed did she tell me to close the discussion and take no for an answer until after this lengthy silent treatment, which extended to all communication with her and rendered all but BaRP play out of reach.)

By the way, covert punishment is a form of abuse. It’s not a mere red flag, it’s one of the crevasses that red flags warn you against. It’s wrong and abusive even if you do it to a horrible person like myself.

If you feel an urge to defend this behaviour, please click here before you give yourself a knee-injury.

If someone is thinking, ‘Hah, I am going to ignore everything this person does to make them feel bad, and passive aggressively make them realize how upset I am at them, until they have no choice but to apologize’. Yes, that is the Silent Treatment.

If someone is thinking, ‘Every time I see this guy I want to quit the game and never return, I am going to nope out and hope he leaves me alone’. This is not the Silent Treatment, that is someone very much hoping that you take a hint on a boundary. That is not someone punishing you, that is someone wanting no relationship with you of any kind ever, and they owe you nothing. Idk if you paypal’d them money for GMing and they ghosted you or something, but if you did not, then expecting that and then calling them an abuser because they would not deal with your shit is more than a little fucked up. I think it is better to tell someone that you will not interact with them, and they might be wasting their time, but it is not owed.

I do not think it would be abusive to ban you. It just isn’t. It would be saying, ‘we do not get along, best of luck in your future endeavors’. There is nothing stopping you from just making a new game and going and doing, and you frankly should if you do not get along with staff to that degree. I would never play on a game where staff obviously could not stand me, and that you do is absolutely mind boggling to me.

@Shygaming in all honesty I just feel I’m not the audience for it and I don’t know it well enough to ask questions I thought would be useful. Like I could ask general questions like, if you are adapting Haven’s code base, what new systems are you as a game runner most interested in adding and what ones did you find not great and are getting rid of?

the myth of consensual SA rp. isn’t there someone we forgot to ask

@Kestrel said:

I think it is blind to ignore the ways in which these experiences can cause real harm to players, both through other players and their own choosing. A couple examples:

1. A player writes a fantasy in which his adult character engages in incest with an underage character. This is repeatedly training his mind to associate sexual desire and arousal with the fantasy of an underage family member. It’s not his fault if these fantasies already lay dormant, but it is his fault and his choice to reinforce and further explore them. I cannot be convinced that this is unlikely to cause future harm to his ability to maintain an appropriate view and relationship with his own underage family members.
2. A game has a skewed gender ratio, more female than male. Because of this, male characters are in high demand by partner-seeking heterosexual female characters. This gives the players of male characters an advantage to pit female characters against each other in competition. It encourages the players of female characters to seek to prove themselves sexually above other female characters, to settle for unequal nonmonogamous arrangements, to ignore mistreatment by the players of male characters, to alter their characters and storytelling for male approval, and to blur IC/OOC boundaries in order to retain their attention. I cannot be convinced that a male-led harem on this game can truly be assumed to be fully consensual, on the part of potentially lonely players using this game as a source of self-esteem and validation, or that it fosters healthy dynamics. I don’t think it’s good for men to ride this kind of ego trip, and I don’t think it’s good for women to vicariously experience this erosion of self through a sexual fantasy that isn’t even really her own.

I’m going to do the really, really stupid thing and put myself in a position of defending stuff I find incredibly repugnant, because while I agree with a lot of what you say, some of the stuff I disagree with and why I think can lead to a lot more harm.

Okay so the first example I find has a few problems. First, from what I’ve read, it just isn’t true about immersion in something necessarily causes someone to adopt that sexuality. Like, we are talking about really gross things illegal for very good reasons, but I don’t see how this is any different than conservatives arguing about people being ‘turned gay’ or becoming trans or any other kind of sexual identity that’s been demonized, and people are marginalized to… well, not infect people. We’re talking about something really bad, but the argument makes me acutely uneasy because it basically embraces a lot of the most harmful ‘nurture, not nature’ beliefs imo. Yeah I mean nature and nurture are really complex, and those things are really bad and we want to prevent people being victimized, but to me this really comes across as ‘gross thing is super gross and I want to find a real harm irl as a reason why it must be banned’ and I think that’s not true, and endorses things most of us would find really bad.

The second example has really huge problems and let me talk about why. Putting people in positions to try to protect consenting adults from themselves leads to Not Great Places really, really fast. Like I do not think the way we solve the Critical Top Shortage is by implying those tops are abusers, or that bottoms are bad because they enable them. I know that wasn’t what you were getting at, and yeah absolutely if someone in a position of authority on a game is actively trying to limit other people that could try to break up their harem, that’s really fucking bad. But I one thousand percent think it will be MUCH more common for ‘protecting’ people to come from a place of resentment and intense dislike of anyone involved, and use that as an excuse to attack them. Because this is something we see in this hobby like, daily. Everywhere. Constantly. Bitches eating crackers. It is vastly, vastly more common for people to decide that one person they dislike is evil because they got locked out of RP, and go after them with righteous fury to protect every lamb that has been duped by them.

And that’s why they gotta spam every newbie warning them off, and try to isolate them from RP. For their own good, ofc.

Anyways, I have no interest in allowing deeply traumatic themes like that or supporting them by code, and sure they gross me out, but I am just not comfortable like ascribing morality to it anymore than thinking everyone that PKs someone is a closeted serial killer irl.

Now if that same player does a reeeeeeeeally graphic murder and talks constantly in ooc about how much they are into it and really wish they could do it and it is what they live for then uh, yeah, maybe a red flag there. But I do not think that is exactly the norm.

@hellfrog said:

So who is the Blood Patriarch, and can he be my boyfriend

You don’t want that. Nobody wants that. Trust.

@dvoraen

I actually don’t recall if this got asked (and I have nfc what to look for if the answer exists), but how does it work that <things> got chomped and then the culprit got what happened to them. I mean that in a “does that particular notion have to be refilled by a successor” or is it more “VACANCY: THIS MANY FOLKS” who may or may not have the same “portfolio” so to speak.

So that one I won’t get into, as fun as it would be to talk about it. I’m gonna keep to things that would greet people immediately on the way in or be very clear just from reading things that would be mostly common knowledge to characters, and the metaphysics around things like that and the circumstances could be considerably deeper, and in some cases run into some character secrets.

@helvetica said:

@Apos Was Flopsy the white rabbit ever able to fulfill his dream of kill all humans?

Oh boy did he ever get to chase his fluffy, hateful dreams. He came up in conversation the other day when discussing examples of relatively minor figures that went on to ascend to malevolent demigodhood in the new larger polytheism.

@Anhedonia said:

If I missed this somewhere above, I apologize (I’m lazy) –

Is my boy Leviathan coming back? Can he take the form of a cool talking fish?

Most of the gods got got but Leviathan is still around and some Infernals worship him, especially among the Sireni.

@dvoraen said:

@Apos Would you like to place a wager on an initial playerbase census (characters in each area by %) after this posting about Ariwn?

(Also, how do you pronounce it?)

I have absolutely no clue who is gonna play what, tbh. Like I have a feeling the areas I am most excited about for the kind of story arcs I have in mind aren’t what will immediately resonate.

Pronunciation is roughly ‘Are-yoon’. Though someone that speaks ancient Armenian could correct me I’m sure.

@helvetica said:

@Apos Just thinking in terms of time differences, paused/continued scenes, or nighttime event scenes that are scheduled to start during the day for player availability, is there going to be a mechanism to tell the grid like… yo, we said it’s night, now?

Yeah. So the grid moves at 3:1 IC:OOC time ratio, with again a lot based around a RL week as a cron for updates, so that much might be familiar to some Arx players. Automatic aging, along with significant mechanical bonuses for physically older characters, IC birthday reminders, significant IC calendar days, mechanical differences from seasons, that kinda stuff is more baked in now.

But for RP, players and GMs have a good amount of leeway here in controlling when scenes are, though there’s a distinction between RP that is happening on the grid versus something formalized in a scene vs again an event or a GM session. Any players RPing together in a room could choose to make that a scene, and lock the time ICly there, because in my experience while overall gametime can and should be much faster than OOC to make character arcs more meaningful, the way people actually write in an RP scene works out to be vastly, vastly slower than real time, where people could spend hours writing about something that really would realistically take place over a couple of minutes.

So anyone planning an event if they pick an OOC date time, they could decide to choose an IC date that corresponds roughly within any couple of IC weeks of that range, and down to the IC minute if they really wanted something happening at the stroke of midnight or something. GMs running a session for their table could have a series of different scenes, since they could have a tempus fugit mid session, and skip forward a day or up to within a few weeks for the next part of the same session they are running. Characters captured, time passes.

There is some OOC formalization in moving into a room and then ICly joining a scene in progress, even if it is always very clear who is or who isn’t there (again in keeping with Arx’s design philosophy, there’s never going to be any kind of OOC invisibility that creates ambiguity in whether RP is or isn’t being watched). But it does mean that someone moving through the grid at night, wandering into a bar scene doesn’t immediately burst into flame if they see they set it for the day.

So about the last post, yeah PCs can be vampires. There is an important mechanics distinction here though, in that time of day is an automated thing, and so is damage from sunlight, with ways to try to mitigate that so someone isn’t completely shut out of RP if they take precautions.

Having said that, I don’t like the idea of players ever having potential character loss from AFKs, disconnects, whatever, so how I approach something like that is essentially if a character is taking environmental damage, they have to opt in trying to tough it out, or they auto flee for safety. No response after a time period just goes to the auto flee. So for example if a vampire (or dhampir or dark elf) linkdies/quits in a scene that was happening during the night in a public room, log back in a few rl days later when the scene is long gone and it’s day and they go get a drink or something irl after logging, they probably come back to their PC hiding in their room and nursing some light burns.

The Kingdoms of Ariwn

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

It is sometimes said that there are grudges between living kings and queens of Ariwn that predate the founding of any other realm in Catenys. This is not at all true. They are, strictly speaking, not living, as those immortals died and received their gift of eternal undeath from the Blood Patriarch a long, long time ago. The grudges, however, that much is exceedingly true. One can spend a lifetime trying to learn the cause of a truly ancient vendetta, only to discover in a passing comment that the reason a lord despises Umbros is because some Umbral noble nine centuries ago made the mistake of referring to his demesne as a ‘petty kingdom scarcely the size of a duchy’.

Ancient vampires, as a rule, are proud creatures.

Many in the other realms fear us, and not without cause. Not solely due to our ancients that might spend centuries plotting revenge for some slight that not a single living soul would ever remember. But they see in us a realm of predators. Of dhampir desperate to win approval of ancient rulers that may accidentally call them by the name of a great-grandparent. Of newly sired vampires, struggling to control their thirst and obey the laws of the Blood Patriarch. And most of all of the Lycan Clans, who are portrayed all too often as war-crazed ravagers, relentlessly seeking to win glory for the Fleshreaper.

Ariwn is not a realm overburdened with unity.

“Eternity is overfull of immortal mediocrities. Become a legend.”

In the ages since Arx was sealed, Ariwn became a popular destination for scholars hoping to speak to ancient beings who could provide answers to the many historical questions and invaluable firsthand accounts of events with no living witnesses. They were inevitably always greatly disappointed. Many ancients will claim that the never-seen Blood Patriarch has forbidden the elders from speaking about the circumstances around Ariwn’s founding, and there may even be some truth to that. But among both the born and created children of the elders, most strongly suspect that the real truth is that speaking of the past simply bores them.

The appetites of vampire and lycan alike are easily maintained by the willing herds, but the desire for entertainment in Ariwn is insatiable. For the Lycan, this means ever higher contests of glory seeking, and great hunts to war with Afflictions and the demonspawn within. For the children of the blood, this often means hoping to become Gifted, and slipping to Shroudwatch to start one’s Durance likely over the stern disapproval of an ancient being that detests change. For the elders, the desire to see something new in unchallenging frivolity makes Ariwn the most rewarding destination for bards, harlequins and mummers’ troupes in Catenys.

And if a jape should go too far and a jester winds up impaled upon one of the peaks of the Bloodrange, that is simply a reminder that one must know their audience.

“Even in the land of Night Unending, remember that the morrow is never promised.”

To the rulers of other realms, Ariwn presents a vexing puzzle. In theory the kingdoms formally possess a nominal highlord in the Blood Patriarch, but centuries may pass without even a single word from him, and even nobles of Ariwn that attempt a summons tend to vanish without a trace. In practice, this means that Ariwn is compromised of scores of independent petty kingdoms that are very loosely affiliated, lightly constrained by ancient treaties and traditions set down from its founding. The solution for most realms tends to be to pretend Ariwn simply does not exist, and conveniently forget that it is the eastern bulwark against the Deadlands that causes the dead to divert instead against Aythirmok.

With Ariwn’s veil of darkness over the land, the ancients have never shown any interest in expanding beyond those borders, and while there have been some significant wars over the centuries brought on by Lycan Clan expansion, Ariwn has stayed largely untouched for ages past. Which is exactly as the elders have liked it. The comparison was often made in Catenys between Arx and Ariwn, two unchanging bastions, one under an impenetrable shroud and one under a veil of darkness. There is a joke often told in Ariwn about its stasis, a grim humor among the younger vampires and dhampir who bemoan that they would never get to wear a crown from the ancients. ‘No need to fret, the elders will abdicate the moment the Shroud of Arx drops.’

The elders are no longer fond of that joke.

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.

@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.

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

@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.

@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.